Summary
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich endorsed President-elect Donald Trumpās victory, stating itās ātimeā to extend full Israeli sovereignty over the occupied West Bank.
This comes as Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu highlighted his alignment with Trump on the āIranian threat.ā
Tensions in Gaza and Lebanon have escalated following recent Israeli airstrikes, with regional leaders gathering in Riyadh to address Israeli actions.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog is set to meet President Biden, though Bidenās influence on Israel may be limited following Trumpās win.
āOur strategy failed and our candidate lost. Quick! Start mocking people for caring about a genocide before they start getting ideas about blaming us for the mess we caused!ā
A shitty campaign does not excuse you from sitting back and allowing fascism to take over. You share in the blame.
I did no such thing. I place the blame on Trump voters, Harris, and the DNC
I wonder if you ever admit fault or if itās always someone else.
Yeah, Iām going to take zero blame for the outcome of these past three presidential elections as I held my nose and voted for the terrible slew of (D) candidates each time which resulted in two losses and one near loss. When are you going to hold the party accountable for their performance and unwillingness to support electable candidates?
Thatās not what I said.
I said:
Since you didnāt answer, Iām going to have to assume you donāt ever admit fault.
I do. There is lots of blame to go around and you share in it by sitting back and allowing a genocidal fascist dictator to take power because of your ideological arrogance.
I did answer by saying that Iām going to take zero blame for this mess.
I also said that I did vote for Harris, so Iām confused about your āsitting back and allowing a genocidal fascist dictator to take powerā comment. Iāve been preaching about the DNCās incompetence since they allowed him to get elected in 2016 but Iām always met with opposition from people who think the DNCās losing strategy is the correct strategy even though thereās no metric where this makes any sense.
I didnāt ask you if you would admit fault about this.
I asked you if youāve ever admitted fault about anything.
Clearly you have not.
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āDems ran a shit out-of-touch campaign, obviously this absolves all of us who were beating the āDonāt vote against the fascistā drum as hard as we could.ā
Believe it or not, and I understand this is quite unsettling for people with a simplistic view of the world, blame can be shared over multiple parties. Yes, really!
It sounds like youāre still running their campaign for them as you gain enjoyment by mocking those opposed to supporters and enablers of genocide regardless of which tribe they belong to. That was a conscious choice from her, and this is a conscious choice from you to continue your support. She was trying to win an election, but whatās your excuse?
Please scour through my post history and find where Iāve ever told anyone how they should vote.
Trying to avoid additional genocides here at home, and being rightfully upset that me, my friends, and loved ones are now in the sights of genocide in addition to the Palestinian genocide getting worse and Ukrainian genocide being enabled by Trump and a potential invasion of Taiwan by the CCP?
I guess thatās all small stuff compared to virtue signaling over Palestine. Gotta maintain that spiritual attitude towards politics.
I donāt know if you, personally, were banging the donāt vote drum, and expressed no opinion on whether YOU were or not. You have, however, jumped in on a comment mocking those who thought that abstaining was in any way a moral choice and saw fit to equate that to āmocking people for caring about genocideā.
And you were trying to do that by throwing a whole other demographic under the bus. We shouldnāt be surprised this country is okay with genocide and then voted for Trump, because it reveals they were already primed for fascism and atomized enough to leave various groups behind.
For conservatives itās women, LGBTQ people, and āthe eliteā, while for liberals it seems to be latino men, Muslims, and the working-class (and kinda trans people because she started getting super vague about helping them near the end of the campaign). The people who right now are like, āWell fuck you guys for voting Trump, I guess itās every person for themselves, got to look after my own nowā, well thatās how lots of people felt before the election when no one was helping them with the genocide, refused to even hear them out, so of course their turnout was depressed.
And they were a tiny minority, btw, if they all voted for Harris she still wouldāve lost. More people didnāt turn out because their savings were decreased because their wages havenāt matched the rise in inflation. Even though Biden had helped lower inflation, people still felt left behind, and rather than not listen to them or say theyāre wrong, they shouldāve empathized with them and said, donāt worry weāll help out.
We will never go forward if we continue on in this manner instead of having solidarity, but that can never happen if you guys keep interpreting warnings and advice as Russian bots and use that as an opportunity to tear down others, plug your ears, and prop up a genocide. And ya, I voted for Harris, they had some good policies, but it was a messaging thing. They shouldāve taken the good economic stuff from their website (stopping price gouging and weāre going to hold companies accountable, the $25,000 to help buy a home thing, fighting pharmacy companies to make medicine affordable, etc), keep abortion in there as it was a strong issue, and maybe add some new stuff (weāll bring back some pandemic measures to help you buy food and build up your savings again, like child tax credit or loans, because thatās when people remember having the most savings), donāt be afraid to say working-class instead of the middle-class, and then hammered that over and over again. Instead their most repeated talking points were that theyāre saving democracy, theyāll reach out to neocon Republicans and put them in the cabinet, have the most lethal army in the world, and keep doing all the same stuff as the current Administration, a presently unpopular one. And abortion, but I think that was actually a good strategy, it just should have been supplemented with the other stuff.
There was also stuff they couldāve said to appease the Muslim voters while still being vague for the pro-genocide people, like āWe will uphold the law with regards to selling weapons to allies.ā Itās not a 100% yes on the arms embargo but it gives hope to people looking for any lifeline on the Gaza issue. Itās like what she about the trans thing.
But anyway, they didnāt do that, and the signs for this result were there when liberals, like the ones in this very thread, refused to abandon bullying as a strategy, and continued to think they could just gaslight people into thinking it would work after it didnāt work in 2016. Maybe itāll work in 2028 if we still have democracy then, but only because people will be tired of Trump again by then and theyāll be able to run literally anyone to beat him (like in 2020).
Yes, of course, thatās what I was trying to do by advocating for the less bad of two options. /s
Like, this wasnāt āIām sacrificing the Palestinian people for my own safetyā, it was āThis is literally the least bad option for Palestine as well.ā People in Palestine understood this. But apparently itās too emotionally charged for some online āleftistsā.
This is quite hilarious considering the same people youāre defending.
See, every time a Dem loses, Iām told itās messaging, but every time itās pointed out what messages the Dem actually put out, itās drowned out by the fact that both left and right do nothing but beat the drum on whatever they see as the Dem candidateās weakness regardless of what their strengths are.
I donāt know, maybe something like saying the Palestinian people must be helped to ārealize their right to dignity, security, freedom and self-determinationā while calling for a ceasefire and saying she āwill not be silentā on Gazan suffering?
Oh, wait, thatās right, the selfsame people who said āCalling for a ceasefire is all I need to vote for the Dem candidateā immediately moved their goalposts once it happened, because Palestinian genocide was never the actual issue. They donāt give a single fuck about more deaths or less deaths. They just want to play purity politics, and people giving them asspats for doing so are encouraging this behavior.
āBullying is when you point out that a strategy is dogshit and senseless, and the more you do it, the more bullying it is.ā
Like, I donāt know what the fuck to tell you. You voted for Harris, so you clearly understand on some level that abstaining is a dogshit answer, but you seem to be bending backwards to accommodate morons whoāve just willfully assisted in the deaths of tens of thousands of people, minimum, for no other reason than their own vanity.
Wow, I really wish someone wouldāve emphasized that losing democracy was a very real consequence of throwing the election, but apparently, thatās bullying.
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No, the least bad option is no genocide.
If everyone who tried to quell dissent on Harrisās policies on Gaza instead pushed on the administration I guarantee they wouldāve changed their mind. They adapted other issues through out the campaign. But they didnāt on this one because they thought they could get away with a genocide and still win the election.
And even your article says they donāt think Harris winning will stop the suffering either, so very motivating for people /s. If you want voters, you need to give them motivation. Apathy is the worst thing that can happen for turn out. Telling them to vote for the person killing their family sounds like the most demotivating thing I can think of. Itās not emotionally charged, well it is, but itās just electoral strategy, too.
The good news is that they have established their power as a coalition, and hopefully we can leverage this in the future. Now the Zionists arenāt the only votes they have to be scared of losing, and we can build on that to pull the Dems left. Maybe. I hope lol.
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What people? Those trying to push the party left so it doesnāt lose like this every year? Genocide victims? Sorry, but I will never feel bad about defending people fighting against a genocide or suffering from one. Youāre willing to try but my morals donāt bend that way.
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True, everyone has an opinion. The right says the Dems are too far left, but Kamala hewed to the center hard this time, including a record number of Republicans at the DNC, and still lost. There are a bunch of other reasons I think this keeps revealing itself to be false (blue candidates, including women, and ballot measures winning down ballot all over the country even in states that went to Trump, Trump winning on vague populist vibes of the economy as revealed in opinion polls with the other fascist part of his policies like immigration or scary trans people being ranked less in priority, his more multi-racial voters suggesting that too, the change in numbers between 2020 for Trump and Harris shows people not switching to conservative but instead just a depressed turn out, the Muslim vote numbers for Biden in 2020 being like 86% compared to Harris in 2024 being something like 40%, etc). She ran a standard Democratic campaign emblematic of not only the current administration but every one during their lifetime since Reagan, and people are tired of neoliberalism, although most canāt express that, they can still feel it. People hear about these nice, liberal policies, but they donāt see it reflected in their bank accounts, so they stop caring about the Democratās technocratic incremental 12 point plans after awhile, because theyāve heard these are happening under Biden, too, but they figure they must not do anything. But I guess thatās just another opinion lol.
I know other people think itās her not having enough time or Biden not dropping out soon enough or something. That might have helped give her more time to spread her policies, but I doubt that was the main reason. I still think she couldāve won with the right strategy with the time she had and that huge upswing of energy when she entered the race.
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Itās hard for people to believe that when the administration you are a part of says the same thing while continuing to arm the genocidal IDF army for the tunes of billions of dollars. Not to mention denying Palestinian speakers at the DNC while inviting families of hostages, bringing up October 7th first every interview and calling that the biggest tragedy, saying you wouldnāt change anything from the Biden campaign, emphasizing Israel every time Palestine is brought up before and after Palestine, kicking out a Muslim person in the audience at a rally, sending the cops after protestors, saying weāll have the most lethal army in the world, saying Iran is the worldās biggest threat while their neighbor is doing a genocide, her staff reiterating that an arms embargo was 100% off the table removing any chance of leverage to enact material change, Trump going to their community before you do, and it goes on and onā¦ That quote comes off insincere when everything else you do and say indicates the opposite. The fact that another red line has come and passed without the US changing position on Israel proves the Biden administrationās insincerity on this issue even more.
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Nah, itās because the White House purposefully and cynically used a different definition of the word ceasefire than the one all the activists and aid workers understood it to mean. This article explains it well. A ceasefire without leverage would cause the genocide to resume immediately after a hostage exchange, and everyone knows this because Israel is the aggressor and has been since the 1920ās. If her campaign didnāt clarify that an arms embargo is 100% off the table, against our own laws btw, than maybe just a call for a ceasefire wouldāve worked, but I doubt it without some sort of explanation of how she was going to accomplish it. She was willing to explain how sheād accomplish other policies, such as through tax credits and such, but not that one for some reason except to say Diplomacy which hasnāt worked for the last year, and everyone knows wonāt work now.
I hope not, because thatās what Iāve been saying about the Democratic electoral strategy since before the election lol. I see bullying as more ad hominem attacks, like telling people if they donāt vote for the person arming the person killing their family, youāll exult in them all dieing or getting deported. Not saying youāve done that specifically, buts itās gotten pretty racist in here lately (but not as bad as Reddit at least).
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The thing is, I thought it wouldāve been a lot easier to convince the candidate to change their genocide policy than convincing thousands of people to change their moral values. Essentially, itās because I wanted her to win that I foresaw a problem with her electoral strategy and kept trying to do something. Itās why I started that vote swapping thread that went nowhere and kept trying to encourage empathizing with the unhappy people in the US rather than ignoring them. Because I saw blaming the voters in 2016 didnāt fix shit, and instead weāre going to have to learn some lessons. But no one was learning them, instead trusting that 2020 wasnāt just a fluke because of the pandemic.
Idk man, I know weāre all hurt right now, but at this point Iām seriously losing hope in the Democratic party, and I blame them 1000% more than the voters because if I could see the mistakes being made thereās no way other more qualified people couldnāt either. If they win 2028 itās purely because continual enshittification and failing material conditions means that the voters will vote against anyone in power during the death throes of this falling empire, and not because theyāll change anything. Thatās my guess - that unless another Bernie-like figure with Obamaās charisma comes, in whoās also promising sweeping changes to the internal systems of the US and not just trying to treat the symptoms - that weāre going to be switching off on one-term Presidents forever.
At least some other people are realizing this, too. I just hope that the country is not too atomized to assemble some sort of alternate coalition before its too late. We need to get off these tracks before we fall into fascism.
Sorry for the length of all this, I wonāt blame you if you skip most of It. Adding spoiler tags so it doesnāt take up too much room in the thread. Honestly, this comment has been a great way to organize my thoughts and feeling on all this, too. It wasnāt when I started, I didnāt mean to subject you and Lemmy to it, I think weāre all just looking for catharsis right now lol.