- cross-posted to:
- progressivepolitics@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- progressivepolitics@lemmy.world
You must log in or register to comment.
I saw a horrifying estimate of 680,000 murdered by israel in Gaza. Ten times the official figure. This is almost a third of the pre genocide population. It is a holocaust.
There is a big narrative that loves to pick off the left-est of the left people in the US government, and come up with various bullshit reasons to criticize them. You’ll see a bunch of them down below in this thread, being negative about Bernie.
You’ll never hear this kind of argument applied anywhere else. Like, if Beto O’Rourke said Gaza was a genocide, you wouldn’t see all these Lemmy comments saying “TOOK YOU FUCKING LONG ENOUGH YOU PIECE OF SHIT” or whatever. When that handful of countries said they wouldn’t do sporting events with Israel, I didn’t see anyone commenting “YEAH WHERE WAS THIS TWO YEARS AGO WHERE ARE THE FUCKING WAR CRIMES CHARGES” or anything like that. The extensive nitpicking is only aimed at people like AOC and Bernie who are significant leftist voices in government.
If you want to know what Bernie’s been actually saying about Gaza, this is it:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/uVDPXtnTXUw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFhcSlrJcAU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dd4cg-t8j8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2_AWLQ4gk4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBZreokpA_s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRrHfsqg990
And so on. He’s been doing what most of Lemmy would like to see someone in the US Congress doing: Yelling about Israel, what a fucking horror it is, and trying to stop US military aid. This extensive nailbiting about him calling it “ethnic cleansing” instead of “genocide” is just going to get smoothly replaced by these users with some other reason to nailbite about him, definitely not with any enthusiasm or support for him. I guarantee it.
People get mad at Bernie because they expect better and are disappointed it took so long. No one expects better of Beto.
But even so-
Like, if Beto O’Rourke said Gaza was a genocide, you wouldn’t see all these Lemmy comments saying “TOOK YOU FUCKING LONG ENOUGH YOU PIECE OF SHIT” or whatever.
-you absolutely woud lol
Yeah, pretty much.
Also:
The UN just called it one, Bernie has cover to do it now. His situation changed, so did his actions.
Wow, a big step for Sanders. This shows it is becoming more mainstream to acknowledge the genocide. I know it’s common sense for us here, but mainstream acceptance is extremely important here. A long way to go, but this is good news
Maybe he was waiting for the UN commission to officially call it a genocide.
The bar is in hell
I legitimately have no idea how that man keeps going. Pretty sure I would’ve hung my hat up after the first 3 or 4 decades when things kept getting worse.
Honestly, when you’re fighting for what’s right, it makes it more bearable when it’s hard. There’s not this extensive hesitation or heavy weight, like when you’re struggling with some frustrating task that isn’t really what needs to be done in the first place.
Good for Bernie.
A few years ago he said “Criticizing Israel is not antisemitic” - this REALLY HELPED criticism be heard at all.
BREAKING NEWS " Sanders calls genocide a “genocide”
yea its been going on since he was like 7 years old. took long enough to say it out loud.
This
Back then maybe technically it wasn’t a genocide just yet, but I recall watching news on tv as an 8 year old, talking about Israeli soldiers shooting and murdering children because they threw rocks at them.
Nothing was done about it
That was over 40 years ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba
Definitely was a thing then too
If you’re gonna look at a bigger timescale, you’re really asking for a “both sides” argument. Its such a long and complicated conflict.
I’m sure his office is getting some phone calls from some very powerful people today
Hopefully they’ll all be politely refused
I’m more concerned about the people who don’t want to condemn genocide than the people who are cautious about using the term.
Well he took his time with that one.
AOC next?
“If you want to know what an unfolding genocide looks like, open your eyes.”
Berni called a genocide, a genocide. Shocking.
He doesn’t “call” it genocide, it is factually genocide.
But hey. Remember Israel is a democracy!Fuck me…and they said that this guy is a huge leftist.
You have to remember that Sanders grew up in Brooklyn in the 40s/50s. He would have encountered holocaust survivors on a daily basis. For guys like that, Israel represented a safeguard against the possible extermination of their people. The fact he’s gone from being broadly supportive if Israel (though being pretty critical of the Netanyahu government) to admitting that this is a genocide shows pretty huge growth.
It’s almost like he’s a fully fledged, complex human being and not an avatar of one side of a highly simplified model of political thought.
He’s quite “left-wing” (from a US Overton Window) on most issues. MTG was relatively early speaking out for Palestine. That doesn’t make her a leftist, either
He’s also Jewish, and a prominent politician in a field where Israeli lobbying is extensive, so him speaking out against Israel is a big line for him to cross.
He’s been speaking out against Israel since the 1980s. Not just speaking, but standing up in congress and yelling about it. There was just a little artificial construction where him calling it “ethnic cleansing” instead of “genocide” represented a reason why he was actually pro Israel, which was always a fucking bonkers take on it.
Yeah but he was a HUGE VOICE for saying “Criticizing Israel is not antisemitism” a few years back, which did A LOT towards others being able to be heard when calling it a Genocide.
Here he is in 1988:
It seems kind of tame by today’s standards. I think that has more to do with the fact that he’s super-Jewish, he was completely comfortable with talking about socialism and Cuba and things in a way that was so far off the left side of the map at the time that it was out of the building. But by the standards of that time it was absolutely insane. This was years before the Rodney King jury said “not guilty,” this was back when we were doing our own Gaza-lite operations in Central America, it was a time when America could do no wrong and anyone who didn’t like us was a terrorist. He actually talks about that in one other interview which I think I posted in another comment, how he met with the Sandinistas and how the media in the US made it totally impossible for them to get any message that was at all friendly to them to anybody in the US.
More recently, here’s a video of him yelling (for the however-manyth time) recently on the Senate floor about what a fucking horror we are enabling in Gaza, showing pictures. “This is an effort to destroy a people.”
Hes basically the most left person in US government
In the senate*
Rashida Tlaib has been calling out israels bullshit since day one, and is left of Bernie on a couple other issues like abolishing ice.
True good call
The most Left in the current Congress is still Right wing.
Bernie is still a capitalist.
He is literally a socialist.
Edit: Here he is in 1985: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phTKpMh5jQI
He literally isn’t, though, because being anti-capitalist is the starting point for Socialism. He’s just comfortable with actual Socialism. Which most Americans aren’t thanks to propaganda.
Not to knock the guy. I voted for him the one time I was allowed to. He’s easily one of the best of a bad bunch.
But at best he’s a Social Democrat, which just means he’s Left of most Dems, but given how the Overton window has shifted over the course of his lifetime, post-Reagan that’s not saying much.
Again, not knocking the guy, but he really dropped the ball with Palestine and AIPAC.
Did he switch back to being an Independent? I thought I saw that a while ago.
Anyway, good talk. Thanks.
Dude watch some of the videos where back in the 80s he was going to Nicaragua and Cuba and coming back and talking on TV about their socialist system and how much better it was than the US system. Search for “bernie sanders 1985” or “bernie sanders 1986” on YouTube, there are a bunch. He is a socialist. This whole “left of MOST Dems” thing is incredibly disingenuous.
Switch “back” to being an independent? He’s always been an independent. He ran in the Democratic primary one time, and almost won. That’s it. He’s an independent. You’re trying very hard to paint him into this Democratic-party corner, why?
He “really dropped the ball with Palestine” how? By getting on the Senate floor and yelling about military aid and showing pictures of starving children, repeatedly fighting for bills which would remove Israel’s funding and haranguing everyone to vote for them? That’s “dropped the ball”? How did he drop the ball?
It’s certainly his biggest weakness and blindspot. He’s Jewish and has always been a liberal zionist. This isn’t to excuse the bad position, but the genocide really puts it into sharp contrast.
A quick search will reveal that Sanders has been critical of Israel’s actions in Palestine since at least 2014 but okay.
