In a pair of TV interviews, Blinken underscored that the United States believes Israeli forces should “get out of Gaza,”
- Thread starter NorthernHawkeye
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On May 6, the UN published data showing that 34,735 people had reportedly been killed in Gaza, including over 9,500 women and over 14,500 children.
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Is it a goal somehow inherently incompatible with Muslim culture?
If the verdict is that they’re irredeemable barbarians, and they’ve chosen the sword, then put them to the sword.
But this isn’t our (America’s) Indian War.
We settled ours, by the sword.
If you have some way to get hamas out or somehow make them a good neighbor, I'd love to hear it. But you don't.
Long-term you have to find an alternative to Hamas in Gaza. You have to get the other nations in the Middle East to buy in on that and shut out Hamas, don’t give them shelter. You have to show Palestinians that violence isn’t the only way Israelis and Palestinians can talk tk each other.
None of which will be quick or easy. I’m not blind to that.
But i think it’s also true that there isn’t a solution out there where this is accomplished via military action.
i'm not going to pretend the shitty outcomes we've had when we've regime changed countries over the years is exclusive to muslim countries.
I've wondered about this as well and I suspect it's either or some of each of the following three:
Religion: People who are Jewish - this one is pretty straight forward. People who are anti-Muslim, not necessarily a full blown bigot, but just have a less favorable view of the religion. People who are Evangelical Christian - I'm less familiar with this, but Israel plays a big part in their prophecies, so Israel must be supported and protected now, so that the prophecies can come true, or something like that.
Domestic politics: If the perception is that Democrats are for Hamas, for Palestinians, and against Israel, then the right/GOP/conservatives will be on the opposite.
Age: Older people may remember growing up when Israel was the upstart underdog that was vulnerable to their more powerful neighbors. Israel was a compelling recipient of our patronage. Of course things have changed, but people's experiences and views may not have.
I think you remarks about religion are spot-on. Certain bible versus express the need to support Israel. Because of that the far right doesn't think twice about providing unfettered support.
I mean, the bible also says it's ok for fathers to sell their daughters into slavery, but that's a topic for another day I suppose.
US Ambassador to Israel Jack Lew insisted Sunday evening that “fundamentally, nothing has changed in the basic relationship” between Israel and the US — despite the decision last week by US President Joe Biden’s administration to delay a shipment of high-payload bombs to Israel, and Biden’s declaration that he would not supply offensive weapons to Israel for a major IDF offensive affecting population centers in southern Gaza’s Rafah.
Noting that military aid from Washington to Jerusalem has increased since war erupted in Gaza after Hamas’s October 7 onslaught, Lew stressed in a Channel 12 interview that only “one set of munitions” had been held back, and that “everything else keeps flowing.”
The two sides “need to keep talking through” issues that relate to the use of “large diameter bombs, heavy bombs, particularly when there’s the possibility of them being used in densely populated urban areas,” he said.
“But I think it’s a mistake to think that anything has fundamentally changed in the relationship,” he repeated.
Asked about Biden’s stated intention not to supply offensive weapons to Israel “if they go [into] these population centers,” Lew replied: “What the president said is that he doesn’t think it is a good idea to have a massive ground campaign in a heavily populated area. But he specifically said that 2,000-pound (900-kilogram) bombs shouldn’t be used in that setting.”
Noting that military aid from Washington to Jerusalem has increased since war erupted in Gaza after Hamas’s October 7 onslaught, Lew stressed in a Channel 12 interview that only “one set of munitions” had been held back, and that “everything else keeps flowing.”
The two sides “need to keep talking through” issues that relate to the use of “large diameter bombs, heavy bombs, particularly when there’s the possibility of them being used in densely populated urban areas,” he said.
“But I think it’s a mistake to think that anything has fundamentally changed in the relationship,” he repeated.
Asked about Biden’s stated intention not to supply offensive weapons to Israel “if they go [into] these population centers,” Lew replied: “What the president said is that he doesn’t think it is a good idea to have a massive ground campaign in a heavily populated area. But he specifically said that 2,000-pound (900-kilogram) bombs shouldn’t be used in that setting.”
So Blinken is criticizing the lone entity that is working to bring home 5 American hostages (amongst others from our allies)?Blinken delivers some of the strongest US public criticism of Israel's conduct of the war in Gaza
Blinken delivers some of the strongest US public criticism of Israel's conduct of the war in Gaza
Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday delivered some of the Biden administration’s strongest public criticism yet of Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza, saying Israeli tactics have meant “a horrible loss of life of innocent civilians” but failed to neutralize Hamas leaders and fighters...www.yahoo.com
Bold move.
I don't disagree with you. The problem is the Middle East isn't stepping up and so there's no other alternative for Israel. I'm sure Israel would love to have the other countries help out. But right now Israel is on it's own and all they have is a hammer so they're going to keep pounding away.
Agreed.
Just saying that Israel also needs to recognize that the hammer alone won’t get the job done. They HAVE to find another option.
It’s insane that they’ve become the “bad guys” in the eyes of many.
All Israel has is a hammer so why are people so surprised they're using their only tool. All the other countries (including the US) are just telling Israel what they're doing wrong and truly not providing any positive help. If the US want's to help, then actually help.
It bothers me Israel has become the "bad guys" but I'm not shocked by it. That's the way our society is today,
If all Israel has is a hammer then that’s at least partly on them too tho - somehow we’re forgetting that they did mention to agree to peace treaties with most of their neighbors. So to say the hammer is all they have isn’t really true imo.
It leaves out that in the past they had other tools at hand - and it helped that they also had that hammer available; with which they’d beaten many of these former enemies as well.
At some point, the bullets will stop flying and the bombs will stop falling. You simply have to have another tool at that point. If you don’t - just look at how we did in Iraq when it was obvious we never planned for a post-Saddam Iraq.
It’s not “blind allegiance” to Israel….it’s prioritizing……#1….Israel has a right to exist……that is Rule #1….Hamas denies this “rule”….and has always pushed the envelope many times forcing/coercing Israel to strike back….Netenyaho/Israel is wrong with their “West Bank settlement” experiment and that has just added to the mess, but Hamas (Iran) is the bad guy here…..more so “the bad guy” than Israel receiving everyone's “allegiance”….
Agreed - at the same time, there’s also the perception that any criticism of Israel = supporting Hamas.
The other tools would be the help from the other countries. But what has the US provided to Israel, nothing but more hammers. And now the US is upset because Israel is using the hammers. Someone else needs to step up and fight to get rid of hamas and change the view of palestinians. Otherwise Israel is going to keep hammering.
That is because many folks are 1) stupid and 2) don’t listen to what is being said and 3) have no clue of the background of the conflict in the Middle East .
You can’t fix stupid. There is an abundance of it out there.
The Democratically elected government of Palestine? Do you even know when that occurred? 2006.
Here, you can read up on it and laugh while thousands still die.
The election that led to Hamas taking over Gaza
Columnist
October 24, 2023 at 12:01 a.m. EDT
The death toll amid Israel’s devastating campaign against the Islamist group Hamas in Gaza is soaring. More than two weeks after Hamas militants orchestrated their appalling strike on southern Israel, killing more than 1,400 people in a slaughter unprecedented in Israeli history, Israeli bombing and raids have killed at least 5,087 Palestinians in Gaza, including more than 2,000 children, according to local authorities. Those numbers are bound to rise as Israel ramps up its offensive.
Israel’s boosters reason away the hideous collateral damage as an inevitable fact of a conflict in which a rogue enemy operates in zones crammed with civilians. Innocent Palestinians, wrote Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, are “caught between the hammer of Hamas’ atrocity and the anvil of Israel’s rightful retribution.”
Others in Israel and elsewhere have been even less sympathetic. They cast the more than 2 million people living in the Gaza Strip — a territory subjected to an immiserating economic blockade for the past 16 years — as accomplices to Hamas, which has held sway in Gaza since capturing it in 2007 from rival Palestinian factions.
“It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible,” Israeli President Isaac Herzog told reporters. “This rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved, it’s absolutely not true. They could’ve risen up, they could have fought against that evil regime.”
A core part of this talking point lies in what happened close to two decades ago. In 2006, the Palestinian political entity operating in the West Bank and Gaza staged elections. Little did observers know that it would be the last vote allowed by the Palestinian Authority, led then, as it is now, by President Mahmoud Abbas. The vote took place in the aftermath of a turbulent series of events: the fiery years of the second intifada, the death of longtime Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, and the 2005 Israeli withdrawal of troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip.
The election yielded a shock victory for Hamas, which won the most seats with some 44 percent of the vote. Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, which advocates for rapprochement and peace between Israelis and Palestinians, recently observed that in no single district in Gaza did Hamas win a majority of votes. At present, children make up roughly half of Gaza’s population, meaning only a fraction of the territory’s current population ever cast a ballot for Hamas.
Given the horror of what Hamas unleashed on Oct. 7, it is difficult for many to imagine the Islamists as genuine democratic actors in a fledgling parliamentary structure. But the faction, which emerged in the 1980s in Gaza (with a degree of Israeli help) as a Palestinian offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, won the votes of many Palestinians who were tired of the entrenched Palestinian clique of Abbas and his allies in the secular Fatah party.
“Mostly, they were voting for opposition and voting against Fatah — against corruption, against nepotism, against the failure of the peace process, and against the lack of leadership,” Mustafa Barghouti, an outspoken, independent Palestinian politician then and now, told CNN at the time.
That analysis was echoed by a conspicuous onlooker. President George W. Bush had pushed for Palestinian elections, in part as an outgrowth of his administration’s ideological zeal for spreading democracy in the Middle East through whatever means necessary. As Hamas’s victory became clear, Bush said the vote reflected Palestinians’ disenchantment with their prevailing leadership, who had been elected a decade prior in the wake of the signing of the Oslo accords.
“There was a peaceful process as people went to the polls, and that’s positive,” Bush told reporters. “But what’s also positive is that it’s a wake-up call to the leadership. Obviously people were not happy with the status quo. The people are demanding honest government. The people want services.”
Within the Bush administration, there was anguish. A recognized terrorist organization that was refusing to disarm its armed wing or revise elements of its charter that sought the destruction of the state of Israel had secured democratic legitimacy. “Everyone blamed everyone else,” an official with the Department of Defense told Vanity Fair in 2008. “We sat there in the Pentagon and said, ‘Who the f--- recommended this?’ ”
As it turned out, Hamas never ended up steering the Palestinian democratic experiment. Western powers temporarily turned off the tap of aid to the Palestinian Authority; Israel clamped down on the Gaza Strip and detained dozens of Hamas officials, including elected legislators. The schism between Abbas and Fatah in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza exploded in a bloody set of battles that saw Hamas violently wrest full control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, allegedly after the Bush administration tried to foment an anti-Hamas putsch in the territory.
What followed is the tragic course of the past decade, with the Palestinian national movement drifting into crisis, Israel placing siege conditions on the whole Gaza Strip, and periodic eruptions of deadly violence from Hamas and other armed factions in the territory reminding the world of the perennial threat they pose and the disproportionate price paid by Gaza’s civilian population. With U.S. and Israeli blessing, Qatar provides an economic lifeline by helping Gaza’s authorities pay for things like infrastructure and the salaries of public officials. Meanwhile, through more covert, illicit means, Hamas has received Iranian aid and support to retool its military capacities.
In the wake of Oct. 7, even fewer governments will treat Hamas as a normal political operator. But in the years preceding the current war, Palestinians in Gaza had more immediate concerns than finding the means to oust the armed faction in their midst. “Many Gazans would prefer not to be governed by Hamas militants, but they can’t simply start up a campaign to get rid of them — not without grave risks to their lives, livelihoods, and families. For one thing, they are too busy struggling to survive from day to day,” wrote Jonah Shepp in the Intelligencer.
“For another, Hamas cements its hold on power through an outsize role in the Gazan economy: It is the only organization that can reliably pay salaries, it maintains a stranglehold on inflows of foreign aid, and it keeps Gaza dependent on Israel for water and electricity by refusing to build infrastructure instead of rockets,” he added.
Other analysts suggest that the moment may also demand more reflection within Israel. Hamas militants “are arsonists, and we must remember that arsonists seek a world in which everything burns,” wrote Ben Rhodes, a former Obama administration official. “Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s long-standing policy of squeezing Gaza, expanding West Bank settlements, and making deals with Arab autocrats has not delivered security but led Israel to let its guard down while Hamas plotted its attack.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/24/gaza-election-hamas-2006-palestine-israel/
So there are other tools out there…but Israel hasn’t made any effort to engage them. They’re CHOOSING the hammer.
US has been increasingly critical of Israel’s actions for awhile - this didn’t just come out of nowhere, nor are we we cutting off the flow entirely.
Other nations need to get involved; but Israel has to make different decisions as well.
it goes back to the whole "you don't make peace with friends" thing
going the non-hammer route is hard. and very unpopular. the guy that said that quote was assassinated because he was trying to make peace with palestians
I got no problem supporting Israel in defending themselves. They've always been our best mid east ally. My problem is Israel killing more than 35,000 civilians, and the destruction of hospitals, colleges, churches and clean water supplies.
You're a f toolWhere did you disappear for a few days? Gaza?
Thought I do a little yard work with the nice weather.
Apology accepted on your assertion that I have supported Hamas.
I have posted many, many times what needs to happen. There needs to be new leadership on both sides. Hamas and Bibi are bad faith actors. The people of Israel are ready for a cease fire. Withdraw and allow an international peace keeping operation. Years of rebuilding and allow other groups to be active politically to counteract Hamas.
Land for peace. That is the solution.
Thank you for validating my numbers and admitting my dominance to your inability to provide any alternate numbers to what are widely available.
Your inability to provide other numbers is embarrassing, but on par for your game here.
No apology given. Get back to me when you get rid of hamas and then we'll talk about the Israeli leadership.
Rid of Hamas so Israel has one less terrorist organization on its border to worry about. We’d do the same. But Biden needs Michigan.
He wanted Congress to fund Israel, and they finally got off their ass and supplied it. Now he’s threatening to withhold weapons.
I agree with you here. I’ve said many times they need to find/foster relationships with Palestinians that could lead to another group to rise in Palestine that they can work with. Again, wouldn’t be fast or easy but necessary imo.
They’ve gone with the stick in Gaza. Now show them a carrot. Imo they need to find away to pry Palestinian support away from Hamas.
When Hamas bases are tunnels under Gaza, I'm not sure how Israel can clear it without a) being there or b) obliterating everything between the sky and the tunnels...
So urban warfare seems to be the best option at present.
No he's not.
If Israel was committing "genocide" there'd be 500k dead Palestinians and this would have been over in a couple weeks.
They're going slow, trying to avoid civilian casualties but when your opponent imbeds itself, and hides behind civilians...civilian casualties are unavoidable.
They’re going about it slowly. You sort of got that part right. They’re literally starving the entire population. Who needs bombs when blocking entrances and having settlers destroy truckloads of food and water will eventually kill more brown people.
