President Biden told a Democratic lawmaker and members of his Cabinet after the State of the Union address that he told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that they will need to have a “come-to-Jesus meeting.”
Biden’s comments, captured on a hot mic as he spoke with Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) on the floor of the House chamber, came after Bennet congratulated the commander in chief on his speech and pressed him to keep pressure on Netanyahu over increasing humanitarian issues in Gaza.
Cute way of admitting that nothing Biden can do can do will please you I guess.
Because there’s no coming back from the sheer amount of support for genocide Biden has already promised, and delivered.
Do you sing praises of a mass murderer who stops with grandma, but killed everyone else?
Despite my best instincts, I’ll bite… When did Biden “promise support for genocide”?
Biden doesn’t want to see innocent civilians killed, be they Israeli Jews or Palestinian Arabs. Why would he?
Unlike Netanyahu and Hamas, Biden gains literally zero political benefit from the war. His life and his job would objectively be much easier if there was peace in the middle east. You know that as well as I do. In fact, I’d say it’s plainly obvious to anyone with half a brain. This war is a drain and a distraction from the US’s resources ability to defend Ukraine from Russia, it makes the region (and thus, the world) less safe, and it is nothing but a political vulnerability to Biden. And still, there is not a serious politician in this country that would even consider removing support of Israel in the wake of the October 7th attacks, especially given a hostage crisis that is now entering its 6th fucking month.
In other words, while you’re entitled to your subjective opinion that what’s happening in Gaza amounts to a genocide or other war crimes, you can’t seriously blame Biden for any of it.
If you’re looking for someone to blame here, look no further than Netanyahu’s government and Hamas–two entities that have repeatedly propped each other up as boogeymen in order to push their communities into the political fringe for the sake of power. Netanyahu literally funded and boosted Hamas, and Hamas has done everything to maximize civilian casualties (also a war crime, btw) on both sides of the conflict.
There have now been multiple reasonable ceasefire negotiations that the Biden administration has helped negotiate which Hamas has unilaterally rejected. The world is only waiting for Hamas to do what they should have done months ago: return the hostages, lay down their weapons, and turn over the war criminals and terrorists who made it their mission to rape, kill and pillage Israel on October 7th. The ball in unquestionably in their court, and it has been for months.
The UN has a very specific definition of genocide under Article II (bolding mine):
https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml
"In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
Killing members of the group;
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."
So, point for point, Israel has done ALL of this in Gaza with the exception of the final bullet point, which Russia is doing in Ukraine.
The part you’re not bolding is perhaps the most important part.
“killing members of a group” is obviously not genocide or every war in history would be considered genocide; “killing members of a group” with intent to destroy that group is what specifically elevates war into genocide.
In other words, intent, context and the details really matter here.
We already know Hamas’ intent is genocide of all Israeli Jews, as was laid out in clear worlds in their founding 1988 charter. And when people say that “Palestine should be free from the river to the sea.”, they seem to be calling for some kind of genocidal one state solution that erases Israel from the map and implies nothing good for the Israeli Jews who currently live there and whose ancestors have lived their for thousands of years. On top of that, many of Hamas’ actions on October 7th (violence targeted exclusively at civilians, rape, theft of civilian property, kidnapping, hiding behind their own civilians as a human shield, etc.) are war crimes.
Does Netenyahu’s government want genocide? It’s debatable. Some of the rhetoric of Israeli ministers has been at least inappropriate and at worst borderline genocidal. But If they only wanted to kill all Palestinians, they wouldn’t only be fighting in Gaza and they would likely have killed many more civilians indiscriminately (there are 2 million people living in Gaza after all). But more important than those are the fact that Israel seems to be following the international wartime rules of “proportionality”, and seems to be able to justify their use of force in the vast majority of cases. They do, in fact, have a right to defend themselves from terrorist threats and wage a military campaign in the hopes of eliminating those threats and saving the hostages (who have been held in captivity for almost HALF A YEAR now.) This is exactly why the International Court of Justice fell short of accusing Israel of genocide.
All that said, the war is horrible and the suffering of civilians is an unspeakable tragedy. The only real solution for peace is a two-state solution under which Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arab Muslims can coexist and live together in a land that they have shared for centuries, or really, millennia. Hamas should release the hostages and accept the ceasefire deal so that the world can move on from this ugly and tragic war.
Oct 7^th WH press release
there’s numerous statements by Biden since then where Biden insists on ‘unconditionaly’ support for Israel.
You’re right. Biden is not responsible for how others respond. He is, however uttelry responsible for his own acts. Including facilitating and expediting arms sales- which he, himself, has gone out of his way to make happen.
Bull. Fucking. Shit.
If the rampant devastation of Palestine isn’t enough of a clue, to the extent that half of the buildings in gaza are damaged or destroyed then perhaps you should look into statements by Netanyahu hismelf. Like how he described the second stage of the invasion as a ‘holy mission’, comparing it to Amalek- where the orders were to genocide everything. In the same speech he describes Gaza as a ‘Bastion of Evil’, and that the soldiers are ‘Obligated to Eradicate this Evil from the World’.
Or maybe, from the Deputing Knesset Speaker, Nissam Vaturi whose tweets are… incendiary. Literally. with comments like “we are too Humane. Burn Gaza now,” and perhaps, Pressiden Herzog who said "there are no innocent civillians in Gaza’; or perhaps the defense minister who vowed to eliminate everything.
Did I mention he went out of his way facilitating arms deals?
Yeah. I did mention the arms sales. I don’t know why. you’d have to ask him. (oh. I do know. he’s a zionist).
You’re right that it’s a distraction from Ukraine and elsewhere. Ask yourself how Hamas got into Israeli systems and evaded detection on Oct 7th. by the way, Israeli cybersecurity is some of the best in the world. they had help, either from Iran, or Russia. As for what Biden has to gain from the War? nothing. But he does have something to loose.
I can blame him for supporting it though. which is what I’m doing.
I am represented by neither Hamas nor Netanyahu. I am represented by Biden.
The “ball” is unquestionably in the IDF’s court. and has been since Oct 8th. If the IDF is so god damn concerned about getting the hostages back, then why have they killed far more than they’ve rescued?
in arabic, there is no idiomatic equivalent to “wipe off the map.”
you’re regurgitating imperialist propaganda.
If you’re going to embarrassingly try to argue literal semantics, then you should at least know that Persians (“Iranians”) speak Persian, not Arabic. 🤦
Iran has repeatedly called for the complete and total destruction (see: actual genocide) or Israel and its people over multiple decades. Iran funds and supports Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthi’s and many other extremist groups in the region.
>There have now been multiple reasonable ceasefire negotiations that the Biden administration has helped negotiate which Hamas has unilaterally rejected
Hamas has made offers that have been ignored as well.
(a) Their “offers” are unacceptable because the involve returning the hostages over the span of months, not days. (b) the last time Hamas and Israel had a ceasefire, Hamas broke the ceasefire by attacking Isreal on October 7th. © Hamas are losing this war, very badly, and are not in a position to dictate their terms on Israel.
If you want a ceasefire, and you should, stop defending Hamas and start realizing that they are the ones who need to surrender and release the damn hostages. God damn.
>Biden is also no in any way responsible for the Israeli response, nor is he in any control of the tactics used by the IDF in achieving their goals.
under pax americana, he can decide whether Israel comes to the table and stops shooting. instead, he continues to arm and fund them and say he, too, is a zionist
Hamas didn’t start this, Britain and the UN did.
If you’re going to go back 100 years, why stop there?
Why not blame the Ottoman Empire, the Rashidun Islamic Caliphate, the Byzantine Empire of Eastern Rome, etc.
The fact is that Palestine and Israel as countries were created at roughly the same time. Israeli Jews have existed there for thousands of years. The tribe called the Philistines have been there possibly just as long, and supposedly the were often at war with the Judah and Israelites. Though the Philistines were neither arabs nor muslims, who came in around 500 years ago during the Rashidun Islamic Caliphate (still a long time, longer than America has existed).
There has never in thousands of years of history been a free, self-governed, single state of Palestine. Both the Israelis and Palestinians have cultural and historic claims over the region going back hundreds, if not thousands, of years. This suggests to me that the only real and viable solution for peace is a two-state solution in which both sides lay down arms and learn to coexist peacefully. Neither Netanyahu nor Hamas are truly interested in a two-state solution, and as such I consider them both to be enemies of peace.
(And before you spend to much time defending Hamas, please know that disproportionate violence targeted directly at civilians, sexual violence against civilians, kidnapping of civilians, hiding militants behind a civilian human shield, etc., are ALL actual war crimes, and that Hamas has openly supported genocide against Israeli Jews since their founding charter in 1988.)
>turn over the war criminals and terrorists who made it their mission to rape,
I have never seen credible evidence of this.
kidnapping and murder are crimes, not war crimes. Hamas isn’t an army, and they don’t control a state. there is no war.
>And still, there is not a serious politician in this country that would even consider removing support of Israel in the wake of the October 7th attacks, especially given a hostage crisis that is now entering its 6th fucking month.
tlaib and omar have been quite vocal as well as may others. the only way you can claim this isn’t misinformation is by playing at no true Scotsman.
Being “quite vocal” is purely politics. Actions speak louder than words, and you know that.
It’s not the same thing as disarming our closest ally in the Middle East, which again, is something that NO U.S. President would do. Not Joe Biden, Not Donald Trump, Not Bernie Sanders, Not Ted fuckin’ Cruz or whatever asshole the Republicans will come up with next. Israel is too important to America culturally and strategically, and they are under too many active threats from their neighbors.
America will continue to support Israel unless Netanyahu really takes the gloves off and starts indiscriminately waging genocide. Unless Trump is reelected, in which case he’ll probably directly help “clean up” Gaza and the West Bank, and then you’ll really have something to be angry about. I guess we’ll see…