The Right likes to ceaselessly chirp that Israel has a right to defend itself. But I don’t see anyone saying that it doesn’t. The real question is whether what Israel has been doing in Gaza is effective self-defense. Israel has managed to lose the moral high ground even faster than the U.S. did after 9/11 and likely is fueling the fires of future terrorism. This is not smart self-defense. Fight smarter, not harder.
And this puts the United States in a precarious place. I think on the whole the Biden Administration has walked a fine line, supporting Israel while trying to mitigate its worst impulses. Now the Biden Administration is urging a “humanitarian pause” in Gaza so that people can get food, medicine, fuel, clean water, and maybe more of the injured can be removed.
Politico reports that the White House thinks Netanyahu is on his way out. “Joe Biden and top aides have discussed the likelihood that Benjamin Netanyahu’s political days are numbered — and the president has conveyed that sentiment to the Israeli prime minister in a recent conversation.” The Daily Beast reports that Biden and Netanyahu probably are headed for a breakup:
While the immediate support the U.S. showed for Israel in the wake of Hamas’ wanton atrocities of Oct. 7 was humane and appropriate, founded (as New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait has noted) in President Joe Biden’s moral decency, that very same Biden character trait will very likely soon require a rift with Netanyahu.
That is because the Israeli prime minister and the extremists in his government are fundamentally bad actors who have contributed greatly to the current crisis.
It is the profound flaws of judgment and instincts of Bibi & Co. that will require Biden and his team to demand a significant change of course by Israel. Should that change not come, it will then be the deep-seated values of Biden and his team and their clear sense of U.S. national interests that will require what will be a major adjustment in U.S. policy.
Edward Luce of the Financial Times writes that Netanyahu is an albatross around Biden’s neck.
Joe Biden has hitched his fortunes to a man — Benjamin Netanyahu — who is co-creator of the ghastly dilemma with which Israel is now faced. The problem with Biden’s bearhug strategy is that he has no veto on the Israeli prime minister’s actions. The tool Biden wields is influence. Everything about Netanyahu suggests that behind-the-scenes suasion is not a method that works.
I don’t know that Joe Biden “hitched his fortunes” to Netanyahu but to Israel, and very likely the White House would be just fine if there were a new Prime Minister sooner rather than later. But yes, I think Joe Biden’s support for Israel is in part about trying to influence it to not go crazy and massacre civilian Palestinians, but that doesn’t seem to have worked.
In other news — Yesterday Senate Republicans finally had enough with Tommy Tuberville.
Republican senators angrily challenged Sen. Tommy Tuberville on his blockade of almost 400 military officers Wednesday evening, taking over the Senate floor for more than four hours to call for individual confirmation votes after a monthslong stalemate.
Tuberville, R-Ala., stood and objected to each nominee — 61 times total, when the night was over — extending his holds on the military confirmations and promotions with no immediate resolution in sight. But the extraordinary confrontation between Republicans, boiling over almost nine months after Tuberville first announced the holds over a Pentagon abortion policy, escalated the standoff as Defense Department officials have repeatedly said the backlog of officials needing confirmation could endanger national security.
“Why are we putting holds on war heroes?” asked Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska, himself a colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve. “I don’t understand.”
re Tuberville – I've repeatedly read that "they" can change the Senate rules, eliminating one person's veto. If it were so easy, why isn't it being done?
I suspect that Benny NutAndYahoo has his own Karl Roves' whispering in his ear "War-time Prime Ministers stay in office (until the war is over)".
Benny NutAndYahoo is Israel's Donald tRump. He has refused to accept any responsibility for what allowed October 7th to take place.
Personally, I have complete confidence that NutAndYahoo will make decisions for Israel based upon what he perceives to be best for himself.
Bibi has been around power in Israel for what seems like forever.
And in all that time, he learned nothing.
But nonetheless, he will be remembered forever.
As the "leader" under whom more Jews died in a single day since the Holocaust ended.
Not quite the epitaph he dreamed of.
But it is the epitaph he so richly deserves.
In modern warfare the innocent civilian has become the primary target. The Hamas terrorists did attack some military targets, but by in large the aim was to provoke by way of savage treatment of civilians. Putin and his war machine is doing the same thing in the Ukraine. So many war crimes have been documented that no reasonable person would conclude that targeting civilians is not part of the war plan. Not just targeting civilians but taking special aim at the weak and the most defenseless. So much for the days of the hero soldier. It has been replaced by the quest for martyrdom. No savage action is too extreme for a martyr. Was there not an American politician who claimed that extremism in the defense of liberty is not a vice? Now the world has seemed to have gotten to the point of extremism just for the sake of extremism, is the highest form of virtue. Oh, the slippery slope of mindless thinking. Why are the greatest wrongs done by those why claim to be doing the right thing?
Biden did not move a carrier task group closer to Israel to fight Hamas. Hamas did not expect to provoke anything but insane rage from Israel by slaughtering civilians. The goal was and still is to get Arab nations to invade Israel. Thus a Jihad, a holy war, is begun. It's to PREVENT other nations from following that temptation that the US is (finally) loudly calling for restraint. And it's loud when Biden tells Bibi he's gonna be out because of his failure(s).
Bibi, like Trump, faces the twin jaws of a vise. He was working on permanent political immunity for his corruption, but that deal was not done. Now, Bibi lacks the political power to finish that job. Once he's out, that may be pursued with a vengeance. Normally, an ousted despot who feels the legal system closing will go into exile. The problem is, Bibi is committing war crimes and the international community may want the Hague to prosecute. So he can’t stay in Israel, nor can he leave.
Are you having problems sleeping, Bibi?
In a way, what Israel is doing in Gaza is no different than what we did in the wake of 911. We knowingly invaded Iraq on the false pretense that Saddam Hussein was behind the attacks, resulting in the deaths of between 280,000 to 315,000 civilians killed as a result. It was an act of blind vengeance. Many of our troops went there with the mindset of war with the Iraqi people. We destroyed a significant portion of he country and the lives of so many people, resulting in ISIS and new generations of terrorists.
Israel should have gone after Hamas and destroyed them. Not only do they have a right to do that, they need to do that to protect the country. But that takes time, patience and planning, what Netanyahu doesn’t have. Israel has gone beyond that, killing thousands of innocents and then saying, as some of us say here, every Palestinian should be viewed as a potential combatant deserving of death. The resulting misery and frustration caused by the violence will only create potential future terrorists.
Much of this is about Bibi's need to atone for allowing the attacks to happen in the first place, by enacting outsized revenge on the Palestinian people. And cover for his own political problems. Not only is this not helping, because at some point there needs to be an end game to this and it won't sit well with people if it appears he's demanding more time to kill as many people as possible before he's willing to sit down as a leader with whomever he has to and figure this out.
I disagree that the Little George/Darth Cheney invasion of Iraq was an act of blind revenge. Blind revenge was used to 'market' the war but was not the reason.
Why did we invade Iraq…
Darth Cheney – oil
Karl Rove – "war time presidents always get reelected
Little George – to one-up Daddy