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.
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
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.
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.
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).
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.
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Do you think all Jews are Israelis?
Did I say the word Jews?
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.
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iirc the opposite, rfk’s killer specifically said it was because of rfk’s support for Israel.
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.
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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.