Donald Trump has said that Palestinians have “no alternative” but to leave Gaza due to the devastation left by Israel’s war on Hamas, in effect endorsing ethnic cleansing of the territory over the opposition of Palestinians and the neighbouring countries.
Speaking as he prepared to host Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, on Tuesday, Trump repeated the suggestion that Gaza’s population should be relocated to Jordan and Egypt – something both countries have firmly rejected.
Trump claimed Palestinians would “love to leave Gaza”, telling reporters: “I would think that they would be thrilled.”
So…. Are both sides still the same? Asking for a friend.
Put the rhetoric aside, and the answer is yes. Israel stole a lot of land from Palestinians under both Democratic and Republican presidents and kept them under an oppressive apartheid system depriving them of their rights. Both parties vetoed UN resolutions to stop or even condemn the practice.
The Israeli government proposed annexing the West Bank in violation of international law, and while one president said he disagreed with the idea, he said he’d back Israel if they did. The other one said he’d support the idea and back Israel either way. Putting aside the rhetoric or intentions, the action is the same. That’s why Palestinians aren’t cheering when one party wins over another in US elections, because they saw what happened when republicans or democrats won; their situation didn’t change. If you feel otherwise, go visit and talk to them like I did.
Alright. So let’s assume for the moment that you’re right, and both parties would do exactly the same thing regarding Palestine. Just for the sake of argument.
Then they’re still not the same.
Would Kamala have handed entire departments of the U.S. government over to Musk? Would Kamala have signed a bazillion EO’s, taking away people’s rights? Would Kamala send thousands of people to Guantanamo? Would she have allowed ICE to raid schools or hospitals? Would she be systematically erasing transgender people from public life? Would Kamala be scrubbing databases and removing information (CDC for example), or making people waste time to delete certain terms from every database and website because of “woke” or “DEI”? Would Kamala have taken the U.S. out of the WHO? Or the Paris Agreement? Would Kamala be threatening to annex Greenland? Or start trade wars with allies? Or do petty shit like removing the option for regular Americans to file taxes for free online? Or pardon 1500+ violent idiots, at least 4 of whom have already been commiting new (and running from old) crimes? Would she install an antivaxer, who also promotes raw milk, to Health and Human Services? Or abolish the Department of Education?
Would she, would she, would she?
They. are. not. the. same.
And you repeating the same tired bullshit over and over and over will not suddenly make it true. You can try to convince yourself that what you did was the morally right thing, but in your own words: put aside the rhetoric and intentions. The consequences are on you.
But anyway, we both know that Kamala would not be the same regarding Gaza. Never would she have said she wants to “take over Gaza” and “own it” and to turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East” to create “thousands of jobs.” She would never have proposed the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think she would have done anything to actually help Palestinians, aside from some symbolic stuff or vague threats she will never act on. Somehow Americans seem to just love Israel, whatever horrific shit they pull, they’ll always side with Israel.
But “both sides are the same” is a blatant fucking lie.
This is a disingenuous argument. Republicans and Democrats are not the same EXCEPT ON PALESTINE. You’re beating a strawman.
The rest of it is arguments over rhetoric. Put the comments by Trump aside; in actuality if Netanyahu annexed West Bank or mass deported Gazans, Kamala and Trump would both continue to support Netanyahu financially and militarily even if they had different press releases ranging from concern to praise. Kamala refused to promise to enforce the Leahy Law and Trump isn’t either.
It’s not a strawman, it’s the truth.
Trump is orders of magnitude worse regarding pretty much everything, so even if Kamala is ‘the same’ on Palestine, all the other stuff would still be better with her in stead of Trump. If you truly believe they are the same regarding Palestine, then they basically cancel each other out, right? Then you should look at everything else and it’s quite obvious they are not the same at all.
Look, I don’t want to be the person who needs to boil things down to simple math. But don’t you think that “Fuck Palestine” is better than “Fuck Palestine. And transgender people. And women. And the environment. And the Department of Education. And migrants, and and and”?
Tell me, how is one not worse than the other?
You’re still strawmanning, because it’s no secret that Harris was better than Trump on literally every issue except Palestine. I admitted it above and you gloss over that so you can repeat the same thing as if you’re not listening. Trump is doing all the horrible things he promised he would do. You’re trying to blame me for this even though I wanted Trump to lose too. Peace.
Edit: you’re still ignoring what I said and trying to talk past me. Blame Kamala for deciding she would rather sacrifice votes and risk her own election than say anything against Israel. That’s on her and not the voters. She couldn’t even call for a ceasefire but Trump did. That should tell you how bad Kamala was blowing it. And we’re not quiet, the Palestinians are still suffering but now that the election is over you and the Democratic leaders decided to ignore us because you never cared. I’m not gloating because we knew this would end badly and spent over a year trying to warn the Democrats, meanwhile so many “liberals” are trying to rub it in our faces as if they weren’t the ones who lost.
This is completely fucking shocking. I hope all the Uncommitted folks are proud of themselves.
EtHnIc ClEaNsInG iS bEtTeR tHaN gEnOcIdE.
In 1940, the Nazis’ plan was to relocate all Jews to Madagascar.
Just 2 years later, they started exterminating them systematically.Population transfers aren’t unheard of. In Greece/Turkey, Italians from eastern Adriatic, German from Prussia and Silesia, Pakistan/India millions of people moved.
This Holocaust comparison is completely dishonest and betrays any knowledge of how it happened. Used in this context, it’s Holocaust relativism at best and likely antisemitic.
I found this quote useful so I’m going to put it here as well as it seems incredibly relevant.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_cleansing
“How could ‘forced deportation’ ever be achieved without extreme coercion, indeed violence? How, indeed, could deportation not be forced? How could people not resist? How could it not involve the destruction of a community, of the way of life that a group has enjoyed over a period of time? How could those who deported a group not intend this destruction? In what significant way is the forcible removal of a population from their homeland different from the destruction’ of a group? If the boundary between ‘cleansing’ and genocide is unreal, why police it?”
From the same Wikipedia article.
Ethnic cleansing has been described as part of a continuum of violence whose most extreme form is genocide. Ethnic cleansing is similar to forced deportation or population transfer. While ethnic cleansing and genocide may share the same goal and methods (e.g., forced displacement), ethnic cleansing is intended to displace a persecuted population from a given territory, while genocide is intended to destroy a group.
Your quote is just a bunch of insinuations leading questions without an answer. Pure bad faith.
Your argument’s defense of a nonexistent boundary between genocide and ethnic cleansing boils down to genocide denial. There is no agreed upon definition of ethnic cleansing. There is no way to peacefully forcefully relocate a group of people. An attempt to forcefully relocate a group of people is motivated by the desire to destroy that group in whole or in part.
The quote from the wiki article points out everything I have now written down in this comment. It’s written as a series of rhetorical questions with clear answers. Your argument’s effort to misrepresent the wiki page’s descriptive analysis of ethnic cleansing as an official definition is an attempt to police a none existent boundary. You argument left out the last part of that section.
Multiple genocide scholars have criticized distinguishing between ethnic cleansing and genocide, with Martin Shaw arguing that forced deportation necessarily results in the destruction of a group and this must be foreseen by the perpetrators.
A call for ethnic cleansing is a call for genocide. There is no way to engage in peaceful forceful deportation or population transfer. There is no meaningful difference between getting rid of a group by forcefully removing them and destroying them.
The Armenian genocide involved death marches, into the desert without food or water. What’s the meaningful difference between sending people to die in the desert and destroying them? There isn’t one.
https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/armenian-genocide
There is no meaningful difference between getting rid of a group by forcefully removing them and destroying them.
Please read that again. There’s a gigantic difference between dead or alive.
100,000 Armenians were ethnically cleansed in 2023 with less than a dozen civilian deaths. Compared that to the Armenian Genocide at the beginning of the 20th century with a million deaths.
Using the same term genocide for both is watering down the term. It betrays why it was coined in the first place.
Of course it’s still a terrible crime.
Luis Moreno Ocampo, the inaugural prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, has classified the ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians as a second Armenian genocide, and opined that the inaction of the international community encouraged Azerbaijan to act with impunity.[34][35]
The number of deaths has nothing to do with it. The intent is the same, the only difference between the two genocides is that they were less successful at killing people in the second one. The only people that are helped by defending a distinction between ethnic cleansing and genocide, that does not exist, are the people who want to commit genocide.
comment section full of spineless beggars who wants everyone to live on fake crumbs thrown by dnc hacks. what’s biden, harris and pelosi doing these days ? they seems to have made fortunes pretending to represent us and now enjoying themselves leaving us and palestinians to get fcked same as under biden. are we all forgetting biden hugging the scum netanyahu and him getting a standing ovation for murdering millions with our money.
aipac owned kamala would be no different other than wording it with lots of word salad of “allies”and right to defend (genocide).
reality is our country has became a rotten oligarchy owning both parties and they see normal voters as no different than how israelis see palestians. they will happily butcher us and our kids for an extra yatch
Yep the DNC isn’t great but it’s far better then actively feeding the country to the oligarchy. Go fuck youself with the BoTh SiDeS bullshit.
cry all you want but its not going to change that millions of past dnc voters want to see likes of pelosi and schumer hanged in the streets than blackmailed into voting for them again. just so they can continue to make millions selling the country to same oligarchs while we keep eating shit with a different packaging.
Do you understand how Senators are elected? The VAST majority of DNC voters didn’t vote for Pelosi or Schumer because they aren’t in their districts.
Maybe pay attention to the road so you don’t accidentally drive your tank into those civilians, again.
https://lemmy.world/post/23262125
god people still defending dnc are as dumb as maga mob
or you are just like ken martin our new dnc chair who wants us to suck upto billionaire parasites for leftovers
The DNC is bad. I said it again. The DNC is really not great. There once more. They are not nearly as bad as what’s going on in the current administration though. If that statement is “defending the DNC” then you have lost all perspective.
History will not be kind to either Netanyahu, or the Biden/Trump presidencies.
This will mean fuck all the to Palestinians who became “displaced persons” just so the Israeli’s can have their own Lebensraum.
The rest of the world needs to get off its ass and ensure Gaza is rebuilt on Israel’s shekel for the Palestinians like a modern day Marshall plan. And ideally prosecute a couple of people for actively advancing genocide.
This will mean fuck all the to Palestinians who became “displaced persons” just so the Israeli’s can have their own Lebensraum.
Does Lebensraum mean to have the safety of not to get attacked by your neighbors? I’m not justifying this plan but to say that was Israel wanted this all along when they disengaged in 2005 and didn’t start the war is a bit out there
An awful lot can change in twenty years.
What has happened in the last twenty years
