The Biden administration last week put a hold on a shipment of U.S.-made ammunition to Israel, two Israeli officials told Axios.
Why it matters: It is the first time since the Oct. 7 attack that the U.S. has stopped a weapons shipment intended for the Israeli military. The incident raised serious concerns inside the Israeli government and sent officials scrambling to understand why the shipment was held, Israeli officials said. President Biden is facing sharp criticism among Americans who oppose his support of Israel. The administration in February asked Israel to provide assurances that U.S.-made weapons were being used by Israel Defense Forces in Gaza in accordance with international law. Israel provided a signed letter of assurances in March.
And suddenly, Israel seems much more interested in diplomacy.
Let’s hope.
I believe they’re throwing a fit about it right now but we’ll see. They don’t have a lot of room to complain about literal tons of free guns getting shipped to them.
Looks like protesting still works.
We’ve been shipping Israel ammo to kill Palestinians for over half a year. We only now stopped one shipment. Think about that.
Best time to stop was yesterday, second best time is today.
We’ve been shipping Israel ammo to kill Palestinians for decades
If we accept this as a justification for continuing, we’ll never stop.
It was initially for defense after a massacre when the Iron Dome was breached in October. That was completely justified support. The munitions sold since Netanyahu began indiscriminately killing Palestinians are not.
They’ve been indiscriminately killing Palestinians long before October.
They’ve been indiscriminately killing Palestinians long before October.
And during that very long time, Eisenhower, Johnson, Ford, Nixon, Regan, Clinton, both Bushes, Carter, Obama, Trump and until recently Biden didn’t stop selling Israel weapons.
And now Biden has started to cut them off.
The previous attacks during the Biden administration were attempted attacks on Hamas, not attacks directed at Palestinians. If Israel always wanted to kill all Palestinians, that would’ve been done in 1985 when this conflict started. Netanyahu has been using the attack on Oct. 7 to justify the shift in tactics from targeting Hamas to “we can’t tell them apart.”
Hamas isn’t even in the West Bank yet Shireen Abu Akleh was murdered there in 2022, while clearly marked as a journalist. There are so many incidents I could pull up as examples of indiscriminate killings but your ignorance is not worth my time.
I’m not saying the IDF didn’t kill Palestinians before Oct 7th. I’m saying they began targeting both Hamas and Palestinians alike after the attack.
Israel only came into existence following ethic cleansing committed against civilians in 1947-1948. Israel has targeted civilians its entire history.
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No, all the children shot during the March of Return were not Hamas, nor were the thousands killed before 2006.
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Palestinians have a right to resist. Israel, being an illegitimate settler apartheid state, has no such right. Attacks on Hamas are not justified.
Correct. The Great March of Return was during the Trump Administration. The thread commenter was talking about the last six months of munitions supplied to Israel. Maybe this is the start of change.
Blame fucking Trump for #1
American policy regarding Isreal is bipartisan stop shifting the blame and own up.
You say in a thread where the current president has delayed weapons delivery for the first time in 50 years. STFU
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I don’t think it’s possible to justify support for apartheid.
Agreed. It’s been the standard since Israel was conceived in 1948, but there are a lot more liberal people in Israel now. The ultra-orthodox make up only 13% now, and those are the conservatives that got Netanyahu into power. He only has a 15% approval rating since January, and there have been massive protests since March. Let’s hope they do the right thing with the next election and allow Palestinians access to their holy land.
Netanyahu’s opposition are even more openly fascist. There is no meaningful left in Israel.
That sounds like ignorant nationalism. I have Israeli-American friends that describe the party very differently. I may believe you if you could substantiate it with proof of their fascist left wing.
The very fact that their “left” still wants an apartheid state! There’s no Israeli left party that wants to give equal rights to Palestinians and return their homes.
They don’t. A large faction of Israel’s left wing believes in one-state. 20% of Israeli Jews believe in a one state solution, as do most Arab/Palestian Israelis. It’s been growing as time passes and the older generations die.
https://www.pcpsr.org/sites/default/files/Summary Report_ English_Joint Poll 24 Jan 2023.pdf
This is the equivalent of someone taking your house and throwing you in the basement and then when you come out and attack decades later they fight back and say its for self defense. Please.
So Native Americans should just start murdering Americans until they leave? One state is the only equitable solution at this point.
- I’m not against a one state solution
- Stolen land/property should be given back
- Your example is disanalgous, run the clock back to when the colonies were being formed. If a colonist from Europe came and took their house or the land they use or live on they have every right to fight back.
- If a colonist attacks me and kills my family I have a right to fight back. If I fight back then its not self defense for them but for me.
You’re right. It’s an imperfect analogy. The Jews that occupy Israel once lived in Israel. Colonialists never originated in America. If you want to run the clock back, take a real look at who is responsible for the creation of Israel.
The Jews didn’t have the means to fight anyone, having just been displaced from their homes in Germany and Poland. Truman and the UN, against Great Britain’s protest, provided the necessary forces as an investment against the colonial presence of Great Britain and socialist presence of the USSR in the form of Arab/Palestinian support. The US is more to blame for the creation and existence of the state of Israel than the Israelis.
https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1047&context=history_etds
The Zionist terrorist organizations that ethnically cleansed portions of Mandatory Palestine through murder sprees of civilians are responsible
Stop posting the thesis of a dude going for his masters degree in history at ‘Old Dominion’ university written in 1980 as a source when this was recent enough that we literally have primary sources for what happened.
Do you have a better source?
No one in Israel wants that.
Also, this comparison is very apt. Israelis explicitly want to get to the point where they have the land and can just give land acknowledgments. This view though is dependent on "Never Again’’ meaning nothing.
20% of Israeli Jews and most Arab/Palestinian Israelis are in support of a one state solution, with numbers increasing as the older generations die off. Vilification of Israelis is no different than the dehumanization of Palestinians that you’re protesting. No group of people deserves simplification.
https://www.pcpsr.org/sites/default/files/Summary Report_ English_Joint Poll 24 Jan 2023.pdf
I edited my comment while you responded. That was not done maliciously.
I did the same after reading your edit. Lol
I thought most surveys showed like 30-40% of israelis were in support of a single-state solution?
That’s a two-state solution, and not really equitable to Palestinians.
So Native Americans should just start murdering Americans until they leave?
wellllll…
Oh they haven’t waited in the basement for decades. This has been an ongoing thing since Israeli terrorists took control of the region in 1948.
It was never justified and this didn’t start that day
Correct. Killing Palestinians is not justified. What I wrote was providing defense to an ally that was just attacked is standard, and justified.
Nobody needs 2000lb bombs - which the US itself doesn’t use because they blow up entire quarters and have massive collateral damage - for defense.
These things take time, it’s shitty but this gives me hope that things might actually change.
Biden never had to start circumventing congress to sell weapons in the first place. His hands have never been tied here.
True, but hopefully he now realizes the error of his ways. Young people overwhelmingly do not support the US’s support of Israel. He knows more about what is happening there than any of us do, and he was all for it until this possible shipment halt. Maybe he’s finally realized that bibi has gone too far.
Pretty sure he just hopes everyone won’t be paying attention when he resumes.
I am no friend of Bibi or the IDFs action towards Palestinians, but let’s be fair - the northern border has been lit up lately, and Biden is still a self described Zionist. Not ‘defending’ the Jewish state is going to be a big line in the sand for him
Seriously… When was the last time you talked to someone his age and changed their minds about something political?
This is part of the danger with a de facto gerontocracy, to be ruled by bad ideas that, with a patina of age, enjoy the status of tradition.
Great, now stop all money and weapons to Israel entirely. Every day Biden doesn’t do this we get closer to a criminal orange man as president.
While I’d love to see that, it would be unprecedented in the history of US-Israel relations. If it does happen at all, it will definitely come slowly.
Also, you may want to stop putting election abstinence out there as a consequence. We’re all aware that Trump will make things worse for Palestinians as well as everyone who isn’t a rich white American industrialist male.
I’m just making sure everyone knows what the consequence is, whether I like it or not. It’s Biden’s job to do right by the people who voted for him no matter how bad the alternative may be.
His job is to represent all Americans, not just Democrats. Many Republicans and Evangelicals believe in supporting Israel in eradicating Palestinians.
So is Trump’s job to represent all Americans, even Democrats? Sure as hell doesn’t fucking feel so.
That’s the funny thing about being President. They tend to do a better job when they’ve held office before. It turns out that real estate con men and actors do a pretty terrible job of representing the average American.
It’s in the job description for president, so yeah in theory. We just all know, based on years of actions and rhetoric, that Trump has no intention of representing anyone other than himself. He doesn’t even care about his own supporters. Don’t let that cloud what the job is supposed to entail though.
it would be unprecedented in the history of US-Israel relations
Not unprecedented. Ronald Reagan used the threat of halting arms exports to Israel in '83, in order to end PM Menachem Begin’s terror bombing of Beirut.
Yes. He then sold arms to Iran, known as the Iran-Contra scandal, which in turn went to Hezbollah, inciting the Israel-Iran proxy war we’re protesting today. Then he provided military aid to Israel under agreement that they use it to attack Hezbollah in Lebanon. He literally is the father of this proxy conflict. Do not glorify his actions.
Do not glorify his actions.
I don’t think I’m glorifying anything. Merely pointing out a moment in history in which a President threatened arms sales to Israel, prior to this one.
He withheld all aid, not just military, and then provided exclusive military aid with directive for application. He wasn’t “being tough” on Israel. He was telling them where to point the guns. It’s not an example of what we need from Biden, or any president for that matter.
How is this the response to a post directly pointing out what you said is wrong.
“Yes I was wrong, but he was horrible so it doesn’t count.”
Ronald Reagan was a piece of shit. He also did the thing you said no one had done before.
No, again, he didn’t. He only withheld aid in order to direct the use of the subsequent military aid. That’s not being “tough on Israel.” It’s telling them where to shoot.
No, he didn’t. The saturation bombing of Beirut was a step too far, especially as it was fucking with the US’s attempts to broker peace in Lebanon. It also actually pissed Reagan off who described it in the phone call as ‘a holocaust’
You have the weirdest, most demented, view of American history as it relates to Israel I think I’ve ever seen.
But what about the profits? You can’t go around not profiting just because a few thousand children are being killed, disfigured and orphaned! It’s like you don’t understand neoliberalism at all.
Sarcasm aside, stopping the money and weapons isn’t enough to stop the genocide because Israel never needed any of it in the first place. But if you funnel hundreds of billions of dollars to defence contractors, there’s nothing the US government won’t consent to.
Orange man won’t be any different. He’s not even trying to pretend it’s not a genocide, just coming out and saying Israel should “finish the problem”.
stopping the money and weapons isn’t enough to stop the genocide
“This thing isn’t good because it doesn’t do the thing all the way, so the thing isn’t worthwhile”.
Have a nice day political agitator, now get blocked.
Same to you trump staffer.
I’m not advocating doing nothing, I’m advocating doing more you dildo.
Great, now stop all money and weapons to Israel entirely.
Can’t do that, it would be antisemitic.
It’s a sticky wicket, because Israel is the USA’s only ally in the Middle East. All options are terrible.
That was true when Israel was created after WWII. It’s no longer the case. The US is also allied with Saudi Arabia and Egypt as non-NATO nations, and also with the NATO partners UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait.
and also with the NATO members UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait.
??? Those are not NATO members!
You’re correct. They’re partners in NATO’s Istanbul Cooperation Initiative. I mistyped. I’ll correct it.
We spent how much money and how many lives to make Iraq our ally, and people STILL pull this “only ally” b.s.?
It took 35,000 lives for the US to finally do this?
Nah. That’s happened before, and everything just continued. It took nationwide protests all over the news, as well as several outspoken members of Congress to make this happen.
Considering Biden repealed his settler sanctions, I’d actually bet this eventually gets approved after Israel promises to pay shipping fees in exchange for breaking the SLA stating they can’t do a genocide
You have that reversed. Trump repealed the 50-year-old sanctions on Israel settling on Palestinian territory. Biden restored it.
Although Netanyahu was so grateful for Trump’s favor, he named a town after him in Golan Heights.
Keep doing good work. Democracy can’t let the rat fucking provocateurs win.
Thanks. Trying to provide factual sources to discredit disinformation is an uphill battle. There sure is a lot of it.
It’s the asymmetric bullshit principle
Thank you for this. It’s incredibly validating.
There sure is a lot of it
Literally COUNTRIES worth!
Not those sanctions lol, I was talking about the recent ones a few months ago.
four Israeli men it accused of being involved in settler violence in the West Bank,
Which he half walked back on
Indeed. I have no faith this hold will actually hold for long, given how many times they’d lied or misled about actions they were willing to take.
Anyone taking bets for how long until Poohbear starts offering ammunition to Netanyahu to “build diplomatic relations”?
Not a snowball’s chance in hell. Putin backs Iran, which in turn backs Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houthis. The Israel-Iran proxy conflict has been a US/Russia proxy conflict since Reagan and Gorbachev.
That’s true, but also a little more complicated than that I think. At least one of the reasons Israel was able to extract so much aid from the US to begin with was the threat they could align with the Soviet Union (initially one of the biggest supporters of Israel, and first to recognize them as a state officially in 1947, though they had a few others had unofficially recognized them by then). Stalin had a zionist foreign policy, despite (or maybe because of) being antisemitic himself. Though Soviets and Israel largely schismed in 1967 and the Soviet union began throwing its funding behind the surrounding Arab states.
Relations warmed in the 90s again but have been up and down since. But there has been a lot of Russian immigration to Isreal. Russian is the third most spoken language in Israel.
2011, Putin said: “Israel is, in fact, a special state to us. It is practically a Russian-speaking country. Israel is one of the few foreign countries that can be called Russian-speaking. It’s apparent that more than half of the population speaks Russian”.[38] Putin additionally claimed that Israel could be considered part of the Russian cultural world, and contended that “songs which are considered to be national Israeli songs in Israel are in fact Russian national songs”. He further stated that he regarded Russian-speaking Israeli citizens as his compatriots and part of the ‘Russian World’
Israel at times has been quite friendly to Russia. It took a neutral stance on the Crimea annexation, infuriating the United States. Russia recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in 2017. Israel refused to recognize Russians assassinating people abroad, infuriating the UK. Netanyahu has spoke often about his friendship with Putin. Israel refused to impose sanctions on Russia or send defensive weapons to Ukraine.
I mean you could go on, it’s a complicated relationship, with especially Netanyahu favoring closer relations with Russia and trying to play both sides. Iran’s relationship with Russia certainly presents complications, but I don’t think Israel getting closer to Russia or at least using the threat of it to extract more from the United States is out of the question. They’re often trying to “play both sides” of the Russia and US divide to their benefit. Especially if Netanyahu remains in power.
https://www.axios.com/2022/10/25/ukraine-russia-israel-netanyahu-putin-lapid-kuleba
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel–Russia_relations
China and Israel have had surprisingly good relations too. And again, Netanyahu has consistently tried to make those closer, possibly to help keep US aid flowing.
Not saying the US shouldn’t cut off Isreal, please do, but the results may be surprising if that were to actually happen. I don’t think putin harbors any particular concerns for the plight of the Palestinian people.
That all changed when Reagan played both sides by selling arms to Iran in the Iran-Contra scandal while providing military aid to Israel with the mandate that they attack Hezbollah in Lebanon. Gorbachev then reinforced the relations that Russia had with Iran since the Persian Empire, and the Israel-Iran proxy conflict was born.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran–Israel_proxy_conflict
Any diplomatic words from Putin should be seen as coercive agenda. He recently stated that he’d prefer Biden in office over Trump because he’s more predictable, while circulating communication with direction to support and encourage the Republican Party.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/08/russia-propaganda-us-ukraine/
Yes not disputing at all that there’s a proxy war (though Soviet Israeli relationship deteriorated long before that started with Soviets funding Israeli opponents since 1967), just that despite or partially because of this, Israel is closer to Russia than most western countries. Isreal doesn’t want to upset Russia and give them more incentive to fund proxies against them, and some Israeli governments, like Netanyahu’s especially, have helped provide cover for Russian actions. And Russia at times will often take surprisingly pro Israeli moves despite also funding proxies.
I don’t think it would be impossible for Israel to switch alignment to Russia, and I think you would quickly see Russia providing cover and stopping any assistance with proxy conflict against them. It would be essentially accomplishing Russia’s goal, so what would they have to fight Israel about anymore? Putin is a real politic great powers kind of leader who has no qualms about butchering civilians by the thousands. He’s certainly not aligned with Iran because he’s concerned about Palestinians. Israel becoming fully aligned with Russia would be accomplishing a 77 year in the making goal for the Soviet Union and Russia.
That’s a fair point. I could see it if Biden cut Israel off for longer enough he’d effectively push Netanyahu into Putin’s arms, like paying protection from the mob. That would also require Netanyahu to remain in office, and he’s polling at 15% favorability as of January. I’m sure that’s gone down since the Iranian retaliation. Elections tend to be reactionary when following tragedy and disaster, so I’m hoping they finally get a more liberal Prime Minister this time around.
Yes totally agree, there’s no way this goes anywhere but worse somehow as long as Netanyahu remains in power. Hopefully elections (or just being hauled off to jail hopefully) push him out soon, for everyone’s sake.
We had better hope hell stays hot and China stays out of it, then. Genocidal assholes don’t care where they source their weapons, and I wouldn’t put it past him to bend over for any country willing to support his campaign.
