You do not, in fact, gotta hand it to Noah Smith for anything, but I think his point that the Palestine protestors are not in fact engaged in advocacy for Palestine but a struggle for power within the Democratic party is on point.
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Because Will would not agree that Biden was the worst president and possibly the worst human being ever, he therefore must be in favor of crushing every Palestinian baby ever into a cube.
It is impossible that someone think that Biden is bad on Palestine but better on Palestine than Trump, because Palestine is only important as a proxy war for Sandersnista thought against Biden thought.
I think this is a fairly reasonable explanation of why so much of the advocacy around Palestine targeted America specifically, rather than on Israel, and in particular they had a very bad understanding of how politics actually works.
More specifically, while I do understand the focus on Biden, I did not understand why they'd assume Trump is better, unless they are focusing on power struggles or are an accelerationist on the issue.
It's complicated because I do believe that Biden's position is reasonably bad and should be different, but I absolutely believe that anyone saying that support for Trump, either explicitly ("Gaza is speaking now, b---h") or anti-anti is arguing in bad faith
By and large the problems with Biden's Israel policy are rooted in what https://sjshancoxli.bsky.social diagnoses as a broader Democratic fear of power. Leftists seem to maintain that it can only be the result of intentional sabotage, that Biden prefers killing Palestinian babies to winning elections.
I think Biden's a committed Zionist; I think the electoral calculus around Palestine was complicated. Ds were clearly afraid that more support for Palestine would hurt them, though it's unclear whether that was true or not.
I genuinely don't know how alternative options would have shaken out. I really think we got a worst-of-both-worlds situation here, where Democrats were held responsible for radicals making pro-Hamas statements and he got a constant stream of people calling him 'Genocide Joe' depressing left turnout
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