That’s the bare minimum, we arm Isreal and veto resolutions against them at the UN giving them license for genocide, and then air drop a pittance of supplies since Biden won’t end the indescriminate targeting of civilians or force Israel to let aid in.
Remember, Biden could end this all with a phone call.
As the WHO points out, airdrops will provide far less aid then if Israel just opened up border crossings and let trucks in:
“It’s absolutely not needed in Gaza. The simplest, safest way and most effective way to deliver aid to people is through crossings. Not just Rafah. It should [also] be Kerem Shalom,” he said, referring to the crossing with Israel known in Arabic as Karem Abu Salem.
He added that the UN has been “more than ready” to supply Gaza with the aid it desperately needs but “a lot of our missions got delayed [and] denied [by Israel]”.
Air drops will undoubtedly provide some benefit, but they will be no means substantially ease the suffering in Gaza. This is an optics play, plain and simple, Biden provides the military means and international cover for Israel to create the famine in the first place, then makes a big show of getting some aid (five months into the genoicde) in to Gaza (using the least efficient means) to try to appease his critics.
Hooray I guess. I hereby nominate Biden for the Nobel peace prize.
Isn’t this you, just yesterday, complaining that Biden was enabling the Israeli/Netanyahu government to stop aid from coming into Gaza “at all”:
Just so everyone is clear, the Israeli governments reaction to this massacre is that they now need tostop aid from coming into Gaza at all because this incident proves starving people receiving aide is a danger to the Israeli military.
These are the people Biden is sending millions of dollars in weapons to. These are the people Biden directs the US ambassador to veto a widely supported cease fire resolution to give international cover to. Fuck, these are the people Biden chooses to lock arms with even as he loses 100k votes in Michigan in protest.
Today Biden has directed the US military to personally deliver aid to Gaza, in the most effective way that they can. (The US certainly isn’t going to put boots on the ground to deliver aid in extremely hostile and dangerous territory where hostages are being kept potentially anywhere.) They are getting aid to the people of Gaza, while the UN is failing to.
It’s possible that the UN could deliver aid more effectively by driving it into Gaza, but (a) it’s very likely that they can’t, because we’ve seen aid trucks hijacked by Hamas and aid stolen from innocent civilians and (b) the connections between UNRWA and Hamas have almost completely ruined the trust relationship with Israel. The UN has become severely compromised by their lack of ability to vet the people that work for them, because as the old saying goes “a bad apple can spoil the bunch”, and innocent people are suffering because of it. That one isn’t on Biden.
To say that Biden could “end this all with a phone call” is pure fiction, whether it’s in an op-ed or not–the only two parties who can agree to a ceasefire are Netanyahu’s government and Hamas. No US president, real or imaginary, is going to disarm Israel when they are our biggest ally in the region and under constant threat from Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, Iran and others. No US president, real or imaginary, will call for Israel to unilaterally ceasefire against Hamas as Hamas continues to hold their people hostage and wage their own counterattacks. If a ceasefire should happen, and it should, it’ll only happen because both sides of this conflict agree to the terms.
Anyway, I really hope you don’t realize that you’re moving the goal posts here, because I want to give you the benefit of the doubt… Anything else makes the complaints seem political and not genuinely pragmatic or even idealistic. Set the goalposts somewhere reasonable, and just keep them there.
Nobody is saying that Biden deserves a fuckin’ peace prize for this, but he’s doing a good thing here (something that just yesterday you seemingly wanted to see too) and he should be given at least due credit for that.
That’s the bare minimum, we arm Isreal and veto resolutions against them at the UN giving them license for genocide, and then air drop a pittance of supplies since Biden won’t end the indescriminate targeting of civilians or force Israel to let aid in.
Remember, Biden could end this all with a phone call.
As the WHO points out, airdrops will provide far less aid then if Israel just opened up border crossings and let trucks in:
Air drops will undoubtedly provide some benefit, but they will be no means substantially ease the suffering in Gaza. This is an optics play, plain and simple, Biden provides the military means and international cover for Israel to create the famine in the first place, then makes a big show of getting some aid (five months into the genoicde) in to Gaza (using the least efficient means) to try to appease his critics.
Hooray I guess. I hereby nominate Biden for the Nobel peace prize.
Isn’t this you, just yesterday, complaining that Biden was enabling the Israeli/Netanyahu government to stop aid from coming into Gaza “at all”:
Today Biden has directed the US military to personally deliver aid to Gaza, in the most effective way that they can. (The US certainly isn’t going to put boots on the ground to deliver aid in extremely hostile and dangerous territory where hostages are being kept potentially anywhere.) They are getting aid to the people of Gaza, while the UN is failing to.
It’s possible that the UN could deliver aid more effectively by driving it into Gaza, but (a) it’s very likely that they can’t, because we’ve seen aid trucks hijacked by Hamas and aid stolen from innocent civilians and (b) the connections between UNRWA and Hamas have almost completely ruined the trust relationship with Israel. The UN has become severely compromised by their lack of ability to vet the people that work for them, because as the old saying goes “a bad apple can spoil the bunch”, and innocent people are suffering because of it. That one isn’t on Biden.
To say that Biden could “end this all with a phone call” is pure fiction, whether it’s in an op-ed or not–the only two parties who can agree to a ceasefire are Netanyahu’s government and Hamas. No US president, real or imaginary, is going to disarm Israel when they are our biggest ally in the region and under constant threat from Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, Iran and others. No US president, real or imaginary, will call for Israel to unilaterally ceasefire against Hamas as Hamas continues to hold their people hostage and wage their own counterattacks. If a ceasefire should happen, and it should, it’ll only happen because both sides of this conflict agree to the terms.
Anyway, I really hope you don’t realize that you’re moving the goal posts here, because I want to give you the benefit of the doubt… Anything else makes the complaints seem political and not genuinely pragmatic or even idealistic. Set the goalposts somewhere reasonable, and just keep them there.
Nobody is saying that Biden deserves a fuckin’ peace prize for this, but he’s doing a good thing here (something that just yesterday you seemingly wanted to see too) and he should be given at least due credit for that.