"We hope the world hears us and knows that the people of Israel are not the government of Israel," said one protester.
"We hope the world hears us and knows that the people of Israel are not the government of Israel," said one protester.
Israelis protested on Saturday night, calling for a ceasefire and the resignation of hardline Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Tens of thousands took to the streets in Tel Aviv to demand that the government reach a deal with Hamas to secure the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza.
They also called for new elections, accusing Netanyahu of prolonging the conflict to keep himself in power.
‘"We hope the world hears us and knows that the people of Israel are not the government of Israel," said one protester.‘
I really wanted to believe that, but they have the same PRV type of voting system as Ireland so that’s hard to believe. It’s not like UK/US where the votes are counted in a more primitive way.
I'll admit to not being the most knowledgeable person on internal Israeli politics, but my understanding is hes been holding onto power for a while through a combination of coalitions and judge nonsense. Even then, if he represented the views of 51% of Israeli's that would still be a lot of people who's views don't align with his.
The problem is that there is a lot of Israelis who are now against Netanyahu, but who are still in support of the genocide in Gaza, or who are always in support of the Settler terrorism and slow genocide in the Westbank.
No Israeli government has reduced or at least stopped settlements since Rabin was murdered. The Center and Center Left of Israeli politics are equally in favor of an Apartheid occupation and running Israel as a supremacist ethnostate.
There is some people that genuinely reject all of this fascist nonsense and demand actual peace and actual justice in Israel. But unfortunately they are very much a minority. And when they speak up they often get threatened, harassed and attacked.
The possible silver lining is that Netanyahu also demonstrated that the right-wing's idea of how to ensure security -- namely, by antagonising Palestinians into submission -- doesn't work. But that kind of insight will take a while to actually sink in.
And another thing that needs to happen is Israelis not shying away from looking at what's being done to Palestinians. The Israeli press is self-censoring, knowing that noone wants to watch or read about the crimes the IDF is committing. It's wilful ignorance: People want to support the IDF because they at least at some level still believe in the antagonising Palestinians into submission approach, yet they can't bear to acknowledge what that entails. Which is kinda actually a real silver lining: Imagine if the Israeli press glorified, instead of ignored, all those mass graves and whatnot, what that would say about their audience. In the end it's still only the Kahanites who actually get a hard-on when seeing Arab corpses.
...the same, side note, btw also happened in the Third Reich: First Nazis were very overt, the pogroms were open, public, they were dragging people through streets and whatnot. They very quickly changed approach, made sure that people were able to ignore what was being done, were able to come up with lies such as "they're only expelling the Jews" and actually believe in them. Precisely because not every German back then got a hard-on when seeing a Jewish corpse either.
So, please, Israeli people, get rid of those chucklefucks in government before they put you in camps for protesting.
Biden's primary stated reason for defending Israel is a promise to his dying father.
Not his conscience, not the people alive and around him today, not the people who voted for him, not the people who he's depending on to get re-elected.
Sorry America, an 80 year old white man is making an undemocratic choice due to a promise he made to another old white man. Awesome.
I don’t know how the poling is now though. However with how the world currently sees Israel, I doubt it would be in a favor for the prime minister (as in not in favor for him).
Some of those dissatisfied with him will want an even more extreme right-winger. So you conclude too much from that figure alone, except that he's very unpopular.
For the poll to drop after a genocide starts, one would need to imagine that most of the drop is anti genocide. "Critical support", when taken in a serious context, usually means one would still vote in an electoral system for that leader who did the thing versus an alternative.
It's hard to imagine what a hardliner would want more at a point where the track is basically kettle and bomb, malnourish to death, is short of enslave and malnourish to death. Like nukes don't work because then you can't use the land for a couple decades.
It's also a parliamentary system, and there hasn't been a stable coalition in forever. Netanyahu, despite his lack of public popularity, has the backroom connections to stay on top of 'the game' in a divided parliament, especially with two of the left-wing parties only narrowly missing the threshold in the last election.