Democracies mean political power to a certain extent is subject to the vote.

You can have other rules to limit that power, that's orthogonal to having a democracy (and btw in theory you could have those rules without a democracy as well). You can give power to other state entities to veto actions by the elected body, like with constitutional courts being able to veto the president and congress.

You can care about foreigners a lot, a little, or none at all and still be a democracy.

You could have a constitutional democracy that has in it's constitution the genocide of all other people on the planet, it would still be a constitutional democracy. Or you can have a constitutional democracy that gives the same identical rights to all people on the planet. Or anything in between.

But in all these cases it would STILL be the will of the citizenry. The constitution will be written according to rules set and voted upon by the citizenry at some point in time, and amended by the citizenry.

It's absolutly not populist to claim that the actual power to determine all extents of the constitution (and of national rules in general) resides with the citizens, in actual democracies. That's actually something most constitutions *explicitly tell you*.

What you need to have a democracy is the vote to some significant (5-10%+) portions of the population, periodical; the ability for people to present themselves up for elections without being harassed if they do so. Actual fair voting procedures. *that's about it*.

Everything else can modify your democracy even by a lot, but isn't a requirement to be a democracy.

You can have an illiberal democracy for example (hello, Singapore).

You can have a democracy where there is no power of constitutional veto for actions of parliament (hello, The Netherlands).

You can have a democracy where there isn't actual freedom of religion (hello, India).

You can have a democracy where there isn't actual freedom of the press (hello, Italy). Or freedom of speech in general (hello, hate speech laws everywhere).

You can have a democracy with slaves (hello, USA for a century). Where women can't vote (hello, all democracies until recently).

You can have a democracy without habeas corpus (hello, El Salvador and most others during "emergencies").

And so on and on. 90-95% of what people mean with "democracy" has nothing to do with the democratic system of deciding who gets political power, but it's rather a wishlist of the actual constitutional rights they would like to see protected and so on.

I hope that students being actively taught lessons know more about the subject matter than someone who hasn’t been in high school for 20+ years.

You teach racism

Please block me. You’re an idiot and a liar and a racist. These aren’t exclusively attacks, these are the behaviors I have seen you take

I reported you for racism. What happened? I thought the mods were cracking down on racists?

Would expect the host (Israel) of the party to at least put out some finger foods.

I was just answering the question

Well it was a pretty solid post by Grizy. Do you disagree with his premise at all?

This sounds like a joke but frozen food heated up in mobile kitchens (glorified food trucks) is how modern armies feed a lot of people, including in disaster relief situations where millions of people need to be fed.

I have said the following repeatedly but it needs to be said again.

The Gazan civilians are so hungry, whatever the Israelis feed them will be essentially consumed on the spot. The risk of leaking food aid to Hamas (except those blended into the population) is negligible weighed against the amount of human suffering/deaths such feeding would prevent.

Unless, of course, you go full stupid and just send the aid into a random area and let whoever has guns take the aid. You know, like what the Israelis are making people do now.

Israel is smaller population wise than the metro area I live in. Do they even have 50,000 troops total in Gaza right now? Given war could start on the northern border any minute on top of this, I think it is pretty unrealistic to have 50,000 troops committed solely to food aid, while you are fighting one war and a second one could start up any minute (Lebanon).

Pulling up all the reservists for the initial Gaza invasion was actually a very big drag on Israel's economy. And this is on top of losing a big chunk of their manual labor workforce (Palestinians) for the foreseeable future.

I think you completely underestimate the existential threat Israel is under, and over-estimate their capabilities, especially as it pertains to manpower. You can have all the technology in the world, and great training and professionalism your military (which no one is arguing Israel even has) and there is still extreme limits on what a nation of 6 million (roughly the Jewish population minus the Haredim) can accomplish.

If the UN was functional and trustworthy, and Palestinians were less violent, this all sounds like something the UN should be doing. But the UN is completely corrupt and rotten to the core, and no nation wants the bad PR of aid workers being killed by Palestinians while trying to bring them food. This has happened to Egypt, and is causing a lot of domestic unrest there.

Very good twitter thread about the food related lies pushed by the anti-israel narrative, all sourced ; gazeans basically always had enough food, and they do now.

Then ofc if hamas keeps stealing most of it, that's a problem, but not an israeli made one.

https://twitter.com/Aizenberg55/stat...85883211297002

lol

It is amusing to imagine some Hamas guys sitting on a mountain of bags of flour in a warehouse somewhere.

Yeah cuz a bunch of fine upstanding lads like Hamas would never steal.

Obviously they would, but puzzling out the economics of the situation is amusing.

World food program of the UN is one of the sources claiming they are starving, except their OWN DATA has price for food in gaza decreasing very fast in the last 60+ days

https://www.wfp.org/publications/202...rket-dashboard

(as per twitter thread above).

I'm conflicted

Israel needs to destroy hamas. The world wants them to do it without killing excess civilians

So Israel is just staying near rafah and exchanging some fire but isn't really moving in the way they want to

They eventually will but they are hoping someone will help the civilians

Israel is being attacked from the north so need military for that. It's not like Israel has unlimited resources

So i think until the election, the status quo will remain.

The aid is obviously getting into the tunnels. I guess that's good since some hostages are in the tunnels. But ideally three power supplies to the tunnels need tu be severed so all can come out

You teach math, but u can't put 2 and 2 together? Lol

Of course i can

Israel also knows that if Trump wins they can do whatever they need to do and not lose american aid

way to gamble the future. And even then, one day trump will be gone.

Maybe a good idea to listen to when even the usa is telling you that you have lost the plot. I'm not sure netanyahu cares given his willigness to do anything to survive but I dont think risking losing usa support is playing well with his main support or general population.

they can do anything they want right now with Biden! they are doing what they want!

No they aren't

They want to dismantle rafah. The reason they aren't is related to the biden administration

That's why israel is just standing pat

They aren't leaving until all the tunnels are destroyed and hamas is out of power

So you guys gave been falsely claiming that gaza has been occupied these 18 years, now you get your wish

Israel will occupy Gaza until they can accomplish their goals. If civilians are just staying in rafah, then status quo it is

Right now sure. But then how usa reacts can make a huge difference

I suspect that these consideration are delaying the main asasult on rafah.

This is false, they wanted to enter Rafah more than a month ago

Israel got over 100k active soldiers. Even allocating 5% to administering aid would dramatically improve conditions for both the Gazan civilians and long term peace.

If the Israelis are so worried about aid getting into the tunnels, the best thing to do is to distribute the aid themselves.

5000 soldiers

500 inspecting, escorting, and distributing from 100 (that's 5 guards per truck) trucks every 4 hours, assume 2 shifts, and you got 2,000 trucks a day. It's not that big of a requirement. And frankly having the soldiers there would make Rafah more secure anyway, and make it easier for Israel to actually find the tunnels.

That goal doesn't stand much scrutiny. It's highly unlikely that Hamas (by whatever name) can be destroyed this way. At least as likely that they will be strengthened.

If israel lose usa support then netanyahu will have turned a small existential threat into a massive one.

Imagine Israel loses USA support, then islamists attack again, that's when Israel gets the complete support it needs to eliminate the threat.

Have you thought about it?

It's either Israel can do it on its own no matter Biden objections, or the USA leaves space for terrorists to hit again and then the world is back in favour of Israel.

If you truly commit that way as Israel you succeed no matter what. Only question is how many Israelis die in the process, and that depends on Americans.