What does it feel like to craft an Israel-Palestine policy that pisses absolutely everyone off?
My latest. https://t.co/ObYgMYqCl6
— Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) May 29, 2024
Julia Ioffe was a Jewish child refugee from the crumbling Soviet empire, and of course she’s got relatives and friends in Israel. I think even the fiercest Balloon Juice critic of the Biden admin’s current behavior would find much to agree with in this article.
As the war in Gaza drags into its eighth month, and as the Palestinian death toll mounts and their suffering continues to flood social media, and as Israeli hostages return as bodies rather than living people, Joe Biden and his national security team are continuing to try to thread a seemingly impossible policy needle: How do you maintain America’s traditional support for Israel while reining in the Netanyahu government’s prosecution of a war that, even according to the State Department, has likely violated international law? And how do you do all this while mollifying your domestic critics, both on the left and the right, on an issue that has become one of the most polarizing in a generation?
The answer, according to multiple administration officials and people close to the president’s national security team, seems to be: You can’t. Biden’s policy, which stems from his own deeply held views, has evolved with the war but has still managed to infuriate just about everyone. To wit: When Biden announced that he would be pausing a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel because of the civilian carnage in Gaza, absolutely no one was happy with the micro-adjustment. The left sneered that it was too little too late, and the right screamed that Biden was abandoning Israel during a time of existential danger. Senior officials and Biden advisors sighed: What could they do that wouldn’t precipitate this kind of bipartisan fury?…
For decades, after all, America has committed itself to a foreign policy of bipartisan support for Israel, with very few conditions. And, despite the loud criticism from progressives over the past few months, most polling indicates that a majority of Americans believe this is the right course of action. They still see Israel as a key ally—even if Americans do increasingly feel bad for the Palestinians—which means there’s only so much wiggle room any president has, let alone one who hails from a generation of American politics when unflinching allyship was an article of faith. “Joe Biden’s support for Israel is reflexive; it’s not analytical,” said a source close to the administration. “Once you commit to that, there are costs to departing from that that are just as big as there are to sticking with it.”
Then again, some of the administration’s policy positions are simply irreconcilable with the complex reality of the situation. How do you allow Israel to wage a war with American-made weapons while telling it to limit the number of civilian casualties when you know that Hamas is doing everything it can to maximize Palestinian casualties to further isolate Israel as a pariah state? How can you simultaneously appease critics on the left, who want you to cut off Israel entirely, and critics on the right, who want you to support Israel even more while disregarding the Palestinians, whom they see as terrorist sympathizers and unreliable narrators of their own demise?…
Before this war, the Biden administration resembled the largely leak-free Obama White House. The national security and foreign policy teams were disciplined, earnest, and eager to right the ship of state after four years of the Trump wrecking ball. Much to the chagrin of D.C. journalists who had grown fond of the informational sieve that was the Trump White House, after January 2021, leaks were suddenly hard to come by. This administration, reporters complained, was boring.
That has all changed with the war in Gaza. There have been constant petitions, resignations, and—worst of all if you’re sitting on the N.S.C.—leaks, including those of classified information. Some administration officials tell me it’s the result of a deepening frustration with an insular policymaking process where only a select few trusted by Biden—Tony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, Amos Hochstein, Brett McGurk—have true input.
But others ascribe the frustrations—and the leaks they spawn—to the unbridgeable divide outlined by Ross. When it came to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, for example, there were internal disagreements on tactics, not on strategy. The question was more Should Washington send Kyiv ATACMS and F-16s? not Should we stop supporting Ukraine and agree with Vladimir Putin? Now, there are people in the administration who don’t like what they perceive as the president’s wavering on his commitment to Israel, and others who feel just as strongly that the president should abandon Israel entirely…
Senior foreign policy and national security officials have, at this point, largely accepted their fate. Anything they decide on Israel-Palestine will be unpopular with White House critics on both ends of the political spectrum. Anything that hems in or punishes Israel will be seen by the American left as cosmetic and ineffectual, and as a betrayal by the American right…
…[T]here’s also a grim acceptance in Bidenland that there simply won’t be enough time before the election for the images from Gaza to recede and other concerns to take a front seat. The I.D.F. recently said that they will need another six months to root out Hamas, ceasefire talks have broken down, and both Hamas and Netanyahu refuse to end the war. After eight months of this horror, there’s an increasing sense that some Biden voters have been lost for good. “It’s unusual for foreign policy to be a prism through which people are expressing their discontent about their own society,” said the source close to the administration. “The plight of the Palestinians has become a way to conjure up the way people of color are treated here—this crisis has become an emotional touchstone that no policy solution can really address because we’re now swimming in a soup that is in many ways about us. I don’t think ending the conflict in Gaza would solve it. The genie’s out of the bottle.”
ETA: Okay, I should’ve read further into my news feeds before posting…
BREAKING: President Joe Biden outlines a new three-phase proposal designed to end fighting between Israel and Hamas, including a total cease-fire, return of hostages and rebuilding of Gaza. pic.twitter.com/i1kq58rv0Q
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) May 31, 2024
Our proposal to end the war in Gaza begins with a complete ceasefire, withdrawal of Israeli forces from all populated areas in Gaza, the release of hostages and hostage remains, the ability for Palestinians to return to Gaza, and a surge of humanitarian assistance.
— President Biden (@POTUS) May 31, 2024
zhena gogolia
The obvious solution? Elect Trump!
JML
I was reminded of the old adage from mediation: “If nobody walks away happy, then the settlement was probably fair.” (obviously, that’s not always true…)
It’s always been a tough needle to thread for the Biden team, especially since there are many people with no interest in threading any kind of needle: they’ve picked their side. I appreciate that they’re trying.
rikyrah
I still support Biden enthusiastically.
I’m not the mainstream of Democratic feelings on Israel, so I’m not going to get mad at him about Israel/Gaza.
I know he’s not the candidate that wants to turn Gaza into beachfront condos….
so…….
raven
Countdown to rage posts.
zhena gogolia
@raven: Yeah, time to go do something else.
japa21
@raven: How was your anniversary celebration?
Chris
Huh. Just the right number of months to get them past the U.S. election. How about that.
brantl
He’s going to have to publicly state that if Israel continues to post the ratio of bystander-dead to Hamas-dead, they will get no arms. Is that going to piss off the Pro-Facistic Zionists? Sure, but it’s the right thing to do. Letting them bomb Gaza to rubble is insupportable.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@rikyrah:
Twitter, or at least the section I’m immersed in, is nothing but extremes: leftier-than-thous who believe that he does and then neoliberal fauxgressives who, behind a lot of disguised verbiage, aka dog whistles, that do want him to turn Gaza into beachfront condos.
It’s worse than watching two baseliners go at it on a tennis court.
JPL
@rikyrah: Thank you for mentioning that and I hope Jared’s words appear on an ad. All the trumps and in-laws are disgusting.
New Style in Parsons
“The genie’s out of the bottle.” What an idiotic statement. Biden has a lot to lose for tens of millions of Americans if he lets the Israeli government and its supporters take down his re-election campaign. He needs to get it through his head that we are more important than Israel.
Baud
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Reddit is that way as well on this issue in particular.
topclimber
I don’t think the US expects zero collateral damage from Israel’s military actions. We accepted that equation ourselves in our long battle against Al-Qaeda and ISIS, not to mention Iraq/Iraq and Afghanistan.
It is the willingness–even zest– to starve people in Gaza and run them out of the West Bank, hostages be damned, that makes it impossible for many Dems to justify what might otherwise be seen as a military necessity.
Let’s see whether Joe’s patient approach pays off not just for Palestinians and Israelis, but also for his standing with any voters holding back because they think he only cares for what Jerusalem wants.
frosty
@zhena gogolia: I’m with you. I’ll see you all later. I need to be packing for a Road Trip anyway.
lowtechcyclist
The thing is, what Hamas is doing to maximize Palestinian casualties is a fundamentally defensive tactic. The carnage stops the moment Israel ends military operations in Gaza. What the U.S. can do is pause all further aid to Israel until Israel ends those operations.
Hamas is very limited in what it can do in the way of attacking Israel proper. October 7th wouldn’t be a day of infamy absent Bibi’s egregious defensive lapse, where he sent the troops defending the border with Gaza to the West Bank to help ‘settlers’ harass the West Bank Palestinians. How you deal with Hamas is defense and intel. If it takes killing tens of thousands of civilian Palestinians to root out Hamas, then that’s a war crime, regardless of Hamas’ role. Israel has agency here no matter what Hamas does. It doesn’t have to be committing genocidal war crimes.
There has to be a big NO from us here. They have already killed far too many people. We need to deprive Israel of any resources we would be supplying them with that can help enable this carnage, until they withdraw. How many deaths will it take ’till we know that too many people have died? Israel passed that threshold months ago. They won’t pull out of Gaza the moment we stop resupplying them, but at least it will hasten the day.
Chris
@New Style in Parsons:
It’s the fact that, as noted in my previous post, the Israeli government is consciously trying to engineer his electoral defeat, and the war is being conducted with that as one of the factors in mind. They’re not even trying to be subtle about it: Bibi and some of his allies have basically come right out and said so.
And all signs indicate that both the administration and the pro-Israel faction of the Democratic Party is either blissfully unaware of this or has no idea what to do about it.
different-church-lady
These two sides have been at each other’s throats for the entire time I’ve been alive and somehow this is all Biden’s fault.
different-church-lady
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
This is not by accident.
Tony Jay
Meh. I’ll just say that there is a huge expanse of potential policy options in the space between ‘unwavering support of Israel’ and ‘cut off Israel entirely’ that the author doesn’t seem at all interested in exploring en route to their ‘this is just fine’ conclusion and leave it at that.
trollhattan
Israel-Palestine is the never-healing wound covered by the smallest of Curad strips (dino pattern optional). Rip it off and countless legions are ready to jump in from every conceivable angle.
I first became aware they even existed with the ’67 War. A new crisis every few years since and nothing seems to improve, at least not since Camp David (in 2000!). Have no answers, just know this current campaign will amp the hatred further than any previous time.
Compare that with the utter lack of knowledge of/interest in Sudan–ethnic genocide on a vastly greater scale. Who speaks for the victims? Who pushes back against the terrorist army and their weapons suppliers? Who can even name them? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Will
I’ve reached the point in my life where I’m just done caring. I watched them torch this country when they didn’t vote for Hillary, and then they have the nerve to blame Biden for Roe being overturned.
Now I’m going to watch these idiots torch Biden over a conflict that we can not stop. Trump will then replace Thomas, Alito, and Sotomayor (RBG pt II). So even if Trump doesn’t personally destroy democracy, the court will for the next couple decades.
I’m actually planning to stop voting if this happens. I’ve hopefully got 20 years left on this planet before either I die or it becomes an abject shit hole, I’m going to enjoy them not stressing about politics or the plights of others.
Baud
@Will:
I’m planning on dropping out, but it’s easy enough to vote once every two years. Not going to stop doing that.
Darkrose
@rikyrah: Everything you said. I’m not thrilled with Biden’s Middle East policy, but it’s still better than Trump, and I am very happy with most of what Biden has done domestically. Trump is an existential threat to me and the people I care about.
CaseyL
@Will:
Took the words right out of my mouth.
Kenneth Fair
The administration—and Democrats generally—can and should condemn both terroristic attacks on civilians and genocidal attacks on civilians. It’s a really, really easy principle to state and espouse: Attacks on civilians are wrong, no matter who’s doing it.
Israel is fully justified in rooting out Hamas and bringing terrorists to justice. But anyone who says the Israeli government needs 2,000-lb. bombs to combat Hamas is just lying. Hamas is an urban insurgency; bombing is a militarily stupid and counterproductive way to fight insurgents. If defeating Hamas was the Netanyahu government’s actual goal, then they’d be asking the U.S. for different materiel and prosecuting this war a different way. But they aren’t. Actions speak louder than words. It’s obvious from their actions that the Netanyahu government’s goal is to commit genocide. The U.S. shouldn’t help them do so. Point out the lies, for God’s sake, and refuse to cooperate with them. And point out how the Netanyahu government is actually hurting Israel, not protecting it.
The Biden administration and the Democratic leadership generally has been woefully late in understanding—and helping the American public to understand—the divide between “the nation of Israel/the Israeli people” and “the Netanyahu/Likud government.” Democrats should long have treated AIPAC as the Likud front that it is and shunned it, rather than act like it’s some impartial friendship committee of Jewish people. And this administration shouldn’t give a rat’s behind what right-wingers want to scream about—they’ll scream regardless. Prove them wrong. Make them justify why Israel needs American bombs.
I get the bind this administration is in, and there’s no question that Trump would be 1,000,000,000x worse. But that doesn’t mean this administration shouldn’t do better.
SW
This kind of nails it, in my view. I am generally unmoved by arguments against Biden because of his age. But the Israel problem is one where his age is a real liability. This is because his instincts regarding Israel were formed in a time when support for Israel was unconditional and nearly universal. But what if the Israeli government is headed by a gangster? How do you reconcile these two conflicting impulses.
pat
@Kenneth Fair:
Thanks for saying what makes total sense to me. And I can be against Israeli policy without being “antisemitic.”
karen gail
It doesn’t matter who is President of US there is nothing they can do except cut off all military aide to Israel. If you want to lay the blame somewhere it should be at the feet of the British Empire after they took over that area from the Ottoman Empire.
I have heard a number of history lecturers state that if US, Canada and UK had been willing to take in the Jews fleeing Nazi Germany there would have been no need to force Palestine to give up land to create a separate nation for Israel.
Personally, I believe we are wrong and have been wrong to unconditionally supply Israel with money and weaponry. US has given Israel at least $260 billion since World War II and President Biden called for $15 billion in aid in April.
sdhays
The IDF is lying that it can root out Hamas in a Friedman Unit. They have no actual strategy for completely eradicating Hamas. Their “strategy” is to just keep blowing things up and promising the Israeli public that they will be able to wave a “Mission Accomplished” banner…eventually.
brantl
@topclimber: We didn’t accept it, Cheney did.
Omnes Omnibus
Trump was convicted yesterday. There is a potential ceasefire deal for I/P on the table. Why are people talking about checking out? The situation today is far better than it was 25 hours ago.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: Actually I think you are. The shouters dominate the conversation but they don’t represent the mainstream.
I support Biden enthusiastically.
japa21
@Omnes Omnibus:
You’re new to the internet, aren’t you.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
Contingency.
different-church-lady
@Omnes Omnibus: Optimism is having supply chain issues.
Jackie
Time to plunge my hands in the dishwater and meditate. 😊
brantl
@pat: You can’t, if you’re talking to fanatic Zionists. Any criticism of Israel is antisemitism, to them.
JCJ
I suppose this outcome to date is what Hamas was looking for. They had to know that this would be Israel’s reaction, so what was their overall plan?
rikyrah
Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) posted at 3:50 PM on Fri, May 31, 2024:
NBC News: Trump supporters are trying to doxx the jurors in Trump’s criminal trial.
A non-profit that conducts public interest research found posts of the purported addresses of jurors on a fringe message board known for pro-Trump content.
The same group found a high volume of violent social posts targeting Judge Merchan and DA Bragg. nbcnews.com/politics/donal…
(https://x.com/kylegriffin1/status/1796645330613641548?t=IYbVh8ST8PaHM64CL1qIDQ&s=03)
rikyrah
Shaiel Ben-Ephraim (@academic_la) posted at 1:09 PM on Fri, May 31, 2024:
The speech blind-sided Netanyahu, who was not updated on the speech or its contents. It is based on an Israeli proposal that the entire cabinet voted on a few days ago. However, Netanyahu did NOT want it to go public because it included a willingness to end the war. Biden went…
(https://x.com/academic_la/status/1796604827369439327?t=m98SBkS3zyIrA-CPnu06bA&s=03)
rikyrah
Jasmine Crockett’s Anger Translator (@Needle_of_Arya) posted at 4:05 PM on Fri, May 31, 2024:
America is gonna need new & updated (white) domestic (cyber) terrorism laws to deter against this type of political doxxing-harassment of private citizens
(https://x.com/Needle_of_Arya/status/1796649267240530007?t=rl4c-s_a2DsCNVLdulSjdg&s=03)
different-church-lady
@rikyrah: We’re going to need more prosecutors.
topclimber
@brantl: So did Obama.
rikyrah
Tell Hamas – ACCEPT CEASEFIRE NOW!!! (@What46HasDone) posted at 3:37 PM on Fri, May 31, 2024:
We gonna learn real quick who was serious about that who ceasefire now thing over the last eight months and for who it was just an aesthetic and a cover for other beliefs that didn’t have anything to do with a ceasefire.
(https://x.com/What46HasDone/status/1796642139608076500?t=N9YEdNInc75Ds9kt0kdG1Q&s=03)
Villago Delenda Est
@raven: A belated happy anniversary! Now back to the quagmire…
rikyrah
Because, of course…
The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) posted at 3:38 PM on Fri, May 31, 2024:
Emily Baden, who used to live in the same suburban D.C. cul-de-sac as Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, has claimed in an interview with the Guardian that the justice used his security detail to intimidate Baden and her family on multiple occasions.
https://t.co/IeJlhNURd2
(https://x.com/thedailybeast/status/1796642337352765901?t=MjBU3TVOjygNZvfzJ-lQEg&s=03)
Villago Delenda Est
@rikyrah: These terrorists (and that’s what they are, textbook definition) need to be hunted down, prosecuted, convicted, and LOCKED UP!
Martin
In case anyone was wondering why the news of Trump dropping an N bomb on the Apprentice has come up, the NDA for the first season crew just expired after 20 years. They can talk.
pat
@brantl:
Thankfully I don’t know any zionists and I don’t care what they think.
Villago Delenda Est
@sdhays: Bibi the genocidal maniac doesn’t want Hamas to be “rooted out”. He needs them to be kept out of jail. Likewise, Hamas doesn’t want peace, it harms recruitment. The Saudis are positively useless. Ditto the Gulf States. They’ve all been treating the Palestinians as if they were Jews since Israel was founded.
Thanks, British and French colonial empires, for fucking everything in the damn Middle East up since Versailles.
Kay
@Tony Jay:
Agreed. The whole thing is just so facile.
This:
Stop worrying about “bipartisan fury” and simply follow US law on shipping weapons to Israeli units who won’t follow our laws? You know, the blueprint 9 D Senators and 89 D House members laid out 3 months ago? How about that? When in doubt follow the law.
It’s just bizarre (and kind of horrible, frankly) to frame this as solely a domestic political problem. The entire world is watching this. It really is bigger than Biden.
UncleEbeneezer
taumaturgo
It is hard to teach an old pony new tricks and considering Joe has been an ardent Zionist since the colonization of Palestine began, if he does a 180 on his absolute support for Netan-Yahoo and his ultra-right wing cohorts it would be an extreme foreign policy reversal. Fingers crossed.
https://prospect.org/world/2024-03-28-how-biden-boxed-himself-in-on-gaza/
Denali5
I still support Biden. He is in an impossible situation. He is light years better than anyone else.
Kay
@Tony Jay:
It reminds me a little of Comey after 2016 “I was anguished, so torn, whatever could I do, Republicans were mad, Democrats were mad, I was in a tizzy !?”
Follow…the laws?
Another Scott
There’s a big rhetorical shift today. I assume it’s because Biden impressed upon Bibi and Israel that their path is not sustainable.
TimesOfIsrael.com:
(Emphasis added.)
Bibi going from “we will vaporize everyone in Hamas for ever and ever, amen” to “Hamas won’t have capabilities” is a really, really big climbdown. And one they were told over and over again that was wrongheaded and doomed to failure to pursue.
Progress!!
Fingers crossed.
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
@Another Scott:
Interesting catch. Thanks.
Kay
I’m obviously backing Biden and I agree he would be better than Trump on this, but I hope what I see as very uneven approach as between Palestinians and Israelis is all “affection” for Israel and not bias against Palestinians due to their ethnicity or religion, because that would make me think much less of Mr. Biden and his team.
But he’s not my role model. I’d still vote for him.
SiubhanDuinne
O/T, Michelle Obama’s mother,
MarionMarian Robinson, just passed away.A remarkable woman. This is so sad. Deep condolences to the Obama and Robinson families. Rest in Power.
Raven
@japa21: It was sweet, a friend from the dog park works at a really swell restaurant and she set us up with an outside table so Artie came!
Baud
@SiubhanDuinne:
RIP.
Thanks for letting us know.
Chris
@Kay:
Can you imagine a judge and jury being like this?
“Oh God, my life is so hard! If I do one thing, the plaintiff and prosecutor will be mad at me, if I do the other thing, the defendant and defense attorney will be mad at me! If I do a lot of things, they’ll all be mad at me! No matter what I do, somebody’s going to be mad at me! Oh God, my life is so hard! What do I do? WHAT DO I DO?”
(And yes, it is about ten times as ridiculous to invoke this on behalf of Joe Biden, of all people. The man has been running for president since Magnum PI was still on the air. I find it unlikely that it’s never occurred to him that these are the kind of binds you get stuck with when you’re in the Oval Office).
Geminid
@JCJ: Like a lot of the facts of this war, we probably won’t get a good picture of what Hamas wanted until it’s over. They clearly intended to provoke a savage response when they attacked civilians and military indiscriminately on October 7.
The response and the death toll may have exceeded Hamas’s expectations, but it has not achieved the desired result. The U.S., friendly Arab countries and key European allies like France, Germany and the UK have hung with Israel, albeit more and more grudgingly.
Hamas and it’s allies like Palestinian Islamic Jihad may also have believed they could impose casualties on the IDF that Israelis would not tolerate, but that hasn’t happened either.
As for the casualties the IDF has imposed on Hamas, that’s another relevant fact I do not think we’ll know until after this war.
Hamas has a civilian leadership based in Qatar and Turkiye, and a military command in Gaza led by Yahyah Sinwar. There might be some divergence between the civilian leaders and Sinwar. He may want to continue fighting to retain control of Gaza, while they could be jockeying for a role in Palestinian politics post-conflict. That could factor into the events of the next few days.
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
MSNBC announced it along with a statement from Michelle. When I checked a couple of minutes ago, the major outlets had nothing up, nor were the standard bios updated yet. I expect that will change very quickly.
Starfish
Just one more Friedman Unit?
Ksmiami
@lowtechcyclist: I’d agree with you except for this fact. HAMAS is a terrorist organization that killed thousands on innocent ppl on October 6th.
Kay
@Chris:
It’s this weird personalization of the decisions. It’s weird and also tone deaf because amid all this carnage it somehow makes the people in the White House the victims. What? How did that happen?
Starfish
@different-church-lady: Biden is in charge of the American money and arms spigots that allow the body counts to increase.
TBone
@different-church-lady: it’s why I don’t say a word about it. Pepperidge Farm remembers…
Starfish
@Tony Jay: Your country is much less pro-Israel than ours, right?
Geminid
@Villago Delenda Est: I think you underestimate Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. They know the players and the problem better than just about anyone, and they started working on the solution when the Israel, the U.S. and European countries were content to manage it.
That’s because a peaceful region matters a lot more to them than it does to me or you.
UncleEbeneezer
@Starfish: Part of that money funds Iron Dome which is currently keeping Hezbollah rockets from landing on innocent Israelis. So you’d rather seem them land and kill even more civilians?
trollhattan
Texas SC Justice Jane Bland disagrees, yo.
Fookin’ Third World country.
Old School
@Kay:
Do you know if Biden is the final arbitrator on whether this law applies? Or would it just set off a series of court cases (filed in Texas for some reason)?
Just wondering if that scenario had been gamed out.
trollhattan
@Starfish:
Otherwise known as the Past-US-Election halt.
Jay
@Another Scott:
SSDD
Israel fucked things up so bad since the Second Intifada, that they no longer have the means to achieve the elimination of Hamas’ military and governmental capabilities.
While people talk about “the bombing of civilians” as war crimes, nobody talks about how the Israeli Government and the upper levels no longer “control” the IDF Brigaids on the ground in the West Bank and Gaza who have gone on an orgy of war crimes, rapes, murders, executions, torture, rape, looting.
Congrat’s Bibi and the US for not following their own laws for decades. You broke the Israeli Military beyond repair.
JaySinWA
@Chris: The IDF has adopted the Freidman Unit.
Starfish
@UncleEbeneezer: Does Israel want money to fund their defense, or do they want to kill civilians and build settlements?
They can make choices.
different-church-lady
@zhena gogolia:
Kay
We’re having our first ever Pride parade in this deep red county Saturday. I’m representing The Democrats – not alone – I got two women to go with me. The organizers are a little nervous about it but I checked the comments on the Facebook announcement and the responses are pretty positive. They did all the grunt work – permits, permission from merchants, etc – we’re just there as back up.
different-church-lady
@Starfish:
Depends on how you define Israel, I guess.
KSinMA
@rikyrah: Me too.
Tony Jay
@Kay:
Agreed. Even that excerpt was simply eyerolling. They could have just written “Both sides are extremists, so an approach somewhere in the middle must be right” and won the monthly box of dried fruits from The Broder Foundation for Extremely-Narrative Pointlessness.
You can justify anything by positing two contrasting fictional audiences and sighing dramatically about how you just can’t make everyone happy so whaddyagonnado except your own thing?
Well, anything except why I should waste my time reading it. Can’t justify that. That’s just crazy talk.
Kay
@Old School:
On one of the sets of laws Biden would be the final say – it’s more complicated than that – there’s a process – but thats the short answer. The other he would not be.
lowtechcyclist
@Ksmiami: That is true. Hamas is evil. That still doesn’t justify Israel killing dozens of Palestinians for every 10/7 victim. It doesn’t destroy Hamas, it’s just mass murder. I don’t see your point.
Kay
@Tony Jay:
People say that in mediation and I just want to bash my head on the table. No, it’s not a good deal if “both sides hate it” – now why would that make any sense at all? Both sides could hate a whole range of dumb things.
HinTN
@trollhattan:
The failure to grasp that great opportunity may be laid squarely on the very small man Yassar Arafat was revealed to be. He couldn’t accept what was offered because the result might/probably would have resulted in his loss of power. Yes, I know this oversimplifies a very complicated problem.
Jay
@Old School:
the way the law is written is the Department of State is the ajudicator, and as we know, the Department of State at the Senior Levels who decide, are all in the bag for Bibi.
The second loophole, is that if the country in question, has a functioning system capable of investigating claims, gathering evidence, taking action and corrections, they get first crack at it. Israel has show for the past 20 plus years that they do not. State always excuses Israel’s excuses. The Leahy Act has only been imposed on % IDF units in the past 30 years.
So, State will do nothing, until the war in Gaza is over and all the war crimes are exposed, and then only a couple of years after, only if there is massive public pressure, (there won’t be domestically), as Israel will do nothing to try to regain command and control of their military and State will do nothing.
Old School
@Kay: Thanks.
@Jay: Thanks.
Tony Jay
@Starfish:
As a country, sure, but the British Establishment is as pro-Israel as required to stay in good odour with the US. Plus there’s the whole 2016-20 period when a performative ‘Antisemitism is whatever the Israeli Right’s representatives say it is” attitude was the law of the land, which is causing its main fair-weather promoters no end of trouble now that Israel is making it impossible for them to pretend it all never happened.
Disgust with the genocide is widespread, but in the halls of power that kind of talk is still verbotten.
HinTN
@Raven: Very nice! Congrats you two lovebirds (and Artie).
Jay
@HinTN:
Arafat’s reason for not accepting the Camp David Accords was not because he would lose power, (he would have),
It is because the Camp David Accords would have left Palestine as two permanently disconnected “Bantustan” slums under Israeli sovereignity and occupation, (“security roads,” settlements, etc) and festering refugee camps.
The Accords in fact established that Palestine would never be a nation.
Tony Jay
@Kay:
It’s just a rhetorical trick.
Can I haz dry fruit box naow?
lowtechcyclist
@UncleEbeneezer: The Iron Dome system that Israel won’t let Ukraine have? I have some unkind thoughts about that.
Frank Wilhoit
@Denali5:
All true, but by the same token, he has little margin for error. In this case he is “fighting the last war”, which is to say, some fictional conflation of pinpricks of a bunch of historical wars. He needs the full picture of what is actually happening today, and nothing could possibly be more difficult. “Bibi is an a$$hole” is not a conclusion but a thread to begin to pull. There are voices whom Biden needs very urgently to listen to, but he doesn’t want to, and neither do the people around him. Mistakes, therefore, lie ahead.
SuzieC
@Kay: That’s great! Where ? I know you’re somewhere in NW Ohio. Have you ever been to the Columbus Pride Parade? One GIANT party.
Cacti
Biden has been terrible on this issue, has acted as if Palestinians aren’t fully human throughout it, and has rarely missed an opportunity to antagonize groups that he needs to win reelection.
Had Ms. Ioffe written this mealy-mouthed bollocks about George W. Bush and Iraq, it would have been called crap by the same group of commenters praising it now.
Geminid
@Starfish: I think it was Mr. Hanegbi, Netanyahu’s national security advisor, who said that, not the IDF.
The fallacy in Hanegbi’s plan is that Israel couldn’t realistically pacify Gaza in 60 months, much less 6. A reporter for Turkiye’s Daily Sabah quoted an Israel security expert who said securing Gaza would tie down 50,000 soldiers. And to what end?
Israeli Defense Minister Gallant has said that Israel cannot afford to maintain control Gaza long term, that there has to be a different solution. Reports are that the Israeli security agency Shin Bet recommended months ago that bringing in forces from Fatah, the Palestinian Authoritiy’s armed wing, was the only practical solution. Arab countries want to back Fatah up with a peacekeeping force empowered by a Security Council resolution. Egypt, the UAE and Morocco would be likely sources for capable troops.
Many Israelis hate the idea of foreign troops in Gaza, and Netanyahu does not want Fatah in there either. But the Arabs will not help Israel on its terms. Israel’s government drove their nation’s bus into a bog they can’t drive out of. The US and the Arabs are willing to toss the the Israelis a line and tow them out, but they’re determined not to do it for free.
Cacti
@Jay: What you said.
The “generous offer” at Camp David in 2000 is one of the great historical fictions of the current century.
Damien
I have a few thoughts that are all conflicting and complicated, much like this entire intractable problem. First, I’m extremely happy that Biden is throwing down the gauntlet on a ceasefire; it’s about goddamn time, and I’m pleased that he included the “rebuilding of Gaza” in there, because in previous conflicts that certainly seems like a piece that got skipped over. Also, I’d very much like for Netenyahu and the IDF architects to get a nice roasting in the Hague for the war crimes they’ve permitted, endorsed, or planned.
That being said, the thing I’m struggling with is what should have been Israel’s response to 10/7? I’m talking in an absolutely ideal world, where Israel wasn’t headed by a fascist, racist, genocidal lunatic. How do we square the following seeming realities (and if someone would like to educate me I’m open!):
I’m not addressing the acute war crimes like the starvation and seemingly intentional targeting of civilians, just if the war was being conducted in an absolutely perfect world (and assuming the perfect world didn’t have total peace).
VFX Lurker
@rikyrah:
This. All of this.
Jay
@HinTN:
BTW, Arafat was never murdered by terrorists for rejecting permanent Batustan status for Palestine.
Rabin was murdered by terrorists for making that limited offer.
zhena gogolia
I hope this headline is gone from the top when I get back from dinner.
Gin & Tonic
Way OT, but here’s a video if you want to see how insane it is to pilot a motorcycle at ~300kph.
Geminid
@Kay: At least you are not in Turkiye. Officials there deny permits for Pride parades. But people still stage the parades, even though the cops eventually break them up. Its not that repressive a country, but civil rights there are very different than here.
I figure Turkiye is 30 or 40 years behind the US when it comes to LGBTQ rights. They may take a step forward though, with this summer’s Olympics. The Turkish women’s volleyball team will be contending for the gold medal, and their two superb strikers are openly gay.
When the women played for the European championship last winter, Turks watched on big screens set up in town squares and stadiums, and when the “Sultans of the Net” won the finals, there was a humungous fireworks display over Istanbul.
SomeRandomGuy
Wow, Hamas sure is evil, *FORCING* Israel to murder people. I mean, they really don’t have any choices, do they? IDF are all robotic automatons that can only kill, because, you know, that evil, horrible, Hamas.
It’s like, it’s amazing how many Republicans don’t understand the concept of courage, or wisdom – Israel does have choices. It’s making the most appalling of choices, and we don’t even discuss the possibility, because, hey, they HAVE to do EXACTLY what *HAMAS* wants.
Wasn’t there a tag, where you could make a word blink? Yeah, putting “*HAMAS*” between those tags, and, like, rumbly explosion sounds when you read it… something so it becomes starkly clear that maybe Israel should do what someone *other* than, you know, Hamas, wants.
Why don’t American readers (in general, etc.) understand that Palestinian children cry for their parents, too… even though they were “acceptable civilian losses” per the IDF?
Citizen Alan
@Villago Delenda Est: See also Bush et al allowing Bin Laden to escape Tora Bora. Conservative movements have nothing to offer except fear of the Other, ideally one that can be packaged as a boogey-man.
Jay
@Damien:
What if alternate histories are not useful.
The only what if I will give, that isn’t a waste of time, is what if Israel hadn’t supported Hamas for decades to keep Bibi out of jail?
Dan B
@Chris: Bibi is smart, competent, ruthless, and believes that eliminating all Palestinians and anyone who gets in his way is at his core. Biden fears that serious actions to penalize Bibi and the far right in Israel will result in being labeled as antisemitic and pro-terrorist. But these problems are just words and can be overcome with a robust propaganda / messaging campaign. Bibi understands sticks. Words without consequences he finds pleasing.
matt
I’m super bored with all the ‘Death to Israel’ people who don’t even seem to be aware of Americans who are committed to the alliance with Israel. There are lots of them. Rashida Tlaib is not the only American with an opinion.
Liminal Owl
@different-church-lady: Nominated!
Geminid
@Jay: Well, that’s an alternative history for sure. You say Israel supported Hamas for decades to keep Netanyahu out of jail, but he was indicted 4 years ago and his trial started in 2021.
VFX Lurker
I’ve already added one brand-new, never-before-seen troll to the pie filter, so some good should come out of this thread.
Citizen Alan
@Kay: The thing that I am not seeing discussed that must be a factor in Biden’s thought process is this: Imagine Biden does enact some kind of serious sanction on Israel and, in the aftermath, Hamas stages some kind of new and significant terrorist attack on Israel. In such a case, Biden will own it. A sizeable percentage of the nation and the entirety of the US Media will treat it as Biden and the Dems choosing Hamas over Israel, and vote accordingly. Cutting off aid to Israel won’t stop the carnage, because they’ve got enough weapons to keep killing until November and sanctioning Israel like people want will greatly increase the likelihood of someone from the Islamophobic Bigot Party replacing Biden as POTUS.
I honestly believe that the only thing that is going to achieve lasting peace in Israel is if Gaza is occupied by some kind of UN peacekeeping force. That or space aliens come down and strike the region with magical Peace Rays. I am uncertain which is more probable atm.
Jay
@Geminid:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Benjamin_Netanyahu
2016 was the start of the 9th criminal investigation into Bibi and the only one that was not quashed and allowed to proceed, and go to trial.
Geminid
@Jay: I guess it’s not decades then, is it?
Ed. But I think the primary purpose for the financial support for Hamas that Israel enabled was to keep the Palestinians divided politically.
Netanyahu’s legal woes were not a big factor until he was indicted. And that was expressed by Netanyahu’s drive to subvert judicial autonomy, not by any new push to assist Hamas.
Chris
@HinTN:
By “oversimplifies a very complex problem,” I assume that you mean “Israel proposed the creation of the Palestinian version of a Native American reservation in which the Palestinians would never have been sovereign (a status that, for example, Israel would never in a million years have accepted for itself either in 1948 or in 2000); Israel and the United States trumpeted this as the single most generous and reasonable peace offer in the entire history of life, the universe, and everything; and when Arafat had the audacity to not take it, they threw up their hands and went home muttering in appalled tones that this crazy Arab clearly just wasn’t serious about peace; and the American public cheerfully accepted all of this narrative because sure, after all this time, why change now.”
Kay
@Geminid:
At least! We’ll have a little table set up with D campaign literature and the t-shirts we sell. One of the women will be bringing her baby. I bought a sun hat for the baby, just in case she needs one.
Damien
@Jay: Dunno man, seems like you’re talking alternate history since Bibi hasn’t even been at risk of jail for a decade let alone multiple. I’m trying to engage in a thought experiment because it’s really easy to say “Israel shouldn’t bomb civilian targets” when Hamas is widely known for, ya know, hiding their bases and military hardware amongst civilian targets. It’s easy to say they shouldn’t do X, but considering that there are some outlets who have been riding the hobby horse of disproportionate response from day one I’d like to hear how we would expect the square of my questions to be circled.
You’re more than welcome not to engage, but to call this a what if alternate history feels a bit flip, to be frank. We can have discussions of ought outside of what is.
Dan B
@Kay: This concern about “Bipartisan Fury@” is another concern about “bad words@”. It’s a beltway insiders concern they focus on because they have lost faith in morality and/or the law. You fight words with your own words. Fighting bad actions requires actions, actions in opposition to acts of heartless cruelty.
Martin
The problem with the current Israel/Gaza situation is that there is no avenue to equity for anyone in the region without tossing some governments, because the entire situation was created from day one to deny equity to everyone in the region. The western powers motivations toward the creation of Israel was part restitution for the Holocaust and part how to solve their own domestic belief that Jews couldn’t be integrated into their Christian societies. In fact, that was the only motivation for the first half century of the idea of Israel pre-war. And the west knew damn well that there was half a million people living in the region they were carving out to be Israel and that the only way that this nation can succeed in their charter is to be in constant conflict with the people they displaced. All of these nations engaged in various forms of colonization – they know how this script works, and they know that Israel doesn’t have this external economic base that can be leveraged to put a boot on the neck of the population you are expanding over top of, so its going to be much more of a constant state of conflict, and I think at the time that Israel was formed, the west was okay with that. I think having Jews and Muslims in this regional struggle was kind of convenient at a time when the rest of the world was trying to rebuild, when old grievances were trying to be repaired, when recurring antagonists were trying to be disarmed and all that. A bunch of white christian countries weren’t going to lose too much sleep over those Jews and Muslims trading border skirmishes as they both fought for a piece of land that they both felt they had claim to.
Against that backdrop, there is no way to achieve equity here. At all. You can argue to undo the 1949 decision that created that localized inequity, but that creates an inequity to the people who were born into the current system, and maybe creates an inequity to the Jewish families that were pushed out of Palestine prior to 1949, and so on and so forth.
This entire framework is built on land, the thing we can’t change. That’s why the borders are the contested matter here. It’s why right to return is a high priority. And as soon as you have two people arguing for the right to the land, to what that land represents, there’s no adjudicating that matter. It can only end in conflict and tragedy unless you can shift the viewpoint of these people off of land being so determinative of their future, which I think every renter can appreciate the difficulty of.
The decision in 1949, even for those who entered into it with the best of intentions – to give the Jewish people a region where they could determine their own outcome, created this crisis and the one thing we can’t do is go back in time and undo it. I think the least bad option in the long term would be a one state solution which effectively dissolved Israel and forced all parties to resolve their differences and form a new governing system and philosophy, but I suspect the power balance has shifted too far for that to succeed. So there is no resolving this conflict apart from telling some party to undeservedly eat shit – and it won’t be the west who set this whole thing in motion being the ones to eat shit. We’re not going to be stuck with the tab for rebuilding, we’re not going to open up for refugees because we’re not actually interested in resolving our own internal antisemitism and anti-muslim biases.
Of course Biden is terrible on this – everyone is terrible on this. There is no way to not be terrible on this – it’s simply terrible by its very nature. Nobody can reach into a pile of shit and pull out a bon-bon.
UncleEbeneezer
@Jay: What is the appropriate response when a terrorist organization kidnaps, rapes and kills young civilian girls? Was Israel supposed to reward that? Shrug and pretend it didn’t happen?
cain
@SiubhanDuinne: oh no, so sorry to hear that.
Rest in power.
Kay
@SuzieC:
Isn’t it great? I hope it wil be fun. It’s very Trumpy here but we’ll be right outside a store run by a woman my daughter went to high school with who is supporting the parade.
The only Pride parade I have been to is Chicago’s. It was fun but very corporate, I must say. A lot of sponsored swag.
BR
Here’s the grim reality that few have really grappled with (and most don’t care to grapple with, because it would undermine too many narratives): in terms of total deaths caused by American weapons in offensive warfare, the death toll under Biden is less than any president except Clinton in several generations. Trump had more due to Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, and so many more. They just weren’t in the news every day.
Look at the numbers.
That doesn’t do anything for the dead in Gaza, but it also says that there’s something about Gaza and Israel that is riling up everyone that is *not* how many are dead due to American weapons.
VFX Lurker
@trollhattan: To paraphrase Baud a few threads back, my fellow white women have the voting power to end this threat to themselves and everyone else with a uterus at the ballot box.
I hope they will.
Dan B
@UncleEbeneezer: How is this a binary decision? Is defending Israeli civilians more, or less, important?
BR
@Damien:
Here’s something I always wondered. They’ve claimed for generations that Mossad is an extremely capable covert operations force (or whatever the technical term is). Why didn’t they send them in to take out all the Hamas leadership, one at a time, no matter where they were, in any country in the region? And make it clear that they would continue to do so as each new Hamas leader stepped up.
Geminid
@BR: The Gaza war itself has been a disaster, and I think Biden bears some of the blame there.
Biden’s successes have been less obvious. The Israelis and Hezbollah continue to lob ordinance at each in the north, and the Houthis are still attacking ships in the Red Sea. But the Biden administration has done a lot to contain this conflict and keep this conflict from becoming general and that was good work.
cain
@Damien:
Hamas only cares about Hamas and their damn war. They probably have food supplies and water holed up somewhere.
They aren’t going to be starving.
Their fellow Palestinians will be taking the brunt of Israeli aggression and will be called martyrs and the next generation will be recruited into Hamas.
SW
@HinTN: I see the tipping point when a religious terrorist murdered Rabin.
Ohio Mom
@Citizen Alan: I’ve long thought something similar, that Palestine needs some sort of Marshall Plan.
They need and deserve to be made into a modern, democratic nation-state. Hopefully they would do a better job of electing leadership than Israel has in the last quarter of a century (since Rabin).
I have one hope for today’s tiny green shot of a truce, and that is it helps Biden get re-elected. I’ve been ambivalent about Israel just about my entire adult life and am currently filled with resentment that it is completely jeopardizing my country’s future, and by extension, my kid’s future.
Are Jews one people, one big family? Maybe. Like many people, I have family members I am estranged from, so saying I’m part of the Jewish family doesn’t mean much to me.
Kay
@Martin:
I understand all this but these broad sweeping statements are a little deceptive, in that they ignore smaller measures that could have been taken. For example. When the United States became aware that Israeli settlers were attacking aid trucks and the IDF were both giving the settlers information on where th trucks would be and standing around letting them attack and burn them, we should have taken action.
This is about US sovereignty too. That aid was ours. We intended it for Palestinians – the United States to Palestinians. It is not in OUR interest to starve these people. Israel couldn’t even be bothered to ensure passage. That was something we COULD have hammered them on, but didn’t. That’s why people got frustrated and angry. No one was expecting Biden to pull something out of a hat. They expected at least the minimum. Get them some food and medical supplies.
BR
@Geminid:
Sure, but that’s not at all what I was posting about. The war is a disaster, sure. I’m just saying that nearly every presidency has had disastrous foreign policy causing deaths around the world. It’s just that some of those deaths are ignored by the American media and public. But one of the central organizing principles of the left is that every person’s life is equal and equally important. That should mean that the countless drone deaths under Trump, and due to arms sold to Saudi Arabia and others, which total *more* than Gaza, should matter. And the same for every president in generations except Clinton. But it doesn’t seem to matter, and I don’t know if it’s that people are unaware of US history or don’t care because it doesn’t fit a narrative.
karen marie
US policies regarding Israel and the Palestinians have been a raging shit fire for decades. I’m baffled that anyone with two brain cells blames Biden for being in the position of “damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t.”
Grow the fuck up.
Geminid
@BR: The Israeli security agency Shin Bet has responsibility for the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Former Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman and others say that as early as 2015, Shin Bet proposed operations to eliminate Hamas’s military commanders that were vetoed by the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu..
lowtechcyclist
@Damien:
First, what should have been their presponse to 10/7? Not to strip the Gaza border of troops in order to help West Bank ‘settlers’ harass West Bank Palestinians.
There isn’t a military solution to Hamas, AFAICT. And that’s why the primary response prior to 10/7 had been preventive.
The thing is, 10/7 didn’t change that. So what can Israel do?
One thing I expected Israel to do was to basically turn Mossad loose, to do its best to eradicate Hamas’ civilian leadership in Turkiye, Qatar, or wherever else it might be. Track those fuckers down to the ends of the earth if necessary until they’re all dead or vanished beyond tracking. If it’s done any of that, I haven’t heard about it, but then it might take longer than eight months to accomplish.
Another thing they could do would be a limited military operation to dispense with Hamas’ infamous tunnel network. Basically have all the inhabitants of the NE end of the Gaza strip evacuate from the km or two nearest the Israeli border, then bring in their version of the Corps of Engineers to find those tunnels and eradicate anyone who chose to stay in them contrary to Israeli orders by whatever means they chose. And either destroy or long-term occupy the tunnels.
After that, I don’t see any good options against Hamas. Revenging oneself against the innocent is wrong, and would just radicalize yet another generation of Palestinians. Israeli intelligence is probably of limited value in Gaza. OTOH, Israel does have one culprit at hand: they can put Bibi on a rocket and fire him into the sun.
Kay
@Martin:
Also? The gaslighting. Sending people out to say that Israel was not blocking aid when we knew damn well Israel was blocking aid, because every news agency in the world has FILM of settlers attacking aid trucks and we know the rest is sitting on a dock. This is another instance where it was no longer just about Israel. It was about telling Americans the truth. That’s where the resignations came from – people in the State Department were issuing reports and others in the Biden Administration were changing the reports. That’s why the last two resigned – the gaslighting. That’s out of line.
Geminid
@BR: Now I understand what you meant, and I generally agree.
Jay
@Citizen Alan:
Isn’t Israel responsible for Israel’s security?
The US warned Israel about 10/7 well before 10/7. So did ruZZia, Egypt and Jordan. So did Israel’s Border Force.
Israel ignored it out of hubris, pulled all the QRF forces and Brigaids from souther Israel and sent them to the West Bank to terrorize the Palestinians there, grab more “libenstraum” and expand the settlements.
Israel claimed that their AI had identified all 37,000 “Hamas*” “fighters” and “leaders” in Gaza were, was tracking them in real time on phones, radios, video, drones, knew where every “shit**” rocket was, where every tunnel was.
*Nope, just people who may have had a phone call at one time to somebody in Hamas or lent a phone to somebody in Hamas, which you have to understand, means everybody in the Civil Service, AID Organizations, Hospitals, Schools, not just Hama’s armed wing, etc.
** yes, most of Hama’s rockets are made in small workshops from commonly available construction materials and nitrates for fuel harvested from human and animal waste.
So, if the US sanctioned individual IDF/IAF/INF Units for War Crimes, stopped providing them weapons, ( which they really cannot do, unit by unit, all State can do is reduce the amount of weapons, types of weapons sent to Israel, Israel get’s to decide who gets them, where and how they are used, and screw you USA.) How is a Hamas attack Biden’s fault?
Isn’t it on Israel to defend Israel? Even with out US aid, Israel has hundreds of tons of weapons stockpiled, manufactured in Israel, imported from other Countries who don’t give a shit, that they can continue their genocide in Gaza with.
Can Hamas launch another 10/7 when some of the 36,171 killed, 81,421 wounded, 9.312 detained and 10,000 missing Palestinians in Gaza so far “must” be part of that “claimed” 37,000 Hamas “fighters”.
Or has Israel’s actions created 150,000 to 200,000 new recruits for Hamas armed wings and IJ that will be ready to “go” in 2-5 years?
This isn’t Bidens fault, it won’t be Biden’s fault, it’s an over 30 year history of US Foreign Policy failures of sucking up to Israel with out paying attention to how Israel has changed since the 70’s, for domestic reasons and “tradition”.
Rabin’s murder by an Israeli terrorist faction should have been a wake up call. It was not.
Freemark
@UncleEbeneezer:
What is the appropriate response when a sovereign government kidnaps, rapes and kills young civilian girls as Israel has done for a very long time? What are Palestinians supposed to do? Just shrug and keep pretending it isn’t continuously happening?
By your logic Hamas was completely justified in what they did. They were not justified and neither is Israel.
BR
@Geminid:
I see. So they didn’t want to do the one thing that could have taken out Hamas leadership with minimal civilian deaths. Which sounds about right given Likud’s motives.
SomeRandomGuy
@Kay: And this is why I reject all “It’s HAMAS’S FAULT!”
People have choices. Israel chose to attack aid workers. Why? I don’t know, except, I remember hearing them say that they’re okay with a 30-to-1 civilian casualty to get Hamas. And, think, that’s like, horrifying. Would 30-to-1 be okay for a bin Ladin? Sure. But a random member of Hamas? If 3.4% of the Palestinians have connections to Hamas, that’s a formula for literal genocide.
I swear, people debate morality like it was the E E Smith Lensmen series, where roughly half the universe was said to be irredeemably evil. I get that there are christian dominionists who take such BS seriously, if you’re not an evangelical, you can’t be trusted at all, but… no one *else* ever seems to call BS, out of fear of the backlash.
A human being who is a Hamas loyalist is still a human being, and can make choices, including, possibly, “holy crap, if I help pursue peace, I’ll make out like a *bandit*! Plus, no more killing! I never really liked the killing.”
Unless people accept that, there can’t be peace.
UncleEbeneezer
@Dan B: What response from Israel would have been acceptable to you? In a hypothetical scenario, what would have been the ideal reaction to 10/7?
I’m curious to know what others think because I have no idea how you even make such a moral equivalent/just calculation. But I know there’s no country on Earth that wouldn’t have responded with military action to a terrorist group killing 1,000+ of its’ citizens.
Geminid
@lowtechcyclist: I would disagree on the tunnels. No army would try to clear out tunnels without controlling the ground and access above them. That would be a suicide mission against a capable opponent like Hamas.
lowtechcyclist
@karen marie:
One might be of the view that not all damnations are equal, and the choice of damnation Biden has made for us so far seems a lot more damnable than others he could have made on our behalf.
lowtechcyclist
@Geminid:
I thought I specified that.
BR
@UncleEbeneezer:
As I wrote above, I think a targeted covert operation that went after each and every Hamas leader, especially those hiding out in other countries, would have been easily justifiable from an international perspective. It would have retained the moral high ground and been effective at the same time.
Geminid
@BR: One reason Netanyahu fears an election is that this and other damaging stories will finally be aired out.
Geminid
@lowtechcyclist: Sorry, I guess you did.
Ksmiami
@lowtechcyclist: I’m saying it’s hard to negotiate with people who want you and yours eliminated.
lowtechcyclist
@Geminid:
No problem. I may have been less than clear. (Who, me? ;-)
Martin
@Kay: Sure, but every one of those actions carries with it a set of inactions that can always be pointed to. The problem is you have this situation of recurring violence on each side – constantly retaliating against the previous thing with both sides picking some arbitrary point in history to validate that they the original victims and that the other parties retaliation is unjust.
So yeah, you can do some small steps, but it doesn’t absolve you of your overarching culpability of providing arms, or validating a given arbitrary historical perspective, or signing onto the whole endeavor because better the Jews settle the West Bank than West Virginia. So the US, along with most other parties in this world, are stuck only being able to do these token measures to save a few orphans from the orphan crushing machine, because we can’t rid the world of the orphan crushing machine because we built the orphan crushing machine and continue to maintain the status quo of there needing to be an orphan crushing machine, and Biden, being a good institutionalist, is beholden to the American Israel project just as Obama was beholden to the Afghanistan/Iraq war project.
Martin
@Kay: It’s foreign policy. It’s all gaslighting. Just line up the US positions on Israel/Gaza and on Russia/Ukraine and they can scarcely be reconciled in any sort of moral sense, because foreign policy has fuckall to do with morality.
Bupalos
Here’s the problem for Biden: It’s very materially in Bibi’s interest for him to lose the American election.
I honestly don’t think the Biden is a “reflexive” supporter of Israel in any sense other than the one I’ve mentioned here on and on and which runs through this article. Biden knows that the United States does not have the democratic capacity to formulate new strategy. He knows that because he’s been around in the days of bipartisan consensus when strategies could be formed. You can’t have a 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 year geopolitical strategy. Strategy runs across administrations and has to represent bipartisan democratic consensus. This administration “formulating the strategy” of abandoning Israel would just mean this administration and only amount to the sum of weapons not shipped. It wouldn’t mean the US had committed to a strategy, it would just mean that we were abandoning a strategy and going with ad hoc reactions.
For the same reason, the United States cannot formulate a strategy for Ukraine/Russia. We can only support the old one, which is essentially to actively maintain a holding pattern while waiting for The Forces of History to end regimes like Putin’s and Xi’s.
None of this is really Biden’s fault. It’s a reaction of how badly America has been hollowed out by it’s own democratic decline.
Freemark
@Ksmiami: Which may be why Palestinians have no trust in the Israeli government when it comes to negotiations. The Israeli government is currently a terrorist organization which has murdered tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians. The current Israeli government seems nearly the same as Russia. The main difference being the Palestinians don’t have the weapons to fight back effectively.
The only real difference being the Ukrainians didn’t fall for Russia’s attempted instigation of an attack probably because the Ukrainian government isn’t a terrorist organization. Pretty sure HAMAS was much easier to instigate.
Jay
@UncleEbeneezer:
Israel claimed that they knew who, what, when, where , why had “done it” and where they were in realtime.
Of course, utter bullshit.
So, you section off an area with troops, “filtrate” the people in that section, arrest or kill the Hamas, IJ and gang fighters that you can find and identify, replace the UNRWA and Hamas social services with IDF Civil Affairs and USAID programs, keep a QRF force in place, along with overwatch, (digital, radio, cellular, dromes, video). When that section is reasonably calm, you section off another area and do it all over again.
What you don’t do is drop 2,000 lb unguided bombs on a refugee camp you forced them to evacuate to, sandwiched between a toxic dump and a gas pipeline, or you know, just in the general neighborhood of a house that may be the home of somebody who may or may not be Hamas, or a warehouse containing Humanitarian Aid, or let your soldiers run rampant, executing Palestinians, Aid Workers, Doctors, Professors, UN Officials, WCK workers, MSF volenteers, while engaging in an orgasm of rape, torture, murder, looting and letting them post it all on YouTube and TicTok. You also don’t set up unmarked, un-announced “free fire” zones where everything that enters, even escaped hostages waving white flags and yelling in Hebrew get murdered. You also don’t, in a supposed Israeli controlled “safe zone”, kill almost an entire Palestinian family complying with the rules while driving, then when it turns out that the only surviving child is badly wounded, you “double tap” the ambulance, aid workers responding, and the child, with a drone strike.
Dan B
@Kay: I’ve been asked to be in the lead float for Seattle’s Pride Parade. I was in the first Seattle Pride March 50 years ago. We were 60 strong.
I was also in the first Pride March in Chicago in 1970. We were 80 strong (nervous, fearful, quivering, etc. strong) I traipsed around holding hands with a friend in Seattle and held hands with a guy I did not know in Chicago. He could have been an FBI plant, we had a file with a couple thousand pages, 100 pages per key Gay Liberation member.
Now Seattle draws 300,000 and Chicago 1,000,000.
Best of luck with yours. There were no allies at the first marches and for at least a decade more.
Geminid
@UncleEbeneezer: Israel had the legal right to attack Hamas. They also had a duty to protect civilians as much as practicable, and they failed in that. They began this fight as a war of vengeance.
Hamas definitely bears much of the blame. They initiated this war with with a savage attack intended to provoke a savage response. They used the civilians under their control as pawns to be sacrificed.
Hamas and its allies also fight without uniforms. Their supporters might argue that this helps level the playing field, but the laws of warfare require that combatants wear uniforms in order to protect civilians.
But regardless of Hamas’s culpability, Israel has inflicted too many unneccesary casualties on the civilians in Gaza, and they have squandered much of the support they had on October 8 because of that.
Bupalos
Bit much. This is a currently insoluble and unmanageable conflict with a long history and a current reality which defies definition in terms of innocents and perpetrators (or whatever “orphan crushing machines” should correspond to.) It’s absolutely true that Hamas hides among the civilian population and part of that strategy of enmeshing is about deliberately raising the Palestinian body count. It’s true that an strong majority of those civilians would be willing to take positive action to see every Jew on planet earth dead. It’s also true that this deep psychology emerged in reaction to endless oppression. It’s also true that the Israeli population right now can’t see past the idea that these Palestinians are animals.
What is practically speaking not true is that either Israel or Hamas or the Palestinian population or the United States could realistically be expected to have the capacity to be doing other than they are right now. These are all maimed entities that somehow have to find the strength to find a different path amidst the reality that there’s no reason for this strength to be there.
karen gail
@Martin: The makers of “orphan crushing machines” are the ones getting rich and with their wealth are steering the policies of governments.
I am reminded of the fact that that arms makers and arms dealers love war; they will sell to both sides. Sadly, the US is one of the big makers of weapons of war so much of our wealth comes from dealing death.
UncleEbeneezer
@BR: Sorry I missed that. Yes, I think that’s pretty reasonable. That’s about where I land on it too. Thanks for elaborating.
YY_Sima Qian
If it was the GWB Administrations saying the exact same words & doing exact same deeds in the current exact circumstances, would anyone here be as charitable as they are w/ Biden?
I don’t expect Biden to solve the intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict by himself. I do expect him to make an earnest attempt (like Obama’s ill-fated effort), I do expect to him give some priority to the lives & well-being of Palestinians under assault in his foreign policy & domestic political calculations, I do expect him to call out Israeli war crimes & crimes against humanity w/ somewhere close to the same moral outrage he could easily muster under the same circumstance against the US’ geopolitical rivals or even random Global South countries, & I expect him to minimize the US’ complicity in Israeli war crimes & crimes against humanity.
Biden & Dems can also choose not to concede the framing to rightwing critics on anything, or cower in fear of what rightwing criticism that might come. When has triangulating toward the rightwing crazy ever served the Dems well in domestic politics or in domestic & foreign policies? Whether it was the Cold War, the post-Cold War unipolar moment, the GWOT, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or the brewing Great Power Competition w/ the PRC? The rightwing reactionaries will always find excuses to criticize, no Dem concessions will change that. Instead of letting the reactionaries shift the Overton Window right, how about the Dems try to shift the Overton Window left?
One thing that the Biden team has done well is putting Neoliberal economics to bed domestically (even while still preaching it to the Global South internationally), helped by Trump leading the GOP down the path of nationalistic populism (at least rhetorically). However, the reactionaries are now trying to hijack the movement away from Neoliberalism by steering it toward economic nationalism & national security Keynesianism, and most of the mainstream Dems (including Biden) are embracing the new paradigm w/ enthusiasm.
I will still vote straight Dem w/o hesitation, the alternative is simply unthinkable. However, Dems cannot hold its diverse coalition together & consistently win national elections in environments that that are structurally unfavorable, by just being the lesser evil. At some point, the GOP will likely be led by a cunning, charismatic & intelligent Fascist marching under the banner of herrenvolk nationalist socialism for the “right kinds of people” only, rather than the transparently kleptocratic buffoon that is Trump.
UncleEbeneezer
@Geminid: Totally agree. I’ve never said, anywhere, that Israel’s response has been less-than-atrocious. They over-reacted the way I sadly expected them too and Bibi has proven himself even more of a monster than I thought. I share the outrage. It just feels like the past eight months there has been very little acknowledgement of Hamas’ atrocities. I don’t think that’s a very honest or useful way to have these discussions. I also think it’s important that recognize and mourn those atrocities publicly for the sake of the Jewish-Americans in our coalition and lives. I know many feel incredibly hurt that so many of their Progressive friends never expressed any outrage until bombs started dropping. And seeing as how 10/7 was the (adjusted population) equivalent of TEN September 11th Attacks, I can’t really blame them. And I think if we are going to endlessly talk about this conflict, that part should always be included.
YY_Sima Qian
Oh, & the IDF can at least try to follow the US’ & NATO’s procedures in Iraq, Afghanistan & Syria, deeply flawed as they were & prone to war crimes committed by the lower echelons. Did the Taliban not hide among the civilian population? Did the ISIS not do so? Did not every anti-colonial insurgency ever? & How did the overwhelmingly violent strategies pursued by by France in Algeria, the white supremacist government in Southern Rhodesia, the USSR in Afghanistan, & the US in South Vietnam work out in the end?
YY_Sima Qian
Oh, & Congressional Dem leaders can choose not to sign on to an invitation to Bibi to address Congress.
kissel
@zhena gogolia: you are missing the point entirely.
Ivan X
I want to say that, with a few people excepted, I really value the efforts most people here are making to be reasonable.
Ivan X
@UncleEbeneezer: Thank you for this comment. It shares my feelings as well.
YY_Sima Qian
@UncleEbeneezer: The Israel government & the IDF shifted the spotlight from Hamas to themselves by their conduct in the war of vengeance (its nature was transparent from the get go), & Sinwar has cunningly let Hamas fade from the limelight, aside from the occasional rocket attack into Israel to show that it is still around despite the IDF pummeling of the Gaza Strip.
& the Israeli-Palestinian conflict did not start from 10/7/2023.
Does every criticism of Israeli conduct & US foreign policy need to be prefaced w/ a reaffirmation of how outraged everyone (at least here on BJ) is by Hamas/PIJ’s pogroms & kidnappings on 10/7? Does every criticism of Hamas’ nihilism & violence need to be prefaced w/ a reaffirmation of how outraged everyone (presumably, at least here on BJ) has been by decades of Israeli crimes against humanity in the WB & the Gaza Strip?
Hamas as agency over its conduct, Israel has agency over its conduct, & the Biden Administration has agency over its choices.
Dan B
@UncleEbeneezer: In response to your question, What is the response when the IDF kills girls, and sons, and mothers? Is it only important that one group did it first? And how far back do we go to figure out who was “first”?
Dan B
@UncleEbeneezer: Your questions seem slanted to me. And your not addressing my questions seems to verify my suspicions. Your questions seem to address only Hamas actions. It seems clear to many people that neither group is without reproach. It would not surprise me if defenders of both parties stated that an eye for an eye is the way of the world.
wjca
I know it’s a dead thread, but
The ideal reaction would have been to arrest Bibi, and every other member of the government who supported withdrawing Israeli troops for settler terrorism support. For treason.
UncleEbeneezer
@Dan B: There was a ceasefire. It ended on 10/7. It seems pretty freaking relevant to any discussion of Israel’s atrocious over-response to 10/7 to include, you know, what actually happened on 10/7. This isn’t ancient history. It’s literally the reason that the war is happening now. I’m bringing up Hamas’ actions because hardly anyone here ever does. And when anyone does, people get defensive in their responses as if we are all just supposed to pretend that Hamas has no agency and like they aren’t just as responsible for our failure to reach a ceasefire as Israel. Israel’s sins have been well-documented and excoriated here by numerous commenters. I don’t argue with them because I usually agree with them. But the subject is quite extensively covered. I don’t think discussions of this topic that completely ignore the war crimes and terrorism of Hamas (not to mention the horrible toll this all had on so many of the Jewish/Israeli people in our lives) are very honest, fair or useful. I’m sorry but those other things matter to me too, and they have been glaringly absent from most of the conversation here for the past eight months. The idea that decades of oppression by Israel is relevant to bring up constantly (as it is, and that’s fine), but somehow the atrocities of 10/7 are not, makes zero sense unless you want entirely one-sided propaganda that ignores all complexity, context and nuance of a situation/conflict that has all of those things in heaping doses, and has since the very beginning. And that’s mostly what it has been here, which is disappointing. If this space had been painfully lacking in addressing Israel’s shitty behavior, I would be pointing that out and urging people to bring that up more. But that hasn’t been the case. It’s only Hamas’ perfidy that is considered a distraction. Ok, I’m done. Cheers.