Many, many polls showed this very clearly. 77% of Democrat voters wanted an arms embargo, and over 30% of 2020 Biden voters in key battleground states said that this issue was serious enough to affect their vote.
> A Harris organizer who worked on youth turnout said that senior campaign officials gave them an order: When they sent out mass volunteer or fundraising emails and people replied by asking about Gaza, they were told to mark it as “no response.” The result? They seldom ended up engaging with voters on that issue.
- https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/uncommitted-le...
So yeah, if there was one thing wrong with Harris, that would be it. That one issue would have changed the result, and as far as single issues go, I call genocide a pretty big one. It's kinda the biggest.
Far from the only issue though - campaigning with Dick Cheney was pretty fucking stupid, for one thing. Then there was promising to be harsher on immigration than Trump. Promising the world's "most lethal" military (we already are?) while trying to gaslight broke Americans into believing the economy was great. In general, trying to pick up right wing votes was a heinous 'strategy'.
Hamas is a hardline theocratic political party based on a very conservative interpretation of a religion. That means they're anti-free speech/press/religion/assembly, anti-LGBTQ rights, anti-free enterprise, anti-secular jurisprudence, and anti-representative government. Neither of the Palestinian Territories have had meaningful elections in over a decade. They're utterly unwilling to discuss any sort of deviation from their foreign policy agenda in good faith.
And yet, that's who many people on the political left-of-center see as the "freedom fighters" of the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Is Israel blameless? Absolutely not. They've committed numerous war crimes and atrocities since October 7th. On the other hand, they have shown with Jordan and Egypt that if their neighbors agree to leave them alone, they'll do the same in turn.
Fatah isn't that much better.
Honestly it's a different flavor of the same kind of authoritarianism that many on the right in the US dream of. And with Trump, they're much closer to implementing this, albeit with a different religion. If the idea behind the 2024 election in the US was to prevent more people from coming under authoritarian rule on a global scale, the left in the US failed miserably. And I say that as someone on the political left.
That message was picked up by the russians etc and turned into a wedge issue on social media.
At least within my little bubble, I saw a lot more concern about that than the fact that Hamas had basically committed a massive war crime on October 7th. The only people consistently talking about the hostages that I saw were my Jewish friends. Otherwise, it was mainly "Free Palestine".
It's worth remembering that they also mainly targeted civilians, and that basically no nation-state today would do too much different from what Israel has been doing. If you were to kill, rape, and kidnap the proportional equivalent of any country's civilian population, you are likely to see their military attack you, and not stop until you at the very least returned the hostages.
How many Palestinians, mostly civilians, were held hostage in Israeli prisons on October 6th? (Hint: over 5,000).
> If you were to kill, rape,
Are you referencing long debunked fabricated accounts [0]? Or do you have any actual evidence of rape?
> and kidnap the proportional equivalent of any country's civilian population
Again - over 5,000 Palestinians were being held hostage by Israel on October 6th, including 170 children [1]. That's a huge proportion of the population.
That's what October 7th was about. That's why they did it - to free kidnapped Palestinians. So, if you were to apply your own logic equally, you would then have to justify what Hamas did on October 7th.
You can compare any statistic you like - kidnappings, murders, torture, rape. Per capita, or absolute, Israel comes out worse every time.
> you are likely to see their military attack you
Most countries attack military targets. Not tens of thousands of children, or every hospital, or record numbers of journalists, and refugee camps. Because the numbers (real people) are unprecedented. Unprecedented.
> and not stop until you at the very least returned the hostages.
Hamas offered to return the hostages on October 9/10 in exchange for Israeli troops not entering Gaza [2].
Netanyahu has scuppered many deals since.
You may live in a bubble, but you can leave it any time you choose.
0 - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/how-2-debunked-accounts-o...
1 - https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20241023-number-of-palesti...
2 - https://www.timesofisrael.com/no-doubt-netanyahu-preventing-...
How many were there after trial?
> Are you referencing long debunked fabricated accounts [0]? Or do you have any actual evidence of rape?
Your own source indicates that there are UN investigators who found evidence of rape being carried out by Hamas terrorists.
> Again - over 5,000 Palestinians were being held hostage by Israel on October 6th, including 170 children [1]. That's a huge proportion of the population. That's what October 7th was about. That's why they did it - to free kidnapped Palestinians. So, if you were to apply your own logic equally, you would then have to justify what Hamas did on October 7th. You can compare any statistic you like - kidnappings, murders, torture, rape. Per capita, or absolute, Israel comes out worse every time.
Tell that to Jordan and Egypt. When the Israelis are offered a chance to sit down and hammer out a good-faith deal, they do so, and generally stick to its terms. It's almost as if they're going tit-for-tat with a group that is both willing to use shocking levels of violence to achieve their aims while also being far less able to counter any response using their own tactics.
> Most countries attack military targets. Not tens of thousands of children, or every hospital, or record numbers of journalists, and refugee camps. Because the numbers (real people) are unprecedented. Unprecedented.
Israeli war crimes should be punished. That being said, Hamas is the aggressor that decided to launch a military operation from one of the most densely populated territories on Earth. They also didn't seem to mind attacking civilian targets like a music festival or kibbutzim. If they had launched attacks on IDF bases, that's one thing. They didn't.
> Hamas offered to return the hostages on October 9/10 in exchange for Israeli troops not entering Gaza [2].
Think about that offer for a second. "We know we just killed over a thousand of your citizens - and fundamentally disagree with your state's very existence - but you can have the ones we kidnapped back, so long as you make no real attempt to find those responsible or prevent further attacks on your territory." Which brings me to my next point...
> Netanyahu has scuppered many deals since.
Of course he has. He doesn't have to take the deals Hamas (and by extension, Iran) wants. He's a bastard and is leaning too far towards authoritarianism to make me happy, but there was absolutely, positively no way that the attacks of October 7th were going to lead to anything but what you see going on now. Hamas is a militia. One backed by Iran, but still a militia. They lack the logistical, geographic and economic means to make any sort of sustained war against Israel, and they likely knew that before attacking.
When you're the leader of a country made up of a historically persecuted people and have been dealing with decades of attacks from an opponent, you're going to take advantage of their miscalculations to protect your people. Hamas made a massive miscalculation with October 7th. Netanyahu has been able to stick to power despite the violence of his response, and likely will until next year. Americans voting in the 2024 election, on the whole, didn't care if their government kept backing the Israelis. Iran's attempts to deliver reprisals generally failed to have any effect on Israel's ability to make war. The IDF operates in and around Gaza at will, able to destroy Hamas' token pockets of resistance. And since it's such a densely populated area, Palestinian civilians pay the price.
Furthermore, everyone who's anyone of consequence in the Middle East, save Iran, hates Hamas. There's a reason Egypt has stopped refugees at the border: they don't want a massively destabilizing force potentially entering their country. They're an existential threat to Egyptian society; Israel has shown it is not.
The only way to immediately prevent further civilian deaths in Gaza at this point is for Hamas to surrender, repatriate any hostages/remains, and disarm. Otherwise the Israelis will continue to push their advantage. You can't do what Hamas did on October 7th and run back behind the skirt of international law to stop your opponents; it simply doesn't work. You can screw up so much that it puts the survival of the entire population under your control at risk, and screw up is exactly what Hamas did by exercising the military option.
A littler over 20% [0].
And, is it really a trial when the conviction rate is over 99%?
> Your own source indicates that there are UN investigators who found evidence of rape being carried out by Hamas terrorists.
No forensic evidence, no survivor testimony.
The "credible evidence", when you read it, is that some people had their pants pulled down, and blood, which are both things that can happen when your own forces are firing tank shells at you [1].
And, pretending to ignore the fact that the most lurid claims of rape on that day were totally debunked doesn't make you look like you're debating in good faith, or willing to change your position when presented with new evidence.
> Israeli war crimes should be punished.
When? After the last 10% of Gaza is reduced to rubble? After they've built the "riviera" Trump keeps talking about? When a few more hundred thousand Gazans have died? When? How?
> Hamas is the aggressor that decided to launch a military operation from one of the most densely populated territories on Earth.
The great Bill Burr: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wniaiyA-JE
> Of course he has. He doesn't have to take the deals Hamas (and by extension, Iran) wants.
Deals negotiated in good faith, some of which he agreed to like the ceasefire he just broke by murdering hundreds of people, and stopping food and aid.
> He's a bastard and is leaning too far
Ya think? You sure seem to be carrying a lot of water for him.
> everyone who's anyone of consequence in the Middle East, save Iran, hates Hamas
Ah yes, because only the wealthy and political class are "of consequence", and the opinion of the actual population [2, 3] means nothing.
> The only way to immediately prevent further civilian deaths in Gaza at this point is for Hamas to surrender
Not going to happen lol.
And collective punishment is still a war crime and an atrocity. You really, really need to understand that point, because right now you're spending a lot of time defending the indefensible. Genocide is never justified, ever, ever; and that's not just opinion but international law.
> You can't do what Hamas did on October 7th and run back behind the skirt of international law to stop your opponents
International law is international law. If someone breaks it once, it doesn't give you the right to break it ten times, or a hundred times in response. Do you understand that? It really seems like you don't.
0 - https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/29/jailed-without-cha...
1 - https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-officers-invoked-defunct-h...
2 - https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/egypt-po...
3 - https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/new-publ...