Joe Biden on Benjamin Netanyahu's Gaza war: ‘Israel starting to lose support’

livus, 5 months ago

Guess Biden looked outside his bubble for 2 seconds.

Benjamin Netanyahu also pointed out that the US and Israel differ about what might follow the Gaza war as Tel Aviv will not back return of the Western-backed Palestinian Authority under President Mahmoud Abbas to Gaza. Gaza "will be neither Hamas-stan nor 'Fatah-stan'", he said

That's an interesting choice of language. The areas that Black South Africans were forced to live in during Apartheid were called Bantu-stans.

ripcord, 5 months ago

The "Stan" is a reference to place names in Urdu / Persian commonly ending in "stan", meaning "land". Pakistan, Turkmenistan, etc. Don't need to reach as far as South Africa.

livus, 5 months ago

@ripcord yeah I know, it's from the Persian and common in Central Asia, meaning place of or homeland. This is also why it was used (with a derogatary implication) in South Africa.

I still find it interesting that Netanyahu is using it to refer to parts of Palestine. Chosen for the same reasons.

As the saying goes, history may not repeat, but it does rhyme.

admiralteal, 5 months ago

It's also a weird point to make even ignoring the well-observed dogwhistle. I doubt the Palestinians would back the Palestinian Authority either. Hamas came to power because that organization, and the PLO before, were not effective at protecting the interests of the people. Israel violated diplomatic agreements made with and encroached against the PA/PLO-led Palestine, so the people voted them out (plus or minus an intifada or two). The Palestinians old enough to remember the government before Hamas hardly hearken back to it as the good old days.

What comes next needs to be immense support of Palestine from Israel. Israel will need to pour support towards Gaza and the West Bank as though they were their own citizens. They need to provide huge short-term security and even huger and longer-term food and medical aid, along with sincere experts there to help Palestine rebuild both social and physical infrastructure. They will need to commit to that aid until Palestine becomes a functional, independent state. If they do not, there will just keep being another Hamas, continuing violence, endless retaliation... until there's no more Palestinians left to bomb.

The Bibi government won't do it, either. Israelis who want an end to the cycle of violence have a moral imperative to vote the religious fundamentalists out of their own state, or else they need to accept they are complicit with the religious fundamentalists running their neighbor's.

NoneOfUrBusiness, 5 months ago

What comes next needs to be immense support of Palestine from Israel.

Starting with lifting the blockade. Not very surprisingly, Gaza wasn't always the aid-dependent shithole it is today, so until it's out of that state nothing can change. Unfortunately, Israel's policy in Gaza right now is "no development, no progress, no humanitarian crisis".

Ganondorf, 5 months ago

lol Didn't some of the released hostages say Israel killed some of them due to their indiscriminate bombing of civilians?

Corkyskog, 5 months ago

The IDF is also accidentally fraggin their own and they won’t even release a report because it would “cause instability within Israel” so yeah… that’s not good either. Sorry mama, we won’t say how he died, just know it was with honor…

snooggums, 5 months ago

The IDF straight up murdered a Reuter's journalist, they don't give a shit about innocence.

AngrilyEatingMuffins, 5 months ago

This dude is so fucking two faced. Pledges undying support as a Zionist one day, then says this the next. Fucking genocidal asshole trying to play both sides.

Corkyskog, 5 months ago

He has always been a zionist. Genocide might finally not being sitting well anymore. Remember the US was getting their Intel(propoganda) straight from IDF…

BraveSirZaphod, 5 months ago

Well, Zionism is simply the belief that a state of Israel has the right to exist in some fashion, not that it necessarily must have the maximal possible borders and be completely devoid of Arabs.

There is zero contradiction between supporting Zionism and supporting Palestinian statehood of some kind, unless you think that the only just solution is the forced elimination of all Jews from the area.

Uranium3006, 5 months ago

In pratice though, they're now the same thing. We've been seeing warning signs of genocide for decades now and nothing was done. Rhetoric Joe us doesn't sit right when the pile of dead bodies continues to grow rapidly

NoneOfUrBusiness, 5 months ago

unless you think that the only just solution is the forced elimination of all Jews from the area.

No? One state for everyone is and has always been a viable solution.

BraveSirZaphod, 5 months ago

Not if you actually ask Israeli Arabs and Jews, with 17% of Israeli Arabs supporting, compared to 46% for a two-state solution. Amongst Jews, it's 10% for a liberal single state and 35% for two states (and disturbingly, 30% for a single Jew-privilged state, which I would actually call apartheid)

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/israeli-polls-regarding-peace-with-the-palestinians

Regardless, a single liberal state is desired by essentially no one.

AngrilyEatingMuffins, 5 months ago

That’s not even what political zionism much less Zionism means.