this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2024
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He pressed Pelosi on whether the United States has a red line for Israel and whether they “own” the Gaza operation as much as their ally.

“If you don’t like what Israel is doing, and the president has made it clear that some of what Israel is doing he doesn’t like, and you go on supplying them with hardware to do these things you own this operation every bit as much as they do, don’t you?” Sebastian asked the former House Speaker.

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[–] BreadstickNinja@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I saw a poll last month that said 50% of Biden voters believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Either way, it's a substantial enough fraction to cause a notable change in messaging from Democratic leadership.

[–] FlowVoid@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

It's not inconsistent for Democrats to believe that Israel is committing genocide and approve of Biden's handling of the issue.

That just implies that Democrats don't hold Biden responsible for what Israel is doing.

[–] agitatedpotato@lemmy.world -1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

I call those people gutless. They so scared of Republicans they wont dare utter any negativity toward the president even though they agree that a genocide is happening. He's been supplying weapons and vetoing ceasefires, I can't believe the majority of the crossover of those two ideas is dumb enough to not think any of it is Bidens fault. Its more likely they're scared.

[–] FlowVoid@lemmy.world 0 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

UN resolutions won't change Israel's behavior. But there's an argument to be made that Biden is working behind the scenes to prevent the situation in Gaza from being even worse. Sometimes the carrot is more effective than the stick.

[–] agitatedpotato@lemmy.world 0 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

If the UN resolution wont change their behavior then Biden wouldn't have reason to veto it. But obviously it would change something he was not okay with changing.

[–] FlowVoid@lemmy.world 0 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

It wouldn't change Israel's behavior, but it would make it more difficult for Biden to try to influence Israel.

[–] agitatedpotato@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

It's proving impossible to influence them outside of revoking funding, so why make yourself responsible for genocide, multiple times, for the dipomacy of someone who publicly says hes not going to listen to you. During an election year even, it makes Biden look weak and guilty. He can't even reign in someone dependent on his cash.

[–] FlowVoid@lemmy.world -1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

We don't know if Israel is impossible to influence, because we don't know if they were originally planning something different.

And trying to influence Israel does not necessarily make Biden responsible for what Israel does.

[–] agitatedpotato@lemmy.world 0 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

But providing weapons and vetoing ceasefires absolutely makes him responsible. He went out of his way to aide and abed someone whos comitting crimes. Thats responsibility.

[–] FlowVoid@lemmy.world 0 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

He provided anti-missile defenses, which makes him responsible for shooting down rockets launched by Hamas. And he provided JDAM kits, which are used to convert dumb bombs (that Israel already owns and is perfectly willing to use) into precision guided bombs.

Neither of these make him responsible for genocide, if anything they might help to reduce the scale of civilian deaths.

As for ceasefires: the US vetoed a ceasefire without release of hostages, but then proposed a ceasefire with release of hostages. Israel is much more likely to accept the latter.

[–] agitatedpotato@lemmy.world 0 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Isreal keeps killing its own hostages, I can't fathom thats whats stopping Netenyahu from agreeing to a ceasfire. And I got bridges for sale for people who do think that.

[–] FlowVoid@lemmy.world 0 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

If you think Netanyahu won't agree to this ceasefire proposal, then he surely wouldn't have agreed to the prior proposals. And if so, then calling for a ceasefire would have been a waste of time.

[–] agitatedpotato@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Pressure is pressure, not abiding a UN resolution is a bad look and allows for further pressure to be put on Israel. Biden has continually kept away Israel away from that pressure while funding them. He's got his hands dirty. The fact is they're delaying for time, they don't care about the hostages, they care about how much time they can use to inflict the maximum amount of suffering on gaza before they're cast of of international society. Thats it, and Biden is giving them the time and space to do so.

[–] FlowVoid@lemmy.world 0 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Uncompromising pressure is exactly the approach taken by Trump and the GOP against Iran, in contrast to the olive branch offered by Obama. It's also the approach taken by multiple presidents against Cuba and North Korea.

It's not an effective way to get a regime to change its behavior. It doesn't cast countries out of international society, it simply realigns them with countries like China.

[–] agitatedpotato@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Who said anything about uncompromising? Almost all the member states agreed on it save 2. The two with the most to gain from this conflict. Compromise would be to go with the consensus. Really weird to paint a joint UN resolution as 'uncompromising pressure' in line with Trump on Iran, he literally assassinated their top military general. What part of that is like a UN resolution with a majority approval?

[–] FlowVoid@lemmy.world 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

It doesn't matter what you want to call it. You want to try to isolate Israel, but isolating a country won't change its behavior. It will change its allies.

[–] agitatedpotato@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

And what does funding and delaying for them do?

[–] FlowVoid@lemmy.world 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Sometimes it allows a degree of influence.

For example, the US has given a lot of funds to Ukraine. But the US does not want Ukrainian troops on Russian soil, and this may be one of the reasons Ukrainians haven't done so.

[–] agitatedpotato@lemmy.world 0 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Well we stopped funding Ukraine, so no wonder they gotta listen to us, clearly their funding isn't secure. The fact that netanyahu publicly goes against biden is because he knows that'll never happen to him. You want to influence him, but there's no incentive for him to listen, he knows no one will stop funding him. Give him incentive to listen, yank his funding his statements make it clear he doesn't think that's a possibility.

No to mention if you suggesting the funding and delaying, the abeding of genocide, is to get influence that we can't use to stop the genocide well Ill let you figure out how that's the same thing as complicity. But the type of complicity where you're also paying for it.

[–] FlowVoid@lemmy.world 0 points 6 months ago

That's not what I meant. The US asked Ukraine not to cross the border with Russia early in the war, it was a particular concern when Ukrainians were making rapid gains throughout Kharkiv. Now that our Ukrainian funding has stopped, our influence is also decreasing. Hopefully that's just temporary.

Regardless, sending money to Israel is not the same as being complicit in genocide. If that were true, then pretty much everyone with a smartphone is complicit in China's genocide of Uyghirs and every European who buys Russian gas is complicit in Russia's genocide of Ukraine.