Bernie is a Zionist. What are you talking about? Yes, he eventually called for a ceasefire (as late as Dec. 10 he refused to call for a permanent ceasefire), but he’s never said anything remotely anti-Zionist. He’s repeatedly declared Israel’s right to defend it’s settler-colonial apartheid self.
He’s also campaigning for Biden while Biden actively ships 2,000 lb bombs to Israel to use in Gaza.
Bernie isn’t progressive. He’s betrayed the people and children of Gaza, supporting one of the chief defenders and supporters of their genocide.
During a presidential debate in the same year in Atlanta, Sanders embarked on another contradiction: “It is no longer good enough for us to be pro-Israel, I am pro-Israel, but we must treat the Palestinians with the dignity they deserve.” Being pro-Israel is being pro-colonialism, for the simple reason that Israel is a colonial enterprise that thrives upon the dispossession of the Palestinian people.
It’s so easy to forget that the colonial empires of France, UK, US, etc. live on to this day. In The Wretched of the Earth, psychiatrist Frantz Fanon recounts treating a French policeman in Algeria during the Algerian fight for independence from French colonial rule circa 1962:
“Sometimes,” he went on to explain, "you feel like telling them that if they had any consideration for us, they’d cough up and not force us to spend hours on end squeezing the information out of them word by word. But you might as well talk to the wall. Every question gets the answer: ‘I don’t know.’ Even when we ask for their names. If we ask them where they live, they answer, ‘I don’t know.’ So of course we had to give them the works. But they scream too much. At first it made me laugh. But then it began to unnerve me. Today I can tell just which stage the interrogation has reached by the sound of the screams. The guy who has been punched twice and given a blow behind the ear has a certain way of talking, screaming, and saying that he is innocent. After he has been hanging by his wrists for two hours, his voice changes. After the bathtub, a different voice. And so on. But it’s after the electricity that it becomes unbearable. You’d think he was going to die at any moment. Of course there are those who don’t scream: those are the hardliners. But they imagine we are going to kill them immediately. But we’re not interested in killing them. What we want is information. We first try and get them to scream, and sooner or later they give in. That’s already a victory. Then we continue. Mind you, we’d prefer not to. But they don’t make things easy for us. Now I can hear those screams even at home. Especially the screams of the ones who died at the police headquarters.
The United States has quietly approved and delivered more than 100 separate foreign military sales to Israel since the Gaza war began Oct. 7, amounting to thousands of precision-guided munitions, small-diameter bombs, bunker busters, small arms and other lethal aid, U.S. officials told members of Congress in a recent classified briefing.
Only two approved foreign military sales to Israel have been made public since the start of conflict: $106 million worth of tank ammunition and $147.5 million of components needed to make 155 mm shells. Those sales invited public scrutiny because the Biden administration bypassed Congress to approve the packages by invoking an emergency authority.
But in the case of the 100 other transactions, known in government-speak as Foreign Military Sales or FMS, the weapons transfers were processed without any public debate because each fell under a specific dollar amount that requires the executive branch to individually notify Congress,** **according to U.S. officials and lawmakers who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive military matter.
There are lots of Palestinian Americans calling on people to Abandon Biden. One token Palestinian American on Lemmy who disagrees isn’t particularly persuasive.
“If it came down to Trump and Joe Biden, I will vote for Trump. Because it doesn’t get worse than Joe Biden,” a man named Salah told me. His friend, Amad, added, “Biden was supposed to be the peacemaker. The comfort-maker. Instead, he became accessory to the biggest genocide in modern history.”
…
“Imagine thinking it’s a good argument to say to a community that has lost 30,000 people, ‘Watch out for the guy that’s going to ban you.’ You’re really asking me whether I’m going to take a ban or a genocide? I’ll take a ban,” Zahr told me.
“I mean, we’ve literally seen our families and our people being thrown into mass graves. Babies blown to bits. It’s not some far-off thing to us,” he said. “It’s been a struggle to declare our own humanity while mourning for our people being massacred.”
…
The truth is Ahmed was one of the only Arabs I could find in Dearborn who openly admitted they actually planned to vote for Biden in November.
Why is Biden always infantilized by his apologists? As if he was completely impotent. He is the president of the United States. In our system, that gives him extraordinary power. He can go to all out war with any country on Earth for 60 days before getting any kind of permission from Congress. If the presidency is such a weak office, why are you so worked up about the prospect of Trump being president? Apparently he’ll need permission from Congress before he adjusts his tie.
Biden does not need an act of congress to not treat asylum-seekers like shit. That is a deliberate choice of his administration. Just like it was a deliberate choice to split up arms shipments to Israel into 100 seperate lots so he didn’t have to report them to Congress.
In response to the recent escalation, the Biden administration apparently has doubled down on support to the coalition, announcing the sale of additional fighter aircraft to the UAE. Biden said the administration is considering redesignating the Houthis a “Foreign Terrorist Organization.” Biden had reversed this designation, imposed in the waning days of the Trump administration and opposed by humanitarian and human rights groups on the grounds that it threatens humanitarian aid on which millions of Yemenis rely to survive.
In addition to potentially violating U.S. law, continuing arms sales to the coalition puts the U.S. at risk of complicity in possible war crimes. The sales also fly in the face of justice and accountability for previous violations given the coalition’s dreadfully flawed investigations of its own strikes.
Trump on Biden’s continued candidacy: ‘I doubt he will even be running’ (www.thehill.com)
Israel Threatens 'Severe Consequences' for Nations Who Recognize Palestine (www.commondreams.org)
Macron arrives in New Caledonia amid calls for France to drop voting changes (www.theguardian.com)
Visit by president intended to quell serious unrest over plans in Paris to expand voting eligibility to include more French nationals...
Someone stop the ride, I want to get off (midwest.social)
Biden administration canceling student loans for another 160,000 borrowers (apnews.com)
The Biden administration is canceling student loans for another 160,000 borrowers through a combination of existing programs....
This is a little believable... (lemmy.world)