this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2024
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The ceasefire vote passed, and just like everyone predicted it will have zero impact on the genocide in progress. The only impact it has was to further limit the ability of the US to pressure Israel to not advance into Rafah. You got your resolution, and now the situation is worse. Yet, here you are doubling down.
I totally appreciate (and share) your zeal in wanting the slaughter to end (assuming that is actually your objective), but this development clearly illustrates the deep flaws in this kind of criticism, and how little you understand about foreign policy and negotiation tactics.
The US has one negotiation point left to keep Israel out of Rafah, and that's the weapons. Once that is played, the only other choice would be to allow the genocide to continue, or intervine militarily. Thankfully the US didn't play that card already, and the Biden administration is sending clear signals to Israel that it's on the table.
Israel has other options for aid and weapons, but they only become viable if the relationship with the US is severed. Once that happens, Palestine is done.
BTW: Abstaining from the vote was, if anything, kissing Putin's ass, not Netanyaho. There were sticking points between Russia and the US, and the US blinked. Anyone who actually followed the negotiations would understand that abstaining means the US decided the resolution was too important to hold up over specific language.
This is very similar to the last such resolution to pass. Russia and America couldn't agree on language, so both agreed to abstain. This time, Russia got their way while the US took the high road.
Are you arguing that the US is protecting Palestinians?
The US has been pressuring Israel to spare civilians since before they went into Gaza. That's just reality. They haven't followed the disastrous strategies that critics have demanded for exactly the reasons I explained.
Netanyaho is a far right maniac who's popularity was based entirely on national security and who was facing multiple criminal allegations. There was no way that he wasn't going to go hard into Gaza. The US could have pulled all aid and weapons deals on day one, and it wouldn't have changed a damn thing - except that Israel would now be a Russian satellite state.
Ramping pressure over time is/was the best available strategy. That doesn't mean I think the US did everything right. That doesn't mean that Biden's personal positions on Israel aren't deeply troubling.
I'll say it again. You got exactly the resolution you were demanding, and exactly the result that people like me said you would get from it. Take the L and learn something.
So, you are arguing that the US has been protecting Palestinians throughout.
Words fail me.
I don't doubt it.
I don't see it working. Pressure only matters when there's real leverage at play, otherwise you get the current mess.
You might be absolutely right. All I'm talking about is maximizing the leverage the US has. That's no guarantee that it's enough leverage to control Netanyaho.
Please show me where anyone has "demanded" a resolution that will in no way be enforced, as the totality of action needed to stop Israel?
Netanyahu is thumbing his nose at everyone because he knows no one is going to actually do anything about his genocide. Stopping weapons isn't about stopping the genocide, it's about not actively contributing to it.
Actively stopping it would probably require a hell of a lot more than cutting off our weapon shipments, and no one but Netanyahu (yourself included) can quantify what that actual line would be. Maybe it would require international sanctions. Maybe it would require military intervention. Neither of those is actually on the table though, realistically, so not being active contributors is probably the best we can do right now.
We're I at my PC I might dump a boatload of links to lemmy comments but, since I'm not, I'll just tell you to do your own search. It's incredibly prevalent in the more "tankie" subs, but they show up pretty much everywhere the subject is discussed.
The frustrating thing is that there are two groups doing it. There are right wing trolls pretending they care but actually just taking advantage to damage Democrats, but there are also good people arguing for the best of causes, but not understanding the dynamics at play.
But so, not actually the person you were responding to when you said "You got [what] you were demanding"?
When someone says that an abstention from a vote is "kissing Netanyaho's ass", it seems pretty apparent that the consider a lack of a yes vote as a moral failing.
Yes, but how did you get from "not opposing Israel is a moral failing" to "if we oppose Israel in a UN resolution, that will fix everything"?
How did you get from a vote on a particular wording of a particular resolution to "not supporting Israel"? Where did I say that anyone said the revolution would "fix everything"?
The US not vetoing the resolution is being actively touted by Israel as the US not supporting them. Obviously it's not actually true, but in foreign policy that kind of rhetoric "reversal" is a huge deal (and Netanyahu is playing it up to try to pressure Biden into backing down).
Obviously "everything" is hyperbole, but your first comment in this thread said
The situation is not worse, it is immeasurably better. Netanyahu's anger is not just about a hit to his pride or something, it's genuine rage at seeing the influence campaigns they run via groups like AIPAC, Psy-Group, and Inspiration fail to cajole the US populace into uncritical support, like they previously enjoyed from older generations. And he's using it strategically to try to signal to people that it won't work, just like Putin does about sanctions, and military aid to Ukraine, both of which actually have a huge impact.
Your assertion (and Biden's belief) that the US's rhetorical support of Israel gave them leverage over their actions, has been proven wrong, as many of us knew it would be. Netanyahu is an extremist, and just like no one expects ISIS to start being normal dudes if their friends just tell them honestly as friends that they need to cool it bro, neither will Netanyahu.
With them, you need tangible leverage to move the needle. Money and weapons are leverage. Threat of force is leverage. Threat of sanctions is leverage. (Assuming you actually will follow through, of course.) That's why Israel has actively lobbied for anti-BDS laws in the US.
What would actually have maybe gotten some reaction from Israel right off the bat? A forceful backing of the resolutions condemning Israel's actions, and a threat to cut off weapons and military support. But instead Biden took so long to do anything, all while lobbying internally for more weapons for Israel, that Netanyahu can clearly see that he has the upper hand. It took months and months, and tens of thousands of dead Palestinians, for Biden to bring himself to have us abstain from vetoing a resolution. If that level of self-imposed inaction isn't the height of fecklessness, I don't know what is, though I also think Biden himself is just plain supportive of Israel in a way that most of the US is not.
Now, the resolution is mostly an incarnation of the US populace's diminishing support for a genocidal regime, and that is immeasurably valuable (even if it won't move the needle on Israel's actions because of how long it took to come, and the lack of any follow-up from Biden).
Maybe it's a reaction to the ignorant self righteous ignorant fury that's been flooding every discussion on Palestine for months. That kind of mass delusion doesn't respond to carefully parsed polite responses. In any case, I've gotten tired of pretending it's not idiotic.
They were saying their response wasn't polite, intentionally.
Popping in because this comment got reported- a reminder to you and everyone in this thread to do your best to be nice to each other. If you're getting heated or exhausted over this discussion it might be a good idea to step away. 💜
what other options though? china and russia won't give them anything, and especially not iran.
Definitely not Iran, but Russia and China are definitely possibilities. The only reason it seems impossible is that Israel has been a US satellite since it's founding. If that tie is severed, what's possible changes.
There are three real powers in the Middle East, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. Two are in the US sphere, and one is in Russia's. Russia would live to pull ahead, and China desperately wants a solid foothold in the region.
Russia specifically would see a lot of tangible benefits. Israel has a top-notch defense industry with many technologies that Russia is missing. Protecting "the Jews" would also play into Russia's narratives about fighting Nazis in Ukraine and elsewhere.
If Russia gave Israel weapons, I’m sure Iran would absolutely love that. What do you think the blowback from that would be? Now China on the other hand.
I doubt there would be much. Iran is almost as dependent on Russia as Israel has been on the US. There would be some token diplomatic protests, but I doubt it would be anything more than signaling. Countries don't have friends, they have interests. Iran's interests are far better served by Russia than by supporting Palestine.
Hamas's entire strategy in launching their attack was to provoke Israel to overreact, which would then prompt Palestinian allies like Lebanon and Iran to get involved. The first part worked beyond their expectations, but Iran and Lebanon haven't taken the bait.
I don't think Russia can spare the weapons.
China, on the other hand, could.
The amount of weapons Israel actually needs is miniscule compared to something like the war in Ukraine. Russia is currently producing around 250k artillery shells per month. Munitions used in Gaza are measured in the hundreds over the entire conflict.
Iran and Israel can not be maintained in the same sphere of influence without copious amounts of hard and soft power that only the US and maybe China possess. So the Russia route is out unless they wanna lose Iran and they probably don't want that. China is more viable, but the thing is: China wants the Middle East on its side. They've been posturing for that for a while now. Taking in Israel would destroy all that in a second.
Not in the short term they don't. You don't just switch from US standards at the drop of a hat and think everything is good. That's why the West was initially trying to scrounge up old Soviet equipment for Ukraine. They'd have to retrofit or junk a lot of their current hardware and retrain their army on the new stuff. And that includes the Iron Dome keeping them safe-ish from rocket fire.
Yet Ukraine has been successfully armed by the west, so it's clearly manageable. The scale between Ukraine and Israel/Gaza is also a huge difference.
The one thing that Russia couldn't replace would be the iron dome. I'll agree that's no small thing.
Two years in they have. That's a better timescale for Gaza than "next month". And scale is irrelevant to the problems for the armed nation. They have fewer weapons, but also fewer resources. The problem with arming Ukraine was never that the West needed time to find enough weapons, it was integrating weapons with their armed forces.