edition.cnn.com/2024/05/08/politics/joe-biden-interview-cnntv/index.html
Biden says he will stop sending bombs and artillery shells to Israel if they launch major invasion of Rafah
Israel/PalestineThe United States has a set of laws, called the Leahy Laws, which supposedly prohibit the US from providing aid to foreign military groups which violate human rights. By these laws, the president can opt to halt weapon shipments if he feels that whoever they're going too has been violating human rights.
Obviously, these rules aren't always followed. But they do give the president the ability to do this.
I think your answer is the most correct but I would bet he never mentions this law publicly for fear of upsetting Israel too much.
Also because as a politician he'll avoid citing specific laws unless they know for sure that's what they'll use legally if/when it gets challenged.
The last thing he wants to do is cite a law as the defense and then have to backtrack it later.
Or even worse, not being able to keep that card in their hand as a first play/unknown card anymore.
So in summary, politics is really, really hard?
Donald Trump was our president from 2016-2020. It’s not literally rocket science, but it’s about rocket science, and they have great advisors.
I think what that proves is that Biden can mostly do what he wants and the system isn't set up well enough to handle a properly rogue executive.
Trump has, what four criminal trials in various stages? Of those: Documents: Got handed to a sycophant judge who delayed it indefinitely to address motions she failed to rule on. Jan6: Got delayed past election by supreme court dallying on nonsense-immunity claims. GaElection Interference: Delayed past election by appealing ruling on dumb stuff about prosecutor's personal life.
At base politics involves a lot of people agreeing to norms about how to behave and what the rules are. If you treat those norms with absolute contempt, apparently the social and electoral pressure that are meant to keep people in check aren't enough. The legal remedies aren't strong enough.
Trump kind of shows that Biden doesn't need to hold on to a legal card for justifying what he's doing, because the president can basically do anything without serious consequences.
I think what that proves is that Biden can mostly do what he wants and the system isn't set up well enough to handle a properly rogue executive.
That's not at all what Trump proves. Trump wasn't a rogue executive. He was--and still is--the figure head of the GOP, and is enabled by his party at every level of government from sheriffs and mayors to congress and the supreme court.
The system isn't set up to handle the entire government going rogue, but then I don't really know how you could set up a system to handle everyone in charge of enforcing the system deciding not to.
Yes, it is also possible the shipments have been violating US law for a while now, especially with regards to how special processes have been put in place to 'grease the wheels' specifically for Israel, so too much public scrutiny is undoubtedly unwanted.
Here is an interview with a former senior State Department official (Director of the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, responsible for security assistance and arms transfers) who explains the concerns. He resigned in protest of what he considered to be direct breaches of US arms transference laws:
Salient points made in this interview:
- For most countries, the decisions on military aid are made at a low level in the state dept. For Israel, and Israel alone, the secretary makes the final call.
- Josh Paul, the interviewee, states that multiple Leahy violations in the past (well before last year) have been put forward by the state department and ignored by the secretary.
- For most countries that run afoul of Leahy, it is a multi-year process to get reinstated for arms transfers that involves independent and U.S. aided remediation. For Israel, and Israel alone, the process relies soley on Israel's military justice system to make remediation.
- Paul states that the U.S. has been violating it's own law by continuing to supply Israel with arms, but that the decisions are being made so high up that those responsible are afraid any decision against Israel will end their political career aspirations.
This is shaping up to be quite the political hot potato. If it ever stops being tossed around somebody is going to be burned.
Leahy Laws
Named after the guy who gave shit to Heath Ledger's Joker in The Dark Knight.
The shit winds are blowing Rand
Reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHKrB0LJuDY
Senator Patrick Leahy's love of Batman is one of my favorite bits of Congress trivia
Isn't there also such a law for states who've developed nuclear weapons outside the NPT?
Yes, there is. Symington's and Glenn's amendments to Arms Export Control Act.
That would be an amazingly spicy law to apply to Israel.
Well it is more than that, once funds get authorized the president has a lot of latitude in the implementation/enforcement of the law.
Small edit.
Doesn’t the Leahy Law already allow conditions like this to be imposed?
Yes, Leahy laws say if there is a reasonable amount of proof of human rights violations it's illegal for the US to send military aid knowing it would be used for those purposes..
Congress budgets for the aid, but the President is the one that that has to approve it being sent.
No, that’s not always the case. Arms transfers are complicated, but ignoring Congress’ requirement to ship Ukraine Javelins unless he got a personal payoff was precisely what got Trump impeached.
Withholding the weapons isn't what got him impeached. It was the "unless he got a personal paypff" part of the equation.
Yes it was. The impeachment had 2 charges, abuse of power and obstruction of congress. The 'payoff' part was the abuse of power. The other, obstruction of Congress, was for the withholding of the payments authorized by Congress. And it doesnt have a exemption for doing for reasons you agree with.
Do you think that Biden is getting a personal pay off that's comparable to digging up dirt on his political opponent?
This isn't a personal payoff. He's looking to secure a ceasefire between these two groups, not incriminating evidence on a political opponent.
I'm not American so forgive me if i'm wrong but if I understand the process correctly the Republicans have a majority in Congress and i'm pretty sure thats all thats needed to impeach, but it would fail in the Senate which I believe is dem majority, so Congress could impeach him it just wouldn't go anywhere.
You are correct. To add further context, Republicans technically have the majority in the House, but it’s very slim. House Republicans are also highly fractured and volatile.
They’ve been vowing to impeach Biden since they came into power at the end of 2022 but have thus far failed to even hold a vote. With that, I think the likelihood of Biden being impeached is very low.
yeah they've been "trying" to impeach him and it was such a train wreck fiasco for them that they're trying to quietly shut it down
Mostly because it is a very small number of republicans who want to proceed with it. Being a republican right now is less like having a monolithic party behind you and more like having 20 different tribes who either somewhat dislike each other, or think the other tribes are treasonous liars and they all fly the same "republican" flag because that is what their supporters expect. Under any other team name they get almost no vote support.
You are correct with the only exception that when you say “Congress”, the correct term is the House of Representatives. Congress includes both the House of Representatives and Senate.
Realistically given the state of the Republicans, an attempt to impeach will probably result in a new Speaker of the House lol
They already do that, they've been rejecting aid packages so the Democrats have to bully them into getting signatures
Yea exactly my point. This seems kinda just like it's bark from Biden with no bite behind it. Though, that does pretty much sum up politics as a whole...
They reject aud to Ukraine. He rejects aid to Israel. A bundled aid package gets proposed. They support aid to Ukraine as it means aid for Israel and Biden only rejected Israel because they rejected Ukraine so he signs off on it. Rinse and repeat.
Repubs know what Biden's game is but it helps his poll numbers to be seen as tough on Bibi so it's to his benefit to stand firm if the Repubs try to play chicken. On the other hand they get similar benefits fighting Ukraine aid so they still go thru the motions even though they know Biden will get a bundle deal they can't refuse.
Both sides are playing the PR game knowing full well both countries will get aid.
If they already reject aid for Ukraine, what is Biden really losing?
Didn't they just sign a huge package for Ukraine, contingent on Israel and whoever else also getting some?
I'd just start the process to stop that package deeming that it's not working as intended.
It was one foreign aid bill that Biden signed that approved funds for aid to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan. It's now up to the president to actually create and send aid packages to those countries. It is at this step that Biden is saying no more aid packages to Israel. I don't know what the congressional preconditions are on aid, but if nothing else Biden can use the Leahy Law to justify not sending Israel aid at this point.
The Israel law passed that included Ukraine and Taiwan was mainly Iron Dome interceptors, Iron Beam funding, and Arrow funding, which are and should still be allowed through.
As far as I know there were no JDAMs as part of that package.
I mean, people are protesting constantly and blaming specifically Biden. So, he has to respond, even if he doesn't control it and isn't responsible for it, because other people think he is. That's why politics is the way it is.
No one in the strongly pro-Palestinian camp is fooled by this though. Their most generous reaction will be "oh he's doing something now?" He's trying to court people who will hate him no matter what.
They think they aren't fooled by whatever but Biden refusing to put the aid on ships/planes is a real and actually thing he can do. So, he won't get credit for it because they think it's an empty gesture. It's all pretty ironic.
He can reject aid packages if he provides a valid reason for rejecting aid. He can also withhold aid for an amount of time.
Only congress can declare war on a nation, and look how the second half of the 1900’s went.
I think Biden would have full power to block military aid as commander in chief. Congress could pass an aid package and Biden could issue a standing order to ground all logistics flights.
What about stuff that is already in warehouses or something? Congress has the purse and buys things but after that, it is under the Commander-in-Chief control. I remember Congress was opposed to further Ukrainian aid, but Biden kept sending stuff.
He can delay shipment, which is what he is doing.
if you listen carefully you can hear goalposts shift across america
Huh. That's what that screeching sound was.
Nah it’s not a screeching it’s a VROOM like an engine because the fucking thing is motorized and headed down I40 as we speak.
”Gee Billy, look at that goalpost go!! 👵 I had no idea how hard it was to score in American Political Football” 🏈 😈🫱🥅🫱
Michigander reporting in, just saw that fucker headed down I696
Yup, that record scratch was heard all the way North. I mean way North...no, too North. A little bit Northeast, somewhere in Canada.
Bb Netenyahu: It was a minor invasion into Rafah. Send us the bombs
Netenyahu: “We’re not invading Rafah, we’re performing a ‘Special Military Operation’”
“Limited”
Waiting for the comments saying “not enough,” “too late,” or “he’s just doing this for political expediency.”
Last week when the FCC voted to restore net neutrality I read comments that said they did that just to take the heat of Israel, even though this process started before 10/7.
It's so exhausting how every single little thing is about Gaza now. I just can't understand why. Where was this anger about Ukraine?
I think the situation in Ukraine is a lot more cut in dry with it having developed over the past 3 years (at least this main conflict) as well as the world clearly labeling Ukraine as the oppressed in the situation.
Things are a lot more murky with Israel/Palestine given it's been happening for 70 years, the US has been a large supplier to Israel with military hardware (that's used against Palestine), people can't agree if Palestine is the oppressed in this situation, and we have a large number of muslim/jewish citizens that view the conflict as an extension of their beliefs/experiences while the number of citizens that could personally relate to the situation in Ukraine is a lot less.
(these are not necessarily my personal beliefs, just an observation on why things appear different than they did with Ukraine)
Gaza has been the best thing to happen to my mental state, because I’ve really cut down on my politics intake.
I think it's extremely sad that this used to be the biggest fucking deal in the world to reddit, and now it barely even made a ripple. This place has really changed a lot over the past several years.
When they wanted him to send aid, he started building a dock. Goalposts moved pretty fast and far after that.
but the real winner was the military getting to do some “build-a-port” training in semi contested waters…the CO of that operation is writing his own promotion warrant as we speak, and it only benefits the US in the long run because skills like that can only go so far without real world experience
The bizarre bit of was the dock only came under attack from the same people they were trying to send aid too. Palestine is weird.
Hamas are objectively evil, and are unambiguously one of the two worst things to happen to the region in the last few decades.
Edit: The other one being the fascist right wing in Israel. Ben-Gvir, Smotrich, and all the other Kahanist pieces of shit. And Bibi Netanyahu and his Likud government who support and enable them.
Let me guess: the other is ISIS?
Hamas doesn’t want people getting aid directly. Doesn’t seem odd at all. They want to control everything
This is why I'm opposed to "Free Palestine"
No, I don't want another radical terrorist state.
If there was a third party coalition that was placed to deradicalized and deprogram the population with the aims of creating a secular, democratic Palestinian state then sure but that's not what any of these ignorant Tankies are asking for
The irony is that, if Gaza was a sovereign nation with Hamas as its government, and it did what it did on 10/7, Israel would have even better justification for a counter-invasion to subdue a hostile sovereign nation.
The fact that they're not a recognized sovereign nation is protecting them from repercussions.
For any security considerations what matters is de-facto state of things, not some official recognition in UN or some other bullshit. And from this perspective Gaza is Hamastan since 2007 for any practical purpose. Just like Afghanistan is "Talibanstan" or the southern part Yemen is "Houthiestan".
The only reason Hamas got elected was because they sold themselves to the populace as a moderate, corruption free party that could actually fulfill the goal of creating an independent Palestinian state at peace with Israel. Even then, they didn't actually get a majority of the vote they just edged out the other parties that also got a minority of the vote.
If there was a legit independent Palestinian state in 2005, Hamas wouldn't have stood a chance in that election, and if it existed today, it would have the political sway of the Hebrew Israelites in the US.
Hell I’d just settle for a peaceful theocracy at this point. They could become a tourist hub like the Maldives.
The dock was for aid shipments.
Plus they were air dropping aid
Shipment of aid is waiting to be landed via the dock as soon as westher permits
I mean it is for political expediency but I see that as a good thing.
This is always such a funny argument to me.
“He only did that thing because it’s what the people want!”
Ok yes? I thought that was the point of representative democracy.
Yeah, everyone screaming they want leaders who listen to what the people want and then say “well he’s only doing it so we’ll vote for him again.”
Like, yeah, obviously.
“Democracy has failed us once again!”
They think he wasn’t fast enough. Like ya? You expect him to completely change one of the nearly unquestioned hallmarks of us foreign policy for the past 70 years on a whim without any kind of political pressure? That foreign policy is : Israel is our unquestioned ally and we do whatever we can to ensure the survival of the state of Israel and its Jewish population. Look at what it’s taking from ignorant TikTok morons to even get the smallest change to that policy
Plus bibi is unpopular af
Biden doesnt want to fully cut ties because bibi is gone soon.
Treaties etc dont allow for skipsies we dont like your leader
Even more. The less support the usa shows the more iran will want to escalate
This is why bibi hasnt feared the usa cutting weapons. Mofo is playing the suicide pact move. "If you cut me off then iran blows up the middle east"
Unfortunately. It doesnt really matter what biden does. It still doesnt touch trump
Trying to kill vp. Raping multiple women. Trying to overthrow democracy. Blackmailing zelensky and dorectly getting ukrainians killed with tweets. Making covid worse. Raising taxes on middle class etc etc
“the people have spoken, i have listened and acted accordingly”
-dark brandon
“HE’S A WITCH, WE SHOULD BURN HIM!”
- The “people”
It's like when a politician does something for the voters that was literally part of the platform when they were running and people are like "they're just buying votes!"
Its like they don't understand the basic concept of rep dem
even funnier is "he's only doing xyz to get reelected!"
like yeah bro thats what politicians do, its how our government works
“He only did that thing because it’s what the people want!”
Ok yes? I thought that was the point of representative democracy.
I mean, Biden never ran for president on a platform of whether or not he'd provide arms if Israel invaded Rafah. There was never a national consensus on it.
In the context of political necessity, he's threatening this to shore up votes on his far left flank, which is a minority of voters but crucial to his political future. But I'd hesitate to say this is what "the American people" want.
There was no national consensus because no sane person thought we’d be in this position
It was. But aid to Israel goes through congress, so this will be tough.
"major invasion".
That's enough wiggle room for Bob Sapp to limbo through.
Israel has been bombing Rafah for months, but they have plans for a full ground force invasion to "root out Hamas door by door", that's what this is in reference to, the ground invasion.
That's a logical and reasonable interpretation. I have lost faith that logic and reason have much sway on the matter.
It may be doomerism, but I'm incredibly skeptical of norms and reliance on shame in response to a strong finger-wagging. I see the "major invasion" wording as weasel words that allow the President to make a strong statement without actually committing to action, as long as Israel gives some excuse like, "this isn't a major invasion, just an in-and-out police action."
I hope I'm wrong.
Right, because that's actually not what he said. He said they needed a plan to prevent civilian casualties and using certain bombs in a city wouldn't do that.
Ok yes, but he did actually say the line from the headline. He also said what you're saying, but he did indeed almost verbatim say what is quoted in the headline.
While some people will certainly shift their goalposts, I wonder if you bother to track what people have actually been calling for.
The vast majority of protestors are not simply calling for Biden to temporarily stop sending weapons to Israel. They have been consistently calling for a lot more than that.
So I'm guessing you'll view things as shifting goalposts because you don't bother to actually listen to individuals and just lump everyone into one bucket and pick the goalposts you find the easiest to argue against in the moment and immediately shift to another one regardless of whether the person you're talking to or about said anything about that.
The vast majority of protestors are not simply calling for Biden to temporarily stop sending weapons to Israel. They have been consistently calling for a lot more than that.
The vast majority of protestors have been protesting their universities' funding sources and expressing general anti-Israel sentiment, not contesting the federal government's policy positions. I'm sure essentially all of the protestors feel Biden isn't doing enough, to be clear, it just isn't the core message of most of these protests.
I have yet to see a cogent outline from the left of what specifically he needs to be doing differently or protests to that effect, outside of obvious virtue points we clearly all agree with (e.g. "children dying is bad") and meaningless platitudes like calling for a ceasefire.
No one on the left is telling Biden to just call for a ceasefire. People are asking his government to put actual pressure on isreal, or hold back weapons. People also have been asking the government to stop protecting isreal politically the way we have been in the United Nations. It’s also important not to ignore the effect words and rhetoric from the president has. Biden was the first sitting president to go to a picket line, all he did there was march in line “workers built this country jack” and it was a really big deal all the same. The biggest reason America had such a strong anti-mask/lockdown sentiment is because of trump shitposting on Twitter.
Thats beside the point though. The point is that if you haven’t seen actionable requests from the left you haven’t been looking, and even if actual demands didn’t exist it wouldn’t matter. The situation is so unbelievably bad that it’s not just some difference in the minutia that’s the problem. What you are saying is as if a persons house is burning, and they telling the fireman to put it out… just for someone else to be like “well, u haven’t given him an out line of what to do. Just obvious virtue points we all agree with (w.g. Houses burning down is bad) and meaningless platitudes like calling for the fire to be doused” meanwhile the fireman is just staring at the house watching it burn because he refuses to acknowledge a fire is happening at all
I have yet to see a cogent outline from the left of what specifically he needs to be doing differently or protests to that effect, outside of obvious virtue points we clearly all agree with (e.g. "children dying is bad") and meaningless platitudes like calling for a ceasefire.
100%
Don’t be stupid, I’ve been to football games and I can assure you that you can’t hear goalposts move.
If goalposts in a forest move and there's no-one there to protest them, do they make a sound?
Do they really need so much military aid? Israel is a pretty militarized country, I don’t imagine they lack the capacity to produce weaponry.
We don't just give them weapons outright. It's a bit more complex than that.
We give them what are essentially a couple billion in gift cards for Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and the rest of the MIC. Israel spends those, then continues to spend their own money (they spent $15 billion on F-15 fighters alone this year) once they are "hooked" on our weapons systems such that the US gets a net positive cash flow from the equation.
What it boils down to is a subsidy for US MIC companies while buying influence and leverage in the Middle East. And I could be wrong (especially since the article isn't too specific) but it sounds like the shipments that Biden is halting aren't part of the aid (gift card purchases) FWIW.
As far as Israel having sufficient capacity to produce weaponry goes, that's quite a bit of a blanket statement and over simplifies some things. First off, not all weapons are the same. Shells are not guns are not bullets are not air defense are not nukes. A country can have the capability to produce one or more of those things, but not all. And even if they have the capability to produce all of them they may not be able to produce all of them in quantity needed. And even if they can produce all of them in quantity needed, you may not be considering that arms production has SIGNIFICANT ramp up time or that Israel's military is a conscription service and thus a significant portion of their workforce that would be making weapons is now actively fighting. In short it's not quite as simple as "if we can't buy it, then make it".
No you're absolutely right the JDAM packages and the bombs themselves were bought normally by Israel, and that's what Biden is currently blocking.
The big aid bill was almost exclusively Iron Dome, Iron Beam, and Arrow funding.
You missed probably the most important part - this "aid" essentially goes both ways. The amount of Israeli-developed military high tech licensed to USA is absolutely insane - and it's VITAL tech, like targeting helmets for all US F-35s (but not the joint force F-35s which are stuck with last gen). This exchange is baked into the US aid, otherwise much of the tech would just remain highly classified in Israel.
Then there is the weapon testing - USA spent (actually wasted) BILLIONS testing various missile defense systems like Patriot etc. Israel has by now 1000s of real combat tests done with Iron Dome, Arrow, Patriot etc and shares the results with USA.
It's a mutually beneficial relationship.
I think the missile interception is probably the most key point of beneficial data for the US. We could literally be giving away the few billion we send a year and it'd be worth it for that alone given that a single well-placed missile could cripple a US aircraft carrier in a potential war.
Just like the war in Ukraine has provided invaluable data on intercepting the big boy missiles, Iron Dome operations must have been useful in showing how to counter slower-moving groups of projectiles. With how we're realizing more and more the role drone swarms will likely play in future wars, I'm sure that's very valuable data.
Yeah I wasn't kidding about the BILLIONS wasted, going back to the 1990s but especially now. Just an uninterrupted sequence of failed tests, indeterminate results, a complete mess - and all that under ideal testing conditions which is a problem in itself. From Israel (and to a much much lesser extent from Ukraine) USA gets real world test results which is literally invaluable - USA cannot replicate it. This data is used to develop new tech and decide which programs are approved and which rejected (since all these missiles are built by contractors like Raytheon etc).
Raytheon is actually the key manufacturer for pretty much all of the Israeli air defense missiles AFAIK. This is another key point people miss - Israel does a good amount of R&D work, but they lack the industrial capacity to actually mass produce weapons.
Also, what is perhaps the 20th century's biggest lesson on winning wars is certainly not lost on them either - that having weapons factories 2000 miles away on a practically unassailable continent is a big fucking advantage if shit ever hits the fan.
It's also sending a message to hostile Israeli neighbors "that's our boy"
It's less about aid to Israel so much as an indirect subsidy to american arms manufacturers.
Also it’s a bribe to keep sharing new intelligence, military tech, and allow us to use their country as a launch pad to other places. Outside of a few select countries that’s all our foreign aid really is. Bribes.
We prefer to call them incentives.
Yep. We give them money to buy American weapons. It’s essentially a jobs program.
This is literally how international relationships work. Are we bribing Taiwan and Ukraine?
The US pays Egypt and Israel billions of dollars each year to buy peace between the two so the Suez isn't closed like it was for eight years after the Six Day War.
That is the reason it is bi-partisan and not just limited to the ultranationalist Christians who want the Third Temple to be built so the world can end.
That's a good point. A lot was done to make Sinai what it is today but it's also lawless
Suez has to be the most secure area I've ever been through. I rode through on a bus with Egyptians many times and they took us all off for a search on the side of the road
Fun fact. Due to this agreement, Egypt has more tanks than the rest of the African continent combined.
Is that surprising? Apart from RSA and maybe Nigeria, Egypt is by far the most advanced African nation, and certainly the most heavily militarised (with actual military, not child soldiers, pirates and militia)
It’s actually pretty important for our (the US’s) defense industrial complex. It means all the production lines keep running which is really important if the US gets dragged into a war. The workers are already trained/competent, the machinery is calibrated. Israel gets extra boom booms and the US doesn’t have to worry about production lines going dark.
If only there was another country that needed lots of bombs and artillery shells… Oh yeah, Ukraine! And they need a lot more. We don’t need to sell Israel anymore if we don’t want to.
Most of the technology we are currently producing and utilizing, cannot be shipped to Ukraine because they don't have the time or technical skills to learn said technology.
There's a reason every package we send them is stock of low tech items that have been sitting in inventory for the last 30 years.
Our newer shiny toys need a ton of training to use correctly, snd Ukraine just does not have time or the manpower to learn how to utilize these items.
Artillery shells are dumb.
Ukraine operates patriots, several AA states, automated howitzers, and other complex weapon systems, so your claim that they are incapable of absorbing and using advanced weapons is lacking evidence.
But mostly what they need are artillery shells
Our newer shiny toys need a ton of training to use correctly, snd Ukraine just does not have time or the manpower to learn how to utilize these items.
The war has being raging for years and Ukrainian forces continue to be trained by NATO nations on modern weapon systems. The US can and should supply low tech for the immediate and high tech for the long term. This isn't an either/or situation.
Ukraine needs a lot more NOW, not necessarily in five or ten years. Israel will reliably need it for… well… yeah….
Likewise a lot of it cannot be used by Ukraine due to them lacking air superiority.
Good luck getting Republicans' support for Ukraine after Biden pulled support for Israel.
Artillery shells yes, but 2klb bombs are bordering useless for ukraine without at least glide kits atm
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11d
In practical terms I think all this really means is that Israel will have to finish destroying Hamas with what they have already on hand, can make themselves, and/or can get from non-US sources. I suspect Israel is just fine with that right now.
With this becoming such a public matter, I wouldn't be surprised if Israel expands their activity in Rafah significantly over the next 48 or so hours.
They have. Pushed through to checkpoints that ensure nobody will escape across the Egyptian border. They've also bombed over 30 targets in Lebanon over the last 48 hours. Israel dgaf what anyone has to say. Especially the USA(who invaded an entire middle eastern country under much more dubious pretenses).
My man nobody is "escaping" to Egypt. They are just as unwilling to let Palestinians across their borders as Israelis are
$5000/head is reportedly the going rate to bribe Egyptian border guards
And how many Palestinians can pony up $5K+ in cash?
This is exactly the issue. The ones that can afford it are unlikely to be civilians, and more likely to be terrorists.
Or more likely have family in the west, I would figure
I've heard of gofundmes or the like for Gazans buying their way into Egypt, with complaints about payment processors slowing down the cashflow when time is of the essence (those complaints imply that it's specifically being unfair to Palestinians, but I wonder if it's standard procedure for sudden large amounts or general PayPal fuckery)
It's not fuckery at all. Hamas is a designated terrorist organization by the US, and payment processors have to ensure the money isn't going to members of that organization. It's really, REALLY frowned upon by the US government to send money to members of designated terror organizations.
Banks are hardly working, unless the Egyptians are taking Bitcoin payments, I doubt it.
You joke, but I think bitcoin would work pretty well for a bribe.
Sinwar has so much cash that he couldn’t take it all with when he had to flee an Israeli advance. He left behind millions of dollars in cash and I suspect he has millions more in cash on him.
Not many. A lot of fundraisers have been popping up to get family members across the border though, I imagine that may be the bulk of who’s getting through. If they get any contact to the outside, they have to pray the algorithm pushes them enough to get enough donations to survive. Really sad stuff :,(
All the higher-ups in Hamas are billionaires.
Not sure if you got the memo but Hamas has shit ton of tunnels and quite a few (some of which were destroyed today) leading into Egypt.
If anything, Israel would be thrilled to let as many Palestinians "escape" as possible. Literally nothing would make Israel happier than as many Palestinians as possible choosing to leave of their own accord.
Egypt has done enough to prevent Gazans from entering Egypt.
Egypt’s wall puts anything Trump was proposing to shame.
Never a word about Egypt and Jordan keeping their former citizens out, but Israel should let them in…
As everyone said, there is no chance that the Egyptians will allow the Palestinians in, especially as the current dictatorship overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood in the 2014 Coup.
Best case scenario, Palestinians will be indefinitely detained inside special camps without being granted Egyptian citizenship.
Worst case scenario, the Egyptian Army indiscriminately opens fire on anyone trying to illegally cross the border, Hamas and civilians alike.
Israel clearly cares, otherwise they wouldn’t announce each step of their retaliation/invasion days before it happens; they just know what they can get away with
They've also bombed over 30 targets in Lebanon over the last 48 hours.
You seem to be keeping up on current news. Are you aware that those "targets in Lebanon" have been shelling north Israel nonstop and there were numerous Israeli military and civilian casualties in just the past few days? Over 60,000 Israelis have been evacuated from the north for going on 7 months now, due to Hezbollah rocket attacks for 7 months straight.
We have absolutely not expanded shit. The idf hasnt even entered rafah yet and the bombing in lebanon has been constant since november and still is at a very low rate
Egypt doesn't want them either.
Might wanna be a little careful on not giving a fuck about the US' thoughts on shit if you are Israel.
Ha. As long as Israel has coin, the USA has wares. Zero chance they leave their most important and effective middle eastern ally high and dry against Islamic terrorists. Even the notion of them doing so is asinine
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11d
You’re both right
Israel does care about America and vice versa
Neither party holds all of the cards
Pretty much. The funny thing about this entire debate is that it doesn't matter. If the US cut off all aid tomorrow, nothing would change about Israel's operations in Gaza. They're an advanced mixed economy with a highly developed defense manufacturing sector. The weapons from the US are a "nice to have" not a necessity.
All I ever heard is that Israel doesn't need the US at all but the US better not condition aid or reduce aid and they need to expedite sending even more aid. Both can't be true.
The devil is in the details. Everything that the US sends to Israel is appreciated of course, but what Israel really needs and what the US really wants Israel to have from them is two things: smart bombs for precision strikes, and missile defense for the Iron Dome. Those two things are what allow Israel to wage war in a somewhat humane fashion. There is a third thing which is a bit of a sticking point, which are the 2000 lb bombs. Israel would like to have those because you need the biggest bomb you can possibly get when your target is 50-300 feet below the surface, as Hamas' massive tunnel network is. The US doesn't like how those things tend to level entire apartment blocks in one go, it makes for bad optics.
So now to get to the point of how both can in fact be true, the reason that Israel 'doesn't need the US' is because Israel is perfectly capable of destroying Hamas with what it's got in the stockpile right now. It will just have to dip into stockpiles of older weapons that will do a much messier job of it. The reason the US 'better not' reduce aid, at least, better not reduce the aid I listed above, is because that won't stop Israel from destroying Hamas, it will just force Israel to do so in a way that results in a lot more Palestinian casualties.
If Israel doesn't have smart bombs to do precision strikes, it may just have to fall back on Russian or Syrian style rolling artillery barrages and barrel bombs. Instead of finding and targeting specific known militants or armed military age males, it will just level anywhere militants may be hiding; which is everywhere. And if Iron Dome runs out of ammo to defend against the literally thousands of rockets Hamas and Hezbollah have launched into Israel in the last few months, well then Israel will just have to respond with overwhelming artillery fire on anywhere rockets were fired from, which of course is always civilian infrastructure because that's how Hamas rolls. The US isn't sending aid to Israel just to help Israel in some abstract sense. They are sending aid to Israel specifically to help Israel fight back and defend itself in a humane manner. There should be no expectation that Israel cannot or will not fight back and defend itself without US aid; just that Israel will fight back far more brutally out of sheer necessity. Therefore I really hope that this hold-back is symbolic and just sending a message to the left wingers in the Democratic coalition that Biden is doing as much as he can, and not depriving Israel of the means to continue to fight on humanely.
Israel will just have to respond with overwhelming artillery fire
Somehow, I think it gets lost on a lot of people that Israel has a very modern, well trained, well equipped military. If they wanted Gaza gone, regardless of casualties, they could have done that in a relatively short period of time.
i mean they have nukes and ICBMs. they could eliminate basically any city in the eastern hemisphere if they wanted to.
I've brought up this exact point when someone got pissy that idf arrested some kids throwing rocks at them. They had guns, they could shoot the kids. Instead they stopped them from throwing rocks pretty effectively with zip ties. Pretty proportionate
The response was insensate rage and screaming
Great comment, thank you.
I think it matters. Wikipedia says US military aid to Israel is about 3.8B a year since 2019 when it was increased. This source https://www.sipri.org/media/press-release/2024/global-military-spending-surges-amid-war-rising-tensions-and-insecurity#:~:text=Israel's%20military%20spending%E2%80%94the%20second,by%20Hamas%20in%20October%202023. says Israel spends 27.5B, after a 24% increase due to Oct 7. Which means they usually spend 22B a year normally. 22B with 4B in aid means that the US covers 15% of Israel's total defense spending of 26B a year. Thats not insignificant, but it likely won't cripple Israel that much either.
Maybe nothing changes in the immediate couple months but US aid accounts for 15% of Israel’s defense budget in addition to manufacturing Tamir missiles for the iron dome, among other support.
Israel needs US aid and protection, no matter how loudly Netanyahu yells and he knows he can yell loudly because the US is obligated by US law to ensure Israel’s QME.
Until that law is repelled, Israel will never not have US support and Israel knows this.
Israel aid is guaranteed. A good third of dems are hardcore Israel defenders plus there's the GOP. Biden doesn't have the ability to cut aid from Israel.
It goes both ways, us knows they need Israel in the Middle East
except as Anthony Blinken has acknowledged there is no military solution that would "destroy Hamas"
that's fine, as long as they aren't capable of pulling off another oct 7th. and as long as they are no longer capable of firing waves of missiles into Israel.
The biggest driver of any Israel-Palestine policy at this point is not losing votes to Trump.
The pro-Palestinians would never vote for Trump, they just wouldn't vote for Biden either.
Keeping Democrats at home on voting day is half the job for the Rs
If you focus on vote counts that's still losing a vote to Trump. Someone switching from Biden to Trump is losing two votes to Trump -- since it's Biden-1 Trump+1, whereas in the other case it's Biden-1 Trump+0.
Convincing someone to not vote for Biden is equivalent to convincing someone who wasn't gonna vote to vote for Trump -- at least when looking at vote counts.
Biden is not gonna win their votes even with this.
foreign policy shouldn't be tied to election results. that's the tail wagging the dog.
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11d
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11d
Didn't they start that yesterday...
Ukraine needs them more
Different situations. Ukraine is basically running on soviet tech and slowing converting to western stuff. You can’t just give them f-35s and hope they’ll figure out how to fly them, that’s why we are orimarily sending raytheon’s ATM’s and artillery etc, that stuff is just easy to use. Israel on the other hand is primarily buying advanced western tech like fighter aircraft and such, that means the specialized tech they’re buying can’t just be rerouted.
What will Ukraine do with it? Israel and Ukraine are using different weapon platforms from different generations. They don't need ammunition/ordnance for F-16s and F-35s because they aren't flying them. They don't need Tamir missiles because they don't have an iron dome. They need supplies for the platforms they're using, not for ones they've never touched before.
The headline literally says "shells." Ukraine operates artillery which uses the same shells as US and Israeli artillery systems
Ukraine needs artillery shells, and I don't think there is a difference in those between Ukraine and Israel.
As for F-16, Ukraine is about to get or already has F-16s which I think will be very hungry, and even for F-35 weapons, Ukraine might find a use, as it has repeatedly shown the ability to use weapons with weapons systems different than what they were originally designed for. For example, launching NATO missiles from their Soviet fighter jets.
Israel already has plenty of weapons to deal with Hamas. If someone who can actually threaten Israel (e.g. Iran) tried to launch a massive attack against them, against whom these weapons would make a difference, then USA would 100% immediately fully resume and massively expand its weapons aid to Israel.
After they invade Rafah, Biden will say it wasn’t major enough to not send more aid.
This is the single most fucked foreign policy situation on earth. No matter what a president does, and no matter who that president is...some group of screaming red faced assholes is gonna be pissed off at his decision. And everyone is an armchair genersl.
What this really means is that Republicans will not vote for any more aid to Ukraine. Why would they when they voted for Ukraine aid preconditioned on aid going to Israel, only for Biden to refuse to actually release that aid?
The United States has a set of laws, called the Leahy Laws, which supposedly prohibit the US from providing aid to foreign military groups which violate human rights. By these laws, the president can opt to halt weapon shipments if he feels that whoever they're going too has been violating human rights.
Obviously, these rules aren't always followed. But they do give the president the ability to do this.
Maybe do more BEFORE the ground invasion rather than waiting for, what at least now appears to be, the inevitable.
So, the US ships weapons to one side to blow up the other side and humanitarian aid to the other side to care for the people their bombs have been dropped on?
What the fuck?
Watch them stop sending smart bomb upgrades and then wonder why the collateral damage has increased.
Why wait until they do the thing when the Israeli defense council has already voted to do it? Why not stop sending bombs and artillery now?
So biden delayed the end of the war by 3 months probably causing the deaths of hostages and countless Palestinians so when Hamas rejected the final offer he sent them for ceasefire he could punish Israel for finishing them off as they should have done before he intervened?
Can someone please explain the logic? Seems like the worst of both worlds
Because it absolutely is the worst of both worlds.
Way too little, way too late and completely counter-intuitive.
“We will stop sending military aid if you use it to try to win the war we are giving you aid for”
Literally no part of this makes any sense.
In the full interview, he was talking about specific types of bombs that were likely to cause mass civilian casualties
Ah, look! More empty fucking warnings.
pretty sure Israel already has more than enough bombs to level the place. They weren't even asking for US help, it's just US Congress is so pro-Israel they keep giving them free stuff and Israel is just happy to take it
They weren't even asking for US help
They've been asking for "free stuff" for decades. Israel has a lobbying group called AIPAC that donates large sums of money to both Democrats and Republican politicians. Biden has received the most money from them by far and is obligated to do Israel's bidding because of it. The group is anti-progressive and has threatened to oust firebrand politicians like Rashida Tlaib and Jamaal Bowman.
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11d
Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't military aid largely a Congress thing? I imagine the President can veto aid packages he doesn't like, but then I'd guess the republicans would start rejecting Ukraine aid packages en masse in protest until Israel gets weapons again