https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/biden-speaks-college-protests-israel-gaza-war/story?id=109870179
President Joe Biden on Thursday spoke from the White House on college protests happening across the nation in connection with the Israel-Hamas war.
He doesn't care, he knows that we're left without another choice, and he's enjoying the AIPAC money too much
Young people are divided on Israel/Gaza.
Asked whether or not they sympathize with various groups involved in the war, we found that majorities of young Americans hold sympathy for the Israeli (52% sympathize) and the Palestinian people (56% sympathize), while they have far less sympathy for their governments (29% sympathize with the Israeli government; 32% with the Palestinian government). Seventeen percent (17%) expressed sympathy toward Hamas; for those who were presented with the information in a split sample that Hamas was an Islamist militant group, sympathy dipped to 13%.
When young Americans are asked whether or not they believe Israel's response so far to the October 7 attack by Hamas has been justified, a plurality indicates that they don't know (45%). About a fifth (21%) report that Israel's response was justified with 32% believing it was not justified.
@Truth_Hurts
An apparent bug in my instance prevents me from seeing some comments, but I saw yours via the "context" button on replies. Fuck your hive mind shit. Children are being murdered. That has nothing to do with anything other than children being murdered. Suck my ass.
It's the second icon beneath a comment if you look at your replies (on my instance, but I think the layout is standardized). I need it for about half of replies to make sense. Looks like this (for my instance):
The point is that some young people are mad about Biden's policy, some likely support it, but the biggest group isn't even paying attention.
Politically, that's grounds for maintaining the status quo.
ahh the nuances of supporting an active genocide. It’s strange that might be polarizing and cause folks to be outraged. Whaddaya gonna do? People need to understand that this is an election year /s
I’d be careful with relying on poll cross tabs on issues of morality. The sample size is usually too small to tell right from wrong.
Sure, but if Biden is guided by his moral code instead of politics then he has even less reason to care if young people are mad at him.
This is correct, you are being downvoted for being right but the hive mind on here tends to support terrorism & murder as long as they are Muslim and the victims are not Muslim.
This, and the opposite "wow feminists and LGBTQ+ people supporting people who would see them dead" are both woefully awful takes.
That's true. Then we risk the orange dictator winning the election and the end of democracy.
Biden should get to work in fulfilling his constituents demands, then.
You don’t get to use authoritarianism and then claim your opponent is the authoritarian. Terrible things are happening under Biden, but I should make the terrible things keep happening because if I don’t the terrible things will get worse? Americans are fucked.
Reporter: "Mr President, has the protests forced you to reconsider any of the policies with regard to the region?"
Biden: "No."
He spent about a couple seconds talking about free speech so that he could go on to talk about law and order, which is what he really wanted to emphasize, and that took up the majority of his stupid little speech.
Ok, here's the thing.
I'm going to put aside my views on both Israel and Palestine, along with whether or not I agree with Biden's handling of the situation.
But let's be realistic. The jewish population in the US is a bit over 7.5 million people. There's roughly 250,000 Palestinians in the US. Biden withdrawing support from Israel may very well be the right thing to do. But instead of the Palestinians and their supporters protesting, it would be the Jewish population and their supporters, which is far, far larger. Biden's numbers would be even lower than they are now, the protests would be far larger than they are now, and antisemitism would spiral out of control. If the Jewish population were to withdraw support for Biden as much as the Palestinians did, Biden might as well drop out of the race and hand Trump the presidency on a silver platter.
From a political point of view, Biden is in a no-win situation. This is what happened because he chose to side with Israel. It would be worse for him if he supported Palestine from day one and got flack from the Jewish population. And if he keeps flip-flopping, he'll end up just pissing both groups off.
This logic relies on the entire Jewish population in the US siding with Israel. They dont. What Israel is doing is fucking evil and a lot of people know it, regardless of faith or culture.
There are unfortunately an order of magnitude more non-Jew Zionists than Jew Zionists because its a popular belief in extreme (and not so extreme) Christian ideologies. Something to do with the rapture starting there.
This logic relies on the entire Jewish population in the US siding with Israel. They dont.
No, but look at the numbers. 7.5 million jews vs. 250k palestinians. Even if only 10% sides with Israel (and I'd be willing to bet that percentage is significantly higher), that's still 3X the size of the entire palestinian population, which means Biden would still be in worse shape than he's in now.
The other piece the the equation is that he's under pressure from the right to glass the whole of Gaza. It's really an unwinnable bind. Save the Palestinians for a few months but throw away the last chance at elections continuing in the US, and then Palestine gets glassed anyway.
So instead Biden will continue to support the genocide until Trump takes over.
It's the worst outcome for both Palestine and America, and yet the Biden administration continues to choose this horrible path.
So what's the solution?
Biden flip-flops. Now he's pissed off the Jewish people. They don't vote for Biden, Trump wins anyway, Gaza gets turned into an even bigger wasteland. Not sure why people think this is somehow the better solution.
If Biden changes course and ends the genocide, he will not lose the Jewish people, he will only lose the Zionist people. These Zionists are a small sliver of the American electorate.
Of course a change in position would have to be accompanied by a change in propaganda. The onesided pro-Israel rhetoric spewed by him and his press team would have to change to a humanist, anti-war stance. They could start by highlighting some of the atrocities committed by Israel instead of downplaying them. MSNBC and local news would quickly follow suit and pick up the party line. People should be talking about a mass grave with 400 bodies instead of a broken window at Columbia.
Obviously there would be a loud backlash from prominent Zionists, but again in the big scheme of the electorate they matter very little. The current Biden strategy of forfeiting the young, the anti-war, and the Islamic demographics would be significantly worse.
You can call this idea farfetched, but thats only because Biden is so entrenched in his position. I believe it's the best option to save the Biden presidency and avoid a Trump second term.
Here's polling to support your points:
Still, I would bet that Israeli supporters in every category skew conservative and probably aren't going to vote for Biden regardless.
I do agree that he's trying to ride the fence, and it's not a good look from either side.
Still, I would bet that Israeli supporters in every category skew conservative and probably aren’t going to vote for Biden regardless.
As I said to another poster: There's 7.5 million jews vs. 250k palestinians. Even if Biden supported Palestine from the beginning and only lost a fraction of support from Jews, that fraction is still likely higher than the entire Palestinian population.
Let's say the split was 90/10. 90% of the jewish population wasn't going to vote for Biden regardless. 10% would have. That 10% still represents 750,000 people, which is still 3X higher than the entire palestinian population.
I'm agreeing with you, but if you look at the demographics, you'll see there are several categories besides just Palestinians who do not think Israel is justified in their attacks on Gaza.
62% of the US Jewish population supports Israel's actions. That's 4.6 million people + an unknown number of non-Jews that also support it. Is the number of Palestinians and their supporters higher than 4.6 million? I legitimately don't know, but if it isn't, then my point would still stand: Biden denouncing Israels actions at this point would piss off even more Jewish people and put him at even greater risk of losing the election, while also having the side effect of anti-semitism spiraling out of control.
But being Jewish doesn’t mean you support Israel or what they are doing. I mean look at Bernie.
If only 10% of the jewish population supports Israel, that's still 750,000 people, or 3X the entire Palestinian population. From a political standpoint, Biden would still be worse off.
Speaking in terms of the percent of the population doesn't matter because we don't use the popular vote to elect the president. We need to see how many of them are in swing states. There's a good chance the war in Israel will turn Michigan red.
Right, but if the jewish population in those states is higher, then siding with the Palestinians would turn some of these swing states red anyway. Possibly more of them.
Exactly. Which is why I discount polls that measure national approval ratings and such. We don't elect presidents that way, so they're not valid.
Gordian knot. He doesn't want to be anti-free speech or anti-protest, but he also can't tolerate violence or bigotry.
but he also can't tolerate violence or bigotry.
Are you sure about that? Because supporting an active genocide kinda makes it seem like he’s ok with violence & bigotry…just not with protesters speaking up against it. If you watch any of the videos from the protest encampments, I think you’ll see that the violence & bigotry is not coming from them.