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Trump win means ‘time has come’ to annex parts of West Bank, Israeli minister says
(www.washingtonpost.com)
this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2024
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Yes, Trump is terrible and obviously worse to anyone to can rationally look at the options. That doesn't change that the Harris campaign chose to ignore the issue, chose to take those voters for granted, and failed to secure a win.
If the Harris campaign cared about Palestinian lives, or that aside, even just cared about winning the election, then why would they not change position to Conditional Aid on Israel and gain all those undecided voters? That issue alone would have secured the swing states to Harris.
Those voters were entirely up for grabs and all it would've taken was a single policy change and some humanity for the victims of an ongoing genocide. If the concern was AIPAC influencing the election through campaign ads, then pivoting just before voting began would've been the right move. If the campaign was trying to win without those voters, ignoring the grassroots momentum, then we can clearly see that was a failed strategy.
Ok, so answer this for me:
How does either actively voting for Trump, or abstaining from voting knowing it's a de-facto vote for Trump, help to improve that situation in any way at all?
In fact, how does allowing Trump to return to power not make the situation actively worse?
And do you still feel that it was the right choice now, knowing that Israel announced that they plan to annex the west bank with Trump's blessing?
It doesn't? Why do you think that's my view when I've already explicitly said I voted for Harris and told others to voter for her too. I've already said Trump is actively worse in all aspects.
Understanding the faults of the campaign in failing to motivate tens of millions of voters doesn't change any of that. It is still ultimately the responsibility of the campaign to galvanize voters. Understanding why they failed to do that is what I'm doing
Ok, but the question mostly still stands. (Note, none of what I'm about to say is directed at you specifically. I'm using "you" in the general sense here.)
Explain the logic in that reasoning. Explain the logic in protesting Harris's support for Israel by allowing Trump to return to power, knowing he is going to make things actively worse. And if there is no logic in their reasoning, how was Harris supposed to appeal to them? Wouldn't that necessarily mean that any attempts at getting their vote was doomed from the start anyway?
And for all the outrage we've been hearing about from them about Harris's support of Israel, why is the same community largely responding with crickets when Trump and Netanyahu announce their plans to fulfill their promise to ratchet up the genocide?
Seriously. Make it make sense. Because to me, if you're outraged over Harris supporting Israel because of the Gaza genocide but aren't even more outraged over this announcement, then your problem with Harris wasn't actually her support of Israel now, was it?
You can read my thoughts on the mentality and choices given to people who's foremost issue is anti-genocide here.
Conditional Military Aid or even Arms Embargo. It's that simple.
It's overwhelmingly popular with democratic voters, it's even popular with Republican voters. It's also a requirement under both international humanitarian law and domestic law (Leahy Law).
I don't know who isn't outraged, or at least in despair, over this announcement.
The fact that, if Harris did change from the policy of unconditional military support, she would have certainly flipped swing states and won the election does absolutely make me mad too. Harris' inability to pivot not only cost the election, but further galvanized Israel to continue and expand it's genocidal actions more than they already have been under the Biden Administration.
I have to strongly disagree here. Keep in mind, I support Gaza. But supporters of Israel far outnumber supporters of Gaza, especially outside of Michigan. It basically put Biden and Harris in a lose-lose situation, because no matter which side they took, somebody was going to get pissed off. Had they shown more support for Gaza, they'd have pissed off far more Jews and she'd have lost the election anyway. Probably by an even wider margin. Whether it was the morally correct choice is a matter of personal opinion, but the choice she made is the choice that was the least shitty option politically.
Well the polls disagree with you. As I mentioned in my linked comment, Over 51% of Jewish Americans Support for Biden’s Decision to Withhold Arms Shipments to Israel. So trying to justify the decision not to based on Jewish American voters is another way of conflating Zionism with Judaism.
First, 51% is hardly a ringing endorsement of anything. A technical majority, yes. But a statistical tie and certainly not overwhelming support.
Also, by your logic, this means she would have lost a little under half the Jewish vote. Here's the problem with that. That still dwarfs Palestinians and supporters of Gaza. By a large margin. Which means she still would have lost, probably by a wider margin. Maybe not as wide as I originally said, but wider nonetheless. At Best, it would have gotten her Michigan. But in doing so, she would have likely risked even more states with large Jewish populations.
Again, no. Look at the other polls I already posted. You're also assuming that Israel is the number one issue for Jewish Americans. It's 9th. It wouldn't have taken half of Jewish American votes away when about 70% vote Democrat because of the overt antisemitism of the Republican party. All your doing is conflating Zionism with Judaism to justify the actions of the campaign
Protip: When you have to resort with thinly veiled accusations of antisemitism to make your argument, you might wanna re-evaluate your argument.
There are 160,000 Palestinians in the US. There are 5.8 million Jewish adult voters in the US.
79% of them voted for Harris. Or just shy of 4.6 million voters
25% considered Israel a major policy item. Or just shy of 1.15 million Harris voters.
Which means that had she supported Gaza, she would have lost about 1.15 million Jewish people who consider Israel a top priority. Which means for every supporter of Gaza she would have picked up, she'd have lost 5 Jewish votes. Which means she would have lost even harder. That's got nothing to do with judaism or zionism or which choice is morally correct or not. That's just math. You may not agree with them, but thare are more of them than there are of you. By a large margin.
You're still assuming that conditional military aid, needed to end the genocide and begin a permanent ceasefire, is anti-israel. When it would be responsible for saving Israeli lives.
We know 22% disagree with withholding military aid. Out of the 25% that consider Israel a major policy item that would be 253,000 voters.
Why are you only including Palestinian Americans when this anti-genocide sentiment is also shared by the overwhelming majority of Arab Americans and Muslim Americans as well as the majority of the general populous?
Because even if you combine the total Palestinian and Arab/Muslim population, they're still nowhere close to the Jewish voting population. Again, it's just simple numbers.
The issue doesn't even crack the top 10 for them.
It does in the very least in swing states, as the polls show. Yet we see a net positive in both swing states and the general populous with a conditional aid policy.
It does among the affected populations. Which makes sense. But to the average voter without any skin in the game, it didn't crack the top 10.
You're trying to compare votes gained vs votes lost due to a policy shift in conditional military aid. We see a positive shift both generally, and very much so in swing states. If we're comparing voters who would vote against Harris compared to voters who would vote for Harris with this change, we see that there would be enough of a positive shift to at least flip the swing states. We saw that there is less than 300k Jewish Americans nationally that would vote against Harris if there was conditional aid. The votes that would be gained by Arab Americans and the Uncommitted movement would far outweigh that, especially in swing states. The argument that the decision to not do conditional military aid was because of the Jewish American vote does not hold.
You can apply all the maybes and the shoulda, coulda, woulda's you want to try to make your point, but the math simply does not work in your favor. Not even close to it. You are grossly overestimating the size of the Arab/Muslim/Palestine population and their supporters, underestimating the size of the Jewish community and where their support lies, and grossly over-representing the effect of the general population, where this issue didn't even crack the top 10.
And I just want to restate for the record: I agree with you. We are on the same side here. But supporters of Gaza are simply grossly outnumbered by the Jewish population and those who support Israel, and if Harris had supported Gaza, she'd have lost a million more votes. That's got nothing to do with which side is right or wrong, or zionism, or judaism, or which side is morally right. It's just math. There's more of them. It's that simple. The entire situation was a lose-lose situation for Biden the day Israel decided that schools and hospitals somehow became valid military targets. From a political standpoint, Harris chose the least politically shitty option.
We just went through the numbers, no she would not have lost millions more votes. She would have gained net votes and enough to secure the swing states. Her decision not to cost her the election. We see the results of her not switching to conditional aid and it was Trump winning every swing state.
You can feel free to believe whatever you want, and I'm obviously not going to convince you otherwise. The math just does not agree with you. Outside of Michigan, the number of pro-Palestine people would barely qualify as a rounding error let alone be enough to swing a single other state. You are grossly over-estimating their voting power at literally every level. The subsection of Jews that even consider this a top issue to begin with outnumbers the total number of voting Palestinians and their supporters more than 5 times over. Your numbers just do not add up no matter how much you really, really stretch things to make them.
So let's see how you came to the number that millions of Jewish Americans would vote against Harris if she was in favor of conditional military aid in order to create a permanent ceasefire.
79% of them voted for Harris. Or just shy of 4.6 million voters
25% considered Israel a major policy item. Or just shy of 1.15 million Harris voters.
You think that since 25% consider Israel a major policy item that they all must be against conditional aid. Is that true? I wouldn't jump to that conclusion. This statistic means that it is a prominent issue for them, not how. Let's say it's the #1 issue for them to make things easier.
Now let's look at how Jewish Americans views on a conditional ceasefire
52.5% support withholding military aid compared to 23% to disagree with that decision.
What's 23% of the 1.15 Million that consider Israel a top issue? 230,000 Jewish Americans.
Even if we assume all of these Jewish Americans are Democrat, which we have no way of confirming one way or the other, let's compare that to the uncommitted movement. Total uncommitted in the Primary was 706,591 (Which may have been undercounted). On average, general turnout is twice that of primary turnout. Which would reflect over 1,400,000 uncommitted votes in the general as an estimate. Considering how widespread anti-genocide sentiment is, I would expect more than that. But it's not like we have any data, other than the current results.