Biden begins backing the resistance to Netanyahu and his war | Opinion
www.haaretz.com
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    • 👍Maximum Derek👍@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      3711·
      10 months ago

      Israel is happy to keep buying our arms but it more than capable of carrying on without us for several years. They’ve armed to keep pace with Iran and have done a good job at doing so - far surpassing them in nuclear capability. We’d have to do considerably more than just not do business with them.

    • gmtom@lemmy.world
      133·
      10 months ago

      Ideally yes, but unfortunately even if Biden does want to do that, existing US doctrine won’t allow it. Israel is basically Americas proxy in the middle east and protects “American interests” in the region from traditionally Russian backed states like Egypt and Iran.

      Then there’s all the more kooky stuff like the amount of important and rich people in the US that are either zionists themselves, are Christian zionists who belive Israel needs to exist to bring forth the second coming, or just simply have vested interests in the military industrial complex.

      Which all make it so opposing Israels genocide extremely costly in terms of political capital.

      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
        4·
        10 months ago

        Our doctrine is whatever we say it is. We control our foreign policy not the other way around. And if we let our previous policy set us up to support dictators and genocidal regimes then our kids are going to be reading about us in text books. Just like we read about our parent’s generation doing that.

        Come to think of it, the Silent Generation was in charge back then too. the fuck is going on with them?

      • Jimmyeatsausage@lemmy.world
        32·
        10 months ago

        I’m pretty sure that if Biden just decided to withhold (conditionally or otherwise) weapons for Israel that had already been flagged for that purpose by Congress, he’d be running a foul the same rules Trump violated by withholding aid from Ukraine. And regardless of whether he was doing it because he had a legitimate change-of-heart, it would totally look like it was for political gain after the uncommitted votes in the primary.

        • Maggoty@lemmy.world
          3·
          10 months ago

          The Leahy Law actually demands it. But we’ve been unlawfully shielding Israel from that for so long everyone has forgotten about it. And if you think it wasn’t meant for these specific purposes, here’s Patrick Leahy on the issue.

          “On this one, I think that there are violations of the Leahy Law,” Leahy said. “I’m not in the Senate. I can’t fight about it… I’m not the chair of the committee. But everybody who’s asked me in the international press, the national press, I’ve said to them: I think there are violations of the Leahy Law.”

          Article, Vermont Digger

      • anarchost@lemm.ee
        21·
        10 months ago

        Israel is basically Americas proxy in the middle east

        It wasn’t until too recently that I realized this, and it rapidly dispels a whole lot of neo-nazi propaganda that I heard early on in my life (WAY more effectively than “hating Israel is antisemitism” or some BS)

    • Tolookah@discuss.tchncs.de
      854·
      10 months ago

      Overdue, but still welcome. I’m gonna assume/pretend it was the less than stellar showing in Michigan that finally got to him.

      • Wrench@lemmy.world
        424·
        10 months ago

        Maybe, but going against Isreal has been political suicide up until now. The more protests, the easier it makes deviating from unconditional support, which again, has been unbroken US policy since the beginning of Isreal.

        Add to that how important our foothold in Isreal is to the US both militarily and economically (in the form of ensuring the safety of shipping down the seas), it’s a huge deal to go against Isreal.

        So yeah, protests help give an excuse. It doesn’t mean it’s changed anyone’s minds on the morality of it all, but that it frees them to actually act on something previously untouchable.

        • Maggoty@lemmy.world
          3·
          10 months ago

          Israel’s popularity has been dropping like a hot rock since the age of social media. But this was even worse. 50% of Americans think Israel has gone too far and another 35% think it’s okay but they shouldn’t keep going. Israel really screwed up.

        • nonailsleft@lemm.ee
          12·
          10 months ago

          Can you explain how Israel would help in ensuring the safety of shipping? I’d think their location doesn’t really make them much of an influence

          • Wrench@lemmy.world
            4·
            10 months ago

            I don’t have much knowledge here, but my impression is that the US helps protect shipping lanes in the Mediterranean, particularly when there’s trouble. And Isreal being a close ally gives them access to their naval port, and just a friendly place to stage from.

            • Maggoty@lemmy.world
              2·
              10 months ago

              We have a ton of bases in the region. Basically every internationally aligned oil producer lets us dock there. We have specific bases in Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain, and Djibouti. On the North side we have NATO bases.

              Israel is absolutely not required.

      • dhork@lemmy.worldEnglish
        285·
        10 months ago

        And, in a roundabout way, you can thank the Electoral College. Because if the popular vote was all that counted, he might decide that the 100k votes in Michigan were worth staying uncommitted so he could pick up the pro-Israel lobby elsewhere, like on Long Island and in NYC. But Biden is all but guaranteed to win NY, while Michigan is a toss-up.

        • spider@lemmy.nz
          12·
          10 months ago

          Florida also has a sizable Jewish population, but the former swing state has turned red from an influx of retirees over the past several election cycles.

          • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
            132·
            10 months ago

            If by “influx of retirees” you mean “even worse systemic election tampering than there already was”, then yes.

            The majority of the people in Florida aren’t Republicans. Only the majority of the people the Republicans allow to vote.

            • spider@lemmy.nz
              7·
              10 months ago

              A mass migration of Northeasterners and Midwesterners into Florida, many of them conservatives leaving Democratic states, has led to the state’s politics turning sharply to the right, experts say.

              “The notion of the ‘Big Sort’ … is really proving itself,” said Matt Isbell, a Democratic elections analyst. “That’s the idea that people move based on the politics. … For a lot of retirees, places like Florida are appealing, especially if they’re already conservative.”

              Many of those new residents may have been attracted to Florida because they see it as a right-leaning state, said J. Miles Coleman, associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, especially amid Gov. Ron DeSantis’ opposition to almost all COVID-19 restrictions.

              But it also goes the other way … “If you’re a liberal retiree up in the Northeast, if you’re Jewish retiree in New York City right now, you see this stuff out of Florida, the Nazis and stuff, do you really think you’re going to come down here?” Isbell said.

              source: Orlando Sentinel, via Internet Archive

              • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
                91·
                10 months ago

                What that article fails to mention is that the number of people kept from voting under one pretense or the other completely dwarfs the number of people moving to Florida from other states.

                For example, a few years ago, the people of Florida voted to restore voting rights to convicted felons wo had served their time and thus paid their debt to society. The GOP reacted by imposing likely unconstitutional financial conditions, effectively re-disenfeanchising almost 775k of them for being too poor to pay for their own incarceration and enslavement.

                That’s more than two and a half times as many as the total population increase of Florida last year,including births, adults moving to the state who are NOT GOP voters etc.

                Then you add the fact that traditionally democratic big cities have too few polling places by design and more people who can’t take the several hours it takes to stand in line to vote in a red state city without losing their income, incurring childcare costs they can’t afford or both.

                Then you have all the people who were struck from voter rolls, more than 3 times as many as the total population increase, a probable majority of which were likely Dem voters struck without a valid reason.

                All in all, elderly Republicans moving to Florida is a bucket of water compared to the ocean that is Republican voter suppression.

                • spider@lemmy.nz
                  12·
                  10 months ago

                  “The notion of the ‘Big Sort’ … is really proving itself,” said Matt Isbell, a Democratic elections analyst.

                  (bold added for emphasis)

                  Maybe he’s in on the joke (?)

                  Edit #1:

                  I was being sarcastic, and thought the context was obvious.

                  Edit #2:

                  effectively re-disenfeanchising almost 775k of them for being too poor to pay for their own incarceration and enslavement.

                  That’s more than two and a half times as many as the total population increase of Florida last year

                  Yes, last year. But the article cites a multi-year trend:

                  Since April 2020, nearly 819,000 people have moved to Florida from within the U.S.

                  The reasons for Florida’s Democratic-to-Republican swing don’t necessarily have to be either one or the other; they can be both, which in this case they are.

            • dhork@lemmy.worldEnglish
              105·
              10 months ago

              The idea of the Electoral College makes more sense when you consider it to be the weighted average of 50 elections. It keeps elections confined to a state-by-state event. Imagine the shit show if we had a full popular vote, and a candidate won by 5 votes, so the entire country got recounted?

              But having the Electoral College be actual people is silly. And it’s weighted all wrong, because the House hasn’t expanded in 100+ years. Maybe if the House were twice it’s size, things might be more representative.

              There is an actual algorithm to determine House apportionment based on the population in the 50 states. One of these days, I want to take the time to figure out if Trump would still have won if the House were twice the size in 2016, or whether that would have skewed the weightings just enough for Clinton to have won.

              • Riccosuave@lemmy.world
                191·
                10 months ago

                Your statement about recounts makes no sense. We can still hold elections on a state by state basis, and determine the winner via popular vote. That would not require a full 50 state recount. It would require individual recounts in states where the votes were within the recount margin. This is precisely what the National Popular Interstate Vote Compact is attempting to do right now, and what should have been done long ago.

                • dhork@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  21·
                  10 months ago

                  I believe that if we had a full-on popular vote for President, and each state’s margin was outside their recount threshold, but the total popular vote was extremely close, the losing side would petition to have all 50 states recounted. Some states would oblige, under the notion that the total popular vote is what counts, and that is within their threshold, while others won’t, because they will use the text of the recount law as written. it will all be inconsistent, and up to the opinions of dozens of judges. Imagine the chaos of 2000 in Florida, times 51.

                  If the NPV compact goes forward, then I think it is more likely that recounts would be triggered everywhere if the popular vote is close enough, because it specifically allocates electors based on that. And if recounts are going on in any one state by the Safe Harbor deadline, there will be a push to certify both slates of electors in every NPV state.

                  NPV is a good idea, but is a ticking time bomb. If we decide we want to have the Presidency decided via popular vote, we are better off ripping up the entire EC and starting over from scratch. The NPV compact should be seen a just the first step toward that.

              • frezik@midwest.social
                3·
                10 months ago

                In Federalist 68, Hamilton gave some reasoning as to why the Electoral College exists. Now, I think the Federalist papers should be treated with some care. They’re often post-facto attempts at justifying committee decisions when that committee had been sitting in meetings all day and just signed off on something. That’s very likely what happened with the Electoral College.

                That said, the explicit reasoning in Fed68 was to stop someone like Trump:

                The process of election affords a moral certainty, that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications. Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union, or of so considerable a portion of it as would be necessary to make him a successful candidate for the distinguished office of President of the United States. It will not be too strong to say, that there will be a constant probability of seeing the station filled by characters pre-eminent for ability and virtue. And this will be thought no inconsiderable recommendation of the Constitution, by those who are able to estimate the share which the executive in every government must necessarily have in its good or ill administration. Though we cannot acquiesce in the political heresy of the poet who says: "For forms of government let fools contest That which is best administered is best,‘’ yet we may safely pronounce, that the true test of a good government is its aptitude and tendency to produce a good administration.

                Additionally, it’s also justifying decisions in light of pro-royalist critics (both foreign and domestic) who said democracy was a trap and the rabble can’t be trusted to decide on their leaders. As a result, the Constitution doesn’t go all in on democracy, and you have this stuff above about one of these not-quite-democratic mechanisms are meant to prevent a populist dullard from gaining the office.

                Those royalist critics are all but extinct now, but we’re stuck with some of the things designed to counter their objections.

                Since then, the US has put in several measures undoing some of the not-quite-democratic stuff. For example, universal suffrage, President and Vice President elected as a pair, senators elected by the popular vote of their state, and the parties having primaries instead of appointing candidates. It’s been an improvement for the common people at every step of the way. Fledgling democracies looking for how to structure their government have largely not chosen to repeat the mistakes of the US; not even one’s the US itself helped setup, like Germany, Japan, and Iraq. They’ve preferred European-style parliamentary systems.

                So we’ve got this Electoral College thing that, at best, is there to counter arguments nobody makes any more, and at worst, was rubber stamped by a committee that wanted to go home for the day. It’s shit, and it needs to go.

      • Jimmyeatsausage@lemmy.world
        1·
        10 months ago

        I assume that threat is on the table at this point. If we blow our whole wad at once, we won’t be able to ratchet up the pressure each time we need to. Between letting Netanyahu’s political rivals meet with the US government and the VP speaking up now, too. The pattern of incremental pressure is pretty apparent. We don’t want to end up in a situation where we have no leverage left and the war continues.

        Meanwhile, Trump is saying Israel should “finish the job” in Gaza.

        • FuglyDuck@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          10 months ago

          Yeah… that’s a cop out.

          Israel and everyone else sees the blocking as tacit support. We could at least abstain. You know. Keep our mouths shut.

    • fidodo@lemmy.worldEnglish
      92·
      10 months ago

      I understand that it’s a really hard situation to navigate through. It’s not easy to just unilaterally go against a long term ally overnight. It’s a horrible situation that I’d hate to be in charge of.

  • phoneymouse@lemmy.world
    292·
    10 months ago

    Haven’t heard as much from people who were supporting Israel at the beginning of the war. I think that means some of them have realized Israel went a bit too far.

      • Synnr@sopuli.xyz
        31·
        10 months ago

        Worldnews and Politics on Lemmy and Reddit are probably singlehandedly responsible for 20% of the daily AstroTurf® Premiumizzle™ API access.

        I subscribed to a couple politics subs yesterday here on Lemmy. I had to unsubscribe this morning.

        • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
          31·
          10 months ago

          Try r/worldevents

          It’s good to have a sub as a counter to pro israeli propaganda but it can’t just be about Gaza if it’s going to survive. Needs more posts.

    • OldWoodFrame@lemm.ee
      42·
      10 months ago

      Guess the percentage of Americans who think Israel went too far. .
      .
      .
      It’s 42%

      I don’t know about you but from my social media feed I would have guessed higher. 19% said Israel hasn’t gone far enough. This article is from 2 days ago.

  • hark@lemmy.world
    121·
    10 months ago

    I’ll believe it when he actually does something about it. So far it’s just been talk and allegedly looking frustrated.

    • pjwestin@lemmy.world
      7·
      10 months ago

      I mean, that was certainly true a week ago, but they’ve definitely started doing something now. They’re dropping aid on Gaza, Harris is calling for a ceasefire, and they invited Benny Gantz, who will probably be Netanyahu’s next opponent for Prime Minister, to the White House. The aid drops are not sufficient, and the calls for a ceasefire have come far too late, but the Gantz thing is actually pretty great. Polls show Gantz would beat Netanyahu if there were an election today, and apparently this has seriously undermined him politically.

      I’m very critical of Israel and the Democrats’ enablement of it’s genocide, and I have no illusions about the White House’s motives here; the only reason Biden’s doing anything is because he’s scared shitless by the 100K uncommitted voters in Michigan. But Biden isn’t just letting staffers leak that he called Netanyahu a, “bad fucking guy,” anymore, he’s taking actual action. You can argue that what he’s doing isn’t enough (God knows I think it’s not enough), but we should acknowledge and encourage positive changes, even if they’re small and insufficient.

    • Keeponstalin@lemmy.world
      9·
      10 months ago

      Here is an Archived Version.

      Biden should never have said U.S. aid to Israel was unconditional. As the death toll of innocents from Israel’s operations in Gaza quickly grew intolerably high, the U.S. should have slammed on the brakes, publicly condemned (rather than defended) Israel’s actions, stopped military aid to Israel, demanded a ceasefire, supported efforts for a ceasefire in international institutions and begun aggressive aid measures for Gaza including sending a hospital ship and finding ways to deliver aid to Gaza via the sea.

      Halfway measures like the sanctioning of West Bank settlers seem impotent. Dropping a few tens of thousands of meals to Gazans, given the scale of the crisis being faced, is little more than a gesture. It also put the U.S. in the position of supporting both sides in this war. That does not send the message that our approach is balanced. It makes it clear that it has been, best intentions aside, incoherent.

      People who possess a modicum of decency or care about the people of Gaza or Israel or the region should hope the U.S. moves more quickly and decisively to a different policy – one that shows a policy guided more by wisdom, compassion, realism and genuine loyalty rather than one focused on superficial displays of misplaced support.

  • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.worldEnglish
    93·
    10 months ago

    Can’t get around the paywall. Is this something that hasn’t been reported elsewhere?

  • YeetPics@mander.xyz
    2022·
    10 months ago

    That’s a weird action for the #1 genocide maker in the history of the world to make.

    It’s almost like he isn’t perpetrating a genocide at all and it’s Israel and netanyahu calling those shots.

  • geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml
    59·
    10 months ago

    Biden begins backing the resistance to Netanyahu and his war

    Hamas?

    Benny Gantz is in Netanyahu’s war cabinet. He is not resistance. He aligns with Netanyahu very well.

    • SmilingSolaris@lemmy.world
      123·
      10 months ago

      It’s less people dying. We can be happy that the genocide will be slightly less effective. Unless your about to pick up a gun and put your “we should demand more” to the test, just for a moment be happy that less people will be dead in the next month than would be otherwise.

      • Nudding@lemmy.world
        39·
        10 months ago

        What? He’s finally starting to get his fill. I guess a thousand Israelis are worth about 35k Palestinians to old Joe. Or maybe he doesn’t give a fuck about Palestinians and he just wants your vote!