No, it’s not people trying to apply moral standards consistently, it’s about people thinking that cutting off arms to Israel would save the Gazans when high-end military aid is not actually necessary for an ethnic cleansing of a small land area, simply a luxury. Following the wishes of the BDS movement, at any time since the war began, would not save the Gazans in any way, shape or form when the Israelis can simply resort to even more indiscriminate, inexpensive tactics to accomplish their goals. In actuality, all it would do is remove what little leverage we actually have over there.
Not that I expect peace protestors to understand much about the logistics of warfighting, I am fully aware it’s just about identifying something negative and fighting it as hard as you can. Unfortunately, though, the lack of understanding makes your proposed solutions simply wishful thinking that fails to take Netanyahu’s precarious political position and potential available methods and resources into account. We see this with climate change as well, where we still have no actual viable solutions for emissions in Russia or India, simply because climate experts are not geopolitics experts.
Oh, listen people. We can’t stop providing aid, or selling arms, or providing intelligence and logistical support, or political cover in the international community or sending carrier group after carrier group in to threaten their neighbors, or else we might lose leverage over them. In short, you’re saying we have to do everything possible to enable their crimes, or we might lose the ability to influence their criminal behavior. Please examine how absurd that sounds. The dynamic you’re describing makes this sound vastly more complex than it is. This approach is frequently used by those on power to absolve themselves from responsibility for the consequences of their actions. Furthermore, if economic pressure doesn’t work, I guess we can go ahead and open up Russia trade again. Right?
Sanctions against Israel would probably be effective, but impractical when they were attacked and still have a significant amount of support in the populace. You could get some Americans behind neutrality, but not helping hamas.
I don’t disagree that it sounds absurd, but global politics just very often is, due to its fundamentally unethical nature. At that scale people are not individuals, they are numbers on a sheet of paper, simply because of the purely mechanical perspective of so many world leaders. At the end of the day, you have to work with what you’ve got, whether absurd or otherwise. It’s not about absolving, guilt is guilt. It’s about there being no guilt-free paths, so this guilt is preferable to the guilt even greater Palestinian casualties. ~50k have died, right? You know that absolutely could be 500k, right?
And if you don’t think the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict is genuinely complex, you’re probably buying into someone’s bullshit. It is very complex.
Lastly, it’s a pretty gross exaggeration that we’re doing everything we can to enable their crimes. If we were, there wouldn’t be any Palestinians left anymore. They’re not that hard to kill.
It’s not easy, actually, to kill or cleanse millions of people while maintaining some semblance of legitimacy in the international community.
Leaders don’t craft their ideologies on what they believe Americans will ‘get behind’. Leaders will attempt to steer Americans to the right position. Harris and this community are all proud of what a righteous leader she’s supposed to be. I’m just holding her to the standard set by her own rhetoric.
