• FenrirIII@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Honestly, like 99% of Americans don’t care about Gaza enough to not vote for Biden over Trump. The internet echo chamber has warped your sense of what normal people actually care about.

    • moe93@lemmy.ml
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      9 months ago

      I think you underestimate the Arab/Muslim population in the US who stopped believing in “blue no matter who” because of what is happening.

      Also on a side note, what do normal people care about? I’d argue if you don’t care about the fact that a Holocaust level genocide is taking place then you aren’t really that normal.

      • SevenOfWine@startrek.website
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        9 months ago

        I’d argue if you don’t care about the fact that a Holocaust level genocide

        17 million people died in the holocaust. IRC the population of Gaza is roughly 2.4 million of which just over 1% have died. That figure includes Hamas militants. The Gaza Health Ministry does not distinguish between combatant and civilian casualties in its reports.

        It is possible to criticize and condemn Israeli war crimes and ethnic cleansing, which are without doubt horrific, without distorting the facts.

        In fact, it actually makes your criticism more convincing and harder to discount by supporters of the current hard right Israeli government. The fediverse is a bubble on this conflict, but we should be aware that hyperbole does not serve the interests of the Palestinian cause or win the argument outside of this bubble.

        Maybe you’ll be the exception, but I say this knowing full well that some will call me pro-Israel for this comment. But if anything these extremists are useful idiots for Israel’s far right government and its supporters, as they allow them to paint any criticism as anti-semitism or disingenious.

        e: this comment already had downvotes within seconds of me posting it. This is not long enough to finishing reading it…

        • moe93@lemmy.ml
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          9 months ago

          While I appreciate your thoughtful response, I disagree with the fact that we need to wait for 17million Palestinians murdered before we can liken the current genocide to the Holocaust.

          The way I see it, the Holocaust was/is attributed to the systematic cleansing and expulsion of an ethnic group at a mass scale and not measured by the number of murdered people (not death, murder because that’s what it is).

          You can call it whatever you want, but at the end of the day what is happening in Palestine is an ethnic cleansing at a mass scale similar to the Holocaust.

          • SevenOfWine@startrek.website
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            9 months ago

            The comment I replied to said:

            a Holocaust level genocide is taking place

            30,000 people have died. 17 million people died in the holocaust. That is not on the same level and it is not on the same scale. 30,000 is a significantly smaller number than 17 million.

            If you support the Palestinian cause, pretending otherwise is a home goal.

            I get that it feels right, because people are understandably angry about all this, but it’s not a winning argument. Quite the opposite. If you’re provably exaggerating the scale of what’s happening, it allows supporters of Israel’s far right government to sow doubt and claim you might also be exaggerating about the very very real war crimes and ethnic cleansing they are engaged in.

            • moe93@lemmy.ml
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              9 months ago

              I feel like you and I are NOT on the same page, as a matter of fact, I feel like we are arguing to different points.

              You seem like you are gatekeeping the definition of the Holocaust based on number of murdered casualties, I argue that the act of ethnically cleansing the Palestinian people is comparable to the Holocaust.

              Please don’t create another straw man to argue over, the number of casualties was never the point, rather the act itself.

              • SevenOfWine@startrek.website
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                9 months ago

                I argue that the act of ethnically cleansing the Palestinian people is comparable to the Holocaust.

                Your comment above:

                if you don’t care about the fact that a Holocaust level genocide

                Maybe you misunderstood my criticism, but I wasn’t disputing that what was happening was genocide or ethnic cleansing. I was disputing the level or scale of what was happening. Clearly what is happening in Gaza (and the West Bank) is on a smaller scale. 17 million vs. 30,000 in Gaza.

                This doesn’t make what is happening ok. It just means that it is on a smaller scale than the holocaust.

                Please don’t create another straw man to argue over, the number of casualties was never the point

                This is not another argument. The number of casualties was my argument from the beginning. The number of casualties may not have been your point, but it was mine when you said that what was happening was on the same level or scale as the holocaust.

                This is also not a strawman argument. I am literally adressing something you said in your comment.

                On a more general note, this is why comparisons to the Nazis or the Holocaust are rarely helpful, and partly why Godwin’s law is a thing.

                For example, just because someone isn’t Adolf Hitler or a Nazi, doesn’t mean they’re not a fascist. Calling someone like Ben Gvir or Smotrich a Nazi might feel good, but it allows them to say “Aha! But I don’t believe x, y, z. Also, the Nazis hated Jews. I’m a Jew. So you’re wrong.” It undermines your argument, even if they are quite similar to Nazis. Call them a fascist or racial supremacist, based on things that they actually said and did, and it’s far harder to deny.

                • moe93@lemmy.ml
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                  9 months ago

                  I have much respect that you are willing to engage in a civilized argument.

                  Now that you have pointed out what I have posted, I understand that I wasn’t being explicit enough in my definition and argument so I’ll do that here:

                  When I said Holocaust level, I didn’t mean it in the sense of the total amount of victims, but rather the act itself (systematic cleansing and expulsion of an ethnic race).

                  I hope you and I are now on the same page.

                  • 【J】【u】【s】【t】【Z】@lemmy.world
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                    9 months ago

                    The other key distinction, of course, being that in the Holocaust, the Nazis were not striking military targets in the course of killing Jews. They were just lining up civilians and shooting them into mass graves, that is before that sort of up close violence affected the morale of the Nazis and they invented the gas chambers and death camps instead.

                    There is literally none of that going on in Gaza. There’s also the fact that for virtually all of these airstrikes there is a legit military target, being the tunnels underneath the cities.

                • ???@lemmy.world
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                  9 months ago

                  I agree that the victims of the holocaust are 17 million by many estimates, but did you notice how the wikipedia page of it only mentions 6 million Jewish deaths under the Holocaust definition as an event?

                  Curious to know what you think about that because it irks me. I don’t see how all those dead Polish people aren’t part of the tally.

            • Keeponstalin@lemmy.world
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              9 months ago

              Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, or religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making a region ethnically homogeneous. Along with direct removal such as deportation or population transfer, it also includes indirect methods aimed at forced migration by coercing the victim group to flee and preventing its return, such as murder, rape, and property destruction.

              Capturing 78% of Palestine in 1948, followed by colonizing and taking control of 60-88% of the West Bank for a total of 91-97% of all of Historic Palestine; dispossessing millions of Palestinians while violently maintaining an apartheid under permanent occupation isn’t doing a good job to you?

              • 【J】【u】【s】【t】【Z】@lemmy.world
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                9 months ago

                Unfortunately, we can’t go back in time. Second-guessing Israel’s creation and settlement by Jews does literally nothing to address the current problem.

                October 7 changed the calculus: the tunnels have to be destroyed now and Hamas cannot continue to remain in charge. It is Hamas who built the tunnels under people’s homes and it is Hamas who encourages people to ignore their own safety and stay in harm’s way so that they can be killed as proud Martyrs.™

                Hamas should surrender right now and bring the violence to an end but it won’t. The West certainly isn’t going to demand a ceasefire, that’s a courtesy we might extend to a state power in a political settlement of the war, but not to literal terrorists that only recently stopped using suicide bombers.

                The death toll is horrifying but I blame Hamas for these numbers. It’s why they built the tunnels under people’s houses in the first place, it’s called using human shields. Then, Hamas acts all shocked Pikachu, “why would the IDF do this?!,” which is called lawfare.

            • ???@lemmy.world
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              9 months ago

              I see the denial is kicking in even stronger. The uglier Israel’s crimes are, the more pathetic your excuses and analysis.

              • Keeponstalin@lemmy.world
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                9 months ago

                That dude’s denial runs so deep. I’m just glad there are others like you that debunk the Israeli propaganda and dehumanization of Palestinians.

                • ???@lemmy.world
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                  9 months ago

                  Thanks. Admittedly this person just drives me up the wall /: they don’t like it when I respond and has said they tried to block me… I offered help to show them how and I’m still unblocked so I will continue to challenge their crap

          • ???@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            Anyone call this a Holocaust level genocide is an absolute moron.

            What about these guys?

            Holocaust survivors who are anti-Zionist:

            • Hajo Meyer

              Meyer repeatedly argued that there are parallels between the Nazi treatment of Jews leading to (but not including) the Holocaust, and Israel’s dehumanization of Palestinians.

            • Marione Ingram

              Ingram says experiencing anti-Jewish hate, losing family members to the Nazi killing machine and surviving the Allied bombing of Hamburg as a child all inspire her to speak out for peace. “What Israel is doing will not end this conflict. It will only exacerbate it,” says Ingram.

            • Tal Frieden, grandchild of a Holocaust survivor

              The rally was loud in its claim that Israel has the unconditional support of the U.S. government. But the U.S. people do not support Israel’s attack on Gaza, which Holocaust scholars have deemed a genocide.

            • Elliot Kukla, another grandchild of a holocaust survivors

              My father was also deprived of medical care as a child, and that legacy scarred him for life physically and psychologically. While he was in hiding, he got sick with whooping cough; the sound of his coughing threatened his own life and the life of the family who sheltered him from Nazis. To spare everyone, he was taken to a Catholic orphanage in the countryside of Belgium.

            • Seven other holocaust survivors likening the treatment of Palestinians to the treatment of Jews by Nazi Germany. I’m excluding Hajo Meyer since I already listed him and Gabor Mate because somehow him being only 1 year old during the holocaust and not a resident of Israel makes him “not real enough to comment on such issues” for some people

            • SevenOfWine@startrek.website
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              9 months ago

              What about these guys? … Meyer repeatedly argued that there are parallels between the Nazi treatment of Jews leading to (but not including) the Holocaust, and Israel’s dehumanization of Palestinians.

              ???

              Ie. Meyer is explicitly NOT arguing that it is comparable to the holocaust, but only to the treatment of Jews leading up to the Holocaust.

              • ???@lemmy.world
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                9 months ago

                I invite you to read the later career section. Some of it:

                In his last recorded interview, coinciding with the 2014 Israel-Gaza Conflict, he lambasted Zionists as Nazi criminals, asserted that German hatred of Jews was less deeply grounded than Israeli-Jewish hatred of Palestinians, and denounced PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s remarks that demonstrations against the war were evidence of hatred of Israel.[citation needed] He was the first signatory of a statement by 250 Holocaust survivors and descendants of Holocaust survivors protesting that war.[19]

                At one talk, organized and hosted by the leader of the UK’s Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, in 2010, Meyer was later reported to have repeatedly likened Israel’s actions against the people of the Gaza Strip to the mass killing of Jews in the Holocaust and likened the government of Israel to that of Nazi Germany.[14][15]

                • SevenOfWine@startrek.website
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                  9 months ago

                  Ok.

                  But in the quote you used above he explicitly says he is not including the Holocaust. Perhaps use another quote next time.

                  To be clear, and I’ve said it here before, but IMHO it’s not helpful to make nazi/holocaust comparisons, when you can call them fascists or racial supremacists (because plenty of them verifiably are based on what they have provably said and done) and call what they’re doing ethnic cleansing or genocide.

                  It’s far harder to deny.

                  But I suppose the language you use depends on the goal you have in mind.

                  • ???@lemmy.world
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                    9 months ago

                    I think they made the comparison to attempt to prevent a genocide. Sadly due to gatekeeping of the terms Nazis and Holocaust, they instead got called anti semitic and maybe lost their jobs.

          • SevenOfWine@startrek.website
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            9 months ago

            Anyone call this a Holocaust level genocide is an absolute moron.

            You’re not entirely wrong, and I’m not accusing anyone here, but sometimes they’re not stupid. Sometimes they are doing it deliberately to disconcert and because they know it will be hurtful to survivors (most of whom weren’t Jewish, but I digress). Sometimes they’re being useful idiots and uncritically parroting that propaganda.

            Unfortunately a lot of anti-Israel propaganda does have explicitly anti-semitic undertones. For example, the Russian/Soviet inspired stuff. Twitter is also full of actual Nazis using this conflict for their own ends. It’s important for people who oppose what Israel is doing, to avoid adopting those anti-semitic undertones even if they’re justifiably angry, because it allows the Israeli far-right to paint all criticism of Israel as anti-semitic. It also alienates the many Jewish people who are critical of the Israeli government and how the Palestinians are treated.

            For example, saying “Zionists control all Western Media” plays into the trope of Jews controlling the media, and is easy to disprove. Obviously not all Jews are Zionists, but if you go on a website like StormFront, they’ll openly admit using Zionist as a dogwhistle for Jew. Hence, you’ll occasionally see an especially blatant comment which says something about ‘’‘Zionists’‘’ being cunning or the like. Plenty of western coverage is critical, which those who defend what Israel is doing will happily use to claim that there is no Zionist bias in Western coverage. Meanwhile if you don’t engage in hyperbole, and simply state that a lot of (but not all) western media are very often (but not always) biased(not fully controlled) in favour of Israel, that’s very hard to disprove because IMHO it’s largely true.

            But you’ve been heavily downvoted, I’ve been heavily downvoted above, and this comment will inevitably also be heavily downvoted too. The fediverse is a bit of a circlejerk like that.

            It’s not as if what we say will actually influence anything anyway, and we’re certainly not going to stop the killings. I participate in the fediverse to practice my English.

    • NoneOfUrBusiness@kbin.social
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      9 months ago

      Uh… No? Polls have consistently shown that Biden is losing younger voters over this issue. And let’s not forget that there are multiple swing states (Michigan is just the most famous one) where losing Muslim votes is enough to cost Biden the state. Enough Americans care about Gaza to cost Biden the election.

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Yeah bro…

      The only reason to be upset with Biden is his support of Israel’s genocide…

      /s

      There’s also:

      1. What he wants to do with our border

      2. Pretending “the economy” is more about billionaires wealth and average Americans aren’t important

      3. Record breaking fossil fuels production

      4. Just ignoring the healthcare crisis

      And a shit ton of other things.

      Supporting Israel could very well be all you care about, but lots of people aren’t that simple.

        • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          If you get to pick between no food, or half enough food to survive…

          How much effort would you put in to starve to death slower?

          Running a bad candidate depresses turnout. And depressed turnout is the only way Republicans win.

          Running Joe Biden is the biggest factor that helps Trump’s chances of winning, and there’s zero fucking reason we’re handing it to him.

          • snooggums@midwest.social
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            9 months ago

            The vast majority of people will choose half food for the chance to live until more food is available. There is not another candidate from the Dems that has the national recognition as Biden, or the successes that Biden should be doing a better job of selling, that could take his place at this point in time.

            Yes, I would rather they ran someone else. But with half the voting population all in on wish.com Hitler it is necessary to eat half the food now and hope for a better candidate next time.

            • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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              9 months ago

              Except we only get a presidential election every four years, and not everyone will still be alive then

              That’s not even part of the starvation example.

              Literally people you’re asking to pick the lesser evil right now will die because of that lesser evil before the 2028 election.

              Maybe you’re upper middle class and it’s not a big deal.

              Congrats, you’re a very small percentage of Americans and the total votes Biden needs to win.

              If you want to help Biden, try having some empathy for the less fortunate and start screaming your head off at the Dem party while there’s time.

              • snooggums@midwest.social
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                9 months ago

                We should absolutely give Biden grief up until November when we need to grit our teeth and accept aomething less than perfection to vote against the Republicans who are worse on every single topic.

                It isn’t like Biden is the only Democrat who is supporting Israel. How many Dems are passing the funding legislation that Biden signs? Who are they going to put up instead of him that opposes Israel?

                Nobody.

                Biden is the best that the party can put forth right now, and we should give him grief to get him to change. The action agsinst Biden in the primaries is great!

                But come November it will be critical to vote against Trump, and a vote for anything other than a Democrat is a vote for Trump because of our stupid voting system.

                • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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                  9 months ago

                  C’mon man…

                  The DNC blacklists companies for working on primary campaigns against House incumbents…

                  They straight up removed delegates from the first state primary because in the last two elections they picked progressives over party favorites…

                  “Just vote in the primaries” is about a decade outdated at the point.

                  I’ll probably still vote D in the general, just like I’ve held my nose to do in all but a single general election. 08 Obama I was actually hype to vote D, and we flipped a bunch of red states the DNC gave up on

                  But not everyone will this year, and Biden doesn’t have a lot of breathing room.

                  The best thing you can do to prevent trump from winning is do anything you can think of to drag Biden to the left.

                  Just shutting up and voting Biden isn’t enough, he’s too weak of a candidate to expect that to work again.

          • dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            9 months ago

            Stop letting perfect being they enemy of good enough. This line of thinking you’re engaging in will only accelerate Trump’s victory. Unless the finality of the United States is your goal, you may want to come up with a more apt analogy.