“Half of the Israeli public is no longer in favor of the war,” one friend told me Saturday night as we witnessed thousands of Israelis take to the streets to protest the Israeli government under the slogan, “Elections Now.” “Yes, but the other half is all-in, and REALLY in favor,” responded his wife. “And they are the more powerful group.”
She, of course, is right. For months, reports of torture and rape have emerged from Israel’s military base turned torture camp, Sde Teiman, where Israel has imprisoned thousands of Palestinians without charge. I wrote about it in a previous diary earlier this month. Palestinians who have emerged from this torture camp refer to it as the “slaughterhouse” with horrendous tales of torture, rape, abuse, and sleep deprivation being meted out by Israeli prison guards. Nearly 30 Palestinians have died while in Sde Teiman and other prisons, according to the information provided to date.
And while the precise chain of events is unclear, what we do know is that the Israeli military advocate general decided to dispatch the military police to question nine Israeli soldiers on suspicion of gang-raping and sodomizing a Palestinian man from Gaza at Sde Teiman. The man was rushed to the hospital where he exhibited signs of rape, including a ruptured bowel and broken ribs. It would be a mistake to simply think that Israel’s actions in prisons like Sde Teiman came only after October. Since becoming Israel’s national security minister in 2022, ultranationalist Itamar Ben Gvir has made prisons his target, with him authorizing abuse against Palestinians. He has also called for the death penalty to solve problems of overcrowding.
Why does history not bear this out? Because Obama had a brief slim majority?
Even having a 60% democratic majority doesn’t do what you think it does. The Democratic Party, thankfully, is not a hive mind. It’s normal for 15% of them to vote differently on a subject based on differing opinions. But Republicans will denounce a bill as illegal, immoral, and then still vote it in to tow the party line.
Obama had a supermajority.
I've heard all of the excuses for how powerless Democrats are.
After watching the ACA and the Trump Tax Cuts and Jobs Act pass with simple majorities, the excuses don't make sense anymore. There is a method to fulfill a president's promises, and they choose not to use it when they have the power to do so.
And notice that the Republicans just ignored the Parliamentarian, whom Democrats sometimes use as another excuse as to why they chose not to fulfill their promises.
That's not a matter of opinion. It's fact.
Yeah, you’ve heard the excuses. Just scared to respond to them, I suppose. The answer should be obvious: We don’t want a dictatorship.
I understand that in a symbolic sense.
The problem is that it doesn't matter for the majority of Americans, because they can legally be paid so little that the person we elect is immaterial to the day-to-day suffering they experience in our civilized republic. (2/3 of the US states still have a $7 minimum wage.)
And, that fact has remained true across two Democratic presidents who had total control of Congress, which means there's no reason to expect that it will be any different under a Harris presidency.