• givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    No matter how much Biden gives Israel, they’ll always treat him like a little removed, and Biden will always do what they tell him to.

    Because they know they can get away with it.

    I can’t understand why people act like it’s no big deal, if the president of America has more loyalty to another country, it should be disqualifying. I don’t care what letter is next to their last name.

    No matter who gets elected in a couple months, America won’t be their priority.

    • SolidGrue@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Oh stop.

      Look, the two frontrunners for president were born in the 50s. For them the 1967 war on Israel is living memory, with Israel only having been formed as a state in 1948. For most of their lives, Israel has been a priority in US foreign politics.

      For most of what I imagine is much of your own life, Israel has been aggressively expanding at the expense of the Palestinians. Mine too.

      Without condoning it, our elder statesmen and stateswomen understand the middle east differently, and are looking for distinctly different outcomes. That ship doesn’t turn on a dime, but it’s fucking turning.

      People are dying and its maddening. I also assure you that nothing the US does either way will appreciably change anything over there. That conflict is baked into the very earth itself. Does that justify the arms deals? No. Do I have a point? Probably also no. But that’s how it is and it sucks.

      You get used to it, I guess. That also sucks.

      • Mrkawfee@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        . I also assure you that nothing the US does either way will appreciably change anything over there. That conflict is baked into the very earth itself. Does that justify the arms deals? No. Do I have a point? Probably also no. But that’s how it is and it sucks.

        If the US turned off the spending taps, stopped blocking Security Council Resolutions, and stopped acting as Israels lawyer, arms dealer, propagandist, and bully things would change pretty damn quickly.

        Israel is effectively an American colony. It would turn into a pariah state very quickly without US backing.

        • Sconrad122@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          Is the creation of a nuclear-armed North Korea in the Middle East with an effective ballistic missile program the change you wish to see in the world?

          • Mrkawfee@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            Israel’s vanity is that it’s part of the Western family of civilised democracies. Its also a lot more economically integrated than North Korea. Shunning and boycotting it would be more analogous to South Africa.

      • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        For most of their lives, Israel has been a priority in US foreign politics.

        Biden has gone record multiple times saying his unwavering support for Israel is from when he was a very small child his dad said they were the good guys…

        I believe him when he says that, and I believe someone like that should not be anywhere near a political office. He’s clearly mental unstable if that’s the truth, and a liar if it isn’t.

        An entire lifetime has passed by since then. It’s just absolutely fucking insane, but that’s what he says.

        . I also assure you that nothing the US does either way will appreciably change anything over there.

        You don’t think if Israel got billions of dollars a year less for defense spending and didn’t have the biggest kid on the block defending them nothing would change?

        If they acted like this without the US behind them, they’d be wiped off the map.

        If the US left them, even for a brief period like a year, they’d be forced to actually pursue peace.

        • SolidGrue@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          If the US left them, even for a brief period like a year, they’d be forced to actually pursue peace.

          No. It just leaves a geopolitical power vacuum into which another opportunistic state would step in and supply them with some equally deadly munitions and financial guarantees. Nothing would change for the Israelis or the Palestinians.

          Also, we probably stationed some Really Massive Ordinance over there that we can’t just evacuate on a Hercules or a Galaxy or 10. Its not like the US will just walk away from that. (Yes, like we did Afghanistan. Twice.)

          • hark@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            Basically “if we don’t support their genocide then someone else will”?

            • SolidGrue@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              Yeah, I suppose that’s one read if you completely disregard the rather startling drift in US policy in Israel from October 2023 to now. We abstained from a UNSC veto on a ceasefire. SoS Blinkin is going more aggressively at Netanyahu than I’ve ever seen a US official go at ah Israeli PM in my lifetime (“cohesive plan” quote), Biden called out Bibi in his SOTU when there are DIRE domestic issues at hand.

              Look, I’m not saying we’re clean here, and aren’t complicit. We’re walking a line of “being supportive” and bringing unorecedented diplomatic pressure on Israel to knock it off. Things are happening “really fast” on the scale of decades old policy, and that means something. Keeping hold on those ties means (a) yes, we’re complicit in the eyes of history, but (b) we are using those ties to try to minimize further bloodshed.

              It’s slow. Its maddening. It’s also real politics on an international scale which, I am sorry, marginalizes death. I’m not OK with that and I’m struggling to make sense of it myself, but among other likely outcomes it’s probably the best play the US can make given the alternatives.

              People with a lot more information than me are making the decisions. I’m trying to trust that.

          • NoneOfUrBusiness@kbin.social
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            8 months ago

            It just leaves a geopolitical power vacuum into which another opportunistic state would step in and supply them with some equally deadly munitions and financial guarantees.

            Who? Russia who is buying weapons from North Korea? China who’s trying to win over the Middle East? This is a needlessly pessimistic assumption.

              • NoneOfUrBusiness@kbin.social
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                8 months ago

                Wjy not China? Does it embarrass the US? Sure, even Russia who would LOVE to snipe a US ally.

                Because they want the Middle East on their side. They’ve been posturing that way for a while now. Israel is inherently a regional pariah state and that’s not changing anytime soon., so I don’t see China making that decision. It works for the US because it has both “needs” for hard power projection in the region and frankly ridiculous amounts of soft power, but China lacks both of these things.

                Edit: Russia is impossible because they don’t have the soft power necessary to keep Iran satiated (I think at this point it’s impossible even for the US, but for Russia doubly so) if they make such a step. At least personally, even from a geopolitical perspective if I had to choose between Iran and Israel I’d choose Iran, for a lot of reasons.

        • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          If the US left them, even for a brief period like a year, they’d be forced to actually pursue peace.

          I significantly doubt this. Netanyahu isn’t suddenly going to grow a heart or morals. I fear he’d do just as bad, if not worse, and prompt the question of if we should get involved against them.

          Remember, AIPAC funds US politicians. Not the other way around. They want the US to support Israel’s goals. Those goals won’t change if the US declines.

      • crusa187
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        8 months ago

        I also assure you that nothing the US does either way will appreciably change anything over there.

        Could not disagree with you more on this.

        Stop sending them billions of our taxpayer dollars, and stop sending them any more bombs being used to slaughter civilians. At the very least, this would force them to spend their own capital to produce their own bombs. That alone would make a massive difference.

    • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      queue all the people forgetting the four times they vetoed the same call for ceasefire… (and that really is directly on Biden and his ambassador)

      • Natanael@slrpnk.net
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        8 months ago

        They have reversed their veto now, that’s what the article is about that you’re commenting on.

        Biden has tried negotiating directly with Netanyahu, and because that has stopped working the WH is starting to change how they’re dealing with them.

          • nieminen@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            For real, had they not vetoed the ceasefire in the first place, how many innocent lives might have been saved?

    • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
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      8 months ago

      Your comment is uninformed, ill-conceived and most importantly baldly inaccurate on its face.

      • Nudding@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Your comment is uninformed, ill-conceived and most importantly baldly inaccurate on its face.

        • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
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          8 months ago

          Prove it.

          Or you can just keep copying other comments in lieu of independent thought.

              • Nudding@lemmy.world
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                8 months ago

                On Biden being paid over 5 million dollars by pro Israel groups since 1990, and enthusiastically aiding in a genocide.

                • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
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                  8 months ago

                  Let’s lay out the facts to debunk your wildly inaccurate and out-of-context accusations.

                  I disagree personally with centralized money interests in politics, but it is currently legal and ubiquitous in the US.

                  In your list, Biden is one of about three hundred politicians to receive political donations from “pro-israel” groups.

                  Israel has been an active military ally of the US for 75 years, receives billions in aid annually from the US, and groups may legally support political candidates that vote to provide that aid.

                  Biden is one of the longest serving senators and has received political contributions according to years served, like the other 278 senators in the list.

                  As for your lie that Biden is “enthusiastically aiding in a genocide”, it should be obvious by.

                  1)the most recent abstention of the US vote and veto from the UN regarding the immediate cease-fire,

                  2)netanyahu being upset with Biden and.

                  3)the overall perpetual breakdown of us-israel diplomatic relations

                  that Biden is in no way “enthusiastically aiding in a genocide”.

                  • Nudding@lemmy.world
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                    8 months ago

                    He literally structured the deals in a way to avoid federal oversight. That’s enthusiastic support if I’ve ever seen it. You’re not living in reality if you fail to see these facts.

    • HeartyBeast@kbin.social
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      8 months ago

      Biden will always do what they tell him to.

      Odd that according to you they didn’t tell him to veto the vote.

      • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        The United States abstained, allowing it to pass.

        Oh wow, look at the absolute bare fucking minimum…

        Now Israel is surely in trouble after a non binding resolution…

        • Linkerbaan@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          Actually it is binding.

          America just said right afterwards that it was non binding.

          Which is a lie.

          • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            It’s as binding as international law…

            Something that Israel violates all the time. It’ll be “binding” when UN forces move in to stop the genocide, or Israel stops on their own.

            I don’t expect either to happen. And consider it was for “immediate” ceasefire, and there hasn’t been a ceasefire…

            Pretty obvious it’s not being enforced.

          • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            I dunno, let me just go check the presidents cell phone and email, I’ll get right back to you…

            Because obviously you just made a reasonable request