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What's to be said? The Israelis had a ton of international support after 10/7, but they overplayed their hand and reacted in a way that engendered more antagonism against them then they would have had otherwise. It was very difficult to be pro-Palestinian in the immediate wake of the initial attacks, but turning Gaza into rubble at the expense of tens of thousands of civilian deaths was not seen as a proportionate response. This was especially true after they had to be bargained with to allow the importation of food and medical supplies for the civilian population. If a Democrat had been elected in 2024, we would have continued to see the same perfunctory public support for Israel combined with behind the scenes action to bring the war to a close, which may or may not have been successful. If a normal, competent Republican had been elected, we would have seen public support for Israel and continued weapons commitments, but nothing beyond that. But Bibi got Donald Trump, the one president who could be convinced to do anything provided he was personally impressed by the last person who talked to him, and the two men already had a good relationship.
Then you add the fact that he's always believed that the US should take military action in Iran, and that he deliberately chose advisors who wouldn't prevent him from doing what he wanted. The problem is that he didn't have the geopolitical wisdom to understand that prior presidents hadn't taken action because they were weak men, but because it wasn't clear that such a war could be won, at least without the kind of commitment that they were willing to make. When Trump loses the war, he's forced to make commitments to Iran that Israel doesn't like, and now Bibi has a decision to make. He managed to alienate the last person willing to give Israel the benefit of the doubt, and he has no good options at this point. It's not like Democrats are going to be more pro-Israel after the midterms. This is the legacy of Netanyahu, the complete obliteration of Israel's international standing.
They probably made the right call there turning Palestine into rubble.
The point of having political capital to do stuff is to spend it. When your political capital is high you should spend it doing stuff you want to do until it is low. Then you stop and start building capital again.
Same thing with money. Dying with a vault of gold is stupid. Spend it on creating a world you want to create.
The main issue Israel has had relates to mass migration into western countries and the rise of wokism in developed countries. These were always going to present a problem for Israel whether they did something or not. More Muslims in Europe is bad for Israel. An anti-white movement in the west and anti-success is bad for the Jews. I think Nixon was caught on tape probably many times being racists. Of the Jews I don’t think he trusted them but he noted they were highly competent. The west doesn’t like competency anymore.
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But they didn't. There were pro-palestine protests two weeks after 10/7, before Israel had even started to really move on Gaza. I think that was actually the wake up call for Israel, the reason they are acting like they are, they realized that europe is rapidly islamizing and they need to go now.
And people associated with them were losing their jobs. It was a mask-off moment for anti-Zionism that essentially vindicated its critics and would have permanently damaged associated organizations if Israel had not proceeded with their avenged seventy-seven-fold plan. It was a highwater mark in public support for Israel abroad after a long period of decline.
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This is a recurring argument I see across the political spectrum; because your most intense opponents continue to do/say outlandish things there's no sense in attempting to moderate in an appeal to public opinion and so you should just do whatever you want cause you have no control over how you're perceived. This seems to me a pretty obviously self serving attempt by extremists to rationalize extreme courses of action. You don't win when the entrenched opposition sits down and shuts up and admits you were right, you win when the general public stops finding their criticisms of you persuasive.
If you look at this YouGov tracker there was a real spike in public support for Israel after 10/7 that declined pretty rapidly as the Gaza situation got worse and worse. I don't think the American Public found the arguments of campus radicals very persuasive on 10/14, but over time Israeli actions alienated the public.
I was talking about europe not the us, still I congratulate myself on remembering the 2 weeks timespan correctly. The "moderate the tones" thing, it's not so much that they got near instant backlash over retaliating, what I'm saying is that they realizedd they have no constituency left going forward, it logically doesn't exist. If you don't believe me look at the +65 lines and the Democrats lines on that survey: what do you think it's going to happen when the 65+ die and the Democrats have power? And this is the US, the country that is going to be most favorable to israel going forward.
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You can see this basically everywhere in politics. Biden and Trump both came in with positive approval ratings! Biden left with one of the most negative approval ratings in history, and Trump is on track to possibly do even worse.
The deepest haters are always going to hate you no matter how cool or winning you are, but most people are not your deepest haters. The numbers can differ a bit on topic but generally in our polarized society there's essentially 30% who will always hate you, 30% who will always love you, and 40% who can be persuaded in some form/don't really care that heavily to begin with. (Like swing voters/nonvoters).
The reason why leaders like Biden and Trump keep dropping in approval after isn't because citizens are being haters, it's because the leaders are failing the standards they hold. They all come in with positive expectations, and if you can't match that then you get judged appropriately. When Trump promises an end to war, less focus on culture war topics and a greater focus on consumer economics and lower prices and we get more war + endless culture war + higher prices, he failed and of course his approval goes down. They aren't just the haters, they're people who were really willing to give him a chance and he failed them.
Same thing here. Israel had a lot of support behind them! Yes there was that 30% of haters or such who wouldn't care no matter what, but the US population was largely sympathetic and behind them. But Israel took that as carte blanche to do whatever they wanted, and they starved the Gazan population and they expanded the settlements and they spoke openly of their genocidal plans. Of course people turned against Israel! They're not all the haters, they are earnestly reacting to Israel's actions.
Part of it is because they're all drinking their own Kool aid. They surround themselves with sycophants and yes men and the other 30% suckup cultists and don't realize that the support of the 40 really is conditional.
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How is that not consistent with the idea that the public did listen to the campus radicals, but it took some time for the campus radicals to influence the public?
Campus radicals have been trying to convince Americans that Israel is a morally abominable apartheid state for 20+ years, it would be a huge coincidence if decades of persuasive efforts all paid off in a sudden public opinion swing over the span of a year in a way that was completely unrelated to Israel's actions in Gaza.
Campus radicals don't emphasize exactly the same things to exactly the same degree all the time. The Hamas attack pushed Gaza to the top of their issues list, even if they had always been concerned about it to some extent, and that increased the propaganda from the campus radicals about that particular subject.
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I'm reminded somehow of the famous Chris Rock bit at the end of Black People vs Niggas
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Two weeks after? Try as soon as the news was out. Same day and next day. Such as the somewhat reported-upon (and somewhat denied) "gas the Jews" protest in Australia.
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I'm pretty antagonistic towards Israel myself, I'm even rather critical of the attitudes that non-Israeli Jewish people tend to have, but this is plainly not how I remember it. I remember an immediate and massive outpouring of support for Palestine, and not just from the immigrant Muslim population, and Jewish people frantically trying to get the barest condemnation of the attack, out of people they thought were their friends.
I don't doubt that there were plenty of far-left morons who engaged in Palestinian flag waving immediately, but in a country of 330 million you can always find plenty of people to take an indefensible position, along with a news media and internet environment incentivized to convincing you that these ideas are mainstream. But this wasn't a position that was taken in polite society. Noted far left radical Joe Biden (Trump's words, not mine) immediately committed to supporting Israel, as did virtually every Democratic politician. Even actual far-left radicals like AOC and Ilhan Omar condemned the attacks. The only politician who didn't was Rashida Tlaib, who in addition to being far-left is actually Palestinian. Ditto news agencies; I can't recall any mainstream commentators saying as much as that the attacks were the regrettable result of decades of occupation and blockade. The only place I heard that was Democracy Now!, and even they were inclined to engage in a lot of throat clearing.
But your original claim was that "it was very difficult to be pro-Palestine", so what difficulties have these people ran into? Once Trump got elected they managed to push through some "muh antisemitism" policies and some people got expelled / deported / otherwise cancelled, but that wasn't in the immediate after math of 10/7, and didn't amount to much anyway.
I mean, if the news media and internet environment was such that it could convince people that these ideas are mainstream, than these ideas are mainstream. When ideas are not mainstream, what you see is a crackdown like when people criticized Covid policies and vaccines, mass migration, or genderwang stuff.
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I mean, are you sure that pro-palestine opinion wasn't allowed in polite society in the immediate aftermath? Far left views- farther left than actual elected officials- do not effectively exclude individuals from polite society in the same way that merely right of center views sometimes do.
You're correct that the establishment loved Israel for about a month. But virtually no effort was taken to exclude far-left antisemites(yes, many of these people are antisemitic- in the same way they're anti-white) for the same reason virtually no effort was taken to exclude far leftists of many other varieties. We live in a society which has systematically dismantled its memetic immune system for lefty ideas, and 'anti-semitism' is a welcome correction- even if some of these people are nothing of the sort.
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There were massively rallies in support of Gaza around the world right after it happened including in NY. I don’t know what the other poster is on about.
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