As human rights groups continue to call out war crimes committed by the Israeli military, we speak to the only U.S. diplomat to publicly resign from the Biden administration over its policy on Israel.
We first spoke to Hala Rharrit when she resigned from the State Department in April, citing the illegal and deceptive nature of U.S. policy in the Middle East. “We continue to willfully violate laws so that we surge U.S. military assistance to Israel,” she says after more than a year of Israel’s war on Gaza.
Rharrit says she found the Biden administration unmovable in its “counterproductive policy,” which she believes has gravely harmed U.S. interests in the Middle East. “We are going to feel the repercussions of that for years, decades, generations.”
this is one of the most ignorant comments I’ve ever read.
you think that the US is under Israel’s thumb?
you fundamentally misunderstand international power dynamics.
“All that the Biden Administration had to do was cease giving weapon!”
this would do nothing. Israel is supported by dozens of countries and has a huge stockpile from having been supported financially and materially for half a century.
The US can influence Netanyahu and Israel, but this is a crime that has been perpetuated for 50 years that is still going on, recently ramped up to a concluding chapter, and the US does not control the idf or Netanyahu.
that is a separate nation with ample resources that is making this decision to continue the genocide.
and no, the Biden administration hasn’t moved “backward” with regard to israeli support, from full support they moved to warnings, after warnings they moved to sanctions, then Biden publicly stated that the US won’t continue to support Netanyahu in an indefinite war and met with his political adversary, now they’re threatening to cut weapon shipments if Israel continues bombing civilians and they’re calling for ceasefires.
they’re moving way too slowly, but they aren’t moving backwards.
Name one single action they’re taken other than ask Israel nicely. You said sanctions but they never actually sanctioned anyone. And the threat you’re referring to was specifically stated to not be meant as a threat.
"Name one single action they’re taken…’
“never actually sanctioned anyone.”
action:
https://www.reuters.com/world/biden-administration-sued-over-sanctions-israeli-settlers-2024-08-07/
The Biden administration is getting sued over all of their sanctions,
Just Google the things I write, you will find sources for them.
action:
publicly declared that the US won’t support an indefinite war.
action: met with netanyahu’s political ally after Netanyahu refused to de-escalate
action: cut down the weapons shipments they already agreed to send.
action: Biden is actively calling for a two-state solution
action: Biden has called for a halt to Israeli colonization of Palestinian land(that’s why those sanctions you didn’t r know about happened).
you may not value diplomatic actions, but diplomacy is important, and is what the US is going to try first with one of their oldest active mutual defense allies in the world.
The naive belief that US presidents have a switch in their office that lets them turn the actions of other countries on and off is inaccurate in the extreme.
there are dozens of countries financially and materally supporting Israel.
If the US stops supporting Israel, they
lose one of their most valuable allies in a part of the world very hostile toward the US.
have zero impact on the capability of Israel to continue waging the genocide. Israel has enough weapons and support to continue this as long as they want to.
push Netanyahu even further away; Netanyahu is under no obligation, as the leader of a sovereign nation, to follow the dictates of other countries.
should the US do more?
yes.
are they doing anything?
Yes, they are repeatedly trying various diplomatic and material actions and censures with which to deescalate the concluding chapter of an invasion that nearly the entire world has supported for 50 years that finally you are aware of and justifiably angry about while maintaining an ally that is crucial to US interests and national security.
The measures taken by the US against Israel are ramping up, and have consistently been ramping up for a year.
too slowly for many people’s taste, especially if they don’t understand how international diplomacy functions, but the spectators’ political blind spot doesn’t mean nothing is happening on the world stage.
Your list is all "says and “meets”. There’s no single “does” in this whole list, except the (pitiful) sanctions that I admittedly thought were taken down in the planning stage. Anyway, if it was as you said stats department employees wouldn’t be resigning left and right. The Biden administration wouldn’t be criticized by experts on the middle east everywhere. Your implication that the people angry at the Biden administration are ignorant laymen who don’t know better is a patently false appeal to authority. Suffice it to say that if the Biden administration wanted Israel to stop, they’d have stopped by now. Israel literally cannot exist in its current state without the United States. They do not have the economy necessary to commit two genocides at once while holding down a population of oppressed natives, and all naturalization agreements with their neigibors were quid pro quos with the United States that Israel on their own can’t sustain, let alone expand. Israel would be eaten alive by their neigibors without US support and they know it.
Multiple US presidents, the most famous of which is Reagan, did it. And it took a whole lot less than a year.
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“an armchair know-it-all here”
…is that it?
thanks!
I don’t know it all, but I agree that my analysis of the situation was succinct and accurate.