To the Gaza protesters helping to elect Trump: Give it a rest

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diegobueno
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To the Gaza protesters helping to elect Trump: Give it a rest

Post by diegobueno » Sat May 04, 2024 8:53 am

This is a segment of a much longer editorial in the Washington Post, most of which does not address the point made in the headline which the editors assigned to it. But the part I am reproducing here underlines what I have been thinking and have not been hearing from any of the other heated arguments about the subject. The student protestors are extremely naive and short-sighted. They are acting out of a very narrow view of world and domestic events, which if they could see beyond, they would never do what they're doing. I have no sympathy for these protesters. I wish they would go back to their classrooms and learn something.

None of these kids were not around in 1968, and neither were their parents, so they have no memory of the riots at the Democratic Convention in Chicago they're so eager to reenact. I find this appalling.

What follows is the relevant portion of the Washington Post piece by Dana Milbank.
Dana Milbank in Washington Post wrote: He also said he would change the law to reverse “a bias against White” people: “I think there is a definite anti-White feeling in this country and that can’t be allowed.” He walked away from his previous support for a Palestinian state, saying “I’m not sure a two-state solution anymore is going to work.” And he said he wouldn’t hesitate to use the National Guard against pro-Palestinian protesters while also leaving open the possibility of using the broader U.S. military against them.

Those last Trump positions — the restoration of white power, the rejection of a Palestinian homeland, the willingness to mobilize troops against peaceful demonstrators — show how deeply misguided those on the far left are as they protest Biden’s policies on Gaza. Their frustration with the president’s support for Israel is understandable. But in making Biden the enemy, including with chants of “Genocide Joe,” the plans to trash the Democratic National Convention in Chicago and the proliferation of vows of the “uncommitted” never to vote for Biden, they are in effect working to elect Trump. This isn’t principled protest; it’s nihilism.

They are working to help return to office an authoritarian who just last week said the neo-Nazi violence in Charlottesville was “like a peanut compared to the riots and the anti-Israel protests that are happening all over our country.” In recent months, Trump said Israel should be allowed to “finish the job” in Gaza and boasted about cutting off aid to Palestinians. And he has vowed, if elected, to reimpose his travel ban on predominantly Muslim countries and “expand it even further.”

For those student protesters too young to remember, this is the guy who led the anti-Muslim “birther” campaign against President Barack Obama; who claimed thousands of Muslims in New Jersey cheered the 9/11 terrorist attacks; who said “Islam hates us” and employed several anti-Muslim bigots in his administration; who wanted to have police surveillance of U.S. mosques; who called for a “complete and total shutdown of Muslims entering the United States”; who retweeted anti-Muslim propaganda videos by a white supremacist; and who told figures such as Palestinian American Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Somali American Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) to “go back” to the “totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”

So it’s entirely consistent that, in Wisconsin on Wednesday, he said that he’s “restoring the travel ban, suspending refugee admissions and keeping terrorists the hell out of our country.” He went on: “We've seen what happened when Europe opened their doors to jihad. Look at Paris, Look at London. They're no longer recognizable.”

Trump, on Hannity’s show this week, called the demonstrators at Columbia “paid agitators” and “brainwashed.” At his Wisconsin rally, he condemned the “raging lunatics and Hamas sympathizers at Columbia and other colleges.” He called for authorities to “vanquish the radicals,” many of whom “come from foreign countries.”

None of this should be surprising, either, for this is the same guy who called thousands of National Guard troops to Washington and federal police to Oregon to combat racial-justice demonstrators after the George Floyd killing; who held a Bible-wielding photo op in Lafayette Square after authorities cleared a peaceful demonstration with tear gas; who, according to his own former defense secretary, suggested to military leaders that they shoot demonstrators; who calls the free press the “enemy of the American people”; who defended the “very fine people” among the Nazis in Charlottesville and who called those convicted of attacking the Capitol “hostages.”

Yet the pro-Palestinian activists, through their actions, would return the author of this ugliness to the White House. They must have been doing for the last eight years what Trump has been doing in court the last three weeks: napping.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... ney-trial/
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Rach3
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Re: To the Gaza protesters helping to elect Trump: Give it a rest

Post by Rach3 » Sat May 04, 2024 9:46 am

What is galling is the fact the Biden Administration could have acted in manners that could have avoided any credible criticism from the Left and student demonstrations, while also avoiding any credible criticism from the Right and "antisemitism" complaints.A March 27 Gallup poll found 55 % of ALL Americans are unhappy with Israel's conduct of the war and that 75% of Democrats are.

diegobueno
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Re: To the Gaza protesters helping to elect Trump: Give it a rest

Post by diegobueno » Sat May 04, 2024 12:36 pm

Rach3 wrote:
Sat May 04, 2024 9:46 am
What is galling is the fact the Biden Administration could have acted in manners that could have avoided any credible criticism from the Left and student demonstrations, while also avoiding any credible criticism from the Right and "antisemitism" complaints.
What would that have been?
Black lives matter.

Rach3
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Re: To the Gaza protesters helping to elect Trump: Give it a rest

Post by Rach3 » Sat May 04, 2024 1:57 pm

diegobueno wrote:
Sat May 04, 2024 12:36 pm
What would that have been?
Adopting early on a combination of the approaches suggested by Tom Friedman and making clear US aid contingent on the approaches being adopted:

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=61062&p=545366&hil ... an#p545366

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=60874&p=544500&hil ... an#p544500

Belle
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Re: To the Gaza protesters helping to elect Trump: Give it a rest

Post by Belle » Sun May 05, 2024 2:57 am

Don't give it a rest for ethical reasons, supporting a terrorist organisation? Oh, nice one. And was that survey conducted by the people who predicted a Clinton win all through 2016?
Donald Trump won't win the election and I'll say it till the day. Meanwhile, I note lefty heads are still exploding!!

The Right's accusations about antisemitism are spot on.

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Re: To the Gaza protesters helping to elect Trump: Give it a rest

Post by diegobueno » Sun May 05, 2024 9:58 am

Another point of view, this from Josh Marshall. Here's part of it (the rest you can find in a link at the end):
Josh Marshall wrote:In these moments we sometimes hear people say, well, don’t try to police the decisions of an oppressed group. This gets to the rub of this issue. The real world isn’t black and white. Groups don’t fit neatly into boxes of oppressed and oppressor. People can have whatever beliefs they want and protest about whatever they want. But the groups who are the targets of eliminationist political goals can make their own decisions about what to associate with and what not to.

And here let me shift gears to my next main point. The last six months have thrown me very hard back on to defending the existence of Israel, its historical connections to Jews in Europe and the Middle East before the 20th century, its origins as the political expression of a people who are in fact indigenous to Israel-Palestine. And that’s because all of these things are now questioned and attacked as core propositions.

But the reality is that these conversations, often harrowing and angry, are simply diversions from anything that creates a path forward from the terrible present. There are two national communities deeply embedded in the land. Neither is going anywhere even though there are substantial proportions of both communities who want that to happen to the other one. There’s no way to build something sustainable and dignified without both peoples having a state in which they have self-determination and citizenship. That’s the only plausible endpoint where violence doesn’t remain an ever-present reality. How you get there is another story. And yes, if you think one unified state makes sense, God bless you. If you can get majorities of both groups to agree to that, fine. I don’t live there. If that’s what they want, great. That’s almost certainly never going to be the case. And it’s a failed state in the making.

But none of these arguments about 1948 or 1967 or indigeneity or “settler colonialism” really impact or have anything to do with getting to some two state/partition end point. And no I’m not saying for a moment that that will be easy to get to. It seems terribly far off. But fantasies and alternative histories won’t get us there.

Oslo gets a bad name today. And perhaps that’s fair since it failed. And failure is a bad thing. But we shouldn’t ignore the irony that we have spent the last six months in the grip of Hamas and Benjamin Netanyahu. And if you look back at the period from 1993 to 1996, there are two players who destroyed Oslo, as a matter of strategy and design. Netanyahu and Hamas. They both saw it as in their interests to kill it and they did kill it. You can question the good faith of the key actors of both sides of Oslo. But those two are the ones who set out to kill it and did kill it. They have always been, in effect, allies.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/a- ... iKiiawdID7
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Rach3
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Re: To the Gaza protesters helping to elect Trump: Give it a rest

Post by Rach3 » Mon May 13, 2024 7:34 am

AxiosAm today:

Trump leads in five of six swing states in Times/Siena polls out this morning.

In a head-to-head race with Trump, Biden squeaks out a lead among likely voters in Michigan. Among registered voters (a looser screen), Biden leads in Wisconsin. Trump leads among likely voters in Wisconsin.

Trump leads both groups in Georgia, Nevada, Arizona and Pennsylvania (in the inaugural Times/Philadelphia Inquirer/Siena poll).

Why it matters: "Trump's strength is largely thanks to gains among young, Black and Hispanic voters," writes Nate Cohn, The Times' chief political analyst.

Rach3
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Re: To the Gaza protesters helping to elect Trump: Give it a rest

Post by Rach3 » Tue May 14, 2024 9:28 am

Rach3 wrote:
Mon May 13, 2024 7:34 am
AxiosAm today:

Trump leads in five of six swing states in Times/Siena polls out this morning.
nic voters," writes Nate Cohn, The Times' chief political analyst.
AxiosAm today:

Some prominent Democrats think Biden insiders are in denial, and sleepwalking into defeat.

Biden's team is convinced Americans won't re-elect Trump once they face the choice in November.

https://www.axios.com/2024/05/14/biden- ... 4-election

barney
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Re: To the Gaza protesters helping to elect Trump: Give it a rest

Post by barney » Wed May 15, 2024 3:16 am

Belle wrote:
Sun May 05, 2024 2:57 am

The Right's accusations about antisemitism are spot on.
I agree. But the Right has just as long and ignoble a history of anti-Semitism, so I think this is much more about Left-bashing than genuine concern for the Jewish community.

barney
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Re: To the Gaza protesters helping to elect Trump: Give it a rest

Post by barney » Wed May 15, 2024 3:20 am

Two good articles, Mark, thank you. Netanyahu and Hamas deserve each other, but the rest of the Middle East and the world doesn't deserve either.
It's all so tragic.

Belle
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Re: To the Gaza protesters helping to elect Trump: Give it a rest

Post by Belle » Wed May 15, 2024 5:46 am

barney wrote:
Wed May 15, 2024 3:16 am
Belle wrote:
Sun May 05, 2024 2:57 am

The Right's accusations about antisemitism are spot on.
I agree. But the Right has just as long and ignoble a history of anti-Semitism, so I think this is much more about Left-bashing than genuine concern for the Jewish community.
You are speaking about 80 years ago and much has changed since then. The leading antisemitics today are exclusively from the Left - but if you have evidence of the contrary then please provide it. Nobody has to 'bash' the Left; it does a good enough job itself in this regard. As of now the universities are totally corrupt and most should be burned to the ground and started afresh. All thanks to the Left side of politics, so moral relativism won't cut it. The conservatives had a role to play in this too, as they took their eyes of the ball with the institutions, particularly the church and child sexual abuse.

The tall tree is gradually destroyed by the predatory mistletoe if it is neglected.

As Dr. Eric Weinstein has said regarding the Palestinians, "do they want a State or a chant?" Nobody else in the surrounding nations wants them either.

Rach3
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Re: To the Gaza protesters helping to elect Trump: Give it a rest

Post by Rach3 » Wed May 15, 2024 7:14 pm

By November, won’t matter to many starving children:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/joe-biden-do ... 53446.html

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