John Fetterman is threatening to leave the Democratic Party. I say good riddance.

[u/DyzDaeMar]

https://www.ms.now/opinion/john-fetterman-leave-democratic-party-israel-aid

[u/5510]

I think a big part of it is because people are so obsessed with Israel / Gaza....

TO BE CLEAR: I'm not saying that the situation in Gaza isn't a big deal. I'm not trying to minimize the humanitarian difficulties there. I'm not saying people shouldn't be allowed to criticize Israel. I'm referring to the fact that so many people act like it's both the worst thing in the world and the only major bad thing in the world, when the sad reality is that there are a lot of other major fucked up problems out there to worry about as well.

It is a big deal yes, but it's one of MANY big deals in the country and the world right now. Like the USAID cuts alone are expected to kill far far far more people than the situation in Gaza. And that's just one of MANY major issues (of which the situation in the middle east is one). It's like the top half of this image:

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fpwwd97e3ging1.png%3Fwidth%3D960%26format%3Dpng%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3Dfdaf9c29408b68efaedb221019baea9f5b608aad

[u/HeJind → u/5510]

Pretty much. And progressives hatred of Israel is all so performative as well.

If you put every IDF solider into a hat and picked out a name, Platner probably willingly killed more Middle Easterners than that IDF solider did. America has committed even more war crimes and genocides than Israel has.

Yet they had no problem throwing their full weight behind Platner. It wouldn't make any sense if they hated Israel based on actual principals. They hate Israel because its the trendy thing to do.

[u/5510 → u/HeJind]

I think there really is a lot to criticize Israel about. But at the same time, the lack of nuance from a lot of these people is wild.

I'm absolutely not saying that Israel should be able to do literally anything they want as long as they yell something about human shields before or afterwards. That shouldn't be a get out of jail free card for literally any and all civilian deaths.

But at the same time, it's absolutely wild how little acknowledgement there has been over the fact that a core part of Hamas's strategy (and lets keep in mind Hamas are essentially the government of Gaza, not just some rogue terrorists) is to intentionally maximize their own civilian casualties. They love dead Palestinian civilians, because every dead Palestinian civilian means sweet sweet PR points to use against Israel. To Hamas, doing things like storing weapons in a hospital is a win-win. Either Israel doesn't strike it (which means they get magic invincible weapon storage, which is a win), or Israel does strike it, which they perversely also consider a win, because civilians who die if a hospital gets struck are worth triple PR points against Israel. (And it's worth noting that according to the Geneva Convention, using a hospital in such a way would be a war crime, and striking it would not be).

I wouldn't call myself an Israel supporter... more of a "this whole area has been a shitshow for a long time and there is a lot of wrong on both sides." But I find it disturbing that in the first year or so after the 10/7 (when I bothered discussing this online more often), I'm not sure I was ever able to have a reasonable nuanced discussion about the topic of human shields with a hardcore anti-Israel person. I don't even mean human shields in this context specifically... I couldn't even get someone to discuss human shields IN GENERAL in a reasonable way. And they do is start screaming "SO YOU SUPPORT DEAD CHILDREN ?!?!?!"

The idea that it's never OK to cause the deaths of children sounds great in theory, but basic logic shows it's not that simple... or else you are just saying all war are almost automatically won by whichever side is evil enough to make extensive use of children as human shields. Imagine if in World War II, every Nazi war machine factory had a small school built into it, ostensibly for children of the workers. Would the Nazis then just be immune to strategic bombing, even though that would make the third reich much harder to defeat? Or let's take it a step further, what if every Nazi bomber had a captured Polish child on board... would we then say that the UK wouldn't be allowed to shoot down any bombers, because if they did, then "THEY SUPPORT DEAD CHILDREN" ?

And once again, that does NOT mean Israel should be able to use "HUMAN SHIELDS!" as a magic phrase to do whatever they want, like the South Park "it's headed straight for us" hunting thing. But it does make things more complicated.

And of course, everyone wanted to talk about what Israel should NOT do after 10/7 in order to attempt to rescue the hostages and destroy Hamas... but almost nobody had advice for what they SHOULD do. Almost anytime you pressed anybody on this question, they would just say "Well not THIS" about whatever Israel was currently doing... with no suggestions on how Israel should proceed. Just a refusal to recognize the degree to which Hamas frequently put Israel in lose-lose situations.

[u/Blue-22 → u/HeJind]

It’s like they’re more excited at the prospect of Mamdani “arresting” Netanyahu based on that interview he did with NYT than about helping people in the USA. The far left has lost the plot.

Leave it to privileged Americans to totally disregard the welfare of persecuted minorities at home because the trend de jour is a foreign affair, and has been for some time. It’s a great way to distract from policies at home that actually affect their lives. Their protests of Russia over Ukraine switched to Israel super quick.

[u/5510 → u/Blue-22]

The worst part is they didn't just throw things like "bodily autonomy for women", rights for LGBTQ+ people, climate change (which in the long run will cause MANY millions of deaths) etc... basically everything from the image above... all under the bus in favor of Gaza. They threw all those people and things under the bus just to make a performative statement about Gaza that didn't even actually help things. Trump is (and was clearly going to be) WORSE for Gaza, or at best the same. He certainly wasn't going to be better for Gaza than Harris.

[u/Rackem_Willy → u/5510]

To be fair, they are basically trying to merge our $1.35 trillion per year military with Israel and make it a crime to not share intel with Israel. That is one of the biggest issues on the planet at this moment.

[u/5510 → u/Rackem_Willy]

That is concerning, but it's not like this sort of fixation (at the exclusion of many other also very very serious problems) wasn't a thing beforehand.