this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2024
15 points (74.2% liked)
United States | News & Politics
7215 readers
375 users here now
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Here's the video.
"Mr. President what's your message to the protesters? Do you condemn the anti-Semitic protests on college campuses?"
"I condemn the anti-Semitic protest. That's why I've set up a program to deal with that. I also condemn those who don't understand what's going on with the Palestinians and they're how they're being..." (trails off)
"Should the Columbia University president resign?"
He tried to "both sides" it, but couldn't bring himself to pull the trigger on even that much.
I had this conversation yesterday(?) with someone else, but the article here had a pretty uncharitable decontextualization of what I thought was a pretty vague 'both sides' comment anyway.
It wouldn't be hard for him to say "I condemn antisemitism, but valid criticism of Israel is not antisemitic", but there's a clear electoral incentive to avoid taking even that rational stance.
No matter how you slice it, Biden is dropping the ball here.
Yeah. I think it's unfair to say that Biden is personally responsible for every campus police department that decides to go out and start pepper-spraying students. I like Biden; I actually came in originally to complain about that exact unfairness of the article, and so I looked up the video for the (cunningly edited BTW) quote, and then when I watched it, I said Jesus Christ I can't defend that.
How hard would it have been to say "Well, I think anti-Semitism's got nothing to do with it. We can have a whole conversation about American's commitment to our democratic allies and the importance of protecting Israel against terrorism, while at the same time standing up for the human rights of the Palestinian people which right now quite frankly are being violated. They are. And that's an important conversation. But I don't think any of that conversation has anything to do with anti-Semitism." Even if he wanted to answer in politician-mode, bringing up anti-Semitism gave him a perfect way to dodge the question's substance by talking about anti-Semitism instead.
All I can say is when I watched the video (especially his apparent self-censorship about making any kind of statement about what's happening to the Palestinians), I lost all my motivation to try to add any Biden-apologia context.
I think there used to be, and Biden's still operating in that world, and you're spot-on as to that being why he's doing some of the things he's doing. I think now -- and I could be wrong -- that the incentive is actually becoming the other way.
I assume you're referring to popular sentiment, and I agree, but there's another electoral vector in play here that has more to do with AIPAC support and fundraising, which I think is in conflict with popular sentiment and might keep Biden on his current strategy of vague deflections. If you've caught any broadcast media coverage in the last day or two on these protests, you might notice a distinct focus on the 'antisemitism' framing, and I think that has a lot to do with those institutional structures.
Yeah, agreed. I was absolutely talking about AIPAC. The popular sentiment is definitely majority on the Palestinian side.
I think even in purely institutional impact, AIPAC's power and the reason people are afraid to get on their bad side has diminished quite a lot though. Back in the 80s, you could say some "anti-Semitic" thing against Israel and you would pretty much guaranteed get primaried in the next election. Now, we have people like Rashida Tlaib or Bernie Sanders talking straight about Israel, and as far as I can tell, nothing happens to them beyond some people getting mad and press releases and things.
Maybe Biden's being nice to them because AIPAC has got money and some number of votes, and those are nice things if you're wanting to win an election. But it's not like the game-changing power they used to have.
It might be a little better now but the entire 'squad' is being targeted by pro-israel super PAC money.. It might just be because popular sentiment has swung so far against Israel that it's getting lost in the noise, but it's definitely still there.
I hope you're right, though.
Yeah, let's see. If half the squad is gone by the end of the year then I will have been wrong. It could happen.