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 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.
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.
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.
Yeah, and imagine where we’d be today if people had just sucked it up and voted for Hillary in 2016. Just the SCOTUS alone.
But sure, it’s the fault of the people warning you how bad it would be to let Trump win, because they couldn’t make voting for Hillary feel good.
If ifs and buts were candy and nuts…
You have to come to terms with the material fact that this approach to electoralism doesn’t work. Shaming votings, telling them you know better, that they owe you their vote, that Trump is way worse so they should vote for someone they dont want: Its been demonstrated to be ineffective at winning elections.
You can and maybe should be disappointment in the electorate for this being the case, but you can’t be in denial of it if you actually want to beat Trump. You have to do something different and convince them that the candidate is worth voting for. Or rather, the candidate needs to convince the electorate they are worth voting for. They need to go out and build a coalition. Candidates need to go to where voters are, hear their issues and concerns, and address them with their platform.
Trump is doing that. Maybe he gets booed. He got booed at the libertarian conference last weekend I think. But he’s showing up to where voters are, and attempting to convince them that he’s the answer for the issues they face. Democrats could take a hint.
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.
Please tell me you aren’t spreading “jews killed the Kennedys” conspiracies
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.
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.