You are supporting a theocratic murderous jihadist regime who committed mass rape and slaughtered an entire music festival. Then dragged the bodies in the street so people could celebrate and spit on them. A regime where the leading cause of death of girls under 18 were pregnancy related causes (under Hamas). Where being LGBT is a death penalty offense. Where being a peace activists makes you a traitor, and is a death penalty offense.
"There is no evidence that hostages taken -- yes, hostages were taken -- were murdered. "
Yes, the were dragged from their homes and murdered and some of their bodies have been returned. What a ghoul you are.
Hamas has murdered so many more Gazan children than Israel has even in your hate-filled blood-soaked bigoted imagination.
After will be hard. But after would be hell with Hamas.
I have to say one more thing for a woman of color to willingly be a worker bee tool for that same corrupt old white guy donor class demographics is beyond the pail.
The democratic party has the only true representatives of weather, people, and legitimate leaders in Congress. They certainly aren’t HRC, Nancy, or Kamala. They are Elizabeth, Mazie, Katie, AOC. You know, the ones that are actively shunned and oppressed by the DNC. The ones funded heavily by the DNC in a primary.
Phuk Kamala Harris, and anyone who supports her. Not to mention a completely, undemocratic coronation of an illegitimate ticket.
Wow. I agree completely about foreign policy. It’s a disaster on every front. I am deeply disappointed after being familiar with you for years about your support for a corporate oligarchy, enabled, fascism and model of our domestic economic policy. I never figured you for a tribal tool. other than our weights and measures department, which I have confirmed is world class, we’re not doing it right. You pick the shoe. It really infuriates me because it’s not some mysterious ethereal subject.
One can easily research the “best policy practice”
The public education model of Finland. By definition, #UniversalHealthcare model in Denmark.
The lack of any prohibition in near all 1st world countries. Incarceration rates, single digit percentiles of ours. Public transportation systems. Again, you need to issue.
Come on man do better. Don’t pack corrupt old white guy donor class water great terrible optic.
AOC was great! But IMHO you ignored the best speaker of the night: UAW’s Shawn Fain in his “TRUMP IS A SCAB” t-shirt.
I’ve been looking for that shirt on the internet but none are endorsed by the UAW, and on Amazon the ones I saw were identified as “imported.” Who wants to buy an anti-scab shirt from a scab company?
Peaceful protestors met with assault…aiy…I had not heard this! Thank you for writing this article.
I watched most of the DNC gala. Some parts were touching & most points were welccomed.
And I’m all for girl power. But what I am not for is taking away choices & votes. The DNC was supposed to be the moral party & now the behavior is not unlike the orange felon.
"I am not a fan of the Democratic Party beating down Trump for being a felon, given the disparate treatment of low income people and people of color in the criminal justice system."
*** *** ***
I disagree.
People often say that the US-American criminal justice system has two tiers. This is inaccurate. There are three tiers.
At the bottom, there are the poor: people who cannot afford to pay bail and who cannot afford to wait in jail for their trial. So they offer a plea bargain, declaring themselves "guilty" in exchange for a reduced sentence. This imposes the permanent blight of a felony conviction upon their records and reduces their chance of economic advancement for the rest of their lives. This is how our criminal justice system deals with the poor.
In the middle, there is the middle class. These are people who might be able to afford bail and might be able to miss some work and still keep their jobs and their homes. For this middle group, our criminal justice system is capable of dealing justice, and it often does.
At the top, there are the rich, including but not limited to Donald Trump. These are people who can easily pay for their bail many times over. These people are not even inconvenienced by delayed justice, because putting off justice is only another business expense. All that they have to do is hire lawyers who dream up a new excuse every week for why the trial cannot proceed. Each such excuse must be considered separately and at length, so that even if the request for a delay has no merit, the necessity of considering the request unavoidably causes a delay. And if, in the end, a wealthy defendant finally goes to trial and is found guilty, they can always appeal. And the wealthy have stacked the US Supreme Court with plutocrats who are happy to offer favors in exchange for rides on private jets.
When we say that the US-American criminal justice system has only two tiers, we imply that there is no middle tier. We also imply that either the bottom tier or the top tier must be okay. But this is wrong. Neither the bottom tier nor the top tier is okay. Both tiers are very much not okay. Only the middle tier comes close to being right.
And pretending that the middle tier does not exist puts us in the company of extreme libertarians who would rather have no public criminal justice system at all, but who would rather privatize it by giving everybody a handgun and empowering everybody to be their own judge, jury, and executioner. This is not the company that I would like to keep. On the other hand, if we want to impose some reasonable rules on the use of firearms, how are we going to enforce these rules without a fair and functioning public criminal justice system?
So we can and should talk about BOTH the top tier AND the bottom tier of the US criminal justice system, and we should say that they are BOTH WRONG, and we should not neglect the middle tier but EXPAND it by correcting the injustices of the top and bottom tiers. I think we can do this; we can walk and chew gum at the same time, and we can understand the the US criminal justice system is both too hard on the poor and too soft on the rich at the same time.
We send money overseas, but ignore our problems in America. It’s wrong. It is also wrong what the DNC is doing to BLOCK BALLOTS & keep Rfk jr out of the running. They accuse Trump & do the same.
Just a few comments about your takeaways from the DNC Day1:
First, I cannot agree with you regarding AOC's speech. For me it represented a total, final betrayal of the very principles she touted at the beginning of her time in Congress. She has made a decision, a calculation, and for her the best way to advance her career is acceptance and approval from the Democratic elite. Remember Rashida Tlaib, defiantly wearing her keffiyah in Congress? She was joined only by Cori Bush and Summer Lee. For her (incredibly courageous) presence at Netanyahu's shameful speech to Congress, Rashida was entirely alone. Where was AOC?
Second, it needs to be remembered that Kamala has been an active participant in Biden's administration, and has given every indication that she will continue all of Biden's policies. That makes it a truly Biden/Harris genocide. I don't see much to celebrate in this new girlboss energy. She's a cop, and is responsible for the incarceration of thousands of Black men in California....on weed charges. That's who she is.
Good discussion. So much of the Biden/Harris I do not want continued. One of many videos re incarceration & plans to change the pattern. (several vids on America’s addiction problem, as well).
I think this is what Diana Bhutto was saying when she said that nothing Israel ever did justified the attacks on Oct 7th and everything Israel has done since then is justified by Oct 7th.
Just one example- you say you hate Netanyahu, his deals are purposely made so that he can say Hamas rejected it, he's continuing the war to avoid his own criminal charges. We keep hearing that what he's doing is NOT safe for Israel. So does that legitimatize an attack on ALL Israel. Because as you say, Hamas is only working in their own greed, thus the starving, killing of innocent Gazans is warranted??? There is no scenario where collective punishment is valid. And that's the problem.
October 7 was a false flag get a grip mention Yahoo and Putin, our partners in the world’s greatest ask of terror at the moment. They both should be somewhere deep deep deep under the Hague.
Qasim, I also want the war to stop. But Hamas was/is getting weapons and other supplies of war through the Egyptian border in tunnels. This is the sticking point for Netanyahu and I KNOW he is horrible and I wish this current war would end. I have hated Netanyahu far before I converted to Judaism and had Jewish children. I think he is the opposite of what will make Israel and Palestine safe and peaceful.
BUT Hamas will use those tunnels under Rafah to import more rockets and bombs and machine guns and paraglides.
Mexican cartels use the US/Mexican border to import and export drugs and guns. We are constantly fighting that.
If Mexican drug lords started using rockets to bomb US border towns—we would not allow it! We would go on absolute shut down and an aggressive campaign to stop them. Would it work? Probably not. But how else would we defend our people?
I know you wish for peace for all people in the region—there is no other humane viewpoint.
It just seems so much more complicated than this inefficient and frankly insulting ceasefire deal. Israel isn’t getting all of the hostages back. They have to allow Hamas to rearm themselves.
Border skirmishes pre-10/7 were awful. Just like at the US Southern border. But Hamas upped the ante. Hamas was okay with Palestinian civilian deaths and Hamas will not give up their insane martyrdom that is causing Palestinians to lose their lives.
And none of the Hamas leaders are even in Gaza! They’re millionaires in their Qatari penthouses.
So when pro-Palestinian supports say “stop arming Netanyahu” well yes. I wish Israelis had a way to get him out of power the same way I wish we could have gotten George Bush out of power. But they don’t.
And Palestinians don’t have a way to get Hamas out of power for different reasons.
I’m just upset because the regime in Iran is winning their war of hegemony over the region and we are squabbling over whether Israel should exist or not (it should. The same way the US should.)
I guess there will be resistance to the illegal occupation of Palestine for as long as that occupation continues.
And your characterization of Hamas is not based in reality. The newly-appointed head of Hamas is in Gaza and has been from the beginning. And "insane"? Really? Palestinians have been attempting to use political means for 50 years. The (entirely democratic) election of Hamas was born of exactly this frustration. And it's worth remembering that for years, right up to October 7th, Netanyahu and the Israeli government funneled billions of dollars to Hamas through Qatar. The strategy was to divide the Palestinian people so there could never be a unified front with the PA (the PA who are completely bought off and who do not serve the Palestinian cause).
By the way, Ms Simon, I don't know anything about you, except that for whatever reasons, you converted to Judaism. I am 74, and I was born and reared Jewish. I eventually quit, because 1) there's no such thing as "god," so I don't have the entry criterion to be part of any religion, nor do I wish to be, 2) Jews have made a millennia-long career out of being victims, and I don't feel like a victim, nor do I want to feel like one, and 3) they're terrible neighbors in the Middle East, and I don't want to be associated with terrible neighbors.
Carter negotiated peace between the Israelis and the Egyptians, and Clinton negotiated peace between the Israelis and the PLO. The Palestinians did not have any gripe with the Israelis (except the gripe the Israelis caused), and it would have been easy, absent Netanyahu, to negotiate peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians, or it wouldn't have been necessary, because they could already have lived together in peace. Except the Israelis got greedy, and starting poaching Palestinian land, with illegal settlements, and the settlers attacked Palestinians, and no Israeli government ever stopped them. So maybe someone would have had to step in.
But we shouldn't be talking about planning ceasefire talks. Every day and every hour and every minute that someone doesn't do something results in more entirely innocent dead people. And plenty more to come, as they starve, and have medical problems for which treatment is unavailable.
Ms Simon, you have to consider why 10/7 happened. You have to consider the whole context. If Hamas (originally funded by Netanyahu!) is getting weaponry from Egypt or anyone else, don't they need it? Entirely innocent Palestinians, aid workers, and journalists are under continuing violent attack. You don't see Hamas' position as defensive?
It wasn't just "border skirmishes." Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have been subjected to incessant attack, and their land is being taken from them. They're being arrested and mistreated without charges or suspicion.
If you want to call 10/7 "up[ping] the ante," so be it. But what were their options? They didn't get protection from the Israelis, the UN, or us. And they still aren't.
Netanyahu's war to annihilate all Palestinians, and take their land, is his way of staying in power. Precisely, as you say, as was the case with W. He would never have gotten re-elected, except Cheney invented a war against Iraq, and the American people were reluctant to change administrations in a war.
Hardly anyone would complain about the existence of Israel if it was a good neighbor. It is not, and it has more or less never been. Many Palestinians, and Hamas brass, have said that Palestinians had no problem with Jews. They had no problem with the concept of Israel. Their problem was with a country that was poaching their land and attacking them. You wouldn't have a problem with people who did that here? This is an important part of the Republican fantasy: that immigrants will take what belongs to Americans, and will commit crimes. No one would want that. It's just that it's not true in this country, but it is true in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Zara, I stand with Israel, too, as long as they enjoy the country that was given to them, and leave everyone else alone. There was antipathy against them decades ago, but that was resolved a long time ago.
I think the biggest issue now, apart from Netanyahu's efforts to divide and conquer Arabs/Muslims, and Israel's relentless efforts to gain the whole of Palestine, "from the River to the Sea," is that Netanyahu is trying to distract everyone, to keep his ass out of the slammer. But he's even gotten increasing numbers of Israelis opposed to him.
At the end of last November, there was a ceasefire, and it resulted in Israel getting back half the hostages taken by Hamas. If Netanyahu cared about Israelis, and the hostages, and had any brains, he would have extended the ceasefire, and gotten back all of the hostages. If he was a decent human being, he would have dismantled illegal settlements, and established peace between the Jews in Israel and the Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. But he's not.
By the way, Zara, when Palestine was chosen for the Israelis, it was not barren. There were Palestinians -- mostly, I think, nomads -- there, and 1M of them were displaced to create Israel out of the middle of Palestine. Those Palestinians were given the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and it's not my memory or awareness that they protested. If I'm wrong, I apologize for the error. This all could have worked out differently. Or some other area could have been chosen for the home of the Jews. Other areas under consideration were mostly in Africa, but under heavy lobbying from Theodor Hertzl, part of Palestine was chosen.
Arabs are 1/5 of the population of Israel. One is a Supreme Court Justice. There are a significant population of Christians. People were mixed. There was a partition. There was movement, like with the Indian/Pakistan partition. Then six Arabs armies invaded to complete the genocide their ally Hitler had begun. They lost. Thankfully.
The only Jewish people in Gaza are dead, hostages, or military personnel trying to end Hamas and get the hostages back. Hamas is a autocratic theocratic nightmare of a state. Being LGBT is a death penalty offense.
There was peace Oct 6th.
Hamas openly repeatedly supports genocidal murder of all the people in Israel.
There is apartheid - Jews were expelled or murdered all across the Middle East.
oh it was was so terrible Hamas was *forced* to commit mass rape, slaughter a music festival, burn two entire towns which were predominantly populated by peace activists,
It’s never black & white, is it? There are layers & nuances, but America loves to pick sides & the war hawks & war machines march on. Passions are aflame, children & women & unspeakable atrocities continue. We need solutions for peace.
You are a rape denier . I see you did not like that the people were adequately hysterical for you to believe.
#BelieveWomen and #BelieveForensics unless they Jews. Then hate them, right or say the deserved it.
And of course they received Plan B.
Now Jewish women can only be raped enough for you if they are forced to bear any pregnancies to term.
You are a genuinely vomitously sick disgusting person.
You are not a remotely decent or human person.
You are sick. You have to be sick to deny rape.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-04-18/ty-article-magazine/witnesses-confessions-naked-dead-bodies-all-the-evidence-of-hamas-rape-on-oct-7/0000018e-f114-d92e-abfe-f77f7e3f0000
I see you, you little nazi bint.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKok3jWR9Hs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jO7be4yirbw
You are supporting a theocratic murderous jihadist regime who committed mass rape and slaughtered an entire music festival. Then dragged the bodies in the street so people could celebrate and spit on them. A regime where the leading cause of death of girls under 18 were pregnancy related causes (under Hamas). Where being LGBT is a death penalty offense. Where being a peace activists makes you a traitor, and is a death penalty offense.
"There is no evidence that hostages taken -- yes, hostages were taken -- were murdered. "
Yes, the were dragged from their homes and murdered and some of their bodies have been returned. What a ghoul you are.
Hamas has murdered so many more Gazan children than Israel has even in your hate-filled blood-soaked bigoted imagination.
After will be hard. But after would be hell with Hamas.
Someone showed up at the DNC and waved a poster saying, "Fuck the DNC".
The protesters are objectively proTrump.
Kindly review this explainer:
https://xkcd.com/1357/
I have to say one more thing for a woman of color to willingly be a worker bee tool for that same corrupt old white guy donor class demographics is beyond the pail.
The democratic party has the only true representatives of weather, people, and legitimate leaders in Congress. They certainly aren’t HRC, Nancy, or Kamala. They are Elizabeth, Mazie, Katie, AOC. You know, the ones that are actively shunned and oppressed by the DNC. The ones funded heavily by the DNC in a primary.
Phuk Kamala Harris, and anyone who supports her. Not to mention a completely, undemocratic coronation of an illegitimate ticket.
Will Rogers greatly overestimated …..
Wow. I agree completely about foreign policy. It’s a disaster on every front. I am deeply disappointed after being familiar with you for years about your support for a corporate oligarchy, enabled, fascism and model of our domestic economic policy. I never figured you for a tribal tool. other than our weights and measures department, which I have confirmed is world class, we’re not doing it right. You pick the shoe. It really infuriates me because it’s not some mysterious ethereal subject.
One can easily research the “best policy practice”
The public education model of Finland. By definition, #UniversalHealthcare model in Denmark.
The lack of any prohibition in near all 1st world countries. Incarceration rates, single digit percentiles of ours. Public transportation systems. Again, you need to issue.
Come on man do better. Don’t pack corrupt old white guy donor class water great terrible optic.
AOC was great! But IMHO you ignored the best speaker of the night: UAW’s Shawn Fain in his “TRUMP IS A SCAB” t-shirt.
I’ve been looking for that shirt on the internet but none are endorsed by the UAW, and on Amazon the ones I saw were identified as “imported.” Who wants to buy an anti-scab shirt from a scab company?
You’re right Fain definitely crushed it.
Peaceful protestors met with assault…aiy…I had not heard this! Thank you for writing this article.
I watched most of the DNC gala. Some parts were touching & most points were welccomed.
And I’m all for girl power. But what I am not for is taking away choices & votes. The DNC was supposed to be the moral party & now the behavior is not unlike the orange felon.
Sea Biscuit:
https://arabellasmith.substack.com/p/sea-biscuit-the-race-is-not-over?r=100zv1&triedRedirect=true
"I am not a fan of the Democratic Party beating down Trump for being a felon, given the disparate treatment of low income people and people of color in the criminal justice system."
*** *** ***
I disagree.
People often say that the US-American criminal justice system has two tiers. This is inaccurate. There are three tiers.
At the bottom, there are the poor: people who cannot afford to pay bail and who cannot afford to wait in jail for their trial. So they offer a plea bargain, declaring themselves "guilty" in exchange for a reduced sentence. This imposes the permanent blight of a felony conviction upon their records and reduces their chance of economic advancement for the rest of their lives. This is how our criminal justice system deals with the poor.
In the middle, there is the middle class. These are people who might be able to afford bail and might be able to miss some work and still keep their jobs and their homes. For this middle group, our criminal justice system is capable of dealing justice, and it often does.
At the top, there are the rich, including but not limited to Donald Trump. These are people who can easily pay for their bail many times over. These people are not even inconvenienced by delayed justice, because putting off justice is only another business expense. All that they have to do is hire lawyers who dream up a new excuse every week for why the trial cannot proceed. Each such excuse must be considered separately and at length, so that even if the request for a delay has no merit, the necessity of considering the request unavoidably causes a delay. And if, in the end, a wealthy defendant finally goes to trial and is found guilty, they can always appeal. And the wealthy have stacked the US Supreme Court with plutocrats who are happy to offer favors in exchange for rides on private jets.
When we say that the US-American criminal justice system has only two tiers, we imply that there is no middle tier. We also imply that either the bottom tier or the top tier must be okay. But this is wrong. Neither the bottom tier nor the top tier is okay. Both tiers are very much not okay. Only the middle tier comes close to being right.
And pretending that the middle tier does not exist puts us in the company of extreme libertarians who would rather have no public criminal justice system at all, but who would rather privatize it by giving everybody a handgun and empowering everybody to be their own judge, jury, and executioner. This is not the company that I would like to keep. On the other hand, if we want to impose some reasonable rules on the use of firearms, how are we going to enforce these rules without a fair and functioning public criminal justice system?
So we can and should talk about BOTH the top tier AND the bottom tier of the US criminal justice system, and we should say that they are BOTH WRONG, and we should not neglect the middle tier but EXPAND it by correcting the injustices of the top and bottom tiers. I think we can do this; we can walk and chew gum at the same time, and we can understand the the US criminal justice system is both too hard on the poor and too soft on the rich at the same time.
Rfk jr is the ONLY one talking about the haves & the have-nots, solutions to our incarceration issues, addiction….
https://www.kennedy24.com/incarceration-video
Recovering America (Rfk jr overcame addiction, himself (LONG vid):
https://www.kennedy24.com/recovering-america-film
We send money overseas, but ignore our problems in America. It’s wrong. It is also wrong what the DNC is doing to BLOCK BALLOTS & keep Rfk jr out of the running. They accuse Trump & do the same.
Just a few comments about your takeaways from the DNC Day1:
First, I cannot agree with you regarding AOC's speech. For me it represented a total, final betrayal of the very principles she touted at the beginning of her time in Congress. She has made a decision, a calculation, and for her the best way to advance her career is acceptance and approval from the Democratic elite. Remember Rashida Tlaib, defiantly wearing her keffiyah in Congress? She was joined only by Cori Bush and Summer Lee. For her (incredibly courageous) presence at Netanyahu's shameful speech to Congress, Rashida was entirely alone. Where was AOC?
Second, it needs to be remembered that Kamala has been an active participant in Biden's administration, and has given every indication that she will continue all of Biden's policies. That makes it a truly Biden/Harris genocide. I don't see much to celebrate in this new girlboss energy. She's a cop, and is responsible for the incarceration of thousands of Black men in California....on weed charges. That's who she is.
Good discussion. So much of the Biden/Harris I do not want continued. One of many videos re incarceration & plans to change the pattern. (several vids on America’s addiction problem, as well).
https://www.kennedy24.com/incarceration-video
All during Covid & continuing, our free speech being thwarted:
Biden/Harris censoring, no good.
Doctor sues Biden & wins:
https://nypost.com/2023/09/20/how-dr-jay-bhattacharya-beat-biden-administration-censorship
Supreme Court allows White House to press social media companies to remove disinformation
https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/26/politics/social-media-disinformation-supreme-court-ruling/index.html
And American’s addition to Wars:
https://www.kennedy24.com/war-addiction-video
I think this is what Diana Bhutto was saying when she said that nothing Israel ever did justified the attacks on Oct 7th and everything Israel has done since then is justified by Oct 7th.
Just one example- you say you hate Netanyahu, his deals are purposely made so that he can say Hamas rejected it, he's continuing the war to avoid his own criminal charges. We keep hearing that what he's doing is NOT safe for Israel. So does that legitimatize an attack on ALL Israel. Because as you say, Hamas is only working in their own greed, thus the starving, killing of innocent Gazans is warranted??? There is no scenario where collective punishment is valid. And that's the problem.
October 7 was a false flag get a grip mention Yahoo and Putin, our partners in the world’s greatest ask of terror at the moment. They both should be somewhere deep deep deep under the Hague.
Qasim, I also want the war to stop. But Hamas was/is getting weapons and other supplies of war through the Egyptian border in tunnels. This is the sticking point for Netanyahu and I KNOW he is horrible and I wish this current war would end. I have hated Netanyahu far before I converted to Judaism and had Jewish children. I think he is the opposite of what will make Israel and Palestine safe and peaceful.
BUT Hamas will use those tunnels under Rafah to import more rockets and bombs and machine guns and paraglides.
Mexican cartels use the US/Mexican border to import and export drugs and guns. We are constantly fighting that.
If Mexican drug lords started using rockets to bomb US border towns—we would not allow it! We would go on absolute shut down and an aggressive campaign to stop them. Would it work? Probably not. But how else would we defend our people?
I know you wish for peace for all people in the region—there is no other humane viewpoint.
It just seems so much more complicated than this inefficient and frankly insulting ceasefire deal. Israel isn’t getting all of the hostages back. They have to allow Hamas to rearm themselves.
Border skirmishes pre-10/7 were awful. Just like at the US Southern border. But Hamas upped the ante. Hamas was okay with Palestinian civilian deaths and Hamas will not give up their insane martyrdom that is causing Palestinians to lose their lives.
And none of the Hamas leaders are even in Gaza! They’re millionaires in their Qatari penthouses.
So when pro-Palestinian supports say “stop arming Netanyahu” well yes. I wish Israelis had a way to get him out of power the same way I wish we could have gotten George Bush out of power. But they don’t.
And Palestinians don’t have a way to get Hamas out of power for different reasons.
I’m just upset because the regime in Iran is winning their war of hegemony over the region and we are squabbling over whether Israel should exist or not (it should. The same way the US should.)
I guess there will be resistance to the illegal occupation of Palestine for as long as that occupation continues.
And your characterization of Hamas is not based in reality. The newly-appointed head of Hamas is in Gaza and has been from the beginning. And "insane"? Really? Palestinians have been attempting to use political means for 50 years. The (entirely democratic) election of Hamas was born of exactly this frustration. And it's worth remembering that for years, right up to October 7th, Netanyahu and the Israeli government funneled billions of dollars to Hamas through Qatar. The strategy was to divide the Palestinian people so there could never be a unified front with the PA (the PA who are completely bought off and who do not serve the Palestinian cause).
By the way, Ms Simon, I don't know anything about you, except that for whatever reasons, you converted to Judaism. I am 74, and I was born and reared Jewish. I eventually quit, because 1) there's no such thing as "god," so I don't have the entry criterion to be part of any religion, nor do I wish to be, 2) Jews have made a millennia-long career out of being victims, and I don't feel like a victim, nor do I want to feel like one, and 3) they're terrible neighbors in the Middle East, and I don't want to be associated with terrible neighbors.
Carter negotiated peace between the Israelis and the Egyptians, and Clinton negotiated peace between the Israelis and the PLO. The Palestinians did not have any gripe with the Israelis (except the gripe the Israelis caused), and it would have been easy, absent Netanyahu, to negotiate peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians, or it wouldn't have been necessary, because they could already have lived together in peace. Except the Israelis got greedy, and starting poaching Palestinian land, with illegal settlements, and the settlers attacked Palestinians, and no Israeli government ever stopped them. So maybe someone would have had to step in.
But we shouldn't be talking about planning ceasefire talks. Every day and every hour and every minute that someone doesn't do something results in more entirely innocent dead people. And plenty more to come, as they starve, and have medical problems for which treatment is unavailable.
Ms Simon, you have to consider why 10/7 happened. You have to consider the whole context. If Hamas (originally funded by Netanyahu!) is getting weaponry from Egypt or anyone else, don't they need it? Entirely innocent Palestinians, aid workers, and journalists are under continuing violent attack. You don't see Hamas' position as defensive?
It wasn't just "border skirmishes." Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have been subjected to incessant attack, and their land is being taken from them. They're being arrested and mistreated without charges or suspicion.
If you want to call 10/7 "up[ping] the ante," so be it. But what were their options? They didn't get protection from the Israelis, the UN, or us. And they still aren't.
Netanyahu's war to annihilate all Palestinians, and take their land, is his way of staying in power. Precisely, as you say, as was the case with W. He would never have gotten re-elected, except Cheney invented a war against Iraq, and the American people were reluctant to change administrations in a war.
Hardly anyone would complain about the existence of Israel if it was a good neighbor. It is not, and it has more or less never been. Many Palestinians, and Hamas brass, have said that Palestinians had no problem with Jews. They had no problem with the concept of Israel. Their problem was with a country that was poaching their land and attacking them. You wouldn't have a problem with people who did that here? This is an important part of the Republican fantasy: that immigrants will take what belongs to Americans, and will commit crimes. No one would want that. It's just that it's not true in this country, but it is true in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
10/7 was Gaza’s Warsaw Ghetto uprising.
I hope you know how ridiculous you are.
I find it so good that you are speaking out re the need to try again for peace.
Altho, Rfk jr has said he has stood with Israle, his resounding talk is stopping the endless wars.
https://www.kennedy24.com/forever-wars-video
Zara, I stand with Israel, too, as long as they enjoy the country that was given to them, and leave everyone else alone. There was antipathy against them decades ago, but that was resolved a long time ago.
I think the biggest issue now, apart from Netanyahu's efforts to divide and conquer Arabs/Muslims, and Israel's relentless efforts to gain the whole of Palestine, "from the River to the Sea," is that Netanyahu is trying to distract everyone, to keep his ass out of the slammer. But he's even gotten increasing numbers of Israelis opposed to him.
At the end of last November, there was a ceasefire, and it resulted in Israel getting back half the hostages taken by Hamas. If Netanyahu cared about Israelis, and the hostages, and had any brains, he would have extended the ceasefire, and gotten back all of the hostages. If he was a decent human being, he would have dismantled illegal settlements, and established peace between the Jews in Israel and the Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. But he's not.
Your discussions are thougtful & well spoken. I do appreciate. And I agree with all of your points. Thank you.
By the way, Zara, when Palestine was chosen for the Israelis, it was not barren. There were Palestinians -- mostly, I think, nomads -- there, and 1M of them were displaced to create Israel out of the middle of Palestine. Those Palestinians were given the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and it's not my memory or awareness that they protested. If I'm wrong, I apologize for the error. This all could have worked out differently. Or some other area could have been chosen for the home of the Jews. Other areas under consideration were mostly in Africa, but under heavy lobbying from Theodor Hertzl, part of Palestine was chosen.
Arabs are 1/5 of the population of Israel. One is a Supreme Court Justice. There are a significant population of Christians. People were mixed. There was a partition. There was movement, like with the Indian/Pakistan partition. Then six Arabs armies invaded to complete the genocide their ally Hitler had begun. They lost. Thankfully.
The only Jewish people in Gaza are dead, hostages, or military personnel trying to end Hamas and get the hostages back. Hamas is a autocratic theocratic nightmare of a state. Being LGBT is a death penalty offense.
There was peace Oct 6th.
Hamas openly repeatedly supports genocidal murder of all the people in Israel.
There is apartheid - Jews were expelled or murdered all across the Middle East.
Here is Gaza,
https://x.com/i/status/1728727879952023906
oh it was was so terrible Hamas was *forced* to commit mass rape, slaughter a music festival, burn two entire towns which were predominantly populated by peace activists,
https://x.com/aziz0nomics/status/1762079998314209298
and take hundreds of innocent hostages. That they were somehow forced to murder.
https://x.com/HenMazzig/status/1824864168643809672
It’s never black & white, is it? There are layers & nuances, but America loves to pick sides & the war hawks & war machines march on. Passions are aflame, children & women & unspeakable atrocities continue. We need solutions for peace.