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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Donald Trump has said that Palestinians have “no alternative” but to leave Gaza due to the devastation left by Israel’s war on Hamas, in effect endorsing ethnic cleansing of the territory over the opposition of Palestinians and the neighbouring countries.
Speaking as he prepared to host Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, on Tuesday, Trump repeated the suggestion that Gaza’s population should be relocated to Jordan and Egypt – something both countries have firmly rejected.
Trump claimed Palestinians would “love to leave Gaza”, telling reporters: “I would think that they would be thrilled.”
Put the rhetoric aside, and the answer is yes. Israel stole a lot of land from Palestinians under both Democratic and Republican presidents and kept them under an oppressive apartheid system depriving them of their rights. Both parties vetoed UN resolutions to stop or even condemn the practice.
The Israeli government proposed annexing the West Bank in violation of international law, and while one president said he disagreed with the idea, he said he’d back Israel if they did. The other one said he’d support the idea and back Israel either way. Putting aside the rhetoric or intentions, the action is the same. That’s why Palestinians aren’t cheering when one party wins over another in US elections, because they saw what happened when republicans or democrats won; their situation didn’t change. If you feel otherwise, go visit and talk to them like I did.
It was a rhetorical question. The answer is demonstrably no.
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Alright. So let’s assume for the moment that you’re right, and both parties would do exactly the same thing regarding Palestine. Just for the sake of argument.
Then they’re still not the same.
Would Kamala have handed entire departments of the U.S. government over to Musk? Would Kamala have signed a bazillion EO’s, taking away people’s rights? Would Kamala send thousands of people to Guantanamo? Would she have allowed ICE to raid schools or hospitals? Would she be systematically erasing transgender people from public life? Would Kamala be scrubbing databases and removing information (CDC for example), or making people waste time to delete certain terms from every database and website because of “woke” or “DEI”? Would Kamala have taken the U.S. out of the WHO? Or the Paris Agreement? Would Kamala be threatening to annex Greenland? Or start trade wars with allies? Or do petty shit like removing the option for regular Americans to file taxes for free online? Or pardon 1500+ violent idiots, at least 4 of whom have already been commiting new (and running from old) crimes? Would she install an antivaxer, who also promotes raw milk, to Health and Human Services? Or abolish the Department of Education?
Would she, would she, would she?
They. are. not. the. same.
And you repeating the same tired bullshit over and over and over will not suddenly make it true. You can try to convince yourself that what you did was the morally right thing, but in your own words: put aside the rhetoric and intentions. The consequences are on you.
But anyway, we both know that Kamala would not be the same regarding Gaza. Never would she have said she wants to “take over Gaza” and “own it” and to turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East” to create “thousands of jobs.” She would never have proposed the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think she would have done anything to actually help Palestinians, aside from some symbolic stuff or vague threats she will never act on. Somehow Americans seem to just love Israel, whatever horrific shit they pull, they’ll always side with Israel.
But “both sides are the same” is a blatant fucking lie.
This is a disingenuous argument. Republicans and Democrats are not the same EXCEPT ON PALESTINE. You’re beating a strawman.
The rest of it is arguments over rhetoric. Put the comments by Trump aside; in actuality if Netanyahu annexed West Bank or mass deported Gazans, Kamala and Trump would both continue to support Netanyahu financially and militarily even if they had different press releases ranging from concern to praise. Kamala refused to promise to enforce the Leahy Law and Trump isn’t either.
It’s not a strawman, it’s the truth.
Trump is orders of magnitude worse regarding pretty much everything, so even if Kamala is ‘the same’ on Palestine, all the other stuff would still be better with her in stead of Trump. If you truly believe they are the same regarding Palestine, then they basically cancel each other out, right? Then you should look at everything else and it’s quite obvious they are not the same at all.
Look, I don’t want to be the person who needs to boil things down to simple math. But don’t you think that “Fuck Palestine” is better than “Fuck Palestine. And transgender people. And women. And the environment. And the Department of Education. And migrants, and and and”?
Tell me, how is one not worse than the other?
You’re still strawmanning, because it’s no secret that Harris was better than Trump on literally every issue except Palestine. I admitted it above and you gloss over that so you can repeat the same thing as if you’re not listening. Trump is doing all the horrible things he promised he would do. You’re trying to blame me for this even though I wanted Trump to lose too. Peace.
No, what I am trying to point out is that all the people who kept repeating the “both sides”-bullshit actually HELPED Trump win. Repeat something often enough and idiots will believe it. I have no actual statistics about this, but I wonder, how many people eventually stayed home because they thought both sides are the same and voting wouldn’t matter anyway? How many people just sorta protest-voted Trump because they believed it wouldn’t make a difference anyway? How many people actually switched to third party voting because they initially wanted to, and it wouldn’t make a difference anyway?
Perpetuating this idea that Kamala was the same helped Trump win. It was repeated by certain people ad nauseam how Trump and Kamala were the same. How you shouldn’t vote for democrats because it would be voting for genocide. If they were the same, you’d end up with genocide either way, so then vote for the one who’s better on every other topic, no? But no, that’s not what they said. It was an intentional campaign to make people not vote for Kamala, either by staying home or voting Trump. Every single thread was full of “both sides”-trolls and 99% of those have mysteriously disappeared since Trump won. I mean, it’s logical, their work was done, right?