Hamas strike on Israel - Threadbans in op - mod warning in OP updated 19/10/23

I'm not into that sort of thing at all.

Yes - I do wonder if the sound bites from the US are just for public consumption and the back room reality is different.

Netanyahu is certainly a very shrewd politician. I think the ICJ case (interim measures) will have a huge impact on what happens next for the War Cabinet - whichever way it goes. That could be the turning point.

Biden will of course do the numbers. His election campaign is critical. That is what he'll focus on.

It would be a tragedy if short term politics deny the Israelis and Palestinians peace.

That seems highly speculative, to the point of recklessness, given all the other ways it could go instead.

Do you really think that's the calculation that people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib are making? It would be stunningly self-sacrificing of them to offer up their own party in hopes of some sort of crash-and-burn from Trump over Israel.

If Democrats don't criticize Biden for something worth criticizing over, then they're not really being very democratic.

Fact is, even if I want to vote for him in November, the situation in Israel makes it that much harder to have conversations with other voters and reason with them to do the same, especially if they turn around and mention their whole family was wiped out by the IDF etc.

Gotta call balls and strikes, and right now Biden is on Ball 3 here (4 balls is an out), only in recent days has he upped the milquetoast temperature against bibi for exit plans, a 2 state solution, etc., has a lot of ground to pick up after initial months of backing Israel with State hitting the yamulke photo ops hard and declaring they had suffered "10 9/11's etc" and just sure as **** as the morning I heard that line, I knew we were in for 10+ Fallujahs, which has occurred over the last 100+ days

Given the umpteen pages of Israeli supporters outraged at the phrase "from the river to the sea", I suspect they will be on here soon denouncing Netanyahu in equal measure.

Or not.

I think that's a constant tension within any party though - how far does someone continue to support their party despite certain differences of opinion? Isn't that supposedly part of why Hillary Clinton lost to Trump in 2016, due to left wingers preferring Bernie Sanders over Clinton?

But in this case, it's so obvious that the alternative, Trump, takes an extreme pro-Zionist approach, too extreme for many Israelis, that I just don't get it. Is there no concept of "the lesser evil" any more?

Biden is trying to push the Israelis to reduce the civilian death toll, with some success, and Netanyahu is so unpopular in Israel that Gantz would win a massive majority if there were an election tomorrow, which would be better for peace than the sort of right wing government favoured by Trump. A future Biden administration would be well-placed in the event of a more moderate Israeli government. A Trump administration would despise them and push the point of view of the right wingers.

And yet no, a section of the Dems and their supporters really do seem to prefer ideological purity to having their party in power.

So is this a suggestion that the rapes didn't happen? If not, what's your point?

Except my question was why would Democrats like Ocasio-Cortez allow Trump to gain from this, in an election year?

Not some random attempt to find an upside for anybody else if Trump gets in.

The fact they are now turning to Trump to be the saviour that turns the tide is even funnier than the person who can't comprehend a person alive in a photo can actually be dead in real life!

Israeli responses today (Haaretz):

30 Israeli civil society groups, led by Standing Together and Women Wage Peace, held a protest against the ongoing war in Gaza in Tel Aviv on Thursday. Over 2,000 people participated in the demonstration. Demonstrators demanding the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas blocked Tel Aviv's key Ayalon highway, and Israeli police arrested seven people during the rally. According to organizers, some of those arrested were relatives of Israeli hostages. Dozens of women also marched in Tel Aviv on Friday morning, alongside family members of hostages, calling for their immediate release from Gaza.

War cabinet minister Gadi Eisenkot said in a Channel 12 News interview that Netanyahu bears "clear-cut" responsibility for the failures of October 7, and that cabinet members had prevented a decision to preemptively strike Hezbollah in Lebanon in the wake of the Hamas attack

"The more murderous and dangerous the situation in Gaza becomes, the more disconnected from the events the behavior of the prime minister and the cabinet ministers looks" - Amos Harel (Haaretz journalist)

I wonder how that will all go if the "progressive" wing of the Democratic party ensures that the 2025 White House is Trump's. What do we think they'll be saying then about "working toward a two-state solution"? Or about whether or not Israel should reoccupy Gaza after the war?