At a hearing, Elise Stefanik pledged to continue the US’s defence of Israel and advance Trump’s ‘America First’ agenda.

Summary

Elise Stefanik, President Trump’s nominee for U.S. ambassador to the UN, stated during her confirmation hearing that Israel has a “biblical right” to the occupied West Bank, aligning with far-right Israeli officials.

Stefanik sidestepped support for Palestinian self-determination, blaming their leadership for failures.

Her stance signals a shift from Biden-era opposition to Israeli settlements, with Trump lifting sanctions on Israeli settler groups and nominating pro-settlement figures like Mike Huckabee for key roles.

Stefanik also vowed to audit UN funding and block aid to Palestinian refugee agencies.

  • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catEnglish
    51·
    16 hours ago

    I know. It never stops.

    Not that it’s the point, but here’s a summary of the sanctions at one point. 11 individuals, 11 entities, I don’t know what changed about it after that: https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-issues-new-batch-of-sanctions-targeting-west-bank-settlers-amid-rampant-violence/

    He also paused some weapons shipments, he re-funded Palestinian aid organizations, he tried to get them food, yada yada yada I’ll just repeat what I said about it before since you seem to have missed that part of it:

    Biden’s “stop or I’ll say stop again also here’s more weapons” level of ‘resistance’ to Netanyahu sure wasn’t anything to be real proud of, but I’ll take that over enthusiastic encouragement any day. Trump also has unpaused some of the military shipments that Biden had paused, today, on day one. Sending even more weapons than Biden was one of his key priorities for the next few years, apparently.

    I would broadly agree with you that the sum total of what Biden did was infinitesimal. He was hitting a boulder with a rubber mallet. He was throwing water bottles at a house fire that he helped ignite. The difference is, Trump is showing up with gasoline, a whole truck full of it, and spraying it on and wants to burn five other houses in addition to this one. Biden at least wasn’t doing that. That makes Trump way worse, even though Biden is bad. I don’t know how that simple logical construction turns into this post-graduate equation that people can’t fathom, or means that they claim I’m saying Biden wasn’t abetting a genocide, but that’s how I see it.

    I eagerly await the strawman through which this fairly crystal clear explanation, in my view, gets turned into something else which it isn’t.

    • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io
      33·
      16 hours ago

      The difference is, Trump is showing up with gasoline, a whole truck full of it, and spraying it on and wants to burn five other houses in addition to this one.

      I’m not gonna say this assumption is wrong, because we’ll have to wait and see about that, but people who disagree with your position (including me) see what Biden was doing as nearly the worst way he could’ve handled the war in Gaza. Trump’s rhetoric is definitely worse than Biden, but on the ground what he did in his first term and what he’s doing now is what other US presidents were also doing، give or take symbolic actions like moving the US embassy. To borrow your analogy, the worst Trump could possibly do is put some lego bricks on the boulder and pretend he contributed to its structural stability. The whole thing boils down to: What can he do that Biden didn’t already do?

      Also note that I’m discounting any possible relation between Trump and the ceasefire; if we assume he did contribute to the ceasefire then he becomes objectively the better candidate for Palestine no matter what he does from this point, but let’s not get into that.