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Harris narrows VP picks to two and will announce her selection Tuesday morning
(www.independent.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2024
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I haven't seen a full write-up on him yet. Is he better than Shapiro on Israel's genocide?
it's kinda hard to be WORSE on the subject of israel's commission of genocide against the indigenous palestinian peoples than Shapiro is >_>;
Can you give me a reason as to why? I haven't seen him say anything worse than the normal Pro-Israel democrat positions.
That's what he said and didn't distance himself from until decades later when it might cost him a prestigious gig not to. Not buying it.
Doesn't help that he used to volunteer at an IDF base and then worked at the Israeli embassy as a paid Hasbarist.
He's also recently spread the "protests against genocide is antisemitic and threatens Jewish students" disinformation, going so far as to equate the currents anti-genocide protesters with the KKK harassing black people.
He also falsely claimed that Jewish people are being banned from campuses, which there's absolutely no evidence for.
Basically he's an awful Hasbarist. Always has been, always will be.
And his supporters in Washington and the media are already declaring all criticism of the above antisemitism because of course they are 🤦🤬
Geez, if the Dems are going to again snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, she could do now by picking Shapiro. :(
Yikes okay I hadn't heard about this, that's really bad. The only way I'd be surprised if a Republican said something like this would be that it's above a fifth grade level of grammar, this is unacceptable for a Democrat. Do you have a source for where he said this?
wow viking_hippie did a way better job than i ever could have expressing the things i wanted to communicate in lieu of any ability on my part to streamline and organize my thoughts in a concise but thorough manner...
but even though i'm very much NOT a fan of shapiro and i mostly agree with everything viking just said, that one bit about "Palestinians are too battle-minded", iirc, was from an editorial he wrote in college back in the 90s, and while it IS a vile position to hold... not everyone was gifted with foreknowledge that it was baseless propaganda.
I learned better since the 90s myself that, no, the middle east has NOT in fact 'always been at war throughout all of history', ACTUALLY. If i sound somewhat salty right now it's out of shame for my past. I myself didn't learn until over a decade later that the middle east's history had a shit ton more nuance.
None of us are immune to propaganda. As much as I dislike shapiro's present positions I actually want to give him the benefit of a doubt that MAYBE he no longer actually espouses this position to this day, and I couldn't find evidence (perhaps just skill issue??) either way.
So, TL;DR: it's healthy to pump the brakes and ask ourselves how legitimate some of the criticisms of someone are, EVEN IF the rest of the criticisms are unfortunately accurate.
I'm not out here to demonize someone. I only set out to qualify exactly why I prefer Walz over Shapiro. Thank you both for being good sports about it!
True. However, as I pointed out in another comment, he's had 30 years to correct the record and didn't until doing so became advantageous to his career prospects.
Coupled with his much more recent statements about the protesters, I don't buy that he's actually evolved on Israel at all since the 90s when, as you so rightly point out, the vast majority of people in the West didn't know better than to believe the Hasbara.
... oh dear gods, now that you mention it, he literally fucking WORKED FOR Hasbara, in 1996.
I was gonna say "If I was embarrassed about something I did in the past I wouldn't want to bring it up either" but Shapiro literally CREATED some of the rhetoric that tried to brainwash me when I was a kid. What the FUCK man... D:
It was a 1993 opioin piece in his college newspaper
Before you say "but that was ages ago! He's evolved since then!", I'd like to point out that at no time during the intervening 30 years has he distanced himself from it, until the moment it might be a hindrance to getting a prestigious gig as VP.
Call me a cynic, but I find it extremely unlikely that he's being sincere rather than just doing disingenuous damage control in order to become the designated White House Hasbarist after Biden vacates that position.
That's the thing he wrote like 30 years ago right? What are his views now? I'm not judging someone based on what they wrote the year before I was born if they don't feel that way anymore.
Given that he never in those 30 years recanted any of it before the moment it became inconvenient to his career prospects and given his recent comments demonizing anti-genocide protesters as equivalent to the KKK and spreading debunked smears about them, I think it's reasonable to conclude that his views haven't changed much.
Yeah, that's all I've seen as well. But I dare to hope, someday, we will have someone, at least near the White House, that actually cares about human rights
now to be fair, and maybe shapiro doesn't even DESERVE my charitability but i'm gonna spare it anyway... we're all subject to propaganda in our youth and he's no exception. Apparently his views were more militant back in the 90s when he was in college and he even tried to VOLUNTEER for the IDF.
But ... like ... back then, we didn't KNOW the kind of shit we know today. It wasn't common knowledge or easy to find out for college age (or in my case elementary school age) kids just how BARBARIC the colonizing state of israel was making shit for the indigenous population. Hell, before I KNEW better (to my great shame) I was a snot nosed little zionist when I was little. Because I was also still under the thrall of religion back then too and thought (erroneously) that "israel=always the good guys".
It's fairly likely he didn't know back then the awful shit the IDF gets up to. It's easy to look back on the past from today and think "oh yeah it's obvious" but israeli defense force soldiers RAPING palestinian civilians and then israeli statist simps RIOTING to stop those rapists from facing punishment for their crimes was actually NEWS to me not too long ago.
I WANT TO BELIEVE that he didn't try to sign up for the IDF with the intent of raping and pillaging trapped and marginalized victims of an apartheid police state like some kind of died in the wool mustache-twiddling villain. And I don't want people pretending as though he was, either.
all in all, his history ain't a good look, and looks significantly worse than walz's, who, far from actively agitating for israeli aggression at any point in his life, was just kind of going with the flow possibly not even realizing what he was agreeing to just as many of us used to before we found out the truth.
i'm not gonna hold my breath hoping, but there's still at least a chance that whoever gets picked might grow a better moral compass and come out against this abject fuckery the state of israel is perpetrating. It's merely that, between the two of them, my perception is that walz is more likely to evolve his position to the better than shapiro.