donuts

If you're going to embarrassingly try to argue literal semantics, then you should at least know that Persians ("Iranians") speak Persian, not Arabic. 🤦

Iran has repeatedly called for the complete and total destruction (see: actual genocide) or Israel and its people over multiple decades. Iran funds and supports Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthi's and many other extremist groups in the region.

Being "quite vocal" is purely politics. Actions speak louder than words, and you know that.

It's not the same thing as disarming our closest ally in the Middle East, which again, is something that NO U.S. President would do. Not Joe Biden, Not Donald Trump, Not Bernie Sanders, Not Ted fuckin' Cruz or whatever asshole the Republicans will come up with next. Israel is too important to America culturally and strategically, and they are under too many active threats from their neighbors.

America will continue to support Israel unless Netanyahu really takes the gloves off and starts indiscriminately waging genocide. Unless Trump is reelected, in which case he'll probably directly help "clean up" Gaza and the West Bank, and then you'll really have something to be angry about. I guess we'll see...

“In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such [snip...]

The part you're not bolding is perhaps the most important part.

"killing members of a group" is obviously not genocide or every war in history would be considered genocide; "killing members of a group" with intent to destroy that group is what specifically elevates war into genocide.

In other words, intent, context and the details really matter here.

We already know Hamas' intent is genocide of all Israeli Jews, as was laid out in clear worlds in their founding 1988 charter. And when people say that "Palestine should be free from the river to the sea.", they seem to be calling for some kind of genocidal one state solution that erases Israel from the map and implies nothing good for the Israeli Jews who currently live there and whose ancestors have lived their for thousands of years. On top of that, many of Hamas' actions on October 7th (violence targeted exclusively at civilians, rape, theft of civilian property, kidnapping, hiding behind their own civilians as a human shield, etc.) are war crimes.

Does Netenyahu's government want genocide? It's debatable. Some of the rhetoric of Israeli ministers has been at least inappropriate and at worst borderline genocidal. But If they only wanted to kill all Palestinians, they wouldn't only be fighting in Gaza and they would likely have killed many more civilians indiscriminately (there are 2 million people living in Gaza after all). But more important than those are the fact that Israel seems to be following the international wartime rules of "proportionality", and seems to be able to justify their use of force in the vast majority of cases. They do, in fact, have a right to defend themselves from terrorist threats and wage a military campaign in the hopes of eliminating those threats and saving the hostages (who have been held in captivity for almost HALF A YEAR now.) This is exactly why the International Court of Justice fell short of accusing Israel of genocide.

All that said, the war is horrible and the suffering of civilians is an unspeakable tragedy. The only real solution for peace is a two-state solution under which Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arab Muslims can coexist and live together in a land that they have shared for centuries, or really, millennia. Hamas should release the hostages and accept the ceasefire deal so that the world can move on from this ugly and tragic war.

If you're going to go back 100 years, why stop there?

Why not blame the Ottoman Empire, the Rashidun Islamic Caliphate, the Byzantine Empire of Eastern Rome, etc.

The fact is that Palestine and Israel as countries were created at roughly the same time. Israeli Jews have existed there for thousands of years. The tribe called the Philistines have been there possibly just as long, and supposedly the were often at war with the Judah and Israelites. Though the Philistines were neither arabs nor muslims, who came in around 500 years ago during the Rashidun Islamic Caliphate (still a long time, longer than America has existed).

There has never in thousands of years of history been a free, self-governed, single state of Palestine. Both the Israelis and Palestinians have cultural and historic claims over the region going back hundreds, if not thousands, of years. This suggests to me that the only real and viable solution for peace is a two-state solution in which both sides lay down arms and learn to coexist peacefully. Neither Netanyahu nor Hamas are truly interested in a two-state solution, and as such I consider them both to be enemies of peace.

(And before you spend to much time defending Hamas, please know that disproportionate violence targeted directly at civilians, sexual violence against civilians, kidnapping of civilians, hiding militants behind a civilian human shield, etc., are ALL actual war crimes, and that Hamas has openly supported genocide against Israeli Jews since their founding charter in 1988.)

Despite my best instincts, I'll bite... When did Biden "promise support for genocide"?

• Biden is not in any way responsible for the October 7th terror attacks and war crimes (targeted killing of civilians, sexual violence and kidnapping, to name a few) that started this whole mess, Hamas (who are the ruling party of Gaza and have been for over a decade) are.
• Biden is also no in any way responsible for the Israeli response, nor is he in any control of the tactics used by the IDF in achieving their goals. Like every US President, real or imaginary, Biden will continue to support Israel because they are (a) our closest ally in the region (b) a home to many US citizens and a cultural site to many US jews, christians and muslims and (c) under constant threat of attack from every angle by enemies who in some cases have vowed to "wipe Israel of the map" (to name a few, Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and Iran).
• Despite what lemmy-think might have one believe, neither the UN, the ICJ, or any reputable organization have been able to show evidence that escalates what we're seeing in Gaza to any kind of war crime, let alone "genocide". There are 2 million people living in Gaza, and if Israel's goal was genocide we'd be seeing a lot more death and destruction than we are today. (Help elect Trump and I guess we might get a closer look at it.)
• The Biden administration has been much more effective at delivering aid (by air and now by sea) to Gazans than the UN, Hamas or anyone else.

Biden doesn't want to see innocent civilians killed, be they Israeli Jews or Palestinian Arabs. Why would he?

Unlike Netanyahu and Hamas, Biden gains literally zero political benefit from the war. His life and his job would objectively be much easier if there was peace in the middle east. You know that as well as I do. In fact, I'd say it's plainly obvious to anyone with half a brain. This war is a drain and a distraction from the US's resources ability to defend Ukraine from Russia, it makes the region (and thus, the world) less safe, and it is nothing but a political vulnerability to Biden. And still, there is not a serious politician in this country that would even consider removing support of Israel in the wake of the October 7th attacks, especially given a hostage crisis that is now entering its 6th fucking month.

In other words, while you're entitled to your subjective opinion that what's happening in Gaza amounts to a genocide or other war crimes, you can't seriously blame Biden for any of it.

If you're looking for someone to blame here, look no further than Netanyahu's government and Hamas--two entities that have repeatedly propped each other up as boogeymen in order to push their communities into the political fringe for the sake of power. Netanyahu literally funded and boosted Hamas, and Hamas has done everything to maximize civilian casualties (also a war crime, btw) on both sides of the conflict.

There have now been multiple reasonable ceasefire negotiations that the Biden administration has helped negotiate which Hamas has unilaterally rejected. The world is only waiting for Hamas to do what they should have done months ago: return the hostages, lay down their weapons, and turn over the war criminals and terrorists who made it their mission to rape, kill and pillage Israel on October 7th. The ball in unquestionably in their court, and it has been for months.

Cute way of admitting that nothing Biden can do can do will please you I guess.

Isn't this you, just yesterday, complaining that Biden was enabling the Israeli/Netanyahu government to stop aid from coming into Gaza "at all":

Just so everyone is clear, the Israeli governments reaction to this massacre is that they now need tostop aid from coming into Gaza at all because this incident proves starving people receiving aide is a danger to the Israeli military.

These are the people Biden is sending millions of dollars in weapons to. These are the people Biden directs the US ambassador to veto a widely supported cease fire resolution to give international cover to. Fuck, these are the people Biden chooses to lock arms with even as he loses 100k votes in Michigan in protest.

Today Biden has directed the US military to personally deliver aid to Gaza, in the most effective way that they can. (The US certainly isn't going to put boots on the ground to deliver aid in extremely hostile and dangerous territory where hostages are being kept potentially anywhere.) They are getting aid to the people of Gaza, while the UN is failing to.

It's possible that the UN could deliver aid more effectively by driving it into Gaza, but (a) it's very likely that they can't, because we've seen aid trucks hijacked by Hamas and aid stolen from innocent civilians and (b) the connections between UNRWA and Hamas have almost completely ruined the trust relationship with Israel. The UN has become severely compromised by their lack of ability to vet the people that work for them, because as the old saying goes "a bad apple can spoil the bunch", and innocent people are suffering because of it. That one isn't on Biden.

To say that Biden could "end this all with a phone call" is pure fiction, whether it's in an op-ed or not--the only two parties who can agree to a ceasefire are Netanyahu's government and Hamas. No US president, real or imaginary, is going to disarm Israel when they are our biggest ally in the region and under constant threat from Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, Iran and others. No US president, real or imaginary, will call for Israel to unilaterally ceasefire against Hamas as Hamas continues to hold their people hostage and wage their own counterattacks. If a ceasefire should happen, and it should, it'll only happen because both sides of this conflict agree to the terms.

Anyway, I really hope you don't realize that you're moving the goal posts here, because I want to give you the benefit of the doubt... Anything else makes the complaints seem political and not genuinely pragmatic or even idealistic. Set the goalposts somewhere reasonable, and just keep them there.

Nobody is saying that Biden deserves a fuckin' peace prize for this, but he's doing a good thing here (something that just yesterday you seemingly wanted to see too) and he should be given at least due credit for that.

I can agree with that. I think that's a valid and convincing point. There should be conditions on the military equipment that we send to Israel just like their is with the stuff that we send to Ukraine. I'm not sure exactly what those conditions should be (beyond the obvious stuff like "follow international laws surrounding war crimes"), but I certainly think it's only reasonable that we should have a say in how our weapons are used if we are sending them over.

Would that be enough to satisfy critics at home and abroad? Would that appease the people who are saying that Biden is somehow complicit in "genocide"? I'm not so sure about that, but I think it would at least send the appropriate message that there are red lines that must not be crossed, even if that is mostly a symbolic gesture. At best people are very vague about what they want Biden to do, and at worst they're calling for a one-state solution (either that Israel should annex Gaza and the West Bank from the extreme right, or that Palestine should control the territory "from the river to the sea" from the extreme left--both of these being more representative of genocide than even what we're seeing today).

The only reasonable, non-genocidal (as in not involving mass murder or displacement of either people) solution is for Israelis and Palestinians to coexist, hopefully peacefully, and maybe even one day (dare to dream) cooperatively.

One thing is for sure, Israel (and the US, by extension) are not going to be satisfied with any conclusion to this chapter in the [decades long] conflict that doesn't return the hostages, strip Hamas of power and remove any chance of a future attack coming out of Gaza.

As long as Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, etc., continue to suggest that Israel should be wiped off the map (not to mention act accordingly) then America will continue supplying Israel with the necessary tools to defend themselves against militant threats. Hamas and Hezbollah have fired missiles nonstop at heavily populated Isreali cities, and the only thing stopping massive destruction and loss of life to our Isreali allies are iron dome missile defense systems that the US has spent >$3,000,000,000 funding. If not for the US, we would be counting bodies in the hundreds of thousands across both Israel and Palestine.

On top of that, all of this ignores the fact that there was YET ANOTHER viable ceasefire agreement that was rejected by Hamas today. At what point do we stop blaming the US for all of the world's problems? The only people with the agency to stop the current fighting in Gaza are Hamas and Netenyahu's government, and you all damn well know that.

Funny how all of these social media platforms that were so happy to describe themselves as "the public town square of the internet" or whatever are now claiming that they own everything that everyone ever posted. So, which is it? Because it obviously cannot be both.

Yeah. Sorry about that. I think Kbin was lagging the hell out when I posted originally, I don't know how that resulted in 3 posts but it wasn't my intention. lol shrug