Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich endorsed President-elect Donald Trump’s victory, stating it’s “time” to extend full Israeli sovereignty over the occupied West Bank.
This comes as Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu highlighted his alignment with Trump on the “Iranian threat.”
Tensions in Gaza and Lebanon have escalated following recent Israeli airstrikes, with regional leaders gathering in Riyadh to address Israeli actions.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog is set to meet President Biden, though Biden’s influence on Israel may be limited following Trump’s win.
Hamas is all but defeated, Hezbollah is also on their back foot, and even the model caliphate, Iran, has proven to be almost completely ineffective against Israel's defense system. Europe will make empty gestures about war crimes via the toothless ICC, and America is now totally controlled by the Republicans who never wanted a two-state peace process in the first place.
Israel has never in their short history had a better opportunity to go for the power play and deal with the Palestinians however they please, and under Trump we can expect that they won't get even a little bit of push back from the US, regardless of how harsh and violently they want to play it.
I expect a fucking bloodbath and a full annexation of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and possibly parts of southern Lebanon.
But hey, the American people have spoken, and I guess that's what they wanted.
Anyone who abstained on grounds of Harris's position on Gaza in my view have blood on their hands in what will not only assuredly he worse for Palestinians under Trump, but also the ongoing attempted genocide in Ukraine by Putin.
They may as well be Trump voters to me and I want nothing to do with them.
Worse than Trump voters actually. The vast majority of Trump voters have convinced themselves that what they're doing is good, actually, and that the democrats are evil whereas the people who abstained from voting for Harris literally had a choice of a candidate that campaigned on making their number one issue worse, and one that at least attempted to talk about peace deals and decided to just have no impact whatsoever, condemning hundreds of thousands plus to certain death. They claim to be on the side of ending human suffering when in actuality, they're little piss babies that are upset that their 10% of the population doesn't have complete and total control.
People are just getting the consequences of their actions or inaction. My empathy bucket for all of this has broken and I don’t plan on fixing it anymore either.
I remember commenting a couple months back on one of those "Arab-Americans not voting for Harris" posts, something along the lines of "it's your vote, but I think that you're going to find that you'd rather have Harris than Trump" and listing some past policy moves like the embassy in Jerusalem, and then someone downvoting and responding something along the lines of "identical candidates".
And I think you will find that there has been no material difference in what "Israel" is actually doing. They've been ramping up occupation and violence in the West Bank for months, going in exactly this direction already. They murdered an American activist in the West Bank as part of this and swept it under the rug using the pretense of an "investigation", remember? The West Bank is already occupied, it is already split into isolated districts, travel is already highly restricted, there are racist curfews for those who must commute to work in Israel, forced through several checkpoints and fearing jail for any delays, giving themselves 3 hour buffers for travel tine, and their government is compradors that work with the IOF to arrest and jail them and out down resistance movements.
The main difference between Dems and GOP on Israel is that Dems feign empathy and concern while Republicans are openly racist. But materially the outcomes are actually very similar, with Dems often being worse because they can more effectively count on your lack of dissent and in coordinating with Europe.
You might remember that there has been a US-backed genocide in Gaza for over a year, under a Dem, and they were willing to lose the election rather than stop supporting genocide.
I remember a couple months back when Kamala Harris swapped in for Joe Biden and her popularity peaked through the fucking roof when people thought she was going to stop the genocide.
Then Kamala said she was going to continue the genocide and kicked Palestinians out of the DNC.
I really hated all the moaning about people calling out that both are shitty options. The Overton window is so far to the right. Like, yeah Harris is clearly the better option but neither represent any positive moves forward.
Oh both can be true, but in this case they are not.
There has always been valid reason to give arms to Israel, and there continues to be today. If you think that alone amounts to "supporting genocide" you're about to be pretty upset when you watch the actual genocide that unfolds in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank over the next 4-8 years. Trump and Netanyahu are about to go scorched earth on Palestine like never in the history of the ~80 year war.
Bernie fuckin' Sanders could be POTUS today and he'd still send weapons to Israel, because they are our main ally in the region who also happens to under near-constant threats and attacks from multiple angles. The absolute best we can reasonably ask for is that weapons are sent on a conditional basis, but nobody wants to talk about that reality.
The Harris campaign made the decision to not break from Biden on Israel, at the cost of a +6 points gain. That's the fault of the campaign's calculations to ignore those voters, take them for granted, and instead run to the right with Liz Cheney and having the most lethal Military.
I voted for Harris and told others to do the same. It's still on the campaign. Blaming voters is just sowing division when we need unity and solidarity to fight against Fascism.
Quote
Our first matchup tested a Democrat and a Republican who “both agree with Israel’s current approach to the conflict in Gaza”. In this case, the generic candidates tied 44–44. The second matchup saw the same Republican facing a Democrat supporting “an immediate ceasefire and a halt of military aid and arms sales to Israel”. Interestingly, the Democrat led 49–43, with Independents and 2020 non-voters driving the bulk of this shift.
In Pennsylvania, 34% of respondents said they would be more likely to vote for the Democratic nominee if the nominee vowed to withhold weapons to Israel, compared to 7% who said they would be less likely. The rest said it would make no difference. In Arizona, 35% said they’d be more likely, while 5% would be less likely. And in Georgia, 39% said they’d be more likely, also compared to 5% who would be less likely.
Majorities of Democrats (67%) and Independents (55%) believe the US should either end support for Israel’s war effort or make that support conditional on a ceasefire. Only 8% of Democrats but 42% of Republicans think the US must support Israel unconditionally.
Republicans and Independents most often point to immigration as one of Biden’s top foreign policy failures. Democrats most often select the US response to the war in Gaza.
There's no one issue that, independently, could have change the outcome that no other could have as well. Blaming it on just one thing is just as ignorant as blaming it just on voters.
It's as much on the Harris campaign as the American people who didn't fucking show up, despite all the evidence that it's going to be so much worse with Trump.
Trying to say "It's anyone's fault but mine" at this stage is pointless, though... because what's done is done. We're fucked. Doing nothing but point fingers only damages us in the long run, because it's that much more energy not spent on fixing it in the future.
With Harris you had someone at least you could work with, she reacts and actually suffers political damage. Trump doesn't give a single shit what anyone wants and gets away with everything.
Over 50% of the god damn country voted for a man who has so many major, should-be career ending flaws we don't even need to list them anymore. If he kicked a puppy it wouldn't even make the top 10 worst things he's done. The democrats lost to the stupidest president of all time, a man who's entire economic policy revolves around tariffs that he fundamentally doesn't even understand and who cannot seem to open his mouth without lying.
....and you're here dunking on the people trying to oppose America's blatant complicity in genocide. Well, you sure showed them.
Tbf the 50% that voted for trump aren't here, plain and simple, so that's why you don't see engagement with them.
The only political engagement you'll see here on Lemmy shifts overwhelmingly left for all parties, so you'll see mostly squabbling between various left factions.
She does, so does Biden, just not to the extent trump will.
It's fucked up the DNC insisted on taking support of genocide as a binary topic out of this election.
Just think, if they cared more about votes than dark money from a foreign government, trump might not be president elect right now. That was always an option you know? Giving Dem voters what they wanted, not just on this issues but multiple others.
Do you think the gamble was worth it now?
Are you willing to do anything different in four years?
These people will blame us for the next 4 years and then blame us when the next neoliberal party darling loses in 2028. Anything they can do to deflect responsibility, hold anyone accountable, and prevent disrupting the status quo in this great race to the bottom.
Biden and Harris already openly pledge unconditional material support to Israel in its genocide, organize Europe in this same direction, and go after anyone opposing them on this. Israel receives what it materially needs to do all pf this. Any further escalation in the West Bank will be done with materials, funds, and diplomatic cover provided by the Biden-Harris administration.
Biden and Harris feign empathy and try to run little games around redefining what a ceasefire is for PR purposes. But in terms of the basic reakity of supporting Israel to do whatever it wants to Palestinians, as in providing them the means they would otherwise nit have to do it, there is no sense in which they are less bad than Trump.
I've said before (and will say again) that US elections are like our national-scale county fairs: idiots that your normally never see come out of the woodwork.
That finance minister is a Kahanist (Israeli fascist), he doesn't just want to annex parts of the west bank. He wants to annex all of the west bank and Gaza while renaming both. As someone living in Israel I've seen how people are already calling the west bank "Judea and Sumera". He also wants to kill all Arabs and Muslims.
"Our strategy failed and our candidate lost. Quick! Start mocking people for caring about a genocide before they start getting ideas about blaming us for the mess we caused!"
"Dems ran a shit out-of-touch campaign, obviously this absolves all of us who were beating the 'Don't vote against the fascist' drum as hard as we could."
Believe it or not, and I understand this is quite unsettling for people with a simplistic view of the world, blame can be shared over multiple parties. Yes, really!
Israel is already controlling the West bank directly with settlements and indirectly with the Palestinians authority who arrest resistance leaders but do nothing to defend Palestinians
Brought to you in part by the voters too stupid to see the WWarmongering and accelerated genocide and the others who think it's a good thing, prophecy, or that billions won't die because idiot bullies have the bombs.
We appreciate that you come together in support of the War even with having to plan your intertwined economy failing and dragging down others, dollar replaced, rights removals, and climate fails. /s
The genocide is already accelerated. The Biden-Harris administration already gives Israel all of the material, military, and diplomatic support they need for genociding Gaza and ramping up against the West Bank, the latter being something that has already been happening for months. And people like yourself tolerated that, accepted that from "your" candidates, and fought against those for whom it was correctly a red line.
In short, both Biden and Harris would rather lose than be anything other than 100% materially supportive of Israel's genocide. They made that choice and y'all backed them up on it. Time to own those decisions, the decision to lose in support of genocide, and do some self-criticism around how what you subscribed to was actually neither particularly strategic nor morally sound.
"Accelerated genocide" is a term that fits along nicely with "enhanced interrogation." It's good to see the right-wing disinformation machine is still functioning since W. Bush left office. I wonder if Harris picked that gem up as she was courting Dick Cheney's endorsement?
ITT there's a lot of people unwilling to accept the Democrats didn't prove their case. They didn't convince the Arabs they would be any better for Palestinians. They didn't convince unions they would be any better for them. And they certainly didn't convince anyone leaning truly left to vote for them by seeking Republican endorsements.
Look, I think Harris did the best anyone could with the cards she got dealt. But blaming the voters has never been a winning strategy.
Why does the blame go for Harris for not convincing people when it was clear to anyone paying attention that Trump was going to be worse?
This sounds like how people talk after being obviously wrong and not being able to accept being wrong.
If there are two paths and once says "Doom" and the other says nothing, only a fool picks the marked path. Only a fool who cannot accept responsibility blames the unmarked path for not being clearly marked "NOT Doom"
When one person says they are going to do bad shit, it's not on the other side to convince you they wont also do bad shit. The person assuming the one not talking who to doing bad shit will do it away because reasons is the problem. There is no one to blame but themselves. They will be a tool until they seize their agency and make an informed decision.
That's the thing though. In regards to Gaza both paths were marked "Doom". With regards to the left, courting actual Republicans clearly marked both paths "Conservative".
Your analogy depends on your point of view being everyone's point of view. This is a fundamental failing of the democrats this year. They again acted like they were the only obvious choice and nobody could possibly have a legitimate opinion otherwise.
If you ignore voters and let party elders call them Russian agents then it's not exactly rocket science that they aren't going to vote for you.
I'm sorry was Richard Spencer on the ballot? How far does this transitive property go? Is the entire family of the voter now Nazis too? After all they have to sit at the table with the person and we know what you all say about sitting at tables with Nazis.
There were two paths. One path was the dems, who I'll be the first to admit, not doing a great job with Gaza. The other, was Trump, who is buddies with Israel's prime minister to a first name basis, moved the embassy to Jerusalem specifically in support for Israel over all others and has proven to have nothing but disdain for anyone else in the region.
I'm sure the people in Gaza hearing the guy who is actively excited about their deaths really appreciate those who didn't vote "showing the dems" to swap out people at least attempting peace talks.
And frankly not voting to prove a point is like fucking for virginity. All you do is tell the politicians that have an interest against you they don't have to worry about you, you won't vote against them either.
None of that makes sense. If the Dems are just greenlighting everything anyways, what's the point for someone who cares about Gaza?
If the Dems are taking victory laps on a failed economy, what's the point for a working class family?
If the Dems are actively courting the conservative family members of war criminals who lied to us to kill 4,000 Americans, what's the point for antiwar activists?
There is not two paths when the Democrats are acting like this.