this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2025
355 points (96.6% liked)
Progressive Politics
2703 readers
665 users here now
Welcome to Progressive Politics! A place for news updates and political discussion from a left perspective. Conservatives and centrists are welcome just try and keep it civil :)
(Sidebar still a work in progress post recommendations if you have them such as reading lists)
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I wonder how many civilians in Gaza Israel would have to murder in order to gain the same amount of press as they would receive for killing two famous white people.
I suspect there were never enough people there to solve this equation.
Ah see you've fallen into one of their many thought traps - because the calculation is made impossible by them repeatedly claiming 'there are no civilians in Gaza'. 12 year old boy playing soccer? Hamas terrorist. 8 year old girl in line outside a store? Hamas terrorist. Newborn baby? Somehow also Hamas terrorist.
The Israeli admin won't stop the genocide. Not until they have some massive political upheaval, remove existing power brokers and prosecute all the war criminals. That will take decades, if there's even an appetite for it at all amongst the Israeli populace.
old BENNY is trying to stay out of prison, hence the distraction by aggressive wars.
I don't know many israelis, but the ones I do know are on the streets protesting all the time now. Accounts differ, but there are many signs that Netanyahu is not particularly popular even at home these days.
What is pretty unique about Israel's genocide is that it is strangely democratic in nature. Sure, Israeli democracy is hardly a democracy at all, but it plays by democratic rules for the part of the population who are considered full citizen. And within this democratic system Netanyahu and his crooks have painted themselves into a corner, where they need to appease the most extremist extreme right terrorists they have chosen as coalition partners. Because the second they stop the government will fall and they will almost certainly be prosecuted for crimes against humanity.
So the combination of the existence of these crimes and the democracy-like institutions in Israel are actually forcing Netanyahu to double down on genocide. It's pretty crazy.
In the third Reich, the first thing the NSDAP did was to abolish democratic institutions. Israel's genocide is very different - dynamics of democratic government are actively fueling the fire of their holocaust. It's the first ever democratic genocide. When the dust settles, I think this is going to give us a lot to think about.
Interesting perspectives. As you say though Israel is a very flawed democracy. Palestinians (in Palestine) live within the geographical land borders of Israel, which are policed and managed by Israel, and find themselves in an apartheid system. Eg: if you're one of the ~3mil Palestinians living in the West Bank, you have no citizenship and no vote, whereas if you are one of the ~500k Jews living in the West Bank, you get citizenship, a right to vote, to protest, the protection of the army and many other rights.
The Palestinians have very limited autonomy under the Palestinian Authority, which has all but collapsed during the conflict due to the devastation levied against Palestines infrastructure. They have increasing laws and fines levied upon them by the Israeli govt - the largest is probably tax. They previously had their taxes reimbursed to the PA by Israel who collects them - but this has always been at the will of the Israeli govt, and has been withheld to the sum of several hundreds of millions of dollars in the last decade. Under 2018 law Israel just keeps an amount they decide based on how much they think the PA has paid to families incarcerated or killed by Israel (quite an opaque process). So they are significanly taxed, policed, and governed by Israel, hell they control their water and power and food - but they have no representation, and very limited rights. That is not democracy.
I would say that the Israelis have done their best to follow the pattern of other repressive regimes: slowly take away rights of the outgroup until they have none left - and as the group responds - initially peacefully, respond with increasing force at every opportunity, and eventually so too will those protesting their conditions, and justification will be met for the violent suppression that was initially desired.
I guess the real test will be the response of the Israeli govt to their protesters - because I suspect they will find themselves next on the chopping block. If the main method the Israeli govt have of solving their political problems is escalating violence then that will eventually be turned inward.
Indeed - I think one of the big takeaways from this for the international community will be just how incompatible apartheid is with democracy, or how blending the two creates an incredibly toxic mix. It has been obvious to (honest) observers and to supporters of Palestine for a long time, but recent experiences in Israel shows how democracy is not worth the paper of the ballots if democracy does not extend to everyone.
Seeing how Netanyahu deals with criticism from the Israeli opposition will be extremely interesting. I think it's safe to say liberal Israelis have bigger things to worry about than Hamas.
The US did a genocide on the Native Americans, even after being a democracy.
Yes, it's not that genocide has never happened in democracies. But in the US, democratic institutions were not the driving factors behind the genocide: you did not have actors locked in to their genocidal actions due to the democratic institutions. Democracy and genocide in America were two largely separate things.
My idea here is that while the genocides on Native Americans were genocides in a democracy, Israel's genocide can be categorized as a genocide by democracy. It is made possible, or at the very least worse, by democratic institutions (however flawed).
It's just a shower thought really, I might obviously be wrong. But I have a fairly good overview of the history of genocide and I am fairly certain this one is unique in this regard.
Yeah I think you're wrong. Many politicians in the US won their votes on the idea of being tougher on the native population. (I think of Andrew Jackson in particular.) Similarly to how many politicians in the South won on upholding slavery before the civil war and Jim Crow laws after it.
Conservatism itself is basically the belief that there should be, is by nature, or exists a certain hierarchy in society and that it can be reinforced with violence if necessary in order to "protect it" from egalitarianism.
But in the US the genocide was largely carried out by random people shooting folks for fun from their train wagons, in Israel it's carried out by the professionally organized army of an allegedly democratic nation. Very different.
Even when the US army was directly involved (no small degree, especially if you don't accept Native American warriors as military targets), its actions were not driven by Democratic institutions. Sure, people voted for leaders who supported genocide, but the genocide was not the direct result of democratic institutions malfunctioning. In Israel it is.
Natives were excluded from the political system, just like they are in Israel.
Natives were seen as savage threats to colonists. In Israel, Palestinians are seen as terroristic threats to settlers.
They're very similar and the main differences are eras, technology, and geography.
America is a lot larger and at the time the surveillance and military technology didn't exist to round every native up and put them in an open air prison. Where there were large communities of native Americans living in organized settlements, the government ran largely the same playbook Israel does today: move them from preferred areas to areas nobody wanted, put them in camps when camps existed, go to war with them directly, etc.
You're assuming people will care about that either.
Within minutes you'll be hearing about the "secret anti-semitic DMs of hateful Greta" from the likes of the Daily Mail.
Oh, I have no doubt the Daily Mail wanted Thunberg dead long before she spoke out against Israel.
The part that bothers me is how many people ignore and are trying to iron clad state that antisemetism is anti Jewish. Semites include Arabs as a well. Basically if you are looking down/hating on a group for their beliefs or languages, you probably fall into antisemetism. Thus if their logic that anti Israel is antisemetic, then anti the people from Gaza would also be antisemetic. Attacking Iraq, or Afghanistan who's official religions are Islam - anti semetic. Attacking Spain, we can call it antisemetism because I believe Catholicism is the official religion, and you guessed it. Christians fall under Semitic usually, because Jesus happens to stem from the middle east..
Sadly either the same or a few days longer than when idf took out the World Central Kitchen workers and trucks.
Although that achieved removing aid from Gaza so Israel probably treats it as a win, like they would attacking more aid ships.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g2g6w4109o
I really think celebrity changes the nature of this. I suspect the media's urge to cover celebrity news is even greater than their urge not to talk about Israel's crimes.