@hannu_ikonen@Lazarou Netanyahu isn't trying to get Trump elected. He's trying to get himself reelected. A few months ago, when the US had its "does Biden have dementia?" news cycle, Bibi told a journalist that in his conversations with Biden, Biden was coherent and not at all demented. He has bigger fish to fry now than which US president treats him like the imp that he is, like whether he's going to go to prison for corruption or not.
@Alon@hannu_ikonen@Lazarou It’s kind of frustrating how even Americans who are against the American political establishment or even America as a concept think that what’s happening in Israel, or in any country they are taking an interest in, is All About America.
@MisuseCase@hannu_ikonen@Lazarou So, Bibi absolutely was trying to help the Republicans in the 2010s. It's just, right now he has other priorities, i.e. deflecting responsibility for the failure of the war to eliminate Hamas and for the failure of the state to prevent Hamas from getting in on 7.10. Ben Gvir never cared either way about US politics; he just wants to do an ethnic cleansing and is frustrated nobody lets him.
@Alon@MisuseCase@hannu_ikonen@Lazarou Ben Gvir was quoted as of a few weeks ago by the Wall Street Journal saying he wants Trump elected so he has a free hand to wipe out Gaza complaining that Biden was helping Gaza too much.
@franktaber@MisuseCase@hannu_ikonen@Lazarou He probably wants that privately, but doesn't have the same US ties that Netanyahu has. So he doesn't know (or care) how to govern accordingly, whereas Netanyahu spoke in Congress behind Obama's back, set hasbara as a right-wing endeavor, and brought Reaganism and Federalist Society-style politicization of the judiciary to Israel. Likud lackeys complain about wokism; Otzma and Religious Zionism lackeys are butts of Isaac Chotiner interviews.
@Alon@hannu_ikonen@Lazarou At this point though Biden should be worried about Netanyahu getting us into a war with Iran. I know a lot of leftists have insisted that Biden wants to start a war with Iran but he clearly doesn’t. Netanyahu either does want to start one or is enough of a loose cannon that he’ll fuck around and start one.
@MisuseCase@hannu_ikonen@Lazarou Netanyahu, like MbS, is desperate for someone else to start a war with Iran. Escalations that may get Iran to start one, maybe? But the man is in his element when he says "Iran is exactly like Nazi Germany and we also can't do anything to them unless the International Leftist Conspiracy allows us," complete with the occasional anti-Soros line.
@Alon@hannu_ikonen@Lazarou Even if he doesn’t intend to start one, things like dropping bombs on the Iranian consulate in Syria, doing air strikes in Lebanon, etc. create severe risk of a panic/misunderstanding that will start a war.
Also he, his cabinet, the IDF, etc. have shown a real tendency to push the envelope, what with attacking the consulate and deliberately hitting a WCK convoy in 24 hours.
@MisuseCase@hannu_ikonen@Lazarou I doubt the consulate and the WCK convoy are related? The consulate was a high-level strategic decision to assassinate an important IRGC commander. The convoy was more like "intel told them there was an important Hamasnik there, nobody questioned the intel despite repeated failures, they kept targeting the convoy, the Hamasnik wasn't there." It was an operational and not strategic decision.
@Alon@hannu_ikonen@Lazarou I don’t think they are related to each other except in the sense of Israel’s government growing increasingly unhinged as it feels the need to project what it thinks is strength (for an internal audience if not for anyone else) and not stopping to think “what if this further erodes international support that we need? What if it has bad medium-to-long-term-consequences?”
@MisuseCase@hannu_ikonen@Lazarou I don't think the decision on the convoy was made by the government, is the point. It was made probably by a senior officer, maybe a brigadier-general, maybe not even. The reason the story hits is not just who was killed but also what it means about IDF rules of engagement, same thing as when the IDF killed three hostages who managed to escape Hamas in December.
I'll concede its not THE intent, nor an overarching goal, and I agree it has way more to do with the domestic situation.
I stand by it being strong man brinksmanship however -- Netanyahu's general actions being to coninuously put pressure on all of the leverage points at his disposal so as to evade justice, and an intermediate objective in such is to put the US in an unwinnable situation, one that WILL cost Biden the election at this current rate.
I'll defer to those with better understanding but the math is the same -- Biden needs to stop arming this guy.
@hannu_ikonen@Lazarou Why do you think it's going to cost Biden the election? In theory, war in the news favors the Republicans, but Trump's so incoherent about it that it doesn't have this effect in practice. The election polls right now are turning more on the economy and the vibes about the economy than anything else.
@Alon@Lazarou Why do you think Generation Z are going to positively pull levers for Biden if their government funds are feeding the Israeli war machine? The horse has left the barn. Evidence of genocide is everywhere.
Thats a fundamental misunderstanding of agency & cognitive psychology if you think Biden wins without young voters.
@hannu_ikonen@Lazarou Because the sort of people with strongly pro-Palestine views in the US are low-frequency voters no matter what happens. Young voters, as opposed to young non-voters, do support Biden; in early-war polls, young respondents, voters and non-voters, had the highest approval rate for Biden on the war (about even; old respondents, who are mostly Republicans, disapproved, because he's a Democrat and they disapprove of everything he does).
Yep. It seems to me that #Netanyahu is actively promoting the #Trump campaign. If his fellow psycho wins then the comb-over mass murderer can really get to work.
I don't get why #Biden and the #Democrats can't take action and suspend military and intelligence cooperation with #israel.
After all, #likudnik and further right Jews in America are going to vote Republican - whatever happens. What have the Dems got to loose?
@Lazarou I don't care what Blinken says unless it's that the US is going to stop sending weapons and money to Israel until they stop indiscriminately murdering people
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