If you’re an American who supports Israel in its war against Hamas, you’re subject not only to a barrage of bizarre and untenable claims, but also must ride an emotional roller coaster controlled by Biden and Blinken. These B brothers seem determined to control Israel’s behavior in the war, going back and forth in what they dictate to the Jewish country. We are told that the war must stop because too many Gazan civilians have been killed in proportion to dead terrorists, yet the ratio is by all rational accounts roughly 1.5:1—one of the lowest ratios of civilians/combatants killed in modern warfare. (And of course the media always use the dubious figures presented by Hamas as if they were accurate!)
We see Blinken telling Israel that they must hold an election now to get rid of Netanyahu—a reprehensible interference in democratic politics, and during wartime! (I’m not a big fan of Netanyahu, and am sure he’ll be deposed in the next election, but now he’s part of a three-person war cabinet that, with help from the Israeli military is directing the fighting. And two of those members are, unlike Netanyahu, from the Israeli Left).
We see the world, including America, issuing dire warnings that Israel must not invade Rafah, despite the fact that that is where the Hamas leadership and a large proportion of its fighters have holed up, and despite Israel having plans to evacuate civilians. Without going into Rafah, Hamas will not be destroyed, and of course will not voluntarily give up power. Keeping Israel out of Rafah is, as all pro-Palestinians realize, a recipe for keeping Hamas in power.
We see the American administration broaching the idea that the Palestinian Authority should rule postwar Gaza, despite the fact that Gazans despise the PA. And the PA is a corrupt, terror-promoting organization that pays Palestinians who kill Jews in its odious “pay for slay” program (or, as Wikipedia calls it, the “Martyrs’ Fund“). What kind of moron would suggest that the PA take over running Gaza? And if any remnants of Hamas remain, they won’t be allowed to.
And now the ultimate insult: the U.S. will propose today a UN Security Council resolution that will call for a ceasefire and release of hostages. The details are hazy, but the resolution is aimed not at Hamas but at Israel, for, given the details, it could lead to the resurrection of Hamas and its attendant terror attacks. Realize that since October 7 there has been not one UN resolution, be it in the General Assembly or the more important Security Council, that has condemned what Hamas has done and told it to lay down its arms, release the hostages, and surrender.
One gets the impression that for a very brief time after October 7 the West was on the side of Israel, but that didn’t last long. Now, it seems, the West, including the U.S., wants Hamas to win—or at least Israel to vanish. Why? Well, of course Biden is sweating bullets over winning a close election in November, and he needs the votes of Muslims and young people who don’t favor Israel. Further, the casualty ratio is too high for most people, who don’t seem to realize that it’s an extraordinarily low ratio of civilians killed to terrorists killed, especially for urban warfare in close quarters.
Will the Security Council resolution pass? Yes, of course, since the U.S., which has been the only veto in the Council’s resolutions against Israel so far, is actually proposing this resolution. And that bodes very ill for Israel.
We also see bizarre claims (viz., from Thomas “I am Dumb” Friedman) that creating a two-state situation will somehow miraculously bring about lasting peace, even when we know that neither Palestinians nor Israelis favor that situation, that it can’t work, and that polls show that most Palestinians, whether they be in Gaza or the West Bank, still favor Hamas. Here are results from a poll taken between March 5 and 10 from the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research:
Forced to the "brink of starvation" in a bombed-out hellscape, what do Gazans think of Hamas now?
New poll:
71% of Palestinians approve of the 10/7 Hamas attacks
91% say Hamas committed no war crimes
59% want Hamas to rule Gaza after the warhttps://t.co/GmkDrwDsaT
— i/o (@eyeslasho) March 21, 2024
Finally, there’s the world’s accusation that Israel is preventing humanitarian aid to Gazans, despite all evidence that Israel is allowing and facilitating that aid, while Hamas takes the lion’s share of it while also ensuring that more civilians are killed—its strategy from the beginning. In fact, Israel has even proposed using IDF soldiers to guard the aid-bearing trucks to prevent them from being hijacked buy Hamas.
Yes, it looks to a pro-Israeli American that the Western world has lost its collective mind, taking steps that will ensure a victory of Hamas, a barbaric, Jew-hating organization that not only oppresses its own people, but is sworn to kill all Jews and eliminate Israel. This is the organization that, apparently, the West is loath to dismantle.
This is my view, but it appears to be one shared by the former Guardian writer Melanie Phillips in a recent column. Phillips, once a liberal, left the Guardian and moved towards the center-right, for which of course she’s been damned. It’s even worse for “progressives” because she’s Jewish favors Israel in the war. But her latest Substack column (also in the Jewish News Service), which you can read by clicking the headline below, rings true. In fact, she speaks of a “war” between the U.S. and Israel, though of course it’s a war of wills, not of weapons.
Her thesis:
As some of us have long feared and has now become undeniable, Israel is fighting not one but two wars of defence against a malevolent foe.
The first is against the axis of Iran and its proxies: Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis of Yemen. The second is against America.
The Biden administration is to construct a pier off the Gaza shore to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid. This week, Israeli TV’s Channel 14 reported that, astoundingly, the Americans have handed over the financing and management of this pier to Qatar, the founder, funder and protector of Hamas and therefore the godfather of the October 7 pogrom.
Channel 14 said the Qataris demanded that the new pier be built by a Gaza company named Al Hissi, which is controlled by Hamas.
Giving Qatar control of this pier would ensure Hamas continues to exist, enrich itself and attack Israel with an open route into Gaza. As Yigal Carmon, the founder of MEMRI, has written in horror: “The US has flipped sides, from Israel to Qatar.”
America could end this war tomorrow by telling the Qataris that unless they instruct Hamas to surrender and release the hostages, Qatar will forfeit its preferential treatment by the United States and will henceforth be treated instead as an international pariah.
Instead, America is feeding Israel into the Qatari jaws. The outcome, writes Carmon, will be escalation into a total regional war by Iran not only against Israel but America.
America’s action is so preposterous it’s hard to believe. Yet in any event, the Biden administration has already pivoted from supporting the destruction of Hamas to working for its ultimate victory.
The administration has been relentlessly pressuring Israel to admit more and more aid into Gaza, accusing it falsely of stopping the trucks and ignoring the fact that most of this aid is being stolen by Hamas to enable it to survive at the expense of the needy civilian population.
The United States is determined to impose rule in post-war Gaza by the Palestinian Authority, despite the fact that the Palestinian Authority’s ruling party, Fatah, has exulted at the October 7 pogrom and declared that it will continue such attacks.
The administration is determined to impose upon Israel a Palestine state, even though this would become another “Hamastan” and place central Israel in grave danger of October 7-style attacks on steroids.
And with Israel now poised to attack the last redoubt of Hamas in Rafah, which is key to the defeat of this genocidal enemy, America is subjecting Israel to intense pressure to abandon this final front of the war.
While many, including me, have imputed America’s waning support for Israel to Biden’s drive to get re-elected, Phillips thinks that the desire to depose Netanyahu is a stronger motivation. She may be right, but that motivation is misguided. Right now Israel is in an existential battle, and the war is being prosecuted by not only military experts, but by a war cabinet that includes right-wing Netanyahu but also two left-wing Israelis (Ganz and Gallant), who were generals in the IDF. Netanyahu fought too, and acquitted himself well in battle, taking part in many actions and being wounded many times, though he never made general. At any rate, now is not the time to call for regime change in Israel, even if you think that the U.S. has the right to tell the Israeli people when and how to hold elections.
Chuck Schumer, who pretends to be a Jew who has Israel’s best interests at heart, also comes in for his share of Phillipsian opprobrium. Beside calling for Israel to depose Netanyahu, Phillips adds this:
Far worse, Schumer parroted the blood libels being used to demonise Israel by its enemies. Claiming to be one of the Jews who “love Israel in our bones,” he stated in the next breath: “I’m anguished that the Israeli war campaign has killed so many innocent Palestinians. I know that my fellow Jewish Americans feel the same anguish when they see the images of dead and starving children — and destroyed homes.”
Every civilian death in wartime is tragic. But “so many innocents” is based on Hamas casualty figures that inflate the numbers and totally omit the Hamas forces they include.
Even more nauseatingly, Schumer smeared Israel still further by intoning: “We must be better than our enemies, lest we become them.”
The suggestion that Israel is no better than Hamas is a pernicious lie spread by those who want Israel gone. In fact, Israel’s ratio of civilians to combatants killed is fewer than 1.5 civilians for every one combatant, far better than any other country’s army has ever achieved.
That ratio, the focus of the world’s ire, should actually dampen its ire. The ratio is astoundingly low, but of course although using it to indict Israel makes no sense, it supports The Narrative, which in the end sees Israeli Jews as white colonialist oppressors and Gazans and Hamas as oppressed people of color who are simply battling colonialism, occupation, and oppression. Phillips:
Israel is not just fighting to defend itself against genocide. It is on the front line of the west’s defence against its enemies and the defence of civilisation against barbarism.
Western liberals can’t acknowledge this because they can’t allow their unchallengeable orthodoxies of Palestinian powerlessness, “peace processes” and western iniquity to be destroyed. So they have turned on the Jews. Jewish suffering has to be erased because it gets in the way of the narrative.
That’s why the eruption of Palestinianism throughout the west is so shattering. People wonder why the forests of Palestinian flags at the incendiary anti-Israel demonstrations are in themselves so intimidating.
It’s because the Palestine cause is not two states side by side. Palestinian identity consists entirely of the intention to eradicate Israel by the hijack and appropriation of Jewish history. Palestinianism stands for the erasure of Jewish national identity and wiping the Jewish people out of their own historic homeland.
Perhaps the last paragraph is a bit hyperbolic, but not overly so given the Jew hatred taught to Palestinian children and the repeated rejection by Palestinians of a “two state solution.” However, I’m sure that there are decent Palestinians who merely want to live in peace with Israeli neighbors, and live in a prosperous country with a decent government. Unfortunately, Hamas won’t permit that.
And, apparently, neither will the United States.
**************
UPDATE: I’ve just learned that, against all expectations, the U.S.’s Security Council resolution at the UN did NOT pass—it was vetoed by Russia and China but of course the U.S. voted “yea”.
France will work with Jordan and the United Arab Emirates to convince Russia and China to back a resolution at the United Nations for a ceasefire in Gaza after the two big powers blocked a text by the United States, French President Emmanuel Macron says.
“Following the Russian and Chinese veto a few minutes ago, we are going to resume work on the basis of the French draft resolution in the Security Council and work with our American, European and Arab partners to reach an agreement,” Macron says at the end of a European Union leaders’ summit in Brussels.
France’s foreign ministry said on Thursday it had started drafting a resolution with diplomats, saying they would put a draft forward if the US resolution did not pass.
Earlier, the UN Security Council failed to pass a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza as part of a hostage deal, the first time the US has backed such language.
The resolution called for an “immediate and sustained ceasefire” lasting roughly six weeks that would protect civilians and allow for the delivery of humanitarian assistance.
I’m not sure why Russia and China voted “no”, unless it’s simply because they don’t like the U.S. and wanted to oppose its resolution.
I was thinking more about the Cease Fire Resolution. Israel could make this work for themselves by saying they are willing to have a ceasefire if all the hostages are released and then wait for Hamas to refuse.
I’m not sure that there is any bargaining power for Israel here: the world will say that Israel has to obey the UN resolution, and there may be no wiggle room. But note that the UN resolution, against all my expectations, failed to pass after it was vetoed by China and Russia. Negotiations continue, but in the meantime Israel may launch an assault on Rafah.
For anyone who missed it when Jerry posted about it, this analysis of the Hamas casualty figures is a must read:
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/how-gaza-health-ministry-fakes-casualty-numbers
Israel should bank the $14 Billion due in from USA, and then repudiate USA the instant that UN Resolution passes. Then, throw the QutarDock into the sea.
Then, finish the war on its terms.
+1
+1
Israel will simply ignore any resolution and do what it must. UN resolutions are ignored all the time. Israel understand that the “B brother’s” statements are for a domestic political audience and are not connected to reallity.
I wonder if there was some masterful diplomacy at work here. The U.S. got the Russians and the Chinese to vote against its own resolution to take the heat off President Biden’s re-election difficulties. The quid pro quo would be that the U.S. would veto some future resolution calling for Russia or China to remove themselves or their client states from their own regional conflicts where they have a stake. Generally speaking, most countries want to be left alone to pursue their own foreign interests more than they want to prevent their rivals from doing so, however tempting it might be in the short term.
I think it’s safe to say that mere dislike doesn’t carry any weight in diplomacy. It’s all about interests. I’m sure the U.S. would never have floated this resolution if it did not know it would be vetoed. And get two countries on side in case one of them double-crosses.
That crossed my mind as well—that the U.S. either got the Russians and Chinese to vote against the resolution or that the U.S. anticipated that they would (even without a quid pro quo). It’s a dangerous game they play.
The US is not that smart nor strategic — not anymore, nor does it have much bargaining power with China and Russia.
+1
I want to reiterate Coel’s mention, in this morning’s Hili comments, of an interview Douglas Murray did in South Africa yesterday regarding Israel/Hamas war at url
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Flggg8Fyzu8
This first 10-12 minutes are instructive..a bit frustrating regarding the host interviewer, yet instructive.
Interesting interview. Agree 100% with Douglas.
Agree re: the host.
Thank you. We should know the name if the “journalist” from, I gather, Eye Witness News (I cannot find the name). My dialectic-O-meter picks up a reading:
The journalist (see? Need a name.) has the thrust of dialectic driving her thought – that is, a gnosis of how History unfolded, is unfolding, and – therefore is expected to unfold until the End of History. Namely, dialectically. That is how she can try to mystify Murray’s quite Hitchensian sparring and have it come across as if the listener or Murray is an ignorant troglodyte. It’s called mystification.
Also : Marxists always lie.
I’ll copied this from the other thread.
The name of the journalist interviewing Murray appears right at the beginning of the clip: Jane Dutton.
I made it 7 minutes into the clip. Dutton claiming that Israel was occuping Gaza before Oct 7 is ridiculous. Any other state in the position of Israel would also want to control the goods going into Gaza to prevent Hamas arming itself for an eventual war against Israel.
Ooo, that’s embarassing – thank you.
+1
I read Melanie Phillips regularly. She’s sometimes over the top, but always interesting.
It’s an interesting twist of fate that Russia and China blocked the resolution. They probably did it simply to show that they have the power to do so.
A new resolution for an immediate cease-fire will probably appear again, and it will be interesting to see how the U.S. responds. Will it reject a new resolution simply because it didn’t originate here (in the U.S.)? We’ll see.
All that said, Blinken said in his March 20 interview with Al Hadath* that the U.S. sponsored U.N. Resolution would send “a strong message, a strong signal.” It did; it was a signal that gives credence to Melanie Phillips’s thesis, sadly.
* https://www.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-with-christiane-baissary-of-al-hadath/
Maybe the Chinese and Russians want to sow division between Israel and America and create space for themselves to be more friendly toward it? Like, maybe as a part of some larger divide and conquer strategy?
I was thinking the same.
I wonder if that Russian and Chinese veto weren’t because, somehow, both Russia and China sense that the wording can be used against them at some point…..
I also wonder whether the “ceasefire”, Pro-Palestinian (actually Hamas) protestors will change their tune in any way.
This is so much worth watching.
Douglas Murray in a conversation with a British reporter on her show about Israel. It’s about 9 minutes, and unlike others, Murray doesn’t let her get away with the usual nonsense………….
https://twitter.com/CaitlinPacific/status/1770935973582434613
Saw it. Brilliant.
Blinken should be remembered by the jewish state for his “actions” and Biden needs to be replaced.
The UN is a failed institution.
Israel should align with Saudi Arabia and plan to go it alone.
[One minor quibble. General Yoav Gallant in the war cabinet is not exactly left-wing. He belongs to the Likud party, although the pragmatic, center-right faction which is sometimes at odds with religious parties in the Netanyahu coalition.]
In the West, siding with the “Palestinians” (in effect Hamas) is a point of doctrine for the pop-Left—a doctrine received from the propaganda of the post-1950 USSR of fond memory. As historian Jeffrey Herf points out: “There is no precedent in modern history in which a movement such as Hamas, with roots in both the racist ideologies of Nazism and in Islamist religious obscurantism, has been so successful in finding supporters or at least excuse-makers among those who regard themselves as secular leftists.”
The ambiguities of conventional Biden/Schumer Democrats represent an attempt to mollify Hamas supporters/excuse-makers in their left fringe—just as conventionally liberal academic administrators incessantly try to mollify their various campus pop-Left squads. Both behaviors remind one of the slogan “no enemies to the Left”, which characterized the short and spectacularly useless career of Alexander Kerensky.
+1
No precedent? Support for “freedom fighters” of the most obnoxious kind has been a universal feature of Western politics since the 19th century and of post 1968 liberalism in particular. The examples are legion, including very recent examples (Libya, Syria).
I don’t think the examples are illustrative. Particularly, I don’t find any major fault of Syrian Kurds, except that the West left them to hang, as usual.
From the same poll:
“We begin with the humanitarian and living conditions. Conditions in the Gaza Strip continue to worsen. The poll shows that the majority of Gazans are still unable to find food, that the shelters where they now live lack most of the basic needs, and that efforts to have access to some of the basic needs involve great difficulties and risks. It is also worth noting that there are significant complaints of discrimination, on political grounds, in the distribution of humanitarian aid. But perhaps the most disturbing is that fact that almost 80% of Gazans report that at least one of their family members have been killed or injured. Three months ago, only 64% reported the same. Indeed, 60% report today that at least one family member has been killed. Almost two-thirds blame Israel for their suffering and most of the others blame the US; in the Gaza Strip, only 9%, a 10-point drop from our previous poll, blame Hamas.
While support for Hamas’ offensive on October the 7th remains as high as it was three months ago, Palestinian support in the West Bank has in fact dropped by 11 points while, surprisingly, support in the Gaza Strip has increased by 14 points. It is clear from the findings however, that support for the offensive does not mean support for Hamas. Instead, the findings show that three quarters of the Palestinians believe that the offensive has put the Palestinian-Israeli issue at the center of attention after years of neglect at the regional and international levels. ”
This supports the theory that the aggressive Israeli military action will drive more Palestinians to violence and to a Hamas 2.0. Support for Hamas is steadily increasing and it seems to be proportional to the amount of suffering the civilians are feeling.
Edit: Sorry for potential duplicate, had an internet connection when trying to post.
The only theory that I see being supported is the one stating that Palestinians will continue to blame everyone else for their problems.
“Support for Hamas is steadily increasing and it seems to be proportional to the amount of suffering the civilians are feeling.” Gee, too bad they can’t figure out which is the cart and which is the horse there.
After reading Melanie Phillips article I thought if the administration and the left want to find “what it is that will force the Netanyahu coalition to collapse”, I have an idea that might help. Do not allow any Palestinian government exist which is for the destruction of Israel. Then the hard right would be voted out of office because it’s the understandable, rational fear of attack that keeps them in office.
I used to wonder about Israel; “why are Jews, who tend to be some kind of liberal, why do they keep reelecting right wingers?” Well after October 7, now I know. They need to change the reality on the ground if they want a change in Israeli politics.
The problem now is how to get others to see thru the lies, the same lies that used to work on me. But don’t look for help in changing minds from the administration. This is a long term problem and realistically all they’re thinking about is the election. Maybe the best thing we can do is make sure Biden and company know how we feel about Israel right to exist.
Many of us once entertained hopes for a 2-state compromise, and land-for-peace dreams. In Israel, however, most of the public pay more attention to real events there than to anyone’s hopes and dreams—and vote for right-wingers when the latter seem to pay more attention to realities. In 1993 the Oslo Declaration was signed; in 1994, Rabin, Peres, and Arafat shared the Nobel Peace Prize for the “peace process”, and suicide bombings killed 35 Israelis; in 1995, Oslo II was signed, suicide bombings killed 40 Israelis and injured many more; in 1996, a wave of suicide bombings in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Ashkelon killed more than 60 Israelis—and Netanyahu first won election as Prime Minister.
Yes. I did have in the back of my mind for a while that reality in Israel was different than my impression. Things didn’t jibe. I knew enough not to think it’s all the fault of Israelis. But I still had been influenced by lefty propaganda.
You speak almost as if you used to think there was something inherently wrong with right-wing governments and something wrong with people or countries who elect them. I wonder why it is that only right-wing governments are able to defend Israel, and why leftists lie about her. Why should whether Israelis vote right or left after Hamas is extirpated be any business of foreigners?…and why on earth should a foreign government presume to destabilize a democratically elected government in Israel?
In 52 years of life (in Australia, NZ and adulthood in Japan and the USA) I’ve never ever seen such a situation where so MANY people get the central subject so ass-backwards wrong.
And on many levels: the history of the problem (whereby “blame” or at least aggression has been almost all from one side), the reasons and methods of any Pals leaving, to the intervening years and wars, to the true motivations of both Hamas/Hezb. and how well they represent their constituents.
I don’t expect people to know minutiae like antisemitism in the Koran and Islamosphere, the larger (800,000) non-choice exodus of more Jews from Arab lands than the (consensual) departure of Pals and their land sales, nor the dynamics of democracy in Israel, but the big things seem to be beyond the understanding of a huge segment of the west.
Co-related with IQ often, but not always: A lot of smarter people are horrifyingly with Palestine on this one and ALL the idiots are on their side. Leaving some higher IQ observers on Israel’s side. (I’m not using “Being pro-Israel = high IQ” filter here and I’ve seen no data on it.)
Anti-vax and religious observance plot out a bit like that also – for which there is ample data.
D.A.
NYC
Russia and China *claim* that they blocked the resolution because it also calls for immediate release of hostages held by Hamas!
The real reason *might* be some kind of gamesmanship. Putin for one is banking on Trump winning and then calling off support for Ukraine, and thus feels that any win for Biden is a loss that must be prevented. That’s zero-sum thinking, and I think it is a strategic blunder. It might seem good tactically, but strategically it helps solidify the alignment of Biden with NATO and isolates Trump into the Putin camp.
An interesting point. Strategic thinking is, of course, Putin’s specialty—as he demonstrated with his brilliant strategy of weakening NATO by a three-day special military operation to seize Ukraine. Current Speaker of the US House of Reps, Mr. Johnson, is another brilliant, zero-sum thinker, like his mentor, the dazzling founder of the former Trump University. With thinkers of this caliber in high positions, how can anything go wrong? No wonder Elon is hoping to leave for Mars.
Unfortunately, while Putin is not brilliant, Western leaders are either terminally dumb or desperately trying to pose as such.
You know the hideous reason given by superstitious Christian Evangelicals for supporting Israel ……. that it is an element in the End Times scenario?
Muslims have End Times too. I don’t know much about it …….. but that is how much hatred can exist for this earth, this life, happiness …… they want everyone to die.
One presidential candidate has clearly and recently said that “Hamas must be destroyed.” He has also unequivocally opposed a ceasefire, saying that it would simply give Hamas opportunity to rearm. Furthermore, he’s puzzled what a ceasefire would even mean, “There WAS a ceasefire in place on October 7th.” When asked whether he was worried that his support of Israel would jeopardize the support of the under-40 voters who are more likely to see him in a favorable light, he plainly says that, no, I’m not changing my view on this to appeal to some voters.
Of course, if your only exposures to Robert Kennedy are media smears and an awareness that he has a penchant for stacks of published-but-sometimes-weak observational studies of both health care and the environment, then you would not know this. Perhaps you believe this penchant for “disinformation” requires his speech be shutdown, his access to media curtailed, his views marginalized or caricatured, his presence on state ballots opposed; the ACLU and many officials of his former party clearly do. You see, many in government and influential organizations today do not believe that anyone has a right to differ, to be wrong, to decide for themselves without either facing pressure to conform or having a decision forced upon them. Even when it is their own lives or health that are at stake. Ask Israel.
Whether it is on Israel’s war (supports), or Ukraine funding (opposes), free speech (near absolutist), or undue corporate influence in government (old-school Dem), Kennedy can literally speak for hours straight in an interview without uttering a platitude or a bumper sticker formulation, without sidestepping questions or redirecting the conversation to a few favored topics. (Contrary to caricatures, he rarely talks about vaccines.) Love him or hate him or ignore him, our politics would be in a much better place if more candidates would—and could—talk at length across the range of issues that he openly addresses in long interviews and podcasts.
Now, back to guessing what the Biden Administration REALLY wants on Israel. Hint: they want to retain power in the United States, and officials will talk out of both sides of their backsides so that all their potential voters have some words or actions to point to that will ease their cognitive dissonance when casting a ballot this fall.
Well said, however.
I am not really convinced that Biden could actually find his “backside”let alone talk out of both sides.
RFK Jr has a well publicized record of speaking against vaccines—all vaccines. Claiming they cause autism. A shame, it’s preventing him from being a viable presidential candidate.
It is a shame. Overall, his positions are largely where many Democrats were 50 years ago. But, no matter. One can now screw Israel, mandate all forms of DEI insanity through executive branch regulations and through the science funding system, cheerlead for the chemical castration and surgical mutilation of children, “protect” all of us from the “harmful” or “wrong” speech of others, and all will be forgiven. Where do I vote? Because party, or inertia, or Orange man, or something.
There is a whole lot of cognitive dissonance being suppressed and willful ignorance being embraced on both sides of our political aisle. It’s just easier to see on the other side.
We need better choices.
The only Kennedy I’ll vote for is Leon S. Kennedy.
+1
Excellent comment, thanks.
RFK jr. has the most rational and moral stance on Israel among all our (less than optimal) candidates.
“Yes, it looks to a pro-Israeli American that the Western world has lost its collective mind”
It looks to an always pro Israeli Scot that “The Western world lost its collective mind quite some time ago” and the treatment of Israel is just another nail in the coffin, or maybe the final nail. Israel is not the problem. Islam is the problem.
Lost it at least a decade ago. The stance on Israel is simply the latest fruits of the madness.
Islam is a core problem for Israel, but it has little to do with the cognitive and moral collapse among the credentialed class of the West.
+1
Why are you quoting a white supremacist? By that, I mean eyeslasho.
You’re mistaking the messenger for the message, I think.
The poll cited on X does not tell us what Gazans think, as it was taken in Ramallah.
Sorry, not true, I misread.
I think there is a general tendency for people in the West to assume that all other nations and cultures have the a desire for peace and respect for their neighbours.
I think this is a mistake. Putin has invaded Ukraine and yet, even accounting for his rigging of the election, he is still wildly popular among Russians according to all sources I’ve been able to find. Xi in China is also remarkably popular domestically. The notion that if only Israel and Hamas got out of the way their could be a peaceful two state solution seems to me to be built on what people wish the Palestinians believed and supported rather than what all evidence seems to suggest that they actually support.
History has shown many times that dictators with that level of brutality, once they consolidate their power, always enjoy popular support at home.
To me, the question is rather why the West keeps pandering to such odious figures, against not only basic morality but also its long-term vital interests.