I’m not sure the people who got those meals agree with you.
50+ years of American foreign policy is aiding and abetting this genocide. The position Biden is in at this moment gives him limited leverage. The second he drops aid to Israel, that leverage is gone. Threats are dangerous if following through makes you powerless.
A series of small punishments maximizes leverage in situations like this. Kill one hostage at a time, and you are taken seriously. Kill all the hostages and you get taken out. Israel has other places to go for aid and alliances. America needs a foothold in the Middle East, and Israel works far better than Saudi Arabia which has its own genocide going on.
I think Biden should be moving faster, but he has the right strategy. Turn up the heat a bit at a time to maximize leverage instead of pulling all support “on principle” and burning all the leverage for nothing. I care more about outcome than purity.
Biden has all the leverage. The Israeli state cannot function as it does without massive support - financial, political, military - from the USA. Hell, they can’t even carry out this genocide to this extent without US (and it’s allies) help. They’re relying on the US and UK for targeting info and having support and surveillance flights (at the very least) run out of RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus. They’re used British and American mercenaries and volunteers, signing deals with fucking Blackwater (now renamed) for land grabs in Gaza.
You seem to have created and swallow this bizarre rubric about imaginary ‘gaining political leverage’ that does not reflect any actual relationship to material reality.
How has the US turned the heat up? By doubling down on blocking and vetoing international efforts to get Israel to accept international law? By starting a military conflict in the Red Sea to break a blockade of Israel? By granting and proposing more new massive spending bills that will send weapons and support to Israel? By pressuring it’s allies and puppet states to defund the only real UN organisation on the ground that not only provides aid, but could actually observe and report the scale of the deaths and atrocities taking place? By giving it’s media apparatus carte blanche to triple down on spewing disinformation, already debunked atrocity propaganda, and genocide justification? By proposing and supporting massive crackdowns on free speech and protest from the streets to college campuses?
And what are the achievements for Palestine the Biden admin and US allies have supposedly won? Fuck all.
If there’s even an ounce of sincerity in you and your argument, then put aside all the vague, unquantifiable political media talk about leverage or political capital or diplomatic strategy and look at the simple facts. What has happened. What has been done. What hasn’t been done. Not press statements, not political speeches. Material reality.
And if you can’t do that, then it’s time to admit to yourself that all this spurious logic about imagined restrictions or political game playing is just veil you’ve thrown over the fact that you simply do not care enough to oppose or perhaps even support the horrors of this genocide. That you’re telling yourself you’re not party to it as you watch more and more people die, perhaps hoping that Israel can just hurry up and finish the job so you can throw up your hands and say, ‘we tried but it was too little too late’. You can cling to that veil to try and tell yourself you’re one of the good, moral people if you want. But people here are telling you, it’s so fucking sheer that everyone else can and will see right through it to what you are.
While still abetting a genocide
Sending aid to Gaza is fine in a vacuum, but it’s fucking meaningless when he’s the one assisting in the genocide
I’m not sure the people who got those meals agree with you.
50+ years of American foreign policy is aiding and abetting this genocide. The position Biden is in at this moment gives him limited leverage. The second he drops aid to Israel, that leverage is gone. Threats are dangerous if following through makes you powerless.
A series of small punishments maximizes leverage in situations like this. Kill one hostage at a time, and you are taken seriously. Kill all the hostages and you get taken out. Israel has other places to go for aid and alliances. America needs a foothold in the Middle East, and Israel works far better than Saudi Arabia which has its own genocide going on.
I think Biden should be moving faster, but he has the right strategy. Turn up the heat a bit at a time to maximize leverage instead of pulling all support “on principle” and burning all the leverage for nothing. I care more about outcome than purity.
Biden has all the leverage. The Israeli state cannot function as it does without massive support - financial, political, military - from the USA. Hell, they can’t even carry out this genocide to this extent without US (and it’s allies) help. They’re relying on the US and UK for targeting info and having support and surveillance flights (at the very least) run out of RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus. They’re used British and American mercenaries and volunteers, signing deals with fucking Blackwater (now renamed) for land grabs in Gaza.
You seem to have created and swallow this bizarre rubric about imaginary ‘gaining political leverage’ that does not reflect any actual relationship to material reality.
How has the US turned the heat up? By doubling down on blocking and vetoing international efforts to get Israel to accept international law? By starting a military conflict in the Red Sea to break a blockade of Israel? By granting and proposing more new massive spending bills that will send weapons and support to Israel? By pressuring it’s allies and puppet states to defund the only real UN organisation on the ground that not only provides aid, but could actually observe and report the scale of the deaths and atrocities taking place? By giving it’s media apparatus carte blanche to triple down on spewing disinformation, already debunked atrocity propaganda, and genocide justification? By proposing and supporting massive crackdowns on free speech and protest from the streets to college campuses?
And what are the achievements for Palestine the Biden admin and US allies have supposedly won? Fuck all.
If there’s even an ounce of sincerity in you and your argument, then put aside all the vague, unquantifiable political media talk about leverage or political capital or diplomatic strategy and look at the simple facts. What has happened. What has been done. What hasn’t been done. Not press statements, not political speeches. Material reality.
And if you can’t do that, then it’s time to admit to yourself that all this spurious logic about imagined restrictions or political game playing is just veil you’ve thrown over the fact that you simply do not care enough to oppose or perhaps even support the horrors of this genocide. That you’re telling yourself you’re not party to it as you watch more and more people die, perhaps hoping that Israel can just hurry up and finish the job so you can throw up your hands and say, ‘we tried but it was too little too late’. You can cling to that veil to try and tell yourself you’re one of the good, moral people if you want. But people here are telling you, it’s so fucking sheer that everyone else can and will see right through it to what you are.
Flour massacre