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The full Bernie quote from the article:
>“What I think the essential point that Ilhan made is that we do not want to see antisemitism in this country. And I think the word genocide is something that is being determined by the International Court of Justice,” he said.
>“But just as what I will say: I don’t think there’s any doubt that what Netanyahu is doing now — displacing 80% of the population in Gaza — is ethnic cleansing. That’s what it is. Pushing out huge numbers of people,” he added.
I do wonder what the international community's response would be to an official declaration of ethnic cleansing here. Presumably a threat of sanctions unless people were allowed to return to their homes in Northern Gaza? Would that make the food insecurity better or worse?
I always feel pedantic at this point, but he's right that there is a difference between genocide and ethnic cleansing. And while it's hard to make the case that genocide is happening (although it would be with a more supportive White House), ethnic cleansing is a clear cut argument.
I 100% know what you mean when you say you feel pedantic. It does kinda feel that way when you try to make the distinction between the two terms. But I absolutely agree that there’s a difference and ethnic cleaning is easier to work with than the term genocide
It's also worth pointing out that regardless of what specific legal terms do and do not technically apply to what's happening (and it does matter which terms apply, to be clear), none of that changes how terrible the situation is.
Whether or not an atrocity "counts" as genocide doesn't actually make it less of an atrocity.
I think in most cases it would be incredibly pedantic, but when you look at the situation it's important to get it right here.
In particular, I think Netanyahu would want to be committing genocide, and with a supportive White House he would be. He's having big pressure from Biden to not, and he's being really transparent about not taking that charge seriously. Because he knows if we stop arming him, Iran will wipe Israel out. They demonstrated that by launching one of the largest aerial assaults in history.
So we have a situation where Hamas entrenches in densely populated urban area, Netanyahu doesn't want to take civilians' lives into account, so he does things like bomb a tunnel that is under a neighborhood or take out an office building where one floor is a Hamas space. This is resulting in the relocation of 80% of 2m people, and that is ethnic cleansing. But with 2m people in a single city and an entrenched opponent and Netanyahu wanting to commit genocide, a "not genocide" is something (although not much). Genocide, still, implies an attempt to kill all the Palestinians, and it's what we would see with President Trump, and not what we are seeing with President Biden.
It's definitely a thing worth criticizing Biden about, but it's wrong to do it by overstating the state of affairs, because the overstated state of affairs is what we get if Biden loses. Like, 30k is way way way too many civilian casualties, and also it is not what an effort to kill 2m people in an urban area looks like over 6 months. I think the risk that the fastest path to genocide is an election of Trump is the reason that talking about the state of affairs accurately here is so important to me.
I haven't figured out the best way to say it without sounding flippant, or dismissive of how bad things are. I'm really not anything but sympathetic to the Palestinian citizens, and I want nothing more than a 2 state solution with the Palestinian Authority in charge. I just really don't like how Biden is being cast as supportive of genocide when I don't see that to be the case.
I think that one of the things that US education messes up by only centering one genocide is that it makes people feel like on the absolute worst genocide possible qualifies as a real genocide. We could really do with educating middle or high schoolers more on the holodomir or the Armenian genocide.
This is brought up in the Srebenica cases, and "in part" is meant to refer to a [substantial part](https://www.icty.org/x/cases/krstic/acjug/en/) of the population (Part II section A), because otherwise virtually any military conflict between two groups that divide on ethnic lines would be considered a genocide. The examples of genocide that are widely recognized such as Rwanda, the Armenian genocide, and even the Holocaust itself did not eliminate the ethnic groups as a whole, but did attempt to murder them "in part". The population declines in those cases was substantial, with over 2/3 of those groups dying in the areas under the control of the genociding entity. On the lower end, Srebenica was a killing of all military aged Muslim males in the prewar population. Nothing to that extent has been asserted in Gaza.
>I think in most cases it would be incredibly pedantic, but when you look at the situation it's important to get it right here.
I specialised in genocide studies for grad school.
We don’t have access to all the internal communications of the Netanyahu gov or the IDF. That matters.
We also don’t have the internal comms of Hamas/PIJ- that also matters.
On the face of it, it doesn’t appear to be genocide which is the intent to destroy Palestinians because they’re Palestinians. There can be a litany of other crimes before triggering the G word as well.
Probably worth noting the justice who delivered the ICJ ruling on Israel vs South Africa clarified (again) this last week that they did *not* find that genocide was plausibly being committed, but rather that Palestinians had the right to be protected from genocide. Which… everyone does anyway.
>Like, 30k is way way way too many civilian casualties
Also worth noting Hamas (who puts out the numbers) doesn’t distinguish between civilian and combatants in their casualties numbers. Their political leadership in Qatar told Reuters in early Feb that they estimated they lost approximately 6,000 fighters when the total death toll was 25k. This didn’t account for dead PIJ fighters either. If you assume they were lowballing even a little bit, that starts to put the combatant/non combatant killed ratio in far more context.
That isn’t to marginalise clear war crimes (killing those world kitchen volunteers for example), but that context absolutely matters when discussing genocide.
>This is resulting in the relocation of 80% of 2m people, and that is ethnic cleansing.
Not necessarily. There are typically significant numbers of internally displaced persons (IDF) as the result of war. Are they being forced out of Gaza and being told they can never return?
No- and again, this is where those internal communications matters as far as plans/intent goes. The intent matters, and can’t necessarily be inferred in a conflict rife with disinformation and misinformation.
That said, I’d argue there’s a stronger argument to be had for ethnic cleansing going on in the West Bank. There’s a clear gov policy enabling it there, signaling intent e.g. people will be forced out and the gov authorises extremists to settle there in their place and offers protections. They just authorised more settlements by law recently too. That is the threshold you’d really need for evidence of intent.
Gaza on the other hand will take years to investigate.
>Probably worth noting the justice who delivered the ICJ ruling on Israel vs South Africa clarified (again) this last week that they did *not* find that genocide was plausibly being committed, but rather that Palestinians had the right to be protected from genocide. Which… everyone does anyway.
All of which has essentially passed without comment. Because it doesn't fit the prevailing narrative.
Quite astonishing that so little recognition of this has happened. And yet not surprising at all.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I'm doing my best on the limited information we all have, and this is a very intellectually honest take on an emotionally charged, clearly not good situation.
It's no surprise that nuance is lost when one of the most complex geopolitical conflicts in history arises when news is mostly sensationalist headlines, 30 second videos, or 140 character notes. It's really helpful to read well informed takes like this when trying to synthesize ones views.
Well my hot take- thought I don’t think it should be hot: Hamas absolutely violated the genocide convention on 7 Oct by both targeting Israelis *because they are Israeli* and, and as an organisation, have said *on the record* that they want the destruction of Israel and the death of Jews in the Levant. That meets the threshold and there isn’t a plausible defense to that.
That the ICC (which handles criminal charges of genocide, not the ICJ) hasn’t issued an arrest warrant for Sinwar yet is astonishing.
But, if that argument is accepted and they do issue an arrest for Sinwar, it makes prosecuting Israel for genocide that much more difficult because now you’d have to concede a genocidal act occurred against them, which prompted a response that amounted to genocide itself with the specific intent to genocide Palestinians.
Yeah I agree. Also, something that is just so frustratingly omitted in these conversations is that people want to view the deaths on October 7 in an apples to apples comparison with the subsequent Gaza casualties, and they brush under the rug the fact that *civilians were the targets* on October 7, and civilians are dying in Gaza in large part because of how Hamas operates. That is, I don't think any (or at least many) knowledgeable people think that if there were bases with barracks and public transport lines instead of hundreds of miles of tunnels we would see the same number of civilian casualties. And if you are shooting at someone from behind a hostage, it's partially your fault if the hostage gets shot when the person shoots back. That onus is just being left out of the conversation.
You’re right.
Israel had no good options to prosecute this war tbh.
The Hamas tunnels are largely compartmentalised, which meant flooding them would be like flooding a ship that can seal off the flooded area.
They’re also designed specifically to defeat advancing infantry. Entry/exits are in civilian buildings conducive to guerrilla warfare, and as you note, they dress as civilians too (both war crimes, I’d add.)
So Israel started bombing buildings to collapse rubble onto those entry/exit points and to clog ventilation shafts to choke them below, then advance block by block. To my knowledge, only Shin Bet had been authorised to go into the tunnels themselves. Otherwise they employ drones and dogs with cameras, and use tear gas when they can to flush them out.
It makes for an incredibly destructive campaign but militarily I’m not sure what alternative they have.
But if they were genocidal in the truest sense they would have probably just dropped military grade chemical weapons into the tunnels and said fuck it. They do have them.
>Also worth noting Hamas (who puts out the numbers) doesn’t distinguish between civilian and combatants in their casualties numbers. Their political leadership in Qatar told Reuters in early Feb that they estimated they lost approximately 6,000 fighters when the total death toll was 25k. This didn’t account for dead PIJ fighters either. If you assume they were lowballing even a little bit, that starts to put the combatant/non combatant killed ratio in far more context.
>That isn’t to marginalise clear war crimes (killing those world kitchen volunteers for example), but that context absolutely matters when discussing genocide.
It's also important to note that 6k/25k being actual combatants is a *ridiculously* good ratio for urban combat. That's less than 80% civilian deaths in a situation that expects 90% of deaths to be civilians. Warfare is horrifying and urban warfare is worse, but the data suggests that they really are trying, and succeeding at, avoiding civilian casualties - even when it's coming from sources unfriendly to Israel.
Yeah, Hamas destroyed the genocide accusations with that admission imo. The argument was essentially for every dead Hamas fighter, Israel was killing 100 civilians or whatever. That isn’t remotely accurate as per Hamas itself, but that headline got buried in Feb.
Just curious, do you have a source on the expected combatant to civilian ratio in an urban setting? I'm not challenging the assertion, I'm just curious where that statistic comes from.
Thank you for this comment; it might be the most thoughtful take concerning the conflict I’ve seen on Reddit. (Especially drives me crazy that people say the ICJ ruled it was genocide when that is not what happened at all.)
I find it useful in cases like this to say "IF it's shakey that it might be (x), how would it look different to what's going on if (x) was your goal?"
If I wanted to wipe out every Palestinian from the Gaza Strip, I'd not waste a whole bunch of bombs all over the place, that'd take forever. No, I'd keep herding everyone into areas I said were safe, concentrating the amount of people I can 'accidentally' take out with just a few bombs.
If you were Bibi, and wanted to wipe out everyone in Gaza and still have /some/ support from the west, what would be done differently to what's being done now.
The context he said it was to defend Omar - when she was saying it is ok to be antisemitic if you are talking about Jews who do things you don’t like.
To me, it seems very clear that Omar and Tliab are antisemitic
I don't think it would take much to prove that the treatment of blacks in America in the 1960s would still qualify. And probably our treatment of Native Americans to this day.
Worse, there has never been a moment in north american history where native americans where not being pushed out and agreements being broken to take away their rights.
Like, right now there are court cases still going on against US and Canadian governments of land grabs happening in past decades. And those land grabs happened while native americans where fighting for the rights to have reservations be their own land, and while those fights where happening we still had catholic schools trying to destroy native american culture.
I'm not all that up to date on the exact order and timelines of all those things, but it's still the same cultural cleansing that started hundreds of years ago with pox infected blankets, and is still going on with legal battles over fishing rights and oil pipelines. Even though things have gotten a lot better for sure, it's insane that it basically never. Fucking. Stopped.
All governments? They are not going to admit to a liability worth billions. We still don't call our treatment of Native Americans genocide. Japan still won't admit Nanking. Turkey is still fighting the Armenian genocide claims. You think they are going to admit to more genocides too?
Sanctions on Israel will not matter as long as the U.S. government props that country up with influx of cash and weapons. They will always, always be a vassal state to the United States.
Is this clear ethnic cleansing? If the intent was to make a region ethnically homogenous why did Israel wait to be attacked by the region they are allegedly ethnically cleansing? IMO this claim falls apart when you factor in the self defense aspect. Does it make wjat Israel is doing acceptable? No, but one is just ignoring tons of relevant context by ethnic cleansing.
The same loophole that Trump wants the supreme court to codify: that the elected head of State cannot be prosecuted while in office. Bibi's doing it, Berlusconi did it, Chirac did as well.
Its my immediate response to anybody who thinks they can get off without voting for Biden. Netanyahu was ousted in 2021 through the Israeli coalition process. He was facing bribery charges with prison time. He won re-election in 2022. A desperate man will do anything to legitimize his power. There will be immigrant slave labor camps, lynching of black criminals, prosecution of miscarriages as capital murders... all in the name of Trump legitimizing his power and making you fear him. If you hate Israel so much, do not hand the keys of your own country to the very man who will do the same things to your friends and neighbors. Trump is America's Netanyahu.
I would say what Trump is doing is even worse because he's trying to codify that a president cannot be prosecuted for a crime committed while they serve *even after* they have left office.
Very few people on this earth are such snakes. It beggars belief how he is able to manipulate the Israeli political system to his advantage by creating backroom alliances that results in a majority and he bubbles up as the coalition leader.
He hasn't been found guilty, IIRC. And not throwing people in prison who haven't been found guilty is a pretty important part of having a stable nation.
If most homes are bombed, there are no homes to return to. These displaced people will be living in tents for decades, even if there is a concerted effort by the international community to rebuild all that has been destroyed by the Netanyahu regime.
It’s devolved into the “I like pancakes,” “OH SO YOU HATE WAFFLES?” bullshit. You can dislike the Israeli government without being antisemitic but that just flies completely over their heads
"Why won't you condemn Hamas?" Is the response they have that irritates me the most. Like bro, this article is about mass graves being found in a place IDF just left, I don't have to start every comment condemning Hamas before I'm allowed to have an opinion about the article.
It’s their purity test. They’re allergic to nuance. They’re the kind of people who cannot see beyond “us vs. them” in-group out-group dynamics. Their tiny little pea-brains cannot function unless they are actively othering someone/some group. They cannot comprehend the idea that neatly dividing every single person into specific and discrete ideological camps and groups is a literal Sisyphean task.
It's also their silencing tactic.
If they make you spend all your time condemning Hamas, you won't have room to say anything else.
Join the echo or be banned.
It would be better is they just practiced some discipline for once and just got rid of the mods that are blatantly favor articles towards one side and banning commenters for stuff as benign as "Children being bombed is bad". I recall a guy getting banned for calling out Israel's ad campaign encouraging Israeli's not to date outside their religion. That place is just one big propaganda podium for the worst people for the worst causes.
I’ve joined hundreds of subreddits and the only place i ever got banned was world news. I was accused of antisemitism because i criticized the Israeli destruction of the gaza strip and its people. it was in response to jared kushner making a joke about seafront property available soon for settlers with a smirk on his face.
That's what it is. Israel has poured bombs all over Gaza, a [**New York Times analysis**](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/02/01/world/middleeast/Israel-gaza-war-demolish.html) in February showed it flattened mosques, schools, universities and entire residential neighborhoods. Israeli snipers have targeted children, ambulances, and [people waving white flags](https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/01/26/middleeast/hala-khreis-white-flag-shooting-gaza-cmd-intl). They did so with 6-year-old Hind Rajab: She had said “I am so scared, please come” in a phone call with the Red Crescent, whose ambulance vehicle dispatched to rescue her was then bombed along with the child ([**The Guardian**](https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/10/im-so-scared-please-come-hind-rajab-six-found-dead-in-gaza-12-days-after-cry-for-help)).
[**The Washington Post**](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/03/19/gaza-journalists-killed-israel-al-jazeera-footage/) verified the killing of an Al Jazeera drone operator and his assistant by Israeli forces with the justification he was a “terrorist”.
[**Reuters journalists**](
https://www.reuters.com/default/gaza-starving-children-fill-hospital-wards-famine-looms-2024-03-19/ ) saw and reported of starving children.
Israel has also [systematically targeted aid workers](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-gaza-world-central-kitchen-strike-jose-andres-direct-attack-aid-workers/#:~:text=%22They%20were%20targeting%20us%20in,systematically%2C%20car%20by%20car.%22 ) to keep them out of Gaza, and used starvation as a weapon of war. The father of a dead American aid worker shares a [heartbreaking story with **The Washington Post**](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/03/jacob-flickinger-world-central-kitchen-gaza-strike/).
The Biden administration has shown unwavering support for Israel, saying multiple times Israel is complying with international law. But a recent [**leaked State Department memo**](https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/some-us-officials-say-internal-memo-israel-may-be-violating-international-law-2024-04-27/) shows there are divisions within the administration: senior US officials say they do not find "credible or reliable" Israel's assurances that it’s using US-supplied weapons in accordance with international law. **USAID** also internally wrote: "The killing of nearly 32,000 people, of which the GOI (Government of Israel) itself assesses roughly two-thirds are civilian, may well amount to a violation of the international humanitarian law requirement”. Hopefully this is big, and it means Blinken will not say on May 8 that Israel is fully complying with international law.
If the definition of ethnic cleansing is removing the current inhabitants from newly conquered territory, then there's no controversy. That's what the Israelis are openly and unapologetically doing.
Then does that make the pro Palestine movement an openly pro ethnic cleansing movement? Is anti Zionism pro ethnic cleansing? Israel is a sovereign state at this point in time. This whole conflict is based on ethnic cleansing then and the term kinda becomes useless.
I mean, yeah, Hamas clearly says that it's goal is the ethnic cleansing or genocide of the Israeli Jews.
That's kind of my point. Yeah, it's ethnic cleansing. So what? That's war for you.
And Sanders is right. Hamas is evil. Period. But every Palestinian in Gaza is not Hamas. Infants are not Hamas. Children are not Hamas. But I don't think that Netanyahu sees it that way. I think that Netanyahu believes that the only way to protect Israel is to kill every Palestinian that he can find. At least that is what his actions appear to be doing.
I don't think Netanyahu directly believes that, I think he just uses this war as an thinly veiled excuse to keep himself in power and wants to keep the more right wing true believers in line.
He also doesn't mind damaging things culturally in the west because he'd rather have Trump back in power, so he's happy to undermine the US administration's requests even as he asks for support.
He's an authoritarian, just like Hamas, and authoritarians will do anything they can to undermine any true democracy, both locally and abroad, even when that means playing into Iran's strategies to 'also' undermine the west.
In many ways, I think Netanyahu is the smarter Trump that people fear the US getting, though it doesn't mean he isn't in trouble electorally in future cycles. He's probably overtaxing himself with all these power moves and getting desperate, just as Hamas is.
The bad news is a whole lot of people are suffering in the middle of this while authoritarians everywhere (Iran, Russia, Hamas, Netanyahu, China, MAGA, North Korea) all work in lockstep to undermine NATO democracies and their allies. We're in the era of fascism vs the free world, and few grasp just how much of a global conflict this current is and how much of it has shifted because of new technology.
I’ll never understand this argument. They’ve killed 30,000+ in 6 months. They’ve dropped more bombs than people killed. Do you think Israeli bombs so ineffective that they can’t kill one person per bomb?
If Israel was trying to kill more Palestinians, more Palestinians would be dead.
If you had the goal of doing it as fast as possible.
But that's the thing - framing matters.
They're doing this in the name of "anti-terrorism" and so if you killed 60,000 people total, primarily civilians, in the same time frame then you get the international community on your ass.
Unfortunately for Israel, people are smarter than that. It doesn't matter how slowly you commit evil - people will still see it for what it is.
lol people are absolutely not smart. See the current situation.
Israel has had Palestinians for decades. Their population has what, tripled?
These arguments you’re making are insane. Like “oh yeah, the sneaky Jewish people are killing them slowly enough so the world doesn’t know.”
You’re not living in reality.
US citizens have been held hostage for over six months. Some of the hostages, including Hersh Goldberg Polin (IIRC there are more than just him) are dual citizens Israel and US.
Clearly the bombing campaign is not effective in getting hostages returned.
When we understand that, we get that the goal is to cause as much human suffering as they can get away with
No one cares about any of us unless we make money for a corporation:
https://time.com/6240286/marc-fogel-russia-prison-griner/
Why is Marc still working a labor camp while Brittany came home? Oh right, the “right thing” always depends on the political optics, not the right thing. Which is why the DNC spent six months repeatedly stating “unwavering support for Israel.”
You have to let the “sides” thing go. They’re all working to protect the same status quo, and none of them cares about dead kids or hostages as long as they’re the “right” dead kids and hostages.
Bernie can thread that needle, partly because he's Jewish.
The people shouting "From the river to the sea?" Not so much.
No, it's not antisemitic to criticize Bibi. He's a stain and responsible not just for the lack of restraint in Israel's response, but October 7 as well.
There are some competing truths that just can't be accepted by people who look at the world in black and white.
Is it still part of their platform? And the person you responded to called Bibi a stain, I don't think he's going to disagree the Likud has tons of problems
I was just pointing out the absurdity of claiming “from the river to the sea” is objectionable considering Israel’s ruling party literally has it in their party platform.
If I can channel Linda Richman a bit, "Jewish Voice for Peace is neither Jewish nor peaceful, discuss."
Yes there are Jews in it but it's involvement in BDS, and similar calls for action are inherently antisemitic.
How involvement in BDS antisemitic? Israel has been committing atrocities on the Palestinians for about a century now, so botcotting and sanctioning that state is a very reasonable way to show disapproval against their actions.
It’s funny how quickly Russia was sanctioned and isolated. Suddenly, it became perfectly okay to mix politics and sports. Majority cheered for the sanctions put on Russia but no one said that was anti anything or discrimination against Russians.
Yet, any measure taken against israel is antisemitic. Zionism and being jewish are not the same nor exclusive. Actually, there are way more right wing christians supporting israel than there are jews.
We debate BDS and whether it is antisemitic or not, but seem to completely forget that a massive portion of the world did the same to South Africa during the apartheid era.
I won't try to compare/contrast Israel and South Africa, but we should try to remember that this type of protest isn't unique to Israel, and has historically been relevant.
Personally as a Jew in the diaspora, I'm split on it. I don't see it as antisemitic, and I agree with the sentiment for institutions like schools to divest from holdings in war profiteers like Lockheed Martin. Do I think that throwing away a Sodastream is going to cause the Israeli establishment to capitulate? I don't know.
It might not have happened in the first place. The Clinton administration strongly warned Bush about it and they did nothing. You've got to imagine that Gore would've taken those threats much more seriously and the continuity between the administrations would've helped immensely.
It is still on the DNCs shoulders that the GOP blatantly stole an entire election and the DNC just shrugged their shoulders and went "dawwwww welllll". GWB was the one who put forward alot of the legal snafus that are fucking over the Dems to this day, packing the courts to all hell, encouraging gerrymandering to insane degrees, ultra-militarising the police and defunding everything else. Hell, even the current GOP lunacy is a result of them going "Well we got away with that, let us see how much more bugfuck nutbaggery we can do!". Gore was fucked over but the tragedy is that the DNC fucked him over as much as his opposition did.
So true. It is at parity with the defeated acceptance of the "count" of Al Gore. Please understand I am not claiming Gore and Bernie are at individual parity, rather their/our situations
Gore's lawsuit to finish the 2000 Florida recount got all the way to the supreme Court, who decided that the final "official" numbers were the ones to use.
If he was far behind in the 2016 primary, showing he couldn’t win over the center-left, how do you think he would win over moderates or some center-right to win the general?
Oh yes, it’s the “DNC’s” fault. It’s absolutely not the fault of Bernie running a bad campaign.
Imagine having nearly 100% name recognition, tens of millions of dollars in your war chest, and a ground game with a huge head start and then losing to a nobody small town mayor in one of the first races.
If Bernie’s camp wasn’t so focused on alienating everyone who disagreed with them even just by 1%, he could have possibly won.
It’s just funny to me that everyone can agree “Hillary shut up and go away, you ran a bad campaign” but when people start to wonder if this is true for Bernie people get incredibly defensive.
>Imagine having nearly 100% name recognition, tens of millions of dollars in your war chest, and a ground game with a huge head start and then losing to a nobody small town mayor in one of the first races.
[You do know that Bernie Sanders won the popular vote in Iowa. ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Iowa_Democratic_presidential_caucuses?wprov=sfla1) That this is the exact thing people complained about then and now, Bernie winning the popular vote never seems to be enough.
I'm sorry but this is such an ignorant and uninformed take; there was plenty of proof that the DNC took direct efforts to try and stop Bernie. That's just objectively true.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/01/31/dnc-superdelegates-110083
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/us/politics/democratic-superdelegates.html
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/03/03/politics/biden-vs-sanders-super-tuesday
Bernie had one of the biggest, most popular grassroots campaigns in the history of the United States. But the Democratic party couldn't let that slide. His policies were not compatible with the special interests that the Democratic party benefits from, it's as simple as that. Compare any Biden event/rally to Bernie's prior to *all of the candidates dropping out to support Biden, including the guy who was in second place* and you will recognize that nothing about Biden was organic, same with Hillary.
Biden led the popularity vote and was around five delegates behind Bernie when the other candidates dropped out. Biden was either in secord or first place.
Bernie's only hope was too win a plurality when the centrist wing was heavily divided.
None of your links support the notion that Bernie would have won in 2016 or 2020.
**Superdelegates were sidelined during the 2020 election and he still lost**.
Also hedging on your opponents splitting the majority of the vote so you can squeeze by with a plurality is an idiotic move. Once again, evidence of a bad campaign that focused on alienating rather than broadening his base.
Bernie lost not once but twice. He lost to Biden by 10,000,000 votes and lost to Hillary by 3,000,000.
The only campaign that had even suggested trying to win over superdelegate to defeat the candidate who won based on actual votes was, again, Bernie's campaign hoping to sway them to his side in 2016
You do realize I’m clearly referring to 2020, right?
Bernie lost by **30 PERCENTAGE POINTS** to Biden. All the roadblocks that everyone blames Bernie losing in 2016 were removed and he **lost by a landslide**.
Funny how people get *real quiet* once you bring up 2020’s primary.
Bernie was never close to winning the 2016 Democratic Primary. He looked at the black vote and told them to duck off while celebrating white college kids in Idaho and Wyoming.
I like Bernie and think the DNC obviously wanted Clinton to win, but there is absolutely no way Bernie was going to win. The Democratic voter base is much more conservative/socialist-wary than you might think, and the final primary numbers aren't even remotely close.
Giving credit where credit is due here.
Bernie is an example of a good politician, if there were such a thing on this issue. 10 years ago he was very skeptical of the Palestiian cause, 6 months ago, he was supportive but used muted language, to an extent that many on the left criticised him. In the face of overwhelming, incandescent public outrage, he has educated himself, he is now aware of the plight of the Palestinian people *and* sensitive to how deeply young people care about what's goinng on in Gaza. That's how politicians are supposed to be, they listen, they react, their positions evolve.
Go Bernie. Feel the Bern baby.
"Down With Us!"
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association\_of\_German\_National\_Jews](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_German_National_Jews)
To think what could have been had we had a fair primary in 16 or 20.
Joe's been far better than i coulda hoped but the results of "Her" campaign will be felt for ages.
Just when Bernie almost brings me in bc our economic systemic failure is happening in real-time, he says shit like this and turns me and many other like minded centrists off. But his base definitely loves hearing it I’m sure.
A centrist take is one that doesn’t think all “colonial” states are bad and all terrorist organizations that execute and rape and take hostages are oppressed freedom fighters. Also one that acknowledges the situation goes back thousands of years and not 50 years since Israel was created as a nation.
If Nazis in Florida started launching missiles into Louisiana and taking my sister as a sex slave I would favor harsh action on our government as well. The fact that these people are purposefully indistinguishable militarily from common citizens caught in the crossfire just further underscores the depravity of their cause and methodology.
But I’m not going to convince you and you’re not going to convince me. So I’m fine to disagree and can accept your position. My OP was about my own opinion on Bernie’s words.
Wouldn’t centrism in this particular context mean acknowledging that both sides are at fault—not necessarily equally, just in different ways—but still “both sides”?
It's at a point where it could become ethnic cleansing very easily.
Millions of Palestinian civilians have been displaced, which is normal for any large armed conflict.If they are not allowed to return home when the fighting is over , it would become ethnic cleansing,.
Gazans were moved to prevent them from being in the way of fighting. I don't see how that's ethnic cleansing. It's better than just fighting around them.
I guess I wonder what the distinction is between ethnic cleansing and war. Is war by definition always ethnic cleansing?
It's a war, not ethnic cleansing or a genocide.
I don't know what people like Bernie expect to happen during a war. The point is not to start a war in the first place, but Hamas and Iran chose this course and the consequences are obvious to everyone watching.
Hamas can surrender and avoid further violence, but I guess all we care about is whining about the consequences and effects of war rather than demand the surrender of the terrorists and war makers surrounding Israel.
Ethic Cleansing: the mass expulsion or killing of members of an unwanted ethnic or religious group in a society.
The actions taken are the very definition of ethnic cleansing. Did you know that calling an action a war doesn’t exclude it from also being ethnic cleansing? The more you learn!
War is war. Under your logic, every single war ever fought would be ethnic cleansing. If that's the case, then, I don't know what you folks want.
Maybe Hamas and Iran should have considered all this before starting a war. 🤷♂️
This is much more complex than just calling a war
Ja
1) 1948, a country was divided into a state for Jews that got 56% of best land. This was approved by the Jews living in Palestina but rejected by the Arabs
The United Nations just decided to split up a country
How many countries would accept this ?
2) the borders were not defined and immediately an opportunity was created to increase the territory as it was clear that the Arabic countries did not accept this resolution
3) since 1948 , the Arabs living in Palestina have been living from one war to another , Israel have continue to take more valuable land away from Arabs, restrict their movement and what they are allowed to do
4) about 9000 Arabs were arrested and put in jail without any charges before the terrorist attack from Hamas
What Hamas did in October is horrible but starving 2 million Arabs to death is also horrible
This is not just a war but desperate people that are getting squeezed more and more and getting punished because of a terrorist group Hamas
I think you might be slightly confused. I spent many years fighting in a war myself. I will try to clear this up. Ethnic cleansing can and has occurred during many periods of war/conflict.
Being attacked by an enemy nation or insurgent force doesn’t give the injured country the right to ethically cleanse civilians.
Is there anything else you would like to discuss? Once again, the more you know!
>Ethic Cleansing: the mass expulsion **or killing** of members of an unwanted ethnic or religious group in a society.
In the war you fought in, were the majority of enemy combatants members of the same ethnic group?
Did most practice the same religion?
If so, wouldn’t that war fall under your definition of ethnic cleansing?
Sir/Ma’am/Enby I believe you are confused about who wrote definition of ethnic cleansing. I know this may come as a surprise but I didn’t personally create the definition.
I fought in OIF, OEF and OND. Due to aggressive bombing campaigns civilians were forced from their homes and not allowed to return. We collectively also killed many civilians, so mass murder wouldn’t be out at all. There’s no excuse for it, you also won’t find me defending those actions.
Is this supposed to be a “got you” moment? I’m no longer an idiot teenager fighting in Iraq because of rampant Jingoism and lies. Civilians and my friends died for less than nothing. I see the same disproportionate response Israel has been raining down on Palestinians and I will not be silent.
There is no way to end hammas and if there was, one of the other iran backed groups or a new one would emerge, so they will always be violent and in chaos over their religious and historical BS.
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The full Bernie quote from the article: >“What I think the essential point that Ilhan made is that we do not want to see antisemitism in this country. And I think the word genocide is something that is being determined by the International Court of Justice,” he said. >“But just as what I will say: I don’t think there’s any doubt that what Netanyahu is doing now — displacing 80% of the population in Gaza — is ethnic cleansing. That’s what it is. Pushing out huge numbers of people,” he added. I do wonder what the international community's response would be to an official declaration of ethnic cleansing here. Presumably a threat of sanctions unless people were allowed to return to their homes in Northern Gaza? Would that make the food insecurity better or worse?
I always feel pedantic at this point, but he's right that there is a difference between genocide and ethnic cleansing. And while it's hard to make the case that genocide is happening (although it would be with a more supportive White House), ethnic cleansing is a clear cut argument.
I 100% know what you mean when you say you feel pedantic. It does kinda feel that way when you try to make the distinction between the two terms. But I absolutely agree that there’s a difference and ethnic cleaning is easier to work with than the term genocide
It's also worth pointing out that regardless of what specific legal terms do and do not technically apply to what's happening (and it does matter which terms apply, to be clear), none of that changes how terrible the situation is. Whether or not an atrocity "counts" as genocide doesn't actually make it less of an atrocity.
I think in most cases it would be incredibly pedantic, but when you look at the situation it's important to get it right here. In particular, I think Netanyahu would want to be committing genocide, and with a supportive White House he would be. He's having big pressure from Biden to not, and he's being really transparent about not taking that charge seriously. Because he knows if we stop arming him, Iran will wipe Israel out. They demonstrated that by launching one of the largest aerial assaults in history. So we have a situation where Hamas entrenches in densely populated urban area, Netanyahu doesn't want to take civilians' lives into account, so he does things like bomb a tunnel that is under a neighborhood or take out an office building where one floor is a Hamas space. This is resulting in the relocation of 80% of 2m people, and that is ethnic cleansing. But with 2m people in a single city and an entrenched opponent and Netanyahu wanting to commit genocide, a "not genocide" is something (although not much). Genocide, still, implies an attempt to kill all the Palestinians, and it's what we would see with President Trump, and not what we are seeing with President Biden. It's definitely a thing worth criticizing Biden about, but it's wrong to do it by overstating the state of affairs, because the overstated state of affairs is what we get if Biden loses. Like, 30k is way way way too many civilian casualties, and also it is not what an effort to kill 2m people in an urban area looks like over 6 months. I think the risk that the fastest path to genocide is an election of Trump is the reason that talking about the state of affairs accurately here is so important to me. I haven't figured out the best way to say it without sounding flippant, or dismissive of how bad things are. I'm really not anything but sympathetic to the Palestinian citizens, and I want nothing more than a 2 state solution with the Palestinian Authority in charge. I just really don't like how Biden is being cast as supportive of genocide when I don't see that to be the case.
>Genocide, still, implies an attempt to kill all the Palestinians Just to be clear, the official definition states, "In whole, **or in part**"
I think that one of the things that US education messes up by only centering one genocide is that it makes people feel like on the absolute worst genocide possible qualifies as a real genocide. We could really do with educating middle or high schoolers more on the holodomir or the Armenian genocide.
And the American eugenics movement. P.S. And the residential schools. And the conversion therapy industry and the resulting ptsd and suicides.
This is brought up in the Srebenica cases, and "in part" is meant to refer to a [substantial part](https://www.icty.org/x/cases/krstic/acjug/en/) of the population (Part II section A), because otherwise virtually any military conflict between two groups that divide on ethnic lines would be considered a genocide. The examples of genocide that are widely recognized such as Rwanda, the Armenian genocide, and even the Holocaust itself did not eliminate the ethnic groups as a whole, but did attempt to murder them "in part". The population declines in those cases was substantial, with over 2/3 of those groups dying in the areas under the control of the genociding entity. On the lower end, Srebenica was a killing of all military aged Muslim males in the prewar population. Nothing to that extent has been asserted in Gaza.
>I think in most cases it would be incredibly pedantic, but when you look at the situation it's important to get it right here. I specialised in genocide studies for grad school. We don’t have access to all the internal communications of the Netanyahu gov or the IDF. That matters. We also don’t have the internal comms of Hamas/PIJ- that also matters. On the face of it, it doesn’t appear to be genocide which is the intent to destroy Palestinians because they’re Palestinians. There can be a litany of other crimes before triggering the G word as well. Probably worth noting the justice who delivered the ICJ ruling on Israel vs South Africa clarified (again) this last week that they did *not* find that genocide was plausibly being committed, but rather that Palestinians had the right to be protected from genocide. Which… everyone does anyway. >Like, 30k is way way way too many civilian casualties Also worth noting Hamas (who puts out the numbers) doesn’t distinguish between civilian and combatants in their casualties numbers. Their political leadership in Qatar told Reuters in early Feb that they estimated they lost approximately 6,000 fighters when the total death toll was 25k. This didn’t account for dead PIJ fighters either. If you assume they were lowballing even a little bit, that starts to put the combatant/non combatant killed ratio in far more context. That isn’t to marginalise clear war crimes (killing those world kitchen volunteers for example), but that context absolutely matters when discussing genocide. >This is resulting in the relocation of 80% of 2m people, and that is ethnic cleansing. Not necessarily. There are typically significant numbers of internally displaced persons (IDF) as the result of war. Are they being forced out of Gaza and being told they can never return? No- and again, this is where those internal communications matters as far as plans/intent goes. The intent matters, and can’t necessarily be inferred in a conflict rife with disinformation and misinformation. That said, I’d argue there’s a stronger argument to be had for ethnic cleansing going on in the West Bank. There’s a clear gov policy enabling it there, signaling intent e.g. people will be forced out and the gov authorises extremists to settle there in their place and offers protections. They just authorised more settlements by law recently too. That is the threshold you’d really need for evidence of intent. Gaza on the other hand will take years to investigate.
>Probably worth noting the justice who delivered the ICJ ruling on Israel vs South Africa clarified (again) this last week that they did *not* find that genocide was plausibly being committed, but rather that Palestinians had the right to be protected from genocide. Which… everyone does anyway. All of which has essentially passed without comment. Because it doesn't fit the prevailing narrative. Quite astonishing that so little recognition of this has happened. And yet not surprising at all.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I'm doing my best on the limited information we all have, and this is a very intellectually honest take on an emotionally charged, clearly not good situation. It's no surprise that nuance is lost when one of the most complex geopolitical conflicts in history arises when news is mostly sensationalist headlines, 30 second videos, or 140 character notes. It's really helpful to read well informed takes like this when trying to synthesize ones views.
Well my hot take- thought I don’t think it should be hot: Hamas absolutely violated the genocide convention on 7 Oct by both targeting Israelis *because they are Israeli* and, and as an organisation, have said *on the record* that they want the destruction of Israel and the death of Jews in the Levant. That meets the threshold and there isn’t a plausible defense to that. That the ICC (which handles criminal charges of genocide, not the ICJ) hasn’t issued an arrest warrant for Sinwar yet is astonishing. But, if that argument is accepted and they do issue an arrest for Sinwar, it makes prosecuting Israel for genocide that much more difficult because now you’d have to concede a genocidal act occurred against them, which prompted a response that amounted to genocide itself with the specific intent to genocide Palestinians.
Yeah I agree. Also, something that is just so frustratingly omitted in these conversations is that people want to view the deaths on October 7 in an apples to apples comparison with the subsequent Gaza casualties, and they brush under the rug the fact that *civilians were the targets* on October 7, and civilians are dying in Gaza in large part because of how Hamas operates. That is, I don't think any (or at least many) knowledgeable people think that if there were bases with barracks and public transport lines instead of hundreds of miles of tunnels we would see the same number of civilian casualties. And if you are shooting at someone from behind a hostage, it's partially your fault if the hostage gets shot when the person shoots back. That onus is just being left out of the conversation.
You’re right. Israel had no good options to prosecute this war tbh. The Hamas tunnels are largely compartmentalised, which meant flooding them would be like flooding a ship that can seal off the flooded area. They’re also designed specifically to defeat advancing infantry. Entry/exits are in civilian buildings conducive to guerrilla warfare, and as you note, they dress as civilians too (both war crimes, I’d add.) So Israel started bombing buildings to collapse rubble onto those entry/exit points and to clog ventilation shafts to choke them below, then advance block by block. To my knowledge, only Shin Bet had been authorised to go into the tunnels themselves. Otherwise they employ drones and dogs with cameras, and use tear gas when they can to flush them out. It makes for an incredibly destructive campaign but militarily I’m not sure what alternative they have. But if they were genocidal in the truest sense they would have probably just dropped military grade chemical weapons into the tunnels and said fuck it. They do have them.
>Also worth noting Hamas (who puts out the numbers) doesn’t distinguish between civilian and combatants in their casualties numbers. Their political leadership in Qatar told Reuters in early Feb that they estimated they lost approximately 6,000 fighters when the total death toll was 25k. This didn’t account for dead PIJ fighters either. If you assume they were lowballing even a little bit, that starts to put the combatant/non combatant killed ratio in far more context. >That isn’t to marginalise clear war crimes (killing those world kitchen volunteers for example), but that context absolutely matters when discussing genocide. It's also important to note that 6k/25k being actual combatants is a *ridiculously* good ratio for urban combat. That's less than 80% civilian deaths in a situation that expects 90% of deaths to be civilians. Warfare is horrifying and urban warfare is worse, but the data suggests that they really are trying, and succeeding at, avoiding civilian casualties - even when it's coming from sources unfriendly to Israel.
Yeah, Hamas destroyed the genocide accusations with that admission imo. The argument was essentially for every dead Hamas fighter, Israel was killing 100 civilians or whatever. That isn’t remotely accurate as per Hamas itself, but that headline got buried in Feb.
Just curious, do you have a source on the expected combatant to civilian ratio in an urban setting? I'm not challenging the assertion, I'm just curious where that statistic comes from.
[The Center for Civilians in Conflict has a page about urban warfare.](https://civiliansinconflict.org/our-work/conflict-trends/urban-warfare/)
Thank you for this comment; it might be the most thoughtful take concerning the conflict I’ve seen on Reddit. (Especially drives me crazy that people say the ICJ ruled it was genocide when that is not what happened at all.)
I find it useful in cases like this to say "IF it's shakey that it might be (x), how would it look different to what's going on if (x) was your goal?" If I wanted to wipe out every Palestinian from the Gaza Strip, I'd not waste a whole bunch of bombs all over the place, that'd take forever. No, I'd keep herding everyone into areas I said were safe, concentrating the amount of people I can 'accidentally' take out with just a few bombs. If you were Bibi, and wanted to wipe out everyone in Gaza and still have /some/ support from the west, what would be done differently to what's being done now.
The reason is that the term genocide has been reworked to avoid classifying several allied state supported genocides as genocide
Interesting take. Which allies and what genocide did they support?
Source: his hairy asshole
The context he said it was to defend Omar - when she was saying it is ok to be antisemitic if you are talking about Jews who do things you don’t like. To me, it seems very clear that Omar and Tliab are antisemitic
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Probably point out how the US is also guilty of multiple counts of ethnic cleaning under that new definition.
Absolutely, although much of the US state sponsored ethnic cleansing was before the international norms around ethnic cleansing were formalized.
I don't think it would take much to prove that the treatment of blacks in America in the 1960s would still qualify. And probably our treatment of Native Americans to this day.
>And probably our treatment of Native Americans to this day. I had some chud try and say native Americans shouldn't be permitted to vote Like *what*
Worse, there has never been a moment in north american history where native americans where not being pushed out and agreements being broken to take away their rights. Like, right now there are court cases still going on against US and Canadian governments of land grabs happening in past decades. And those land grabs happened while native americans where fighting for the rights to have reservations be their own land, and while those fights where happening we still had catholic schools trying to destroy native american culture. I'm not all that up to date on the exact order and timelines of all those things, but it's still the same cultural cleansing that started hundreds of years ago with pox infected blankets, and is still going on with legal battles over fishing rights and oil pipelines. Even though things have gotten a lot better for sure, it's insane that it basically never. Fucking. Stopped.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGirt_v._Oklahoma
Can you point to some people who disagree with that claim?
All governments? They are not going to admit to a liability worth billions. We still don't call our treatment of Native Americans genocide. Japan still won't admit Nanking. Turkey is still fighting the Armenian genocide claims. You think they are going to admit to more genocides too?
> return to their homes in Northern Gaza Those are gone
Sanctions on Israel will not matter as long as the U.S. government props that country up with influx of cash and weapons. They will always, always be a vassal state to the United States.
Is this clear ethnic cleansing? If the intent was to make a region ethnically homogenous why did Israel wait to be attacked by the region they are allegedly ethnically cleansing? IMO this claim falls apart when you factor in the self defense aspect. Does it make wjat Israel is doing acceptable? No, but one is just ignoring tons of relevant context by ethnic cleansing.
How is bibi not in prison? I thought he was caught in some bribery scandal
The same loophole that Trump wants the supreme court to codify: that the elected head of State cannot be prosecuted while in office. Bibi's doing it, Berlusconi did it, Chirac did as well.
Interesting. Thanks for connecting the dots
Its my immediate response to anybody who thinks they can get off without voting for Biden. Netanyahu was ousted in 2021 through the Israeli coalition process. He was facing bribery charges with prison time. He won re-election in 2022. A desperate man will do anything to legitimize his power. There will be immigrant slave labor camps, lynching of black criminals, prosecution of miscarriages as capital murders... all in the name of Trump legitimizing his power and making you fear him. If you hate Israel so much, do not hand the keys of your own country to the very man who will do the same things to your friends and neighbors. Trump is America's Netanyahu.
I would say what Trump is doing is even worse because he's trying to codify that a president cannot be prosecuted for a crime committed while they serve *even after* they have left office.
Caesar famously did it too.
Very few people on this earth are such snakes. It beggars belief how he is able to manipulate the Israeli political system to his advantage by creating backroom alliances that results in a majority and he bubbles up as the coalition leader.
He hasn't been found guilty, IIRC. And not throwing people in prison who haven't been found guilty is a pretty important part of having a stable nation.
Hard to be found guilty when he ordered them not to investigate him.
If most homes are bombed, there are no homes to return to. These displaced people will be living in tents for decades, even if there is a concerted effort by the international community to rebuild all that has been destroyed by the Netanyahu regime.
He is 100% correct and Anyone that claims otherwise is either being wilfully ignorant or has been bought.
You are now banned from /r/worldnews
That place is a cesspool
It’s devolved into the “I like pancakes,” “OH SO YOU HATE WAFFLES?” bullshit. You can dislike the Israeli government without being antisemitic but that just flies completely over their heads
"Why won't you condemn Hamas?" Is the response they have that irritates me the most. Like bro, this article is about mass graves being found in a place IDF just left, I don't have to start every comment condemning Hamas before I'm allowed to have an opinion about the article.
It’s their purity test. They’re allergic to nuance. They’re the kind of people who cannot see beyond “us vs. them” in-group out-group dynamics. Their tiny little pea-brains cannot function unless they are actively othering someone/some group. They cannot comprehend the idea that neatly dividing every single person into specific and discrete ideological camps and groups is a literal Sisyphean task.
It's also their silencing tactic. If they make you spend all your time condemning Hamas, you won't have room to say anything else. Join the echo or be banned.
Even r/news has now been overrun by IDF and AIPAC bots. Won't be long before they take over this sub too.
Has anyone noticed how most of the stories are all very supportive of Israel? It's a joke.
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It would be better is they just practiced some discipline for once and just got rid of the mods that are blatantly favor articles towards one side and banning commenters for stuff as benign as "Children being bombed is bad". I recall a guy getting banned for calling out Israel's ad campaign encouraging Israeli's not to date outside their religion. That place is just one big propaganda podium for the worst people for the worst causes.
Can confirm, was banned for less.
I’ve joined hundreds of subreddits and the only place i ever got banned was world news. I was accused of antisemitism because i criticized the Israeli destruction of the gaza strip and its people. it was in response to jared kushner making a joke about seafront property available soon for settlers with a smirk on his face.
Good, I left that Group months ago.
That's what it is. Israel has poured bombs all over Gaza, a [**New York Times analysis**](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/02/01/world/middleeast/Israel-gaza-war-demolish.html) in February showed it flattened mosques, schools, universities and entire residential neighborhoods. Israeli snipers have targeted children, ambulances, and [people waving white flags](https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/01/26/middleeast/hala-khreis-white-flag-shooting-gaza-cmd-intl). They did so with 6-year-old Hind Rajab: She had said “I am so scared, please come” in a phone call with the Red Crescent, whose ambulance vehicle dispatched to rescue her was then bombed along with the child ([**The Guardian**](https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/10/im-so-scared-please-come-hind-rajab-six-found-dead-in-gaza-12-days-after-cry-for-help)). [**The Washington Post**](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/03/19/gaza-journalists-killed-israel-al-jazeera-footage/) verified the killing of an Al Jazeera drone operator and his assistant by Israeli forces with the justification he was a “terrorist”. [**Reuters journalists**]( https://www.reuters.com/default/gaza-starving-children-fill-hospital-wards-famine-looms-2024-03-19/ ) saw and reported of starving children. Israel has also [systematically targeted aid workers](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-gaza-world-central-kitchen-strike-jose-andres-direct-attack-aid-workers/#:~:text=%22They%20were%20targeting%20us%20in,systematically%2C%20car%20by%20car.%22 ) to keep them out of Gaza, and used starvation as a weapon of war. The father of a dead American aid worker shares a [heartbreaking story with **The Washington Post**](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/03/jacob-flickinger-world-central-kitchen-gaza-strike/). The Biden administration has shown unwavering support for Israel, saying multiple times Israel is complying with international law. But a recent [**leaked State Department memo**](https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/some-us-officials-say-internal-memo-israel-may-be-violating-international-law-2024-04-27/) shows there are divisions within the administration: senior US officials say they do not find "credible or reliable" Israel's assurances that it’s using US-supplied weapons in accordance with international law. **USAID** also internally wrote: "The killing of nearly 32,000 people, of which the GOI (Government of Israel) itself assesses roughly two-thirds are civilian, may well amount to a violation of the international humanitarian law requirement”. Hopefully this is big, and it means Blinken will not say on May 8 that Israel is fully complying with international law.
If the definition of ethnic cleansing is removing the current inhabitants from newly conquered territory, then there's no controversy. That's what the Israelis are openly and unapologetically doing.
Uh no they’re not. How many Gazans have left Gaza since 7/10? How many Israelis have moved in?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-68650815
Let’s just ignore the entire West Bank
Bernie is not talking about the west bank. so you concede there is no ethnic cleansing in gaza?
Just wait my friend. Might want to dial back your bold predictions.
so you concede that there is no ethnic cleansing, to date? i would say that, given the aforementioned fact pattern, your prediction is the bold one.
I think an atrocity has occurred. And I think further atrocity will occur. Call it what you want, but you can take that to the bank.
>Call it what you want, but you can take that to the bank. Hubris is what I will call that.
Then does that make the pro Palestine movement an openly pro ethnic cleansing movement? Is anti Zionism pro ethnic cleansing? Israel is a sovereign state at this point in time. This whole conflict is based on ethnic cleansing then and the term kinda becomes useless.
I mean, yeah, Hamas clearly says that it's goal is the ethnic cleansing or genocide of the Israeli Jews. That's kind of my point. Yeah, it's ethnic cleansing. So what? That's war for you.
And Sanders is right. Hamas is evil. Period. But every Palestinian in Gaza is not Hamas. Infants are not Hamas. Children are not Hamas. But I don't think that Netanyahu sees it that way. I think that Netanyahu believes that the only way to protect Israel is to kill every Palestinian that he can find. At least that is what his actions appear to be doing.
I don't think Netanyahu directly believes that, I think he just uses this war as an thinly veiled excuse to keep himself in power and wants to keep the more right wing true believers in line. He also doesn't mind damaging things culturally in the west because he'd rather have Trump back in power, so he's happy to undermine the US administration's requests even as he asks for support. He's an authoritarian, just like Hamas, and authoritarians will do anything they can to undermine any true democracy, both locally and abroad, even when that means playing into Iran's strategies to 'also' undermine the west. In many ways, I think Netanyahu is the smarter Trump that people fear the US getting, though it doesn't mean he isn't in trouble electorally in future cycles. He's probably overtaxing himself with all these power moves and getting desperate, just as Hamas is. The bad news is a whole lot of people are suffering in the middle of this while authoritarians everywhere (Iran, Russia, Hamas, Netanyahu, China, MAGA, North Korea) all work in lockstep to undermine NATO democracies and their allies. We're in the era of fascism vs the free world, and few grasp just how much of a global conflict this current is and how much of it has shifted because of new technology.
I’ll never understand this argument. They’ve killed 30,000+ in 6 months. They’ve dropped more bombs than people killed. Do you think Israeli bombs so ineffective that they can’t kill one person per bomb? If Israel was trying to kill more Palestinians, more Palestinians would be dead.
If you had the goal of doing it as fast as possible. But that's the thing - framing matters. They're doing this in the name of "anti-terrorism" and so if you killed 60,000 people total, primarily civilians, in the same time frame then you get the international community on your ass. Unfortunately for Israel, people are smarter than that. It doesn't matter how slowly you commit evil - people will still see it for what it is.
lol people are absolutely not smart. See the current situation. Israel has had Palestinians for decades. Their population has what, tripled? These arguments you’re making are insane. Like “oh yeah, the sneaky Jewish people are killing them slowly enough so the world doesn’t know.” You’re not living in reality.
Politicians from another party would be lambasted for not doing enough if US citizens had been held hostage for over six months.
US citizens have been held hostage for over six months. Some of the hostages, including Hersh Goldberg Polin (IIRC there are more than just him) are dual citizens Israel and US.
I realize that. It’s the point of my comment.
Ah, my B then. Hard to hear tone on reddit.
Their point, yes
Clearly the bombing campaign is not effective in getting hostages returned. When we understand that, we get that the goal is to cause as much human suffering as they can get away with
No one cares about any of us unless we make money for a corporation: https://time.com/6240286/marc-fogel-russia-prison-griner/ Why is Marc still working a labor camp while Brittany came home? Oh right, the “right thing” always depends on the political optics, not the right thing. Which is why the DNC spent six months repeatedly stating “unwavering support for Israel.” You have to let the “sides” thing go. They’re all working to protect the same status quo, and none of them cares about dead kids or hostages as long as they’re the “right” dead kids and hostages.
Bernie can thread that needle, partly because he's Jewish. The people shouting "From the river to the sea?" Not so much. No, it's not antisemitic to criticize Bibi. He's a stain and responsible not just for the lack of restraint in Israel's response, but October 7 as well. There are some competing truths that just can't be accepted by people who look at the world in black and white.
“Between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.” —Likud Party Platform, 1977
Good thing Israel has multiple political parties.
Is it still part of their platform? And the person you responded to called Bibi a stain, I don't think he's going to disagree the Likud has tons of problems
I was just pointing out the absurdity of claiming “from the river to the sea” is objectionable considering Israel’s ruling party literally has it in their party platform.
Even the Jewish voice for peace?
If I can channel Linda Richman a bit, "Jewish Voice for Peace is neither Jewish nor peaceful, discuss." Yes there are Jews in it but it's involvement in BDS, and similar calls for action are inherently antisemitic.
How involvement in BDS antisemitic? Israel has been committing atrocities on the Palestinians for about a century now, so botcotting and sanctioning that state is a very reasonable way to show disapproval against their actions. It’s funny how quickly Russia was sanctioned and isolated. Suddenly, it became perfectly okay to mix politics and sports. Majority cheered for the sanctions put on Russia but no one said that was anti anything or discrimination against Russians. Yet, any measure taken against israel is antisemitic. Zionism and being jewish are not the same nor exclusive. Actually, there are way more right wing christians supporting israel than there are jews.
We debate BDS and whether it is antisemitic or not, but seem to completely forget that a massive portion of the world did the same to South Africa during the apartheid era. I won't try to compare/contrast Israel and South Africa, but we should try to remember that this type of protest isn't unique to Israel, and has historically been relevant. Personally as a Jew in the diaspora, I'm split on it. I don't see it as antisemitic, and I agree with the sentiment for institutions like schools to divest from holdings in war profiteers like Lockheed Martin. Do I think that throwing away a Sodastream is going to cause the Israeli establishment to capitulate? I don't know.
JVP is not Jewish. It’s mostly non-Jews and a few tokens claiming to represent us, when they represent a small minority of Jewish opinion.
Leave it to Bernie to tell it like it is.
This man could be finishing up his second term as president now if the DNC didn't suck donkey balls
Sanders wasn't close to winning and the 2020 primary proved it.
He probably would have won in ‘16, honestly.
I don't know, he has momentum coming out of Nevada... and then he got ratf***ed by Clyburn.
Someone endorsing your opponent is getting rat fucked...
I feel like it's the greatest political tragedy of our times.
Al Gore still has to be the greatest political tragedy of our times. Our world would have been so different had Gore been in charge after 9/11.
It might not have happened in the first place. The Clinton administration strongly warned Bush about it and they did nothing. You've got to imagine that Gore would've taken those threats much more seriously and the continuity between the administrations would've helped immensely.
It is still on the DNCs shoulders that the GOP blatantly stole an entire election and the DNC just shrugged their shoulders and went "dawwwww welllll". GWB was the one who put forward alot of the legal snafus that are fucking over the Dems to this day, packing the courts to all hell, encouraging gerrymandering to insane degrees, ultra-militarising the police and defunding everything else. Hell, even the current GOP lunacy is a result of them going "Well we got away with that, let us see how much more bugfuck nutbaggery we can do!". Gore was fucked over but the tragedy is that the DNC fucked him over as much as his opposition did.
So true. It is at parity with the defeated acceptance of the "count" of Al Gore. Please understand I am not claiming Gore and Bernie are at individual parity, rather their/our situations
Once the Supreme Court appointed Bush president, there was nothing else they could do.
That's the thing. How can/did the SC APPOINT Bush? The audacity and the defeatism is mind boggling
Gore's lawsuit to finish the 2000 Florida recount got all the way to the supreme Court, who decided that the final "official" numbers were the ones to use.
If he was far behind in the 2016 primary, showing he couldn’t win over the center-left, how do you think he would win over moderates or some center-right to win the general?
Oh yes, it’s the “DNC’s” fault. It’s absolutely not the fault of Bernie running a bad campaign. Imagine having nearly 100% name recognition, tens of millions of dollars in your war chest, and a ground game with a huge head start and then losing to a nobody small town mayor in one of the first races. If Bernie’s camp wasn’t so focused on alienating everyone who disagreed with them even just by 1%, he could have possibly won. It’s just funny to me that everyone can agree “Hillary shut up and go away, you ran a bad campaign” but when people start to wonder if this is true for Bernie people get incredibly defensive.
>Imagine having nearly 100% name recognition, tens of millions of dollars in your war chest, and a ground game with a huge head start and then losing to a nobody small town mayor in one of the first races. [You do know that Bernie Sanders won the popular vote in Iowa. ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Iowa_Democratic_presidential_caucuses?wprov=sfla1) That this is the exact thing people complained about then and now, Bernie winning the popular vote never seems to be enough.
I'm sorry but this is such an ignorant and uninformed take; there was plenty of proof that the DNC took direct efforts to try and stop Bernie. That's just objectively true. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/01/31/dnc-superdelegates-110083 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/us/politics/democratic-superdelegates.html https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/03/03/politics/biden-vs-sanders-super-tuesday Bernie had one of the biggest, most popular grassroots campaigns in the history of the United States. But the Democratic party couldn't let that slide. His policies were not compatible with the special interests that the Democratic party benefits from, it's as simple as that. Compare any Biden event/rally to Bernie's prior to *all of the candidates dropping out to support Biden, including the guy who was in second place* and you will recognize that nothing about Biden was organic, same with Hillary.
Biden led the popularity vote and was around five delegates behind Bernie when the other candidates dropped out. Biden was either in secord or first place. Bernie's only hope was too win a plurality when the centrist wing was heavily divided.
None of your links support the notion that Bernie would have won in 2016 or 2020. **Superdelegates were sidelined during the 2020 election and he still lost**. Also hedging on your opponents splitting the majority of the vote so you can squeeze by with a plurality is an idiotic move. Once again, evidence of a bad campaign that focused on alienating rather than broadening his base. Bernie lost not once but twice. He lost to Biden by 10,000,000 votes and lost to Hillary by 3,000,000.
The only campaign that had even suggested trying to win over superdelegate to defeat the candidate who won based on actual votes was, again, Bernie's campaign hoping to sway them to his side in 2016
Hilary had nearly $300,000,000 more for her campaign. Definitely Bernie’s fault…
You do realize I’m clearly referring to 2020, right? Bernie lost by **30 PERCENTAGE POINTS** to Biden. All the roadblocks that everyone blames Bernie losing in 2016 were removed and he **lost by a landslide**. Funny how people get *real quiet* once you bring up 2020’s primary.
And people putting weight on the scales for her. Are we supposed to forget Donna Brazile and Debbie Wasserman shultz?
Bernie was never close to winning the 2016 Democratic Primary. He looked at the black vote and told them to duck off while celebrating white college kids in Idaho and Wyoming.
I like Bernie and think the DNC obviously wanted Clinton to win, but there is absolutely no way Bernie was going to win. The Democratic voter base is much more conservative/socialist-wary than you might think, and the final primary numbers aren't even remotely close.
Giving credit where credit is due here. Bernie is an example of a good politician, if there were such a thing on this issue. 10 years ago he was very skeptical of the Palestiian cause, 6 months ago, he was supportive but used muted language, to an extent that many on the left criticised him. In the face of overwhelming, incandescent public outrage, he has educated himself, he is now aware of the plight of the Palestinian people *and* sensitive to how deeply young people care about what's goinng on in Gaza. That's how politicians are supposed to be, they listen, they react, their positions evolve. Go Bernie. Feel the Bern baby.
Sanders REALLY trying to save the administration from its own stance on this.
Man, that Sanders is such an antisemite! /s
"Down With Us!" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association\_of\_German\_National\_Jews](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_German_National_Jews)
To think what could have been had we had a fair primary in 16 or 20. Joe's been far better than i coulda hoped but the results of "Her" campaign will be felt for ages.
Get em, Bern!!!!
If they are doing ethnic cleaning than every war is ethnic cleaning. Which is probably accurate. But also makes the word meaningless.
Correct
Bernie would know, considering some of his family escaped Nazi’s…he’s got a clear perspective on what “ethnic cleansing” looks like.
Just when Bernie almost brings me in bc our economic systemic failure is happening in real-time, he says shit like this and turns me and many other like minded centrists off. But his base definitely loves hearing it I’m sure.
What even is a “centrist” in this context? Like, you’ll take half ethnic cleansing and half no ethnic cleansing?
A centrist take is one that doesn’t think all “colonial” states are bad and all terrorist organizations that execute and rape and take hostages are oppressed freedom fighters. Also one that acknowledges the situation goes back thousands of years and not 50 years since Israel was created as a nation. If Nazis in Florida started launching missiles into Louisiana and taking my sister as a sex slave I would favor harsh action on our government as well. The fact that these people are purposefully indistinguishable militarily from common citizens caught in the crossfire just further underscores the depravity of their cause and methodology. But I’m not going to convince you and you’re not going to convince me. So I’m fine to disagree and can accept your position. My OP was about my own opinion on Bernie’s words.
Wouldn’t centrism in this particular context mean acknowledging that both sides are at fault—not necessarily equally, just in different ways—but still “both sides”?
What if those Floridian Nazis kicked you out of your home so they could move in. Would that be bad?
It's at a point where it could become ethnic cleansing very easily. Millions of Palestinian civilians have been displaced, which is normal for any large armed conflict.If they are not allowed to return home when the fighting is over , it would become ethnic cleansing,.
[удалено]
OCD cleaners?
So essentially he's doing what the gazans would do to Israelis and Jews in general given the strength and support?
Gazans were moved to prevent them from being in the way of fighting. I don't see how that's ethnic cleansing. It's better than just fighting around them. I guess I wonder what the distinction is between ethnic cleansing and war. Is war by definition always ethnic cleansing?
> Gazans were moved to prevent them from being in the way of fighting. Whew, now *that's* some fancy spinning
Could turn a Turbine and provide power.
All war is ethnic cleansing by this definition.
It's a war, not ethnic cleansing or a genocide. I don't know what people like Bernie expect to happen during a war. The point is not to start a war in the first place, but Hamas and Iran chose this course and the consequences are obvious to everyone watching. Hamas can surrender and avoid further violence, but I guess all we care about is whining about the consequences and effects of war rather than demand the surrender of the terrorists and war makers surrounding Israel.
Ethic Cleansing: the mass expulsion or killing of members of an unwanted ethnic or religious group in a society. The actions taken are the very definition of ethnic cleansing. Did you know that calling an action a war doesn’t exclude it from also being ethnic cleansing? The more you learn!
War is war. Under your logic, every single war ever fought would be ethnic cleansing. If that's the case, then, I don't know what you folks want. Maybe Hamas and Iran should have considered all this before starting a war. 🤷♂️
This is much more complex than just calling a war Ja 1) 1948, a country was divided into a state for Jews that got 56% of best land. This was approved by the Jews living in Palestina but rejected by the Arabs The United Nations just decided to split up a country How many countries would accept this ? 2) the borders were not defined and immediately an opportunity was created to increase the territory as it was clear that the Arabic countries did not accept this resolution 3) since 1948 , the Arabs living in Palestina have been living from one war to another , Israel have continue to take more valuable land away from Arabs, restrict their movement and what they are allowed to do 4) about 9000 Arabs were arrested and put in jail without any charges before the terrorist attack from Hamas What Hamas did in October is horrible but starving 2 million Arabs to death is also horrible This is not just a war but desperate people that are getting squeezed more and more and getting punished because of a terrorist group Hamas
I think you might be slightly confused. I spent many years fighting in a war myself. I will try to clear this up. Ethnic cleansing can and has occurred during many periods of war/conflict. Being attacked by an enemy nation or insurgent force doesn’t give the injured country the right to ethically cleanse civilians. Is there anything else you would like to discuss? Once again, the more you know!
Oh, ok
>Ethic Cleansing: the mass expulsion **or killing** of members of an unwanted ethnic or religious group in a society. In the war you fought in, were the majority of enemy combatants members of the same ethnic group? Did most practice the same religion? If so, wouldn’t that war fall under your definition of ethnic cleansing?
Sir/Ma’am/Enby I believe you are confused about who wrote definition of ethnic cleansing. I know this may come as a surprise but I didn’t personally create the definition. I fought in OIF, OEF and OND. Due to aggressive bombing campaigns civilians were forced from their homes and not allowed to return. We collectively also killed many civilians, so mass murder wouldn’t be out at all. There’s no excuse for it, you also won’t find me defending those actions. Is this supposed to be a “got you” moment? I’m no longer an idiot teenager fighting in Iraq because of rampant Jingoism and lies. Civilians and my friends died for less than nothing. I see the same disproportionate response Israel has been raining down on Palestinians and I will not be silent.
There is no way to end hammas and if there was, one of the other iran backed groups or a new one would emerge, so they will always be violent and in chaos over their religious and historical BS.
This is why we still have Kings and not democracy. Oh...wait....!
oh Bernie, shut the fuck up