https://lemmy.ca/comment/12091177
Serious question: what do you think publicly repudiating Israel would do for the democrats' chances of willing the presidential election? It makes sense for them to say nothing publicly while privately trying to tie down those loose cannons.
Honestly I suspect it would do the opposite, Lemmy is a bit of a echo chamber and while users here heavily skew towards favoring Palestine in this, or at least condemning what Isreal is and honestly has long been doing to them, the US as a whole, even the base of the democratic party, has long been at least mildly friendly towards Isreal, and a large fraction will see Hamas's attack as justifying Isreali action. It's a bit of a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation for the dems I think where their current path angers progressives on the left, and actively sanctioning Isreal would probably anger the more center-right side of the party, and they need both to turn out to win. They probably figure that at the end of the day, the left either is mostly younger people that don't vote as reliably, or will bite their tongues and vote for them, because, well, if you're given only two possible futures, both evil, and a choice between them, one has a moral obligation to choose the lesser evil, no matter how evil that lesser is, just because by definition, the greater evil is worse. But the center-right, they probably figure, probably don't care about what is happening as much, and will feel much less uncomfortable about just voting for the republicans instead if the dem candidate doesn't do what they want.
That being said, it doesn't really much matter, ethically, if not helping kill tens of thousands of innocent people makes it slightly harder to win political power for yourself, it's still a pretty horrible excuse. Nobody sitting in a jury would let someone go free if they were accused of being an accomplice to a murder, if that accomplice's defense was "well, I'm running for mayor, and if I didn't help the murderer, his friends probably won't vote for me". Like I get that Kamala isn't really calling the shots on that, being only vice president currently, but she doesn't seem like she intends to change how Biden has handled the situation much.
Don't get me wrong, I am voting for her, I'm not one of those people that thinks that it is somehow noble to just let the greater evil win if it means not taking an action that helps the lesser evil beat it, I think that the going for the best outcome plausibly available is always the right thing to do and that doing the reverse because "well my hands are clean" is a misguided and self centered way to do ethics, but like damn people (to which I mean the people that actually side with Isreal in this, and the DNC I guess, not they they see my tired internet ranting), just because the other option is as close as the country has come in a century to "literally Hitler" does not mean that you have to emulate Churchill refusing to help the Bengalis.
If we're going to do the realpolitik analysis, why does nobody ever mention that a democratic Israel or any sort of Palestinian state would be unfriendly at best toward the US? Or in other words, helping the Palestinian people would do nothing to further the interests of the US.
I know it's gross to think in terms like that, but we're already framing this as a problem for American elections. Soooooo
Why would it be unfriendly at best towards the US?
In international politics, relations change as quickly as shifting sand. Vietnam is an ally and very friendly towards the US anymore, and they still have the same government that we went to war with. Think in comparison to "We, personally, violated your sovereignty, laid more ordinance on your country than in all of WW2, committed numerous warcrimes, and poisoned the land with chemical defoliant", "We supported your oppressors and gave only token assistance to your independence struggle" is easier to overcome.