There is so much nuance in the Israel/Palestine situation. Why is it a litmus test for an American politician???
I don't want to choose people to represent me here based on their opinion on this *incredibly* challenging world crisis. I want to choose people to represent me based on taking care of the issues that I think are important here - getting a good, reliable, easy to use immigration system in place. Tearing down the system of hierarchy that is capitalism + patriarchy + oligarchs. Getting corporate money out of politics. Strengthening our constitution. Bringing to justice the people in the current administration who have committed war crimes. Ending gerrymandering. Supporting the right to vote (passing the John Lewis act).
Israel. Nearly half (49 percent) of Democrats say that while they believe Israel has a right to exist, they are worried about how Israel has conducted its war against Hamas. By contrast, only 13 percent agree that “Israel is a colonial apartheid state”—a position that some leading 2028 contenders have espoused—and that it, alone, bears responsibility for “any and all violence that has followed its establishment.”
You seem to be endorsing those who are pandering to the most extreme 13%. Why not look at the 49%? To go further, among Democrats who know who Einat Wilf is, how many even go so far as to worry about Israel's conduct of the war against Hamas?
There is a way for Democrats to think differently about Israel: Support the pro-democracy groups in Israel, Gaza and West Bank. Support the Israelis - Jews, Arabs, Muslim, Christians - who have been fighting for years against the country's slide away from democracy. That would be a new and different way of thinking.
Why is this article name-checking Hasan Piker as if he's a Democrat? I know, I know, the Dems are looking for their Joe Rogan because they always fight the last war. But Piker, while he may be a dog-torturing nepo baby and a shill for China, is not a Democrat. Many of us (I hope) are here supporting a center-left liberal Democratic party in order to restore democracy and the rule of law to this country. Piker is not that. The NYT wrote an embarrassing puff-piece on him. I expected better of the Bulwark.
Kelly and Beshear are as far from Piker as you can get. He is the horseshoe theory given form -- he is much closer to the authoritarian right than he is to moderate reasonable Democrats. A country governed by Kelly and Beshear would be fine, while one by Piker-types would be just another version of our current disaster. Why the Bulwark is treating him as anything the Democrats should listen to I still cannot fathom.
Oh yes because The Bulwark's former electoral strategy - and your proposed one - of having the CEO prance around the stage with Kamala Harris and Liz Cheney bragging about how mOdErAtE they would be as they promised to keep funding pointless wars in the Middle East was soooooooooooooooooooo effective at winning every swing state!!
Hmmm... I feel like I never said any of that? Also, I would take Liz Cheney as president over Piker 1000% of the time. I disagree with her, but she is an honorable person and he is trash. Kamala was a weak candidate running uphill in an anti-incumbent environment. Let's not over-correct and land in the same mess from the other side.
Your prior attempt to link Kelly and Beshear to Piker was specious, so now you've decided to go after my individual influence in Democratic primaries. Very persuasive.
The sad thing is, I really, really don't like the demand for some sort of "all or nothing" litmus test where you have to say the right code words for "I hate Israel and wish all the Jews would go back to Europe" or the other usual things that get said when the masks come down.
I didn't mind Buttigieg's response last August at all -- he supports Israel's right to exist and doesn't like what he's seeing from its current government. There's a LOT of Dems who aren't as loud on social media who are right there. It's not a simple issue. Activists who want to make it a simple issue are being downright toxic in their purity testing.
If you want it in electoral terms? I don't think you can win Pennsylvania if you're dropping the code words that start with G... and without Pennsylvania, there is no path to the presidency for a Democratic nominee. None.
Don't be surprised when one of the gotcha questions in the televised Democratic presidential primary candidates debate will be: "Do you think Israel committed a G word in Gaza?" Newsom is no doubt already think up a way to answer "yes" and then say "but I'm just quoting Mamdani."
Candidates will have to be authentic on Israel in order to win from this point forward. I think the US has to stop supporting everything Israel does and stop sending them money and candidates have to stop taking money from AIPAC. This dumb war is going to make the US, Israel, and Iran far less safe for years.
This really isn't as hard today as it would have been before the last couple of years. America supports--and should support--Israel's right to exist. But America cannot support the over the top response to Oct 7th from the Netanyahu regime. We don't support killing tens of thousands of civilians who are trapped in Gaza and we shouldn't supply the weapons used in doing it. We don't support this again, over the top, aggression against Iran from Israel and the U.S. Just as most don't support the U.S. attacking boats in the Caribbean, kidnapping the leader of Venezuela, threatening Greenland, abandoning Ukraine and NATO, now threatening Cuba and on and on and on.
Now that America is suffering with the lawless, corrupt, and vicious Trump regime, we should be able to separate a "people" from their amoral leaders. We are going to have to rely on our allies to offer that understanding to us when we are finally rid of ours. Israel needs an incentive to get rid of Netanyahu and, if losing armament support from the US can do that, it's a win/win/win for the world. Bad leaders can make horrific mistakes. We can support the Israeli people and the American people while still recognizing their leadership as criminal.
I would add that we have to recognize the unique difficulty in doing the above. Israel is conflated with standing in for Jews all over the world. This is ridiculous, of course; imagine Catholics worldwide being held accountable for every papal decree or people of Russian descent in other countries being harassed and attacked for the atrocities Russia has committed against Ukraine. But this is the unique position of Jews since the beginning of time. We're always waiting to be attacked and killed as "the other" and we never have to wait long. I say "we" as that is my heritage. Some Jews have compromised their moral compass for Israel lately as we can't believe what we're seeing yet feel as vulnerable as ever with antisemitism on the rise.
The U.S. needs to course correct its friend at this point. No need to rehash the past as the future lies before us. It can't be done now, as we have our own criminals to reckon with. But when the Democrats take over, they need to address Israel as if it were Canada (in the days before Trump) to say that we can't enable and support what we feel is egregiously wrong conduct at this point, but say it with love and not abandonment. I realize this kind of sincerity and nuance is difficult to do politically. But it can't be deemed impossible given the stakes.
Dear Lauren Egan, When I first read the headline on your column, I thought you were reporting on some current effort to approach this difficult topic in a balanced & well-informed way. So it was with surprise that I read your approval for Newsom's comparing Israel to an "Apartheid state." Israel is of course the only state in the Middle East where Jews, Christians, Muslims & other faith groups have legal citizenship and have their religious freedom protected. By contrast, Jews -- whose residence all round the Middle East preceded Islam by a thousand years -- haveof course been expelled from the surrounding Arab nations. You speak favorably of Obama's efforts to work out a nuclear deal with Iran. How'd that deal go, by the way? And would there be any reason for Israel to think such a deal nonthreatening? Re your claim that Israel "brutally killed tens of thousands of innocent civilians": although Hamas used the vast sums it received from the international community to build approx 350 miles of tunnels debouching under hospitals, kindergartens and civilian structures of all kinds -- and Israel, unlike any actor in modern warfare, risked its soldiers to warn civilians to evacuate before striking these arms depots -- its actual ratio of civilians killed to combatants is, according to UN rapporteur Col. Richard Kemp & others expert on modern warfare, the lowest recorded in modern warfare. I could go on, but let me get to the upshot: what you are actually doing is providing a flimsy rationale for the Latest Manifestation of the Oldest Hatred. Congratulations Lauren Egan! You must be very proud to be joining so venerable a crew!
People are not allowed to change their minds, Lauren? Your always second guessing the Dems. Why is that? Your frequent criticisms are growing tiresome. What are your views? Did you ever change your mind? Your comments are more and more typical of a person from Tennessee. Not everyone from there but damn.
Did you interview anyone who acknowledged that Harris LOST some set of votes because of what Biden did do to restrain Israel's efforts against Hamas?
Yes there were voters who either abstained from the binary choice between Trump and Harris or selected Trump because Biden they didn't see enough effort from Biden against Israel. However, that doesn't mean that those votes lost are greater than the votes lost due to the measures that were taken against Israel, to say nothing about the votes that would have been lost if Biden had taken as hard a line as the activists wanted.
As to the politicians saying Israel committed genocide in Gaza. A lot of people in the chattering classes are saying that. In 1901, a lot of people were saying that the former Freedmen's Bureau was an instrument of Negro supremacism and that the program of Reconstruction it was part of was a tragic mistake. Did widespread belief in that notion make the belief that Reconstruction was a mistake correct for the early 20th century? Why does widespread belief that Israel committed genocide show that it was genocide?
Thanks for putting this into the conversation about how Dem politicians talk to Dem voters about Israel. You can be pro-Jewish and anti-Israel. Gaza was a red line.
Exactly. But there are a lot - a lot - of AIPAC drones and sycophants who will scream bloody murder anytime anyone says anything even remotely seen as possibly critical of Israel and anything it does. Natanyahu even said it out loud last year, that any criticism of Israel is by definition antisemitism. Their intention is to shut down criticism, and they've been incredibly successful, just like the anti-climate change propagandists. But the tide is turning. If Israel wants to act like a violent, colonialist, authoritarian state, it will be seen and called out as a violent, colonialist authoritarian state. If anyone, including Jewish Americans, want to support this, then they will be called out as supporters of a violent, colonialist authoritarian state.
This is the reason I have stopped all donations to the DNC and its other organizations. They are now nearly a full-blown, antisemitic, antizionist organ of the worst elements that exist in the world. Israel was attacked by Hamas and thousands of Palestinians on 10/7/2023 in a genocidal frenzy that left 1,200 people dead and 253 hostages stolen, many of whom were later executed by Hamas or held hostage by "ordinary Palestinians", tortured, starved, sexually abused and spit upon. Yet, the day after that massacre, millions of brand new Palestinian flags and professionally-made signs "Death to Zionists" et al. suddenly appeared on college campuses, in city streets all over the world in a coordinated attack against Israel, reeling in the midst of mourning the deaths of thousands of their families and friends. This was NOT an organic protest. This was planned and executed by Iran/Qatar/China alliance, using the old Soviet "anti-Zionist" tropes. It swarmed the Democratic Party and brainwashed gullible progressives, because it (ab)used the language of oppressor v. oppressed (like the mullahs in Iran did in 1979). MSM spouting Hamas/Iran propaganda and lies virtually non-stop. And, here we are, Democrats and their candidates lapping up the lies, slamming Israel for conducting one of the most civilian-friendly wars in war history - 2 million tons of food sent in. Thousands of children's vaccines distributed, and Israel paused the war for distribution to Gaza's children. Millions of warning messages sent to Gazans to evacuate, and safe corridors established for them to do so. Lowest civilian - to - combatant casualty ratio in war history (1:1.5). Some "genocide"!! It was a war. Was Israel's IDF perfect? Of course not. But no army in no war is. And this was a particularly difficult one, as Hamas doesn't wear uniforms (and dresses like Press, ambulance drivers, women), uses Gazans as human shields, and had underground tunnels, booby-trapped, to hide in, under civilian-occupied buildings. This was a legitimate war that any other nation on Earth would have waged in the face of such massacre. The Democratic Party is now just a mouthpiece of Iran and other bad actors in the Middle East who are hellbent on destroying the West. After 40 years of donations, canvassing, calling and fighting for Democrats....I'm out.
Can't blame you. I'm a lifelong centrist, Zionist Democrat who despises Trump and MAGA, yet feeling myself evolving into an Independent. My sense is the progressives won't miss either of us as they take over the party.
I consider myself a bleeding heart liberal Zionist. I am driven to protect those that are vulnerable whether it be people that are gay, any minority race here in America, immigrants and Jews. There are only about 15 million Jews left on this planet due to forced conversion, relocation and extermination for centuries. There are more Muslims in Russia than there are Jews on the planet. Where the fu$k are the real liberals in my Democratic Party? I have stopped all donations to democratic candidates as well.
The organization J Street gives Democrats a defensible position on Israel and the Palestinians. Supporting the right of self-determination of both nations, and no holds barred criticism of the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank. Israel is not an apartheid state internally - within its internationally recognized borders - and it is one in the way it rules the West Bank. That is a key fact which also underlines the case for a Palestinian state. This is where any liberal should stand, whether on the center right or on the left. And Netanyahu should be condemned unconditionally.
Yes. You have to recognize the realities. It's ugly all over, and has been for a long, long time. Here more than almost anywhere else the problem is tribal allegiance - the ugly realities on all sides in an incredibly complex situation mean any unthinking tribalism means acceptance of the unacceptable. Israel decided it was going to "take off the gloves"? Fine. But that doesn't come with a get out of jail free card. We supported Israel for some very good (and some not very good) reasons. But unconditional support has led to a massive and toxic sense of entitlement, which I see in this thread in spades. But to take any tribalist position here, no matter how deeply felt or well worded, is to guarantee continuation of death and destruction.
Yeah I fear the Israel Gaza thing has turned into a political purity test. But how many US voters really cared about it beyond a finite set? Of course, now with the US bringing death and destruction on Iran perhaps at the urging of Netanyahu, a whole bunch of voters will care about Israel in 2026 elections.
In the end, the ant can't impose its will on the crocodile unless the crocodile wants to do what it wants anyway. Trump is solely responsible for what we're doing in Iran just as he is solely responsible for the attacks he's made on other nations, whether with words or weapons.
There is so much nuance in the Israel/Palestine situation. Why is it a litmus test for an American politician???
I don't want to choose people to represent me here based on their opinion on this *incredibly* challenging world crisis. I want to choose people to represent me based on taking care of the issues that I think are important here - getting a good, reliable, easy to use immigration system in place. Tearing down the system of hierarchy that is capitalism + patriarchy + oligarchs. Getting corporate money out of politics. Strengthening our constitution. Bringing to justice the people in the current administration who have committed war crimes. Ending gerrymandering. Supporting the right to vote (passing the John Lewis act).
There's a more pragmatic approach covered over at the Liberal Patriot: https://www.liberalpatriot.com/p/are-moderate-democrats-becoming-extinct
Israel. Nearly half (49 percent) of Democrats say that while they believe Israel has a right to exist, they are worried about how Israel has conducted its war against Hamas. By contrast, only 13 percent agree that “Israel is a colonial apartheid state”—a position that some leading 2028 contenders have espoused—and that it, alone, bears responsibility for “any and all violence that has followed its establishment.”
You seem to be endorsing those who are pandering to the most extreme 13%. Why not look at the 49%? To go further, among Democrats who know who Einat Wilf is, how many even go so far as to worry about Israel's conduct of the war against Hamas?
There is a way for Democrats to think differently about Israel: Support the pro-democracy groups in Israel, Gaza and West Bank. Support the Israelis - Jews, Arabs, Muslim, Christians - who have been fighting for years against the country's slide away from democracy. That would be a new and different way of thinking.
Why is this article name-checking Hasan Piker as if he's a Democrat? I know, I know, the Dems are looking for their Joe Rogan because they always fight the last war. But Piker, while he may be a dog-torturing nepo baby and a shill for China, is not a Democrat. Many of us (I hope) are here supporting a center-left liberal Democratic party in order to restore democracy and the rule of law to this country. Piker is not that. The NYT wrote an embarrassing puff-piece on him. I expected better of the Bulwark.
I would wager that Hasan Piker probably moves more Democratic primary voters than anything written on The Bulwark.
You may be right but, if so, that's yet another example why Democrats struggle to win outside of a few safe progressive blue zones.
Last I checked, Laura Kelly and Andy Beshear don't govern red blue states.
Kelly and Beshear are as far from Piker as you can get. He is the horseshoe theory given form -- he is much closer to the authoritarian right than he is to moderate reasonable Democrats. A country governed by Kelly and Beshear would be fine, while one by Piker-types would be just another version of our current disaster. Why the Bulwark is treating him as anything the Democrats should listen to I still cannot fathom.
Oh yes because The Bulwark's former electoral strategy - and your proposed one - of having the CEO prance around the stage with Kamala Harris and Liz Cheney bragging about how mOdErAtE they would be as they promised to keep funding pointless wars in the Middle East was soooooooooooooooooooo effective at winning every swing state!!
Hmmm... I feel like I never said any of that? Also, I would take Liz Cheney as president over Piker 1000% of the time. I disagree with her, but she is an honorable person and he is trash. Kamala was a weak candidate running uphill in an anti-incumbent environment. Let's not over-correct and land in the same mess from the other side.
There is no nexus between Kelly, Beshear and Piker, which is where you started.
Luckily for you, you have have miniscule to zero influence over who wins primary elections.
Your prior attempt to link Kelly and Beshear to Piker was specious, so now you've decided to go after my individual influence in Democratic primaries. Very persuasive.
Interesting insight and analysis. Here I provide my own thoughts on Israel/Iran/Trump/Netanyahu and quote Lauren’s comments about Newsom’s position.
https://howardwgordon.substack.com/p/regime-change-in-iran-may-be-welcomebut?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
The sad thing is, I really, really don't like the demand for some sort of "all or nothing" litmus test where you have to say the right code words for "I hate Israel and wish all the Jews would go back to Europe" or the other usual things that get said when the masks come down.
I didn't mind Buttigieg's response last August at all -- he supports Israel's right to exist and doesn't like what he's seeing from its current government. There's a LOT of Dems who aren't as loud on social media who are right there. It's not a simple issue. Activists who want to make it a simple issue are being downright toxic in their purity testing.
If you want it in electoral terms? I don't think you can win Pennsylvania if you're dropping the code words that start with G... and without Pennsylvania, there is no path to the presidency for a Democratic nominee. None.
Don't be surprised when one of the gotcha questions in the televised Democratic presidential primary candidates debate will be: "Do you think Israel committed a G word in Gaza?" Newsom is no doubt already think up a way to answer "yes" and then say "but I'm just quoting Mamdani."
Candidates will have to be authentic on Israel in order to win from this point forward. I think the US has to stop supporting everything Israel does and stop sending them money and candidates have to stop taking money from AIPAC. This dumb war is going to make the US, Israel, and Iran far less safe for years.
This really isn't as hard today as it would have been before the last couple of years. America supports--and should support--Israel's right to exist. But America cannot support the over the top response to Oct 7th from the Netanyahu regime. We don't support killing tens of thousands of civilians who are trapped in Gaza and we shouldn't supply the weapons used in doing it. We don't support this again, over the top, aggression against Iran from Israel and the U.S. Just as most don't support the U.S. attacking boats in the Caribbean, kidnapping the leader of Venezuela, threatening Greenland, abandoning Ukraine and NATO, now threatening Cuba and on and on and on.
Now that America is suffering with the lawless, corrupt, and vicious Trump regime, we should be able to separate a "people" from their amoral leaders. We are going to have to rely on our allies to offer that understanding to us when we are finally rid of ours. Israel needs an incentive to get rid of Netanyahu and, if losing armament support from the US can do that, it's a win/win/win for the world. Bad leaders can make horrific mistakes. We can support the Israeli people and the American people while still recognizing their leadership as criminal.
I would add that we have to recognize the unique difficulty in doing the above. Israel is conflated with standing in for Jews all over the world. This is ridiculous, of course; imagine Catholics worldwide being held accountable for every papal decree or people of Russian descent in other countries being harassed and attacked for the atrocities Russia has committed against Ukraine. But this is the unique position of Jews since the beginning of time. We're always waiting to be attacked and killed as "the other" and we never have to wait long. I say "we" as that is my heritage. Some Jews have compromised their moral compass for Israel lately as we can't believe what we're seeing yet feel as vulnerable as ever with antisemitism on the rise.
The U.S. needs to course correct its friend at this point. No need to rehash the past as the future lies before us. It can't be done now, as we have our own criminals to reckon with. But when the Democrats take over, they need to address Israel as if it were Canada (in the days before Trump) to say that we can't enable and support what we feel is egregiously wrong conduct at this point, but say it with love and not abandonment. I realize this kind of sincerity and nuance is difficult to do politically. But it can't be deemed impossible given the stakes.
Dear Lauren Egan, When I first read the headline on your column, I thought you were reporting on some current effort to approach this difficult topic in a balanced & well-informed way. So it was with surprise that I read your approval for Newsom's comparing Israel to an "Apartheid state." Israel is of course the only state in the Middle East where Jews, Christians, Muslims & other faith groups have legal citizenship and have their religious freedom protected. By contrast, Jews -- whose residence all round the Middle East preceded Islam by a thousand years -- haveof course been expelled from the surrounding Arab nations. You speak favorably of Obama's efforts to work out a nuclear deal with Iran. How'd that deal go, by the way? And would there be any reason for Israel to think such a deal nonthreatening? Re your claim that Israel "brutally killed tens of thousands of innocent civilians": although Hamas used the vast sums it received from the international community to build approx 350 miles of tunnels debouching under hospitals, kindergartens and civilian structures of all kinds -- and Israel, unlike any actor in modern warfare, risked its soldiers to warn civilians to evacuate before striking these arms depots -- its actual ratio of civilians killed to combatants is, according to UN rapporteur Col. Richard Kemp & others expert on modern warfare, the lowest recorded in modern warfare. I could go on, but let me get to the upshot: what you are actually doing is providing a flimsy rationale for the Latest Manifestation of the Oldest Hatred. Congratulations Lauren Egan! You must be very proud to be joining so venerable a crew!
>> "PARTY OFFICIALS TOLD ME they think Democratic voters will be motivated in the upcoming elections to back candidates who feel authentic"
such a novel idea, oh wow, good job Dems
People are not allowed to change their minds, Lauren? Your always second guessing the Dems. Why is that? Your frequent criticisms are growing tiresome. What are your views? Did you ever change your mind? Your comments are more and more typical of a person from Tennessee. Not everyone from there but damn.
Did you interview anyone who acknowledged that Harris LOST some set of votes because of what Biden did do to restrain Israel's efforts against Hamas?
Yes there were voters who either abstained from the binary choice between Trump and Harris or selected Trump because Biden they didn't see enough effort from Biden against Israel. However, that doesn't mean that those votes lost are greater than the votes lost due to the measures that were taken against Israel, to say nothing about the votes that would have been lost if Biden had taken as hard a line as the activists wanted.
As to the politicians saying Israel committed genocide in Gaza. A lot of people in the chattering classes are saying that. In 1901, a lot of people were saying that the former Freedmen's Bureau was an instrument of Negro supremacism and that the program of Reconstruction it was part of was a tragic mistake. Did widespread belief in that notion make the belief that Reconstruction was a mistake correct for the early 20th century? Why does widespread belief that Israel committed genocide show that it was genocide?
Thanks for putting this into the conversation about how Dem politicians talk to Dem voters about Israel. You can be pro-Jewish and anti-Israel. Gaza was a red line.
Exactly. But there are a lot - a lot - of AIPAC drones and sycophants who will scream bloody murder anytime anyone says anything even remotely seen as possibly critical of Israel and anything it does. Natanyahu even said it out loud last year, that any criticism of Israel is by definition antisemitism. Their intention is to shut down criticism, and they've been incredibly successful, just like the anti-climate change propagandists. But the tide is turning. If Israel wants to act like a violent, colonialist, authoritarian state, it will be seen and called out as a violent, colonialist authoritarian state. If anyone, including Jewish Americans, want to support this, then they will be called out as supporters of a violent, colonialist authoritarian state.
This is the reason I have stopped all donations to the DNC and its other organizations. They are now nearly a full-blown, antisemitic, antizionist organ of the worst elements that exist in the world. Israel was attacked by Hamas and thousands of Palestinians on 10/7/2023 in a genocidal frenzy that left 1,200 people dead and 253 hostages stolen, many of whom were later executed by Hamas or held hostage by "ordinary Palestinians", tortured, starved, sexually abused and spit upon. Yet, the day after that massacre, millions of brand new Palestinian flags and professionally-made signs "Death to Zionists" et al. suddenly appeared on college campuses, in city streets all over the world in a coordinated attack against Israel, reeling in the midst of mourning the deaths of thousands of their families and friends. This was NOT an organic protest. This was planned and executed by Iran/Qatar/China alliance, using the old Soviet "anti-Zionist" tropes. It swarmed the Democratic Party and brainwashed gullible progressives, because it (ab)used the language of oppressor v. oppressed (like the mullahs in Iran did in 1979). MSM spouting Hamas/Iran propaganda and lies virtually non-stop. And, here we are, Democrats and their candidates lapping up the lies, slamming Israel for conducting one of the most civilian-friendly wars in war history - 2 million tons of food sent in. Thousands of children's vaccines distributed, and Israel paused the war for distribution to Gaza's children. Millions of warning messages sent to Gazans to evacuate, and safe corridors established for them to do so. Lowest civilian - to - combatant casualty ratio in war history (1:1.5). Some "genocide"!! It was a war. Was Israel's IDF perfect? Of course not. But no army in no war is. And this was a particularly difficult one, as Hamas doesn't wear uniforms (and dresses like Press, ambulance drivers, women), uses Gazans as human shields, and had underground tunnels, booby-trapped, to hide in, under civilian-occupied buildings. This was a legitimate war that any other nation on Earth would have waged in the face of such massacre. The Democratic Party is now just a mouthpiece of Iran and other bad actors in the Middle East who are hellbent on destroying the West. After 40 years of donations, canvassing, calling and fighting for Democrats....I'm out.
Can't blame you. I'm a lifelong centrist, Zionist Democrat who despises Trump and MAGA, yet feeling myself evolving into an Independent. My sense is the progressives won't miss either of us as they take over the party.
I consider myself a bleeding heart liberal Zionist. I am driven to protect those that are vulnerable whether it be people that are gay, any minority race here in America, immigrants and Jews. There are only about 15 million Jews left on this planet due to forced conversion, relocation and extermination for centuries. There are more Muslims in Russia than there are Jews on the planet. Where the fu$k are the real liberals in my Democratic Party? I have stopped all donations to democratic candidates as well.
The organization J Street gives Democrats a defensible position on Israel and the Palestinians. Supporting the right of self-determination of both nations, and no holds barred criticism of the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank. Israel is not an apartheid state internally - within its internationally recognized borders - and it is one in the way it rules the West Bank. That is a key fact which also underlines the case for a Palestinian state. This is where any liberal should stand, whether on the center right or on the left. And Netanyahu should be condemned unconditionally.
Yes. You have to recognize the realities. It's ugly all over, and has been for a long, long time. Here more than almost anywhere else the problem is tribal allegiance - the ugly realities on all sides in an incredibly complex situation mean any unthinking tribalism means acceptance of the unacceptable. Israel decided it was going to "take off the gloves"? Fine. But that doesn't come with a get out of jail free card. We supported Israel for some very good (and some not very good) reasons. But unconditional support has led to a massive and toxic sense of entitlement, which I see in this thread in spades. But to take any tribalist position here, no matter how deeply felt or well worded, is to guarantee continuation of death and destruction.
Yeah I fear the Israel Gaza thing has turned into a political purity test. But how many US voters really cared about it beyond a finite set? Of course, now with the US bringing death and destruction on Iran perhaps at the urging of Netanyahu, a whole bunch of voters will care about Israel in 2026 elections.
In the end, the ant can't impose its will on the crocodile unless the crocodile wants to do what it wants anyway. Trump is solely responsible for what we're doing in Iran just as he is solely responsible for the attacks he's made on other nations, whether with words or weapons.