A career State Department official resigned from her post on Tuesday, saying she could no longer work for the Biden administration after it released a report concluding that Israel was not preventing the flow of aid to Gaza.
Stacy Gilbert, who served as a senior civilian-military advisor to the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM), sent an email to staff saying she was resigning because she felt the State Department had made the wrong assessment, The Washington Post reported, citing officials who read the note.
The report was filed in response to President Joe Biden issuing a national security memorandum (NSM-20) in early February on whether the administration finds credible Israel’s assurances that its use of US weapons do not violate either American or international law.
The report said there were reasonable grounds to believe Israel on several occasions had used American-supplied weapons “inconsistent” with international humanitarian law, but said it could not make a definitive assessment - enough to prevent the suspension of arms transfers.
When the genocide is this obvious, and the ongoing consequences for the democrats and democracy this serious, it really makes me wonder what’s the political calculus behind it.
Is AIPAC really that big of a threat? Is netanyahu that important to our imperial interests in the middle east? Why choose full on putinesque post-truth politics over this?
I’ve never had much faith in the democrats, but I honestly just don’t understand what’s driving such terrible decision making.
Pulling support from Isreal isn’t nearly as popular as someone who is in the progressive / lemmy bubble would think. And besides public opinion, Isreal has a very strong lobby. Also, while there are more vocal American Jews standing against Isreal now, they’re far from united against Isreal.
I know it seems like it’s a clear win because of the echo chamber in here, but it could cost them not only the presidential election, but down ballot as well, if they go against Isreal. And I’ve said it before, chasing the Leftist vote is an exercise in futility. They will just move goalposts, and you may very well lose more voters appeasing them than you gain. And the votes you do gain will be fickle.
It sucks to say, but their strategy is solid. And we need to celebrate the small wins to encourage their slow break from unconditional support.
Edit:
Lemmy as a whole - “Political polls are very unreliable and next to useless”
ITT: “A specific poll agrees with my opinion, and thus should be treated as the absolute truth”
Uh huh. Re: echo chambers
I’ve seen a number of polls that reiterate how strongly youth and democrats oppose israel’s actions and call it genocide. I don’t think it’s an echo chamber effect.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/642695/majority-disapprove-israeli-action-gaza.aspx
This poll from March shows 55/36 disapprove/approve.
Moreover, democrats disapprove at 75% vs 18% approve and independents disapprove at 60% to 29% approve. Sure, republicans approve at 64%, but ain’t no republicans switching to biden over gaza.
Those numbers are brutal for democrats, and getting worse. More obvious genocide from the israelis and feeble lies from biden isn’t going to reverse that trend.
It’s easy to say disapprove, you should look at the rankings of what issues are on their minds. Gaza is down there.
Conveniently up until the election.
A fair point.
Polling does not agree with you. It’s certainly not a slam dunk but the majority of voters want military aid conditioned on not committing war crimes.
Completely Pulling support is one thing, but “conditioning support” has broad bipartisan public appeal. Bernie Sanders can articulate this well; support for Israeli defense programs like Iron Dome, and cutting support for offensive artillery that’s being used to storm Gaza. Why can’t Biden say the same, instead he’s trying to split hairs on whether tanks into Rafah doesn’t count as a ground invasion (and making himself look stupid in front of voters).
When did doing the right thing become unelectable?
So solid that polling says the opposite, the media is starting to catch on, and there is a report that dem strategists are freaking the fuck out over how shit Biden’s chances are. CNN miraculously figured out that, surprise surprise a lot of it has to do with Biden’s handling of Gaza.
Sry, but you’re delusional if you seriously think that the Israel thing isn’t a huge factor towards why Biden has lost so much support. We are literally seeing a democratic president aid Israel in commiting a genocide.
Outside of lemmy I get tons of information about the ongoing genocide. As far as I can tell, the democratic strategy is not solid. They’re going be in for a rough realization that Trump stands a very good chance of becoming the next president. But I suppose we just have to wait and see, I wouldn’t count on Biden winning, and neither our NATO allies as they’re Trump proofing themselves.
This is only half the story: the US consciously chooses how they put out information about these issues, it’s not as if the american public just magically stays ignorant to the facts on the ground. The state department has repeatedly denied Israeli atrocities and culpability, and even in the instances where israel’s actions are black and white (like the above report), they speak about them them as if they are less concrete than they clearly are.
I think a lot of people are kidding themselves if they think there’s no material benefit to the US by keeping Israel as an iron-clad ally in the middle east. I think it’s crazy that anyone would even need to articulate the reasons why the middle east is so significant to modern geopolitics; the significance of the region’s natural resources and distribution thereof simply can’t be overstated. Look back just a couple years to the news around Nord Stream and russian sanctions to get an idea about what oil means to the world economy.
The polls are kinda irrelevant to the issue: public opinion follows state messaging (at least the portion you’re describing that supports israel blindly), and even where it deviates in this case (allegedly), I think most people might recognize the need for intervention if the state department just passed along the reports happening on the ground and not obfuscate israel’s roll here.
The US is at least partially responsible for their own propagandizing here.
Not at all. Israel is a greater liability than any benefit they provide. Unconditional support for every Israeli aggression makes the US deeply unpopular in the rest of the region when we were previously popular. It undermines all our rhetoric of freedom and human rights when we partner with such a blatant violator of them. Bin Laden spelled out in his 2001 statement that support for Israel’s atrocities is what motivated 9/11, and doubling down on that support only increased terrorism for the next 20 years.
And what do we get out of this ironclad support? Did Israel help us in any of our wars in Iraq or Afghanistan? Do they give us any aid or resources or do they demand them from us?
That’s a great point. When Israel kicks out 2 million refugees where are they all going to go? Surrounding countries again. And I’m sure they really don’t like that from a geopolitical point of view, as well as humanitarian. It really encourages every surrounding country to hate us.
I honestly don’t think there is any calculus happening here. Biden is a Zionist. It’s not outlandish to think there are other high ranking Democrats who are also Zionists enabling him. They might be upset at the optics, but they’re not upset at the outcome. The Biden administration also doesn’t seem to think this position will cost them the election, so they see no incentive to pause their goals.
Blinken’s a zionist
They figure that they would lose more votes from people who support Israel than they’re currently losing from people who support Palestine so much they would rather have Trump in power (in which case Palestine will be in even more trouble, which isn’t a problem for Israel supporters).
I mean, look around these comments sections and see the apologism. If you bring up any criticism of Biden, you must support Trump! Its 2016 all over again, where voters with legitimate concerns about the candidate are being told to basically stfu. Democrats of a certain vintage think they are owed your vote.
Yeah, and imagine where we’d be today if people had just sucked it up and voted for Hillary in 2016. Just the SCOTUS alone.
But sure, it’s the fault of the people warning you how bad it would be to let Trump win, because they couldn’t make voting for Hillary feel good.
If ifs and buts were candy and nuts…
You have to come to terms with the material fact that this approach to electoralism doesn’t work. Shaming votings, telling them you know better, that they owe you their vote, that Trump is way worse so they should vote for someone they dont want: Its been demonstrated to be ineffective at winning elections.
You can and maybe should be disappointment in the electorate for this being the case, but you can’t be in denial of it if you actually want to beat Trump. You have to do something different and convince them that the candidate is worth voting for. Or rather, the candidate needs to convince the electorate they are worth voting for. They need to go out and build a coalition. Candidates need to go to where voters are, hear their issues and concerns, and address them with their platform.
Trump is doing that. Maybe he gets booed. He got booed at the libertarian conference last weekend I think. But he’s showing up to where voters are, and attempting to convince them that he’s the answer for the issues they face. Democrats could take a hint.
Yes. This stupidity definitely has grass roots.
Here’s the political calculus for Democrats:
This appears to be a very unusual election. Normally Democrats lead with young voters, and Republicans lead with older voters. But this year, Biden has gained ground with older voters even while losing ground with young voters.
So the first thing to consider is that Biden is trying harder to appeal to older voters than usual for Democrats, and older voters are more likely to support Israel.
Furthermore, older voters are much more likely to vote, which is good news for Biden. This also means that Biden has less reason to maximize turnout than previous Democrats.
The obvious question is why doesn’t Biden try to win over young and older voters? I’m sure he would like to, but supporting Palestine isn’t the way to do it. Surprisingly, young voters actually don’t care that much about Gaza. Furthermore, according to that article “young voters who wanted Biden to pressure Israel to stop attacking Gaza would vote for him at about the same rate as those who didn’t.” So supporting Palestine might just be downside risk with older voters.
Putting all this together, and the political calculus favors appealing to older voters on Israel, and trying to find some other issue to win back young voters.
I think it’s the same short sighted calculus businesses use. They aren’t thinking about the long term. They just want to win this election. And there’s a path to victory by grabbing soft conservatives. They don’t care that they’re obliterating our reputation, the reputation of our intelligence community (who press F to doubt on Israel’s claims), and the reputation of the party.
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Thing is, there’s a liberal path to victory too. He just isn’t taking it.
Is it money? It’s usually money.
It can’t be worthwhile trying to fight over the pro-Israel lobby considering how hard the Republicans back Israel no matter what.
Yes. And it’s wild to me that you don’t have to be a far-right neo-Nazi conspiracy theorist to be able to say that nowadays. They’re a huge lobby with a lot of money and influence to throw around.
It basically only makes sense if corruption is involved. There’s no reasonable moral ground for enabling genocide.
States just aren’t moral entities - there’s no reasonable moral ground for most anything an imperial power does. It’s almost always just about securing more power.
But I don’t understand how this makes sense for the democrats from even a realpolitik perspective.
I said this only makes sense if states lack morals(corrupt).
You say “well states aren’t moral”.
How are these different enough that you felt the need to downvote me? I’m literally agreeing with you.
I didn’t downvote. I don’t see you having any down votes. I don’t disagree with you, I just don’t feel that your comment addressed the specific point I was making.
I don’t disagree that states are devoid of any ethical capabilities, but they’re not cartoon supervillains. When states are cruel, it’s for specific reasons to achieve specific aims.
I don’t understand what the democrats think they are getting or avoiding with this. To me it looks lose/lose for them.
Geopolitics is rarely ever moral.
Biden is afraid of the same Israeli political action networks that evaded registering as foreign agents for about half a year before JFK and Bobby were assassinated. Those networks never came into compliance and split into a parent and a subsidiary. The parent organization has disbanded. The subsidiary is now known as AIPAC. If he pulls support from Likudnik Israel those terrorists will instantly put two bullets in the back of his head.
I personally don’t think that fear of assassination is what’s driving biden and the democrats policy on this.
Given that netanyahu and gvir were almost certainly involved in killing yitzhak rabin I’m sure they’re capable, I just think the risk/reward is off. They can affect US policy without the risks inherent in killing an allied head of state.
He’s spreading conspiracy theories. Don’t take him seriously.
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iirc the opposite, rfk’s killer specifically said it was because of rfk’s support for Israel.
Do you think all Jews are Israelis?
Did I say the word Jews?
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You said Israelis.
What other religion would these supposed Israeli assassins be?
There’s a world of difference between saying something was done by people who happen to be Jewish, and saying “the Jews” did it. Unless you think being Jewish should make a person immune to all criticism.
I don’t actually have an opinion on who killed Kennedy, but saying it was done by a group–the Israeli right wing–that’s openly committing genocide, has a history of committing assassinations, and has a stranglehold on US politics is not ridiculous or racist on its face.
Notice how neither of them engaged with what I asked in the terms in which I asked them.
There’s a world of difference between saying genocide was done by people who happen to be Israeli right wingers, and saying “the Israeli right wing” did it.
I can’t fathom what point you think you’re making.