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Free Gaza / Palestine supporters: I have a question for you (Discussion about media)
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this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2024
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It came from Israel's actual actions. They're undergoing an extermination campaign in Northen Gaza, banned UNRWA which is the only reason Palestinians have not died of Starvation, executed the young, old, sick, weak, injured and just about everyone else. They've even just passed a law that would give them legal authority to deport Palestinians that have "terrorist relations", and we all know how even babies are considered to be Hamas by the IDF. And I havent even touched on the daily killings of civilians. We have a list of confirmed kills of over 14,000 babies aged less than 1 year old. This, along with the war on Lebanon and the regional attacks, is all done with the full support and funding of the current administration. Biden/Harris being the same as Trump on this topic is not a meme, it's the horrible truth. And all the Arabs that were kicking and screaming about this for the past 13 months were not only ignored, but also actively silenced by the Democrats.
Hey thanks a lot for coming by!
I appreciate the viewpoint. But I'm curious about what media or social media you use.
Do you use Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, Lemmy, Mastodon, Discord, Telegram or.... Anything else?
No problem at all, thanks for actually acknowledging it.
And I only really use Lemmy. I occasionally browse Imgur, but thats mainly for memes. I don't use any of the big social media sites, I haven't in over 10 years. I haven't touched Reddit in several years at this point either.
Found one.
I appreciate what you are trying to do but I'm not planning on being combative about this.
My mental model is that the majority of people having this viewpoint were caught up in a disinformation campaign tailor made for their viewpoints.
The election is over, it's not helpful to try to fight the viewpoint anymore. But it's more important from a media strategy to TRACK where this came from.
I hear you. There are certain types of argumentation that I see on Lemmy over and over again, and almost always leading towards a conclusion about not voting for Democrats, to the point that I react with a decent amount of hostility to them.
Found one what?
One other prolific poster said he was American and was aggressive to the point of psychosis about Kamala and Trump being the same on Gaza, then used non-American numbering style, dots instead of commas I think, like $5.000.000 for 5 million, and then pretended not to understand the question when people asked him about it.
The other day there were a couple of people in my comments insisting that anarchists shouldn’t vote in this election, but with weird inconsistencies in whether they were claiming to be American or British. And someone told me that a bunch of users I was arguing with about this topic all suddenly got deleted right after the election.
There were a few more times when their masks slipped off, that’s just what comes to mind right now.
I'm not American. I'm Canadian actually. I was just answering OPs question though. I wasn't intending to make any bad faith arguments or mislead anyone so I'm sorry if I did that.
That's fair, but you weren't answering OP's question.
You acted as if OP had asked if Israel was committing a monstrous crime, or whether Biden and Harris were linked to that. They absolutely are, and you can draw a very direct line from Biden to that, although a lot less so from Harris.
OP's question was how the absolutely insane idea that a good thing to do for the Arabs would be to let Trump get elected came from. You seem like you're echoing that idea, right at the very end, and I invite you to watch things get infinitely worse for all Israel's victims, starting immediately, if you still think that.
You didn't explain anything about how that point of view, which has now come to its ugly conclusion and will result in a quick acceleration of the genocide already in progress, might have spread so widely on social media, when if looked at from first principles it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Mostly you spent a long time saying Israel is killing on an industrial scale and it's wrong. We all think that, I think. You don't need to tell us.
Actually, even that wasn't what OP asked. They asked where each commenter first saw this type of thing on social media, to get some data about how it might have gotten into the public consciousness. But that second-to-last question is a lot more similar to what OP asked than what you said.
My comment explained why it wasn't just a meme, but rather a stark and real comparison. It was a direct answer to the question.
The fact of the matter is that Biden has emboldened Israel enough where they are actively performing an extermination campaign in Gaza, invading Lebanon and the West Bank, and escalating to a regional war with Iran. All of this could have been stopped with a single phone call from Biden at any point in the past 13 months. This is why a genocide under the Trump administration is seems as more or less the same thing. Because it's happening as we speak, and Biden is doing nothing to stop or slow them down.
It's not that Arabs voted overwhelmingly in favor of Trump, they just refused to vote for Democrats on principle. Turns out arming a nation that is actively engaged with the genocide of Arabs, silencing them when speaking up, and staunchly defending said country is something that turned Arabs off from voting for the Democrats again.
True.
False. He had many phone calls. They didn’t help.
An active genocide in Gaza and the possibility of an escalating regional war was one of the most massive threats to Biden’s reelection prospects. Look what happened.
If he could have ended it with one phone call, just cancelled the whole operation, he would have. Are you trying to tell me that he just loves dead Palestinians and war in the Middle East so much that he wanted the whole thing to happen even though it was absolute kryptonite to his own and his party’s domestic political prospects, in addition to being a historic crime against humanity, just because?
Absolutely false. Wait and see, and observe the difference. Not that it wasn’t already a stain on humanity, but it’s now going to get substantially worse.
My guess is that by the end of Trump’s term, all of Gaza will be annexed to Israel, and all the Palestinians that were there will be exiled or dead. None of this 35,000 numbers anymore, with aid coming in sometimes. And, several other Gaza-like situations will have come up all over the world, with Trump actively pushing them forward instead of just handing over weapons to the one who wants to be doing them.
~~False. See above.~~
Edit: You know what? This one is true, I guess. He’s “trying” but not enough to accomplish much of anything. My mental model is that he’s stuck between losing support if he sends weapons, and losing support from the majority of Americans that are pro-Israel, if he doesn’t. But yes, the level of resistance he’s offering isn’t stopping it.
The difference is, Trump will hit the gas, and support Netanyahu no matter how many Arabs he kills, I think. Also he’ll start mistreating Arabs inside the US, and destroy Palestinian aid agencies, as he did during his first term. He really doesn’t like Arabs.
True.
Absolutely true.
I’m not trying to have any kind of hostile interaction with you. I feel bad about doing so and I hear @[email protected] about just wanting to learn about the situation without needing people to fight in the comments. Just saying how I see it point by point through your narrative. The whole element of it that is presupposing that Biden wanted all of this to happen, or that Trump won’t cause an absolutely insane acceleration of the slaughter operation, is what’s making me mad about it.
The DoJ is currently sitting on 500 documented cases of war crimes by Israel while using American weapons. They have a legal standing to halt arms shipments on a whim. If there's even a whiff that America would stop arming Israel they would stop. Israel would not be able to exist let alone fight this war without American support. Also, keep in mind that even Ronald Reagan was able to talk down Israel with a single phone call when they tried the same thing in the 80s.
I don't think Biden likes to see dead Palestinian children, but I also don't think it's a coincidence that he has received more money from pro Israel lobbyists than any other Senator in history. No other president in history has emboldened Israel the way Biden has.
The domino's have been falling consistently for the past 13 months. The escalations we are going to see over the next few months would have happened regardless if Trump won or lost. It's abundantly clear there's little to no red lines when it comes to Israel's actions, regardless if it's Democrats or Republicans in charge.
I'd also like to point out that Biden campaigned on certain promises for Arabs concerning Palestine that he never fulfilled. Biden has been ignoring the Arab demographic for longer than 13 months.
You're not being hostile IMO so don't worry about appearing that way. If I didn't want to to discuss politics I wouldn't be in this community. I know this
I'm not saying Biden wanted it to happen. I'm saying he let it happen, just as Trump would. When all is said and done a genocide is a genocide, the pace of it matters little. And the conflict is also already boiling over to the rest of the middle east. All while a Democrat is President. Harris would have been better than Trump on virtually every other topic, but for this one there is little to no difference. Both vocalize staunch and unwavering support of Israel. Just one side vocalizes it a bit more politely.
So now we’ve gone from one phone call, to cutting off aid and letting Israel get destroyed. The US can do that, sure. No problem. If Biden did that, no Democrats would win elections for the next 20 years. He’d probably get impeached, with the full support of all those AIPAC Democrats in congress, and then they’d get their aid from his replacement.
I think he had the phone call, said Rafah was a red line, Netanyahu went in anyway, and that’s the choice he faced. Like I say, you’re claiming that he just randomly decided not to do anything when it would have been incredibly easy, for reason that don’t make the slightest bit of sense for Biden even in terms of his own self-interest.
Besides that, Kamala is at least an unknown quantity in it. There’s a middleeasteye article comparing the two somewhere in my history. We don’t know she won’t continue Biden’s policies, but she also wasn’t the one in charge at the time, and we don’t know that she will continue them. With Trump, we know we’re getting a monster.
You fired the babysitter because when her brother was in charge, your kid got bit by a dog. Now, you’re saying it’s no different if a known vicious dog is the babysitter, because what’s the difference. To me that makes no sense.
The cutting off aid statement was meant to show how easily Biden could have threatened them to make them stop. I even gave the Ronald Reagan example as a historical one. It can happen with a single phone call. It just doesn't.
2/3rds of Americans support a ceasefire along with 80% of Democrats. It was not an unpopular opinion to say we should make a ceasefire happen. Even before becoming president Biden was staunchly pro-Israel for all, or majority, of his political career. Like I said in my previous comment, he's gotten a lot of money from groups like AIPAC. I don't think the hypothetical threat of impeachment is what was stopping him.
Thereby letting Netanyahu do whatever he wants. So he's not really holding them back now is he? Where's the difference between him and Trump then? The fact that Trump wouldn't bother calling Netanyahu asking him to please not kill civilians? This distinction matters very little to the innocent lives Israel has claimed.
Harris has made the some generic statements and empty platitudes that Biden has made and nothing more. Tim Walz himself went on the VP debate and the only real comment on the topic was him saying he supported Israel's right to expand their borders. Couple these along with her doing incredibly stupid things like campaigning with people like Liz Cheney, silencing Democrat-Arabs trying to speak up, refusing to even meet with them other than a few private meetings with some Arab leaders that went nowhere. And it's not a stretch to think she would have been the same. It's pretty clear where she stood on the topic. And this inaction definitely cost her swing states like Michigan and maybe even other states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Yet again, you’re conflating “support a ceasefire” with “support letting Israel get destroyed if Netanyahu gives the middle finger to the idea of a ceasefire.” Everyone “supports” a ceasefire, in the abstract.
You’re also vastly overestimating how much most Americans care about the Palestinians, sadly. I’m not trying to defend Biden’s atrocious way he handled this. I’m saying that if he’d done perfectly and threatened Netanyahu like you said, played hardball, then the exact same social media campaign that played the young left like a piano about it for the last 8 months wouldn’t have had a word to say about it, and would have been banging the drum about record oil extraction and how much he betrayed us on the climate, and would have been playing up how badly be betrayed Israel the to centrists, and the person who is not him and didn’t make the decisions would have lost even more badly than she did.
I’m not saying Biden did good, and I’m definitely not saying anyone who thinks Israel’s committing a monstrous horror is wrong. I am saying that America’s enemies foreign and domestic have gotten real good at playing up real issues into their desired electoral outcomes, and their desired electoral outcomes are 10 times more horror. Maybe more.
Israel will not get destroyed if Biden tried to enforce a ceasefire. At the end of the day America still has a gun to everyone's head daring anyone to try anything they don't want them to do. There's a reason why America is called the "World Police". The danger to Israel is if America pulls its support from Israel entirely, not stopping a few arms shipments. Israel would still have the arms to fight, they would just not be able to do the mass killings they currently do. The US has covered 70% of the cost of the Israel's current war, just to give you an idea of how much help Israel gets in this conflict. At the end of the day, both Trump and Biden will allow Netanyahu do whatever he wants for the sake of political convenience and foreign lobbying. This is why I say there is no difference between the two, and that it's not just a meme. I know a lot of people will say that Trump will help expedite the process or let it become a regional war. But at the end of the day, a genocide is still a genocide, regardless of the pace. Israel is not being slowed down or stopped in the slightest currently. And the escalations leading up to a regional war have already started. So when people say Trump will be worse a lot of the Arab-Americans just looked at what's happening and said "How?".
The ceasefire was overwhelmingly popular with Democrats. The ones who didn't want one were traditionally Republicans (for the most part) and that's who Harris tried to court. The Republican voters. The end result she got next to no actual Republican votes and disenfranchised a lot of progressives through this decision, and a few others. There have been studies to show that Harris would have actually gained support if she took a firmer stance and said she would enforce a ceasefire.. Was it the singular issue that cost her the election? Probably not. But it definitely hurt her in key swing states.
I think we're both repeating ourselves at this point.
If you want to say anything about what I said about how it translated into social media, which was to me the main point of both OP's question and what I was saying, I'm open to it.
Explains why I see you so often on lemmy.ca !
Btw, here's an example of someone who endorsed orange voldemort because of Gaza: Democratic Hamtramck Mayor Amer Ghalib. Source: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/14/hamtramck-donald-trump-arab-american-muslim
Majority of Arabs were either voting for Trump, 3rd party, or not voting as a "fuck you" to the Democrats. I know some actually liked Trump but keep in mind that the Arabs were a big reason Biden won Michigan in 2020. A lot of Arabs hate Trump.
Yeah, this is the one thing I wasn't sure Harris was doing right. And based on what's coming out now with the numbers on margin of the swing states and how many Arab voters switched, it seems like this might have been the sole issue that cost Harris the White House.
For my part, I thought she should have promised to use executive action to declare a national referendum on the issue once she was elected President, and tell the Jewish bloc that she'd always continue supporting Israel's right to defending itself while telling the Arab voters that she'd use the referendum results to justify putting an end to the war in Gaza by any means necessary and justified and approved in the referendum itself.
Harris lost all the swing states last I checked. It wasn't the sole issue that cost her the White House but it was definitely the issue that cost her Michigan, and maybe Pennsylvania.
Democrats switched from Biden to Harris last minute because they realized Biden wasn't doing so well on the popularity front. This should have been a major clue to say that Harris should have steered in her own direction. But she didn't and it cost her the election.
Well, based on https://www.arabnews.com/node/2033691/world I can see an argument for them being undercounted in, and thus a tipping point for Wisconsin as well. And if all three are in play then that's the EC.
But yes - if there was any room on any other issue to improve on, those improvements might have helped in getting the lowest Arab/Muslim populated swing states into play and gotten to a surer EC win.
Well that was an interesting read, thank yoy for sharing. Maybe this opinion is more widespread than I thought.