Stop doing business with Israel until the genocide stops
Israel is happy to keep buying our arms but it more than capable of carrying on without us for several years. They’ve armed to keep pace with Iran and have done a good job at doing so - far surpassing them in nuclear capability. We’d have to do considerably more than just not do business with them.
Not doing business is something we can do first while we work on the rest.
I agree, but they’re mainly thinking about not losing our high readiness military bases in Israel. Israel and Kuwait represent our ability to act quickly in the middle east. That somehow seems to be worth more than a genocide.
Ideally yes, but unfortunately even if Biden does want to do that, existing US doctrine won’t allow it. Israel is basically Americas proxy in the middle east and protects “American interests” in the region from traditionally Russian backed states like Egypt and Iran.
Then there’s all the more kooky stuff like the amount of important and rich people in the US that are either zionists themselves, are Christian zionists who belive Israel needs to exist to bring forth the second coming, or just simply have vested interests in the military industrial complex.
Which all make it so opposing Israels genocide extremely costly in terms of political capital.
Our doctrine is whatever we say it is. We control our foreign policy not the other way around. And if we let our previous policy set us up to support dictators and genocidal regimes then our kids are going to be reading about us in text books. Just like we read about our parent’s generation doing that.
Come to think of it, the Silent Generation was in charge back then too. the fuck is going on with them?
I’m pretty sure that if Biden just decided to withhold (conditionally or otherwise) weapons for Israel that had already been flagged for that purpose by Congress, he’d be running a foul the same rules Trump violated by withholding aid from Ukraine. And regardless of whether he was doing it because he had a legitimate change-of-heart, it would totally look like it was for political gain after the uncommitted votes in the primary.
The Leahy Law actually demands it. But we’ve been unlawfully shielding Israel from that for so long everyone has forgotten about it. And if you think it wasn’t meant for these specific purposes, here’s Patrick Leahy on the issue.
“On this one, I think that there are violations of the Leahy Law,” Leahy said. “I’m not in the Senate. I can’t fight about it… I’m not the chair of the committee. But everybody who’s asked me in the international press, the national press, I’ve said to them: I think there are violations of the Leahy Law.”
Overdue.
Overdue, but still welcome. I’m gonna assume/pretend it was the less than stellar showing in Michigan that finally got to him.
Maybe, but going against Isreal has been political suicide up until now. The more protests, the easier it makes deviating from unconditional support, which again, has been unbroken US policy since the beginning of Isreal.
Add to that how important our foothold in Isreal is to the US both militarily and economically (in the form of ensuring the safety of shipping down the seas), it’s a huge deal to go against Isreal.
So yeah, protests help give an excuse. It doesn’t mean it’s changed anyone’s minds on the morality of it all, but that it frees them to actually act on something previously untouchable.
Can you explain how Israel would help in ensuring the safety of shipping? I’d think their location doesn’t really make them much of an influence
And, in a roundabout way, you can thank the Electoral College. Because if the popular vote was all that counted, he might decide that the 100k votes in Michigan were worth staying uncommitted so he could pick up the pro-Israel lobby elsewhere, like on Long Island and in NYC. But Biden is all but guaranteed to win NY, while Michigan is a toss-up.
Florida also has a sizable Jewish population, but the former swing state has turned red from an influx of retirees over the past several election cycles.
Still is overdue.
We blocked yet another thing in the UN from criticizing Israel.
I assume that threat is on the table at this point. If we blow our whole wad at once, we won’t be able to ratchet up the pressure each time we need to. Between letting Netanyahu’s political rivals meet with the US government and the VP speaking up now, too. The pattern of incremental pressure is pretty apparent. We don’t want to end up in a situation where we have no leverage left and the war continues.
Meanwhile, Trump is saying Israel should “finish the job” in Gaza.
Look who wants to get reelected!
Haven’t heard as much from people who were supporting Israel at the beginning of the war. I think that means some of them have realized Israel went a bit too far.
Try r/worldnews. Whatever it is that is happening there, it isn’t very palatable.
Worldnews and Politics on Lemmy and Reddit are probably singlehandedly responsible for 20% of the daily AstroTurf® Premiumizzle™ API access.
I subscribed to a couple politics subs yesterday here on Lemmy. I had to unsubscribe this morning.
Guess the percentage of Americans who think Israel went too far.
.
.
.
It’s 42%
I don’t know about you but from my social media feed I would have guessed higher. 19% said Israel hasn’t gone far enough. This article is from 2 days ago.
What’s the source of the poll? Because if it’s 42% of Americans that answered a random number in the middle of the day and then were willing to talk about genocide, I’m surprised the number is as high as 42%
Edit: yup it’s exactly what I thought
https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/WSJ_Partial_Results_Feb_2024.pdf
I’ll believe it when he actually does something about it. So far it’s just been talk and allegedly looking frustrated.
I mean, that was certainly true a week ago, but they’ve definitely started doing something now. They’re dropping aid on Gaza, Harris is calling for a ceasefire, and they invited Benny Gantz, who will probably be Netanyahu’s next opponent for Prime Minister, to the White House. The aid drops are not sufficient, and the calls for a ceasefire have come far too late, but the Gantz thing is actually pretty great. Polls show Gantz would beat Netanyahu if there were an election today, and apparently this has seriously undermined him politically.
I’m very critical of Israel and the Democrats’ enablement of it’s genocide, and I have no illusions about the White House’s motives here; the only reason Biden’s doing anything is because he’s scared shitless by the 100K uncommitted voters in Michigan. But Biden isn’t just letting staffers leak that he called Netanyahu a, “bad fucking guy,” anymore, he’s taking actual action. You can argue that what he’s doing isn’t enough (God knows I think it’s not enough), but we should acknowledge and encourage positive changes, even if they’re small and insufficient.
Promoting a political rival would be more substantial if that political rival actually differed in policy.
He’s not just a political rival, he’s a war cabinet member who was brought to the White House and given a lecture on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. And again, if you don’t think these steps are good enough, fine, fair enough, I mostly agree with you. But he’s definitely, “doing something,” now and not just, “looking frustrated.”
