r/JewsOfConscience Jewish Anti-Zionist Jul 22 '24

Discussion Dementia is Disqualifying, but Not Genocide

It's really disturbing to me that dementia is disqualifying for Joe Biden, but him doing a genocide is not. That shows how Palestinians are viewed in America by the political class.

If only Hitler had dementia, maybe we could've gotten rid of him sooner, since the Holocaust wouldn't have been a problem for him with his domestic constituency.

What do others think?

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u/Taarguss Reconstructionist Jul 22 '24 edited Jul 22 '24

I think Biden’s Israel stance has had more to do with pressure to get him out than you think. He’s hemorrhaging young voters over this stuff. Party leadership knows this. I’d be surprised if Harris didn’t support a ceasefire and more conditional aid. It’s becoming a more popular position that more mainstream politicians are getting friendlier to.

But also, Biden isn’t personally carrying out a genocide. Netanyahu is. Biden’s enabling it by not withholding US support, but he’d be cool with giving Israel money in any situation regardless of what they’re doing or who’s in charge. He’s uncritical about Israel. He’a been public about how Netanyahu is a problem but he’s from a school of political thought that has aid to Israel as a self evident, non negotiable point, which most Americans also agree with. It’s like being allies with France. Like, of course you support them, why wouldn’t you?

Most Americans don’t even understand the nature of what’s happening in Gaza and they don’t understand that no country on earth gets more money from the US than Israel. They just don’t know that. They do however see a visibly crumbling old man on TV looking like he should be receiving in-home care. There’s so many layers to how all of this is perceived and it all makes a huge difference in what people think is important. It’s not as simple as “we don’t care about Palestinians,” it’s a bigger issue of the public being badly informed about Palestinians and the US establishment being misaligned on Palestinians. Us antizionists are a small minority. We’re can’t expect everyone’s gonna see it the way we do. That’s why we have to keep pushing and speaking up.

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u/ArmyOfMemories Jewish Anti-Zionist Jul 22 '24

We are absolutely funding the genocide though.

Our weapons and diplomatic cover. I feel 'enabling' is a true characterization but perhaps not enough to capture what we're doing.

We're fully supporting the genocide.

Biden is not innocent. He is a career war-monger.

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u/Taarguss Reconstructionist Jul 22 '24

I’m not saying he’s innocent at all. His Israel policy is atrocious. He keeps sending them money that they’re using to carry out the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Obviously. But i think it’s closer to something like criminal negligence than any kind of scheming “yes yes, kill the Palestinian civilians yes!” kind of thing.

I don’t think his class of politician thinks of the conflict that way. That’s not their framework or their motivation. They’re trained to give Israel a giant blank check every year and warned that if they’re too critical of Israel, they’ll lose the Jewish vote. It’s bad. It’s stupid. but I don’t think it’s the kind of kill em all mentality that you’re thinking of. Same conclusion, thousands of dead people. But what you’re seeing is a zombie for Israel just kinda doing what the establishment does.

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u/ArmyOfMemories Jewish Anti-Zionist Jul 22 '24

I’m not saying he’s innocent at all.

Oh apologies, I didn't mean to imply you were.

But i think it’s closer to something like criminal negligence than any kind of scheming “yes yes, kill the Palestinian civilians yes!” kind of thing.

I don't think he's making cartoonishly violent remarks about Gaza (at least in public) - BUT he has made cartoonish remarks like that in the past.

During the 1st Lebanon War, Biden defended Israel's bombing campaign by drawing an analogy to Canada.

In the analogy, he said:

Biden’s comments were offensive, Begin said. Suddenly he [Biden] said: “What did you do in Lebanon? You annihilated what you annihilated.”

I was certain, recounted Begin, that this was a continuation of his attack against us, but Biden continued: “It was great! It had to be done! If attacks were launched from Canada into the United States, everyone here would have said, ‘Attack all the cities of Canada, and we don’t care if all the civilians get killed.’”

If so, Begin told us, I wondered what all the shouting was about. It turned out Biden wasn’t shouting about the operation in Lebanon at all, he was angry about what Israel was doing in Judea and Samaria . . .

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u/Taarguss Reconstructionist Jul 22 '24

Fuckin yikes. Well god damn I hadn’t read that quote before. That’s really bad.

I mean look, I think that quote still illustrates what I’m trying to explain is that the whole framework on how most people think of this conflict is security and normal warfare, which is how a lot of genocides are excused. But where as people like Pol Pot and Hitler were expressly interested in eliminating certain ethnicities from their societies, I think to people like Biden, the civilian casualties in Gaza are just collateral damage. Ignoring the numbers of people killed, it’s the difference between the Holocaust and the allied terror bombings of non-strategic German cities.

I absolutely buy that they don’t care, but I don’t think they conceive of it as being the primary purpose of the war. Like, WE know that destroying Gaza and removing its people is why this is all happening. Netanyahu was waiting for this opportunity. But part of why it’s currently successful is that you can argue that it looks like any other war that takes place in cities instead of battlefields. That’s why I think it’s easier for regular people to be mad at him for having some kind of cognitive disease than for throwing money at Israel and being complicit, which he is.