It's All Bibi's Fault

Just a quick observation for when this continues to fall apart and the establishment looks to deflect blame by scapegoating Netanyahu. With the exception of 1 single year (June 2021 to June 2022), Benjamin Netanyahu has been Prime Minister of Israel since 2009. And 2009 was the start of his second time as PM. 

If you go back to when George Bush was president, Bibi has been PM of Israel more often than he has not. And I mean the elder George H.W. Bush.

A Pencil to a Knife Fight

The "duelling resolutions" on Gaza perfectly sums up the Democratic Party and why there either needs to be a deep fucking purge or progressives need to just say "fuck it" and start over from scratch. 

One resolution - calling for "release all the hostages, let in humanitarian aid, call for a ceasefire" was passed unanimously. This might sound good - if it were early 2024. This was put forward explicitly to head off the second resolution calling for "a complete arms embargo on Israel and the recognition of a Palestinian state". The DNC passed one and killed the other - on voice vote. And they did this less than a week from famine being officially declared in Gaza. 

Speaking of famine - Ken Martin's opening speech "stop bringing a pencil to a knife fight" kept talking about how voters were hungry for a party that fights. He kept using that word - "hunger". Starting at 15 seconds into that video, he says it five times in fifteen seconds. Literally while he was trying to derail efforts at stopping Israel from inflicting famine on hundreds of thousands. You know who else is hungry Mr. DNC Chair? The people you keep trying to shove back under the bus.

That's not the part that just encapsulates the whole fucking disaster. It was obviously clear that mutiny was going to break out - so Martin fucking withdrew the watered down amendment. So that they could discuss it more. So what he did was kill even the watered down amendment - meaning the DNC summer meeting is going to say absolutely nothing about Gaza at all.

He opened the meeting talking big talk about fighting and doing more and letting the voters know they are being heard. He said they were going to stop bringing pencils to the knife fight. Turns out what he meant was "we only have pencils, so we aren't going to go to the fight at all."

Here is the only real question for progressives - can the Democratic Party be saved? All signs point to no. They cannot.

BUT BUT BUT - won't splitting the vote result in Republican electoral dominance? To that I say - what the fuck do we have now! Donald fucking Trump got re-elected even after closing out his campaign at a fascist white supremacist party by giving a microphone a blowjob. Progressives fucking did this - they let the fucking neoliberal shitbags run the Cheney hugging, gun toting, genocide denying campaign that Democratic leadership demanded - the Squad dutifully lined up behind the party line with AOC repeating the pure nonsense of "tirelessly working for a ceasefire". And Harris put in the worst performance of a Democratic candidate since fucking Walter Mondale.  And where are we now - with the same leaders in place?

• Trump is polling at minus 14.
• Republicans are polling at minus 17. 
• Democrats? Minus 30.

Now the DNC decides that "let's pass the same bullshit toothless resolution we've been flogging since the start of Harris' 107 days if not longer - and then pull it so we don't even get that approved" is how they show they are listening to the people. Where Democrats support Israel's military campaign by a whopping 8%. That's not a net 8% over not supporting - that's only 8% of Democrats still support this monstrosity.

I keep asking - what's the end game here? What is the plan? Progressives have to keep supporting these fucking genocidal assholes as they continue to chase the Republicans down the abyss? This was the plan this past November and how did that turn out? And now progressives are being told that the only way to win in the future is to keep doing the things that have gotten us to this point.

The Most Moral Army in the World

There's a wild piece of bullshit going on about how Israel actually does a remarkable job of protecting civilians - that modern urban warfare usually has a 9:1 civilian to combatant ratio while Israel's is 1:1.  It's of course bullshit and lies, excellently taken apart here by Alonso Gurmendi - among others.  But there's a couple things I'd like to get to regarding it. You might know one of them, it's been making news and I'm mentioning it here because it's pretty new. That is - according to Israel's own assessment of who is a terrorist - they are still killing 6 civilians per Hamas fighter. So not 1:1. And this assessment of "who is a terrorist" is Israel's own and would include people like Anas Al-Sharif. IOW, the real ratio is almost certainly worse than 5:1.

Here's the other point - and I would love to see someone pushing the 9:1 line get questioned on it.  Do you know what had a much lower ratio than 9:1?  October 7th.

The latest toll from the attack is now 796 civilians, 379 members of the security forces and 14 civilian hostages, giving a total of 1,189.

796/379 is 2.1.  Also, let's not forget that numerous Israeli civilians were killed in that attack by the IDF. For example, all the charred bodies and smoking wrecked cars at the Nova Music Festival? Hamas goons are mostly armed with AK-47's - IDF helicopters fired Hellfire missiles on the crowd.

The paper notes, “This deception worked for a considerable time until the Apaches had to skip all the restrictions. It was only around 9:00 a.m. that some of them began to spray the terrorists with the cannons on their own, without authorization from superiors.”

“The rate of fire against the thousands of terrorists was tremendous at first, and only at a certain point did the pilots begin to slow down the attacks and carefully select the target,” the paper added.

Despite the confusion, twenty-eight Israeli combat helicopters fired all of the ammunition they were holding, including hundreds of 30 mm cannon shells and Hellfire missiles, during the day.

After landing his Apache to reload ammunition at roughly 10:00 am, the commander of the 190 squadron instructed the other pilots “to shoot at everything they see in the fence area,” separating Israel from Gaza.

Anyways, it would be amazing to see someone try this bullshit 9:1 ratio argument and be confronted with Hamas' ratio of 2:1. I guess October 7th wasn't all that horrific because it was actually far safer for civilians than normal modern urban warfare. That would make heads explode.

Oh and also - my main point here.  Yes, Hamas is a terrorist organization that killed almost 800 civilians in a single attack, and took huindreds of people hostage at the point of a gun. BUT the IDF is far worse.

Edit: maths is hard. 1/6 is 5:1 not 6:1

Does Israel Have a Right to Exist?

What a loaded question. And one that completely shows the questioner's racist nature. What about Palestine? Does Palestine have "a right to exist"? If only every single idiot who has asked about Israel's right to exist was forced to answer the same question about Palestine, maybe we'd have fewer genocide inciting monsters in the public discourse.

Francesca Albanese has a great answer to this question - Israel exists. It just does. There's no question of "right to exist" - it simply does exist. And this answer takes the wind out of the sails of the question.

The question having a good answer is a good reason to move on - but that's not how I roll. I'm instead going to go into what's being asked. The question isn't about Israel per se - but rather the foundational principle of Zionism - do Jewish people have a right to a national homeland?  Some people say no - ethno-states are inherently unfair and undemocratic. Their very nature posits a two tier system with second class citizens - it is a recipe for apartheid. And most people agree that apartheid is bad.

It's a purity test - true states must grant equal rights to all of its citizens. This is a noble goal and I would love to support it. But I personally don't think the world we live in is unflawed enough to enshrine this rule.

Here is my disagreement - the history of the Jewish peoples is one of persecution and displacement and literal fucking genocide. For a lot of history, Jews have been deprived membership in any state and this is not only unfair, but also creates the circumstances for gross human rights violations - including one of the greatest crimes in all of human history. I do believe there is a need for a Jewish national homeland because of the long history of Jews being denied their right to self-determination. I believe that antisemitism still exists and it is pervasive and deadly dangerous, and that there is a movement that is actively trying to return all Jews to a position of statelessness and to deny them the right to self-determination.

But something I have now come to accept is that this does not mean that "Israel has a right to exist". This is how I reconcile my belief for a need for a Jewish national homeland while still considering myself an anti-Zionist. There should be a Jewish state - but not Israel, at least not the Israel we have now.

Statehood is defined by acceptance and recognition by other states. It is a political question - of course it is! The idea of statehood not being a political question is crazy and flies in the face of what a state is - a political entity.

As a result, recognition of states depends on its reputation. And that depends on the nature of the state. For example (at the risk of triggering Godwin's Law) - there are very few people who have issues with the existence of Germany as a state. There are a lot of people who would have issues with the existence of Nazi Germany as a state.

Does Israel have a right to exist?  Depends on what you mean by "Israel"? Does a messianic terrorist apartheid state committed to genocide in the name of Greater Israel have a right to exist? Does a rogue state with pure and intense contempt for international law and a deep sense of grievance and belligerence towards all of its neighbours and an inability to extend basic human dignity to starving children - does such a state have a "right to exist"? No, it does not. No state with ambitions to subjugate or exterminate another people has a right to exist. That's my purity test - do you intend to do genocide? If yes, then I am opposed to you. And in a just world - the international community would hold the same position. And this is absolutely compatible with a belief in a Jewish homeland. Jews do have a right to a nation-state, but not to a nation-state that is actively engaged in genocide.

How Could He Be Any Worse?

It's been a minute.  Nowhere near as long as the long hiatus - but certainly not a short break. I guess the urge to scream about the atrocities has died down after seeing how utterly ineffectual it is. Anyways, let's get to it.

About a year ago, when the discussion was about how everyone had to support the racist fucking monsters funding a literal fucking genocide - I asked how Trump could be worse on Gaza. Biden had literally given Netanyahu everything that Bibi wanted. Despite the performative wringing of hands and threats of withholding arms, here's the sum total of what the Biden Administration actually did to curb the killing:

• They delayed one shipment of weapons - which did not actually impede the flow of weapons from the US to Israel.
• They imposed sanctions on a handful of Israeli settler terrorists that had been attacking the West Bank - and then immediately paused any impact of those sanctions "for humanitarian reasons".
• They identified one single IDF unit that was not eligible to receive US military aid due to their propensity to commit gross human rights violations - and then, based on literally nothing - said that the unit had reformed enough to reverse the original decision.
• They did not veto one Security Council resolution demanding a ceasefire in Gaza - which they then immediately discredited by calling it "non-binding".

Three actual actions, which were all immediately undermined so much as to render them completely ineffective. Effectively, Biden's Administration did absolutely nothing to slow down the genocide. Absolutely nothing.

So with Biden 100% fully supporting anything that Israel chose to do - and only reserving the right to act upset about it - the question was "how could Trump be any worse?"

Well, it's been long enough that we can check. We can look at how things are going and see if it is worse. Let's start with the kill count.  Under Joe, 47 thousand Palestinians in Gaza were confirmed killed by Israel. This took 472 days - so a murder rate of just under 100 per day, slightly over if you subtract the one week long ceasefire. And under Trump? Today's kill count is 61,600 or 14,600 higher. And he's had control for 202 days - but there was a 6 week long ceasefire in there, so 160 days of killing. That works out to 91 Gazans killed per day - certainly within the range of uncertainty for these numbers. So essentially - the IDF daily murder rate is pretty much the same as it was under Joe. AND Trump did manage to secure five more weeks of ceasefire than Biden did. IOW - the original assessment, that what the US president wants is irrelevant to how much the IDF slaughters Arabs - basically proven at this point. The IDF's natural murder rate is about a hundred Gazans per day. And this was normalized under a Democratic president.

That said - Trump has brought his own flavour of suffering to the Gaza Strip - the mass starvation is clearly worse with him in charge. Not to say that Biden did not allow and provide dioplomatic cover for the intentional affliction of starvation on a people. Biden absolutely did do this. Recall that the ICC warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant specifically for starving the people of Gaza were for actions between October 8, 2023 and May 20, 2024. But the situation is much worse under Trump. Now this is also due to the fact that this is how starvation works - that the longer you go on a severely calorie deficient diet, the closer you get to dying. That people don't starve to death overnight - and it takes time to starve an entire population. Or possibly it is due to the continued descent of Israel into genocidal mania - that a year ago, they might have been more opposed to intentionally starving children to death.

Still, regardless of the reasons - the use of mass starvation has been much worse under Trump - and as Truman noted, the buck has to stop somewhere. Under Biden, there was an intentional mass starvation campaign very early on targeting Northern Gaza - which was only lifted months into it by the delivery of way too little aid into the targeted area. That of course resulted in the Flour Massacre which set off a full month of the IDF mass killing aid seekers. So horrific and inhumane that I thought this was the worst they could do - but I underestimated the cruelty of the human spirit. Under Trump, Southern Gaza was subjected to starvation after the ceasefire. Two months of starvation with zero aid being allowed in, only to be lifted by the operations of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation - a group that has been mowing down aid seekers since the end of May. It's been longer that they've been using aid distribution as bait for killing fields and way more people have starved to death in Gaza this year than previously. And the starvation continues. And the murder of around a hundred Palestinians continues on its daily pace. Because this is the New Normal. Genocide is happening but we are unable or unwilling to do sweet fuck all about it. So it's now just been accepted as part of what happens daily. The sun rises, the IDF kills a hundred people, 2 million people have starvation forced upon them. The usual daily routine.

Only - there is one more normalized aspect of all of this. And that is that it is constantly getting worse. Israel keeps brainstorming new atrocities to try out - to shock our conscience so badly that we normalize this new thing. The reports of children being used for target practice or of the IDF forcing Gazans to act as human shields before murdering them - did not prompt any real action to curb their crimes, so they reach for the next depraved thing they can add to the arsenal of atrocities. A new push to conquer Gaza City is starting now - a year and a half after they claimed full control over the area. This is going to bring fresh new horrors for us to be shocked at, before accepting as just part of the new normal.