He pressed Pelosi on whether the United States has a red line for Israel and whether they “own” the Gaza operation as much as their ally.
“If you don’t like what Israel is doing, and the president has made it clear that some of what Israel is doing he doesn’t like, and you go on supplying them with hardware to do these things you own this operation every bit as much as they do, don’t you?” Sebastian asked the former House Speaker.
It wouldn’t change Israel’s behavior, but it would make it more difficult for Biden to try to influence Israel.
It’s proving impossible to influence them outside of revoking funding, so why make yourself responsible for genocide, multiple times, for the dipomacy of someone who publicly says hes not going to listen to you. During an election year even, it makes Biden look weak and guilty. He can’t even reign in someone dependent on his cash.
We don’t know if Israel is impossible to influence, because we don’t know if they were originally planning something different.
And trying to influence Israel does not necessarily make Biden responsible for what Israel does.
But providing weapons and vetoing ceasefires absolutely makes him responsible. He went out of his way to aide and abed someone whos comitting crimes. Thats responsibility.
He provided anti-missile defenses, which makes him responsible for shooting down rockets launched by Hamas. And he provided JDAM kits, which are used to convert dumb bombs (that Israel already owns and is perfectly willing to use) into precision guided bombs.
Neither of these make him responsible for genocide, if anything they might help to reduce the scale of civilian deaths.
As for ceasefires: the US vetoed a ceasefire without release of hostages, but then proposed a ceasefire with release of hostages. Israel is much more likely to accept the latter.
Isreal keeps killing its own hostages, I can’t fathom thats whats stopping Netenyahu from agreeing to a ceasfire. And I got bridges for sale for people who do think that.
If you think Netanyahu won’t agree to this ceasefire proposal, then he surely wouldn’t have agreed to the prior proposals. And if so, then calling for a ceasefire would have been a waste of time.
Pressure is pressure, not abiding a UN resolution is a bad look and allows for further pressure to be put on Israel. Biden has continually kept away Israel away from that pressure while funding them. He’s got his hands dirty. The fact is they’re delaying because they don’t care about the hostages, they care about how much time they can use to inflict the maximum amount of suffering on gaza before they’re cast of of international society. Thats it, and Biden is giving them the time and space to do so.
Uncompromising pressure is exactly the approach taken by Trump and the GOP against Iran, in contrast to the olive branch offered by Obama. It’s also the approach taken by multiple presidents against Cuba and North Korea.
It’s not an effective way to get a regime to change its behavior. It doesn’t cast countries out of international society, it simply realigns them with countries like China.