The U.S. military finished installing a floating pier for the Gaza Strip on Thursday, with officials poised to begin ferrying badly needed humanitarian aid into the enclave besieged over seven months of intense fighting in the Israel-Hamas war.
The final, overnight construction sets up a complicated delivery process more than two months after U.S. President Joe Biden ordered it to help Palestinians facing starvation as food and other supplies fail to make it in as Israel recently seized the key Rafah border crossing in its push on that southern city on the Egyptian border.
Fraught with logistical, weather and security challenges, the maritime route is designed to bolster the amount of aid getting into the Gaza Strip, but it is not considered a substitute for far cheaper land-based deliveries that aid agencies say are much more sustainable. The boatloads of aid will be deposited at a port facility built by the Israelis just southwest of Gaza City and then distributed by aid groups.
Oh no, now the U.S. is Hamas too!
The US has been Hamas ever since they said they were holding back bombs that might be used in Rafah.
But then decided to send another billion in weapons to Israel.
Their cognitive dissonance is astounding.
As an American, I would just like to say I’m fucking infuriated by how my government is handling this shit. Moreover, most of us who aren’t in the throes of the Trump cult are at the very least least dismayed with what our government is doing (that is, giving Israel a military aid firehose and doing fuck all to actually try to stop them from committing genocide).
We’ve got several crimes against humanity under our belt. I, for one, would very much like to avoid adding another. But Biden doesn’t seem to give a shit. And this also has the horrifying possibility of throwing the election, which would herald a whole hell of a lot of things that would be terrible for far, far more people in far more places than just Gaza (though, to be clear, Gaza would probably get fully genocided - maybe by US B-52s, if Trump wins it).
I fucking hate our political system so much. It’s so fundamentally and obviously broken, and the only people who can fix it are the same people who benefit from it being broken, so it’s going to stay broken. Who knows what will end up breaking through that deadlock… I’m just getting pretty fucking concerned that it’s gonna involve some political violence sometime soon.
It’s not that Biden doesn’t give a shit. It’s that Biden agrees with Bibi that the people living in Gaza are Dirty Others who must be kept in line with the threat of force.
I don’t agree.
I think this is honestly just the typical boomer “back Israel to the hilt because Jewish people got absolutely fucked by the Holocaust”, while simultaneously flat out ignoring the fact that Israel != all Jewish people.
I’d at it’s more 'there are two regional powers here, Israel and Iran. The more aid we give Israel the easier it makes Iran"
Edit: weaker* it makes Iran
Fucking autocorrect.
And that zero-sum game thinking is idiotic.
Frankly, if we (read: mainly the US and the UK) made amends with Iran (and I know precisely how enormous of a conditional statement that is), and successfully ameliorate and rationalize their policy towards Israel (i.e. convince them to call off their own frankly genocidal policy towards Israel), that could be the the start of the path towards a much more robust peace in the middle east. It’ll likely take several generations to mellow things to a truly sustainable and reasonable level. But something like that might, I believe, be the start of the path to lasting peace in the Middle East - or at the very least, significantly diminished violence and conflict.
We had a tiny chance when Obama and Rouhani were talking. Hell, at one point we had a treaty. There was a road map and some hope.
Then Trump fucked it all up for no reason, along with all the other shit he pulled.
By that logic, these two things are the same as long as we elect boomer government officials.
Again, no.
The two things are being treated as the same by the Biden administration.
Don’t ignore nuance. Ignoring nuance is what Netanyahu and the Israeli is actively trying to get everyone to do to, in the interest of giving themselves some geopolitical cover for executing their own “final solution” in Gaza.
Ignoring nuance is also what a lot of other autocrats and populists are trying to do in their own way, including Orban, Modi, Milei, Fico (to whom I wish a very slow, lengthy, and complicated convalescence), Trump, and Putin - along with much (or most) of the political parties behind them. It’s all in the interest of solidifying autocratic power and wealth, and scapegoating problems on people who are not the root cause of said problems (a common populist tactic).
Biden is the one who decided, against Congress orders, to hold back the bomb shipment. The GOP was actively drafting legislation to push them out over his head when he allowed it through trying to skip becoming a Republican talking point… but I really wish he didn’t capitulate to the GOP’s desires so easily.
Considering US money has been funding both side, (remember those suitcases full of money the IDF has been giving to Hamas? true story) I wouldn’t be surprised if that money comes from US aid to Israel.