President Joe Biden said Tuesday Israel’s prime minister needs to change his hardline government and support for the country’s military campaign is waning amid heavy bombardment of Gaza.
President Joe Biden said Tuesday Israel’s prime minister needs to change his hardline government and support for the country’s military campaign is waning amid heavy bombardment of Gaza.
...
“This is the most conservative government in Israel’s history,” Biden said, adding that the Israeli government “doesn’t want a two-state solution.”
It's mind-blowing how thoroughly Netanyahu has bungled this. They had damn near the entire world in full support after Hamas' horrific attack on Israeli civilians, and they've managed to lose it.
Like every other time a headline makes it sound like Biden is criticizing Israel's government, that's not what this is.
“We’ll continue to provide military assistance to Israel until they get rid of Hamas, but we have to be careful – they have to be careful,” Biden said. “The whole world’s public opinion can shift overnight, we can’t let that happen.”
For literal decades now Biden has been telling Israel that they need to pay attention to optics if they want support to continue.
It's never a threat, because Biden always pledges support no matter what.
He doesn't have any issues with Israels actions over there. He's just worried the governments of other countries may face pressure from their citizens to stop funding genocides.
He doesn't want the genocide to stop, he wants Israel to be discrete and maintain plausible deniability
Israel still has broad support in the USA. It is rapidly diminishing and they don't have broad support among younger generations or among European nations, but they still have a majority of Americans and that will remain true for the next decade or two if they don't do anything crazy.
So no, Biden isn't going to become Bernie Sanders 2.0. Americans just aren't that progressive and they don't care that much about brown people. (Sorry, can't make it nicer than it is).
I am quite happy with Biden. He's about as progressive as can be without losing a national election.
He’s about as progressive as can be without losing a national election.
What's the last democrat who ran a progressive general campaign?
Obama was the closest we've had in decades, and he flipped a shit ton of "red" states despite the undeniable amount of racism he faced.
His second term after people found out he wasn't really a progressive?
Much tighter race.
Progressives tend to lose in the primary, you know, "private affair by a private party" that party leaders can influence as much as they want because the whole thing isn't even technically an election.
So anyone that just keeps repeating "a progressive can't win a general" doesn't actually know. They're just repeating the bullshit that moderate politicians tell them. And of course they're gonna say that, if we start sending progressives to generals and they start winning...
People are going to start asking out loud why we waste a dem cycle with a moderate who's unwilling to tax the rich, which would solve the vast amount of our countries issues.
I’d love it if we could stop propping up Netanyahu’s apartheid regime and instead give a bunch of military support to a cause that actually needs and deserves it… like Ukraine.
In the context of US politics, this whole clusterfuck is a MASSIVE unforced error by Biden. The only people he’s appeasing are almost exclusively already on the right wing, and they’re never going to vote for him. I’m becoming more concerned by the day that his handling of the Israel/Gaza war may in fact cost him the election.
Shipmate, as an active-duty submariner, you realize that the Israelis aren't Americans, right? Sending money to the IDF doesn't help your cousin on the ground. You of all people should also understand that the Ukraine front is an actual strategic conflict, and sending our retired equipment already marked for demolition to them instead is a strategic maneuver that's entirely in accordance with all governing directives. Why don't you ask your cousin about the actual boots-on-ground strategic picture instead of making assumptions.
Just going to point out that if your side killed more journalists in this "war" than the two decades of the Vietnam war... Maybe you're the fucking bad guy.
Well, apparently the IDF has been killing so many Israelis (IDF and civilian) that their government just said investigating any of those deaths would be detrimental to stability among Israelis.
They're just going to pretend all those deaths are due to Hamas, so that Netanyahu 's government isn't held accountable and people don't vote in sensible politicians who actually want the violence to end.
Biden said Tuesday Israel’s prime minister needs to change his hardline government and support for the country’s military campaign is waning
Thing is, he later went on to say "I am a Zionist." So while he's trying to play both sides in the end he'll keep sending your money to kill Palestinian children for as long as there are Palestinian children to murder.
What Genocide Joe says is that he will ALWAYS support israel's Genocide no matter what, but that they're starting to lose Europe and the rest of the world.
The difference is, Trump did so for personal political gain. Netanyahu's government is killing thousands of palestinian civilians, which is genocide. Coercing a foreign nation to stop genociding people is a good thing.
Biden is wrong. Netanyahu shouldn't do a thing to his government. Israel's Government needs to permanently dispose of Netanyahu. Israel needs to take back its democracy and depose its corrupt officials.
70% of Israelis want him to resign. But only 25% want him to resign now - most want him to wait until the current war settles down. Which unfortunately gives him and Ben Gvir some perverse incentives, because there's no way they remain in power after the dust settles.
They should hire more people to be annoying in comment threads where people are having a nuanced discussion about the war. The whole world loves it when 2 day old accounts try sealioning everyone without even bothering to upload profile pictures.
Hamas got exactly what they wanted out of the October 7th attacks, a horrifying display of callous violence and aggression against innocent people. A terrorist attack does not justify a genocide.
A large number of people think that Netanyahu got exactly what he wanted out of that attack too and I'm not convinced that those people are wrong.
There's lot of stories bubbling about seriously shady actions from his Government in regards to Hamas, from creating them to funding them and the timing of their attack was near perfect if their intent was to quell the IDF uprising and strengthen his Governing coalition.
There's also questions about just how one of the most feared and clued in intelligence services in existence, the Mossad, somehow missed the planning, funding, training, and gathering of forces that Hamas did for at least a YEAR prior to the attack. They also shrugged off warnings from both Egypt and the United States about it too! It nearly beggars belief.
I'm not claiming it was orchestrated but taken together it sure is a bad look.
They knew they would get this response, too. How could they not?
Israel can't ignore the hostages and rest on its laurels. There's no option to not respond when your citizens have been violently seized, held captive, tortured, maimed, raped. And Hamas knows their own defensive strategy relies heavily on using Palestinians as human shields, which will cause that inevitable response to be absolutely horrific. Hamas was relying on these horrors -- though I think perhaps the response has been a LOT sharper than any anticipated.
I think a lot of critics of the war, oddly, focus too much on what has happened after October 7th. When really we should be looking at what led up to it. And that's not to say that Hamas was justified because that level of depraved violence never is. But it IS to say that the Bibi administration was utterly complicit and that the fuse on this powder keg was lit long ago and no one with the power to do so seems to have made an effort to extinguish it. On October 6th, the whole world knew that the Bibi administration was made up of a corrupt, lunatic fringe of far-right religious fundamentalists bent on the total destruction of Palestine and a total takeover of Israel. On October 8th, the protests against Netanyahu for doing things like sending suitcases of money to Hamas or deleting the oversight of their Supreme Court were replaced with a completely different narrative.
I think both Hamas and Bibi's team thought they would politically benefit from this kind of violence. I think both are finding out they terribly misjudged things, though I am sure none will admit it. And the people -- mostly Palestinians, but also no doubt some Israelis -- are suffering terribly as a result of these two intractable right-wing theocratic organizations going about their religious war.
I mean it looks like the Hamas leaders are flying around in private jets being hosted by other insane dictators, so I don't see that they find anything wrong with the situation. I doubt they give a fuck about all the civilians that are dying.
It [the Israeli government] cut off all commercial and humanitarian aid traffic from Israel into Gaza since Hamas launched its surprise terrorist attack on October 7 and has vowed to sever all ties with Gaza.
Good. Then sever them already, and get the fuck out of the way.
Those ties include things like Palestinians' access to fresh water and electricity. Saying they're going to cut off ties is a coy way of threatening genocide.
Is this the part where they pick one person to take the blame then, after switching him out, continuing with business as usual? Obviously biden doesn't disapprove, hence the $100+ billion he has pledged in full support of the genocide and ethnic cleansing.
President Joe Biden said Tuesday Israel’s prime minister needs to change his hardline government and warned support for the country’s military campaign is waning amid heavy bombardment of Gaza.
Biden said Israel was beginning to lose support around the world, and argued Netanyahu “has to strengthen and change” the Israeli government to find an eventual long-term solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The remarks – delivered at an off-camera fundraiser, a venue in which the president has been more freewheeling than his usual White House appearances – amounted to some of Biden’s most candid to date when it comes to his view of the ongoing war.
In phone calls, Biden has encouraged Netanyahu to do more to avoid civilian casualties, but top administration officials have said there is a “gap” between Israel’s intentions and the realities on the ground.
Speaking Monday evening at a White House Hanukkah reception, Biden acknowledged Israel was in “a tough spot” following the Hamas attack on October 7 and the subsequent war in Gaza.
Biden administration officials have been pressing their Israeli counterparts in recent weeks to begin planning for what happens in Gaza once the military campaign ends, including insisting on keeping the door open for an eventual Palestinian state.
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The fear of being labelled an antisemite has worked very well for silencing opposition for decades now. I guess Bibi thought that tactic would continue to work no matter how vile his government and military acts.
I’m glad that tired, old trick is getting the skepticism it deserves. Even the slowest among us are realizing that if you’re discussing a non-denominational issue and being called “antisemitic” for it, then maybe the accusation is bullshit. Human rights should not be a religious issue.
It seems to be happening almost in real time. I was called an antisemite several times just a couple of months ago for expressing outrage at what Israel is doing. I don’t see that accusation being thrown around nearly as much recently.
It worked (and works) to head off criticism of the Israeli government because so much of the time there are antisemites whose supposed criticism of the government is there to mask hate.
But Netanyahu isn't Judaism. He's just a guy, and as a fallible human being he has made enormous errors of judgment and engaged in ludicrously unethical behavior.
It’s less effective because it’s a classic example of the boy who cried wolf. If you’re grouping people who are appalled by Israel’s conduct with actual antisemites then the accusation of antisemitism loses credibility.