Nothing in the presidential directive would have triggered any cutoff of arms if the administration had more definitively ruled that Israel’s conduct had violated international law.
From the AP article.
Everyone who signed off on that report is a coward.
Anybody who chooses to forget about this in 6 months, I vow to remember till I'm in the ground
Can already tell the excuse: "now's not the time though"
If not now, when?
I was reading about how planners for the DNC are trying to make it partially online/streaming because of worries about protesters inside and outside of the convention.
A lot of stressing over mayor of Chicago Brandon Johnson being on the side of the protesters, not the party.
Anybody who chooses to forget about this in 6 months, I vow to remember till I'm in the ground
Can already tell the excuse: "now's not the time though"
If not now, when?
I was reading about how planners for the DNC are trying to make it partially online/streaming because of worries about protesters inside and outside of the convention.
A lot of stressing over mayor of Chicago Brandon Johnson being on the side of the protesters, not the party.
Lots of stressing about being on the wrong fucking side of the issue instead of just not being on the wrong fucking side of the issue.
Johnson might be shaping up to be a terrible mayor in all of the technical competency requirements, but I'm fairly sure he's at least not raising the bridges on us to kettle downtown like Lori did during the George Floyd Protests.
Johnson might be shaping up to be a terrible mayor in all of the technical competency requirements, but I'm fairly sure he's at least not raising the bridges on us to kettle downtown like Lori did during the George Floyd Protests.
There's other, much more awful precedence going back to 68 and I didn't realize till now that the DNC was in Chicago this year and boy does history love to repeat itself in the worst ways
Also, the floating pier that is being built to transfer aid that could just be going through the border has one fatal weak point....
Waves.
Desperately needed humanitarian aid for Palestinians in Gaza will at least for the next few days remain sitting off the coast of Gaza on an American Navy cargo ship, as the US continues to face obstacles to getting the floating pier it has constructed in place and operational in the eastern Mediterranean.
The pier and causeway, known as Joint Logistics Over the Shore or JLOTS, will ultimately be used by the US, its allies and aid groups to get aid into Gaza by sea from Cyprus. But the system had to be moved to the Port of Ashdod last week due to heavy seas, and it still hasn’t left.
Even when JLOTS becomes operational, the weather and sea conditions may severely limit the ability to use the floating pier.
It can only be safely operated in conditions with a maximum of 3-foot waves and winds less than approximately 15 miles per hour, according to a 2006 Naval War College paper on the systems limitations. A prediction of sea conditions from Israel’s Marine Data Center shows waves are often at or near that 3-foot limit in the area.
Still not quite sure why a floating pier needs to be built to distribute humanitarian aid when the United States "[does] not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of US humanitarian assistance."
Oh of course, that's US humanitarian assistance. All the humanitarian assistance from the UN, well, I guess the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of that, thus necessitating the construction of a floating pier.
But that does not necessitate ceasing the shipment of military aid from the United States to Israel, apparently.
Cornell’s new president supports inviting neo-Nazis to our campus and was the driving force behind Ann Coulter giving a talk on replacement theory on our campus this semester. Seems like a pretty important indicator of ideological dynamics in the Ivies/higher ed writ large rn
To see it laid so bare, Nazis are okay but anti-genocide protesters are not, is really something.
“It’s no coincidence that immediately after our government sent the Israeli apartheid regime over $14 billion with absolutely no conditions on upholding human rights, Netanyahu began a ground invasion of Rafah to continue the genocide of Palestinians—with ammunition and bombs paid for by our tax dollars. Over 1.5 million Palestinian civilians, including over 600,000 children, are trapped in Rafah, living in makeshift tents, without food, clean water, sanitation, medicine, or any form of shelter. Israeli forces have already killed over 35,000 Palestinians, and the families displaced in Rafah will now face even more unimaginable human suffering. Many of my colleagues are going to express concern and horror at the crimes against humanity that are about to unfold, even though they just voted to send Netanyahu billions more in weapons. Do not be misled, they gave their consent for these atrocities, and our country is actively participating in genocide. For months, Netanyahu made his intent to invade Rafah clear, yet the majority of my colleagues and President Biden sent more weapons to enable the massacre.
“There is nowhere safe in Gaza. Nearly 80% of the civilian infrastructure has been destroyed. There is no feasible evacuation plan, and the Israeli government is only trying to provide a false pretense of safety to try to maintain legal cover at the International Court of Justice. Netanyahu knows that he will only stay in power as long as the fighting continues. It is now more apparent than ever that we must end all U.S. military funding for the Israeli apartheid regime, and demand that President Biden facilitate an immediate, permanent ceasefire that includes a complete withdraw of Israeli forces from Gaza, and the release of all hostages and arbitrarily detained Palestinians. I urge the ICC to swiftly issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu and senior Israeli officials to finally hold them accountable for this genocide, as is obviously warranted by these well-documented violations of the Genocide Convention under international law.”
She means something really specific when she says "knowing the history" because in DC history, local knowledge & expertise needs to work to validate decisions power already made- and that means it needs to sound credible. She's saying students don't have the Expert Totem she has.
One of my all-time favorite talks about how "history" and "expertise" works in Washington is by @razaraz describing how Iran experts function in policy spaces despite not knowing the language, ever having been there, really knowing much, etc. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hf6rql0D0OU
and it basically works like this; what the experts are lending to power isn't a sort of colonial knowledge that informs and guides decision makers to devious ends, its credibility. that's why it doesn't matter if the pet historians are shitty. it matters that they have books.
Hillary isn't saying that students' conclusions are wrong this isn't actually a statement about knowing something she's saying your opinions aren't *credentialed* and that's why the opinions of DC experts always outweigh what you can see with your own eyes. you're just some hog.
and what makes you credentialed or an expert is amorphous and shifting. I had someone basically point their finger at me and go "you're an Iran expert now" and it stuck for years bc I had a good Farsi accent and some war nerd understanding of the Iranian military.
and diplomats valorize language aptitude not because they really use it for their job but because it imparts a disproportionate amount of swag or gravitas. Tom Friedman or Michael Oren can be monstrously wrong but have been around a long time or have a certain CV & that works
you can't be just some nobody, you can't be an obvious crank- that's why Gorka was a fucking laughingstock- but this is how "oh its just so complicated" or "you need to study the history" actually works as an obfuscating tactic.
as a tangent there's a whole aside early in Eichmann in Jerusalem where dullard midwit Eichmann reinvents himself as a "Jew expert" and he sounds just like every lanyard area studies dumbass hanging around U street he's just like see, there is an art to dealing with these people
I would like to say that I've noticed a whole lot less talk about Eurovision, both here and on social media, which impresses me. Because kinda like the Olympics, it's a big deal for the countries involved, and it's hard to mentally/emotionally boycott something like that.
Can we have a President who doesn't approach a major humanitarian crisis that he's funding and fueling with the grace and dignity of a drunk uncle at Thanksgiving Dinner?
In Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part II, the Earl of Warwick warns the king of an impending revolt, which is one of those
main chance of things
As yet not come to life, who in their seeds
And weak beginning lie intreasured
The ailing but canny king rises to the occasion:
Are these things then necessities?
Then let us meet them like necessities.
A brutal war ensues, in which Henry saves his kingdom.
King Henry’s response is a piece of wisdom well suited to a moment when clamoring or nervous politicians, addled demonstrators, and would-be anarchists or revolutionaries have scarcely anything sensible at all to say about the wars of our time.
The case of Israel against Hamas, and specifically the question of a potential invasion of Rafah, Gaza, is particularly striking. Freezing the conflict before the destruction of Hamas as an effective military organization (as a political movement, it may last a very long time) has no prospect of delivering anything remotely like peace. Insisting that the Israelis find a humane way of destroying an enemy, without collateral damage, is absurd when that force is deeply and cunningly dug in and fortified, and indeed prefers for political reasons to see its own civilians suffer. If such an alternative existed, surely someone would have described it for the rest of us.
The fact—the necessity, as King Henry might have put it—is that although any force engaging in urban warfare has a responsibility to limit civilian casualties, city fighting is ruinous. The residents of Mosul, Fallujah, or for that matter of Aachen in 1944, would agree.
Halting the war now, leaving Hamas still standing, is a surefire way to breed more wars. Doing so would encourage Hamas to fulfill its promise of launching many more October 7–style attacks. It would also embolden Iran, which has already gotten away with firing massive volleys of long-range missiles at Israeli cities; Hezbollah, which has ignored a deal requiring it to withdraw behind the Litani River and is waging a low-level war across the Lebanon frontier; and the Houthis, who have been taking potshots at merchant shipping.
The effectiveness of antimissile defenses has shielded governments from treating necessities like necessities. Indeed, it has in some measure obscured the existential nature of the long-running Israel-Hamas war. Western leaders have preferred not to take seriously the eliminationist rhetoric of Hamas, Iran, and their various proxies, just as they preferred not to take Vladimir Putin’s rhetoric denying the existence of a legitimate Ukraine seriously.
The vacuous commitment of Western leaders to stand with Ukraine “for as long as it takes” allows them to avoid defining that awkward word, it. Creeping talk of cease-fires—in which the Ukrainians evince no interest—substitutes for providing Ukraine with the means to win. More hard thinking of a Henrician kind would make clear that a cease-fire would produce only a demoralized Ukraine, a triumphal Russia, a blow to Western prestige—and, in the end, a renewed Russian war of conquest. It would also force other states in the path of Russia’s ruthless imperial ambitions to choose between accommodation and nuclear proliferation.
In both cases, there is in Western circles a desire to avoid confronting the awfulness of real war—not war waged in far-off lands for obscure purposes, but war waged to save or destroy nations, wars launched with massacre and the promise of more massacre in the event of victory by the side that started them.
There is a deeper civilizational malady here, the kind that manifests in magical thinking about political choice. It was audible in the calls for defunding the police, which did not pause to consider that crime rates might rise when officers cease to keep the streets safe; in the claims that gargantuan deficits would not lead to inflation; and in the assertion that you can keep children completely safe from risks of COVID without paying a penalty in their mental health.
Part of the transition to adulthood lies in accepting that actions have consequences, that money spent on one thing is not available for another, that not all stories have happy endings, that not all good things are compatible. Maturity is, above all, the recognition that reality is reality, and that when it conflicts with your wishes and desires, it always wins.
If a substantial number of members of Congress, on both sides of the aisle, act like spoiled teenagers, it is because few penalties exist for adult legislators acting like brats. Indeed, many of their constituents prefer it so. Under such circumstances, it should come as no surprise that student protesters complain when their university fails to feed them even as they occupy its buildings and muscle the janitors, or insist on wearing masks so that, unlike Martin Luther King Jr. or Henry David Thoreau, they do not have to take responsibility for civil disobedience. While there have been some notably adult responses to student unrest—University of Florida President Ben Sasse stands out in his insistence that students are not children and should not be treated as such—for the most part university presidents have flattered and appeased students rather than reproved them, even as some of those students have called for the destruction of the world’s only Jewish state.
The world has a distinctly 1930s feel to it. Western leaders have offered stirring or at least forceful rhetoric in response to multiple crises. But when it comes to deeds rather than words, the record is less compelling. During the Cold War, countries spent 4 or 5 percent of their GDP on defense, and the United States got as high as 8 percent. Today, even the United States is below 3 percent. There is a broad political consensus that China is a growing threat, that Iran is a violent menace, and that Russia is an imperial revanchist state. Yet no one is seriously calling for the kind of sacrifices that are needed to meet the crisis, such as raising taxes to reverse the shrinkage of the United States Navy or create the kind of industrial base that could sustain the American military should worse come to worst.
With some notable exceptions, Europe is even more lost in its world of wishful thinking than the U.S. is. France’s Emmanuel Macron may talk of stationing Western forces in Ukraine, but unless his and other governments introduce large-scale conscription and create the industries required to sustain armies, they will not have much by way of land forces to do it. Great Britain, a traditional defense stalwart, will struggle to meet a target of 2.5 percent of GDP spent on defense by 2030—as its forces have shrunk to levels not seen, in some cases, since Victorian times.
Thucydides, of whom Shakespeare’s King Henry would have approved, famously said that war is a rough master, a violent teacher. In peace and prosperity, he said, states and individuals do not find themselves “suddenly confronted with imperious necessity.” At a time when war flickers on the borders of a generally peaceful and generally prosperous and generally immature West, we would do well to heed his wisdom, and that of the tired but resolute Shakespearean king.
I am too tired to rebutt this massacrist drivel bit by bit so a simple “fuck you and go to hell Cohen” will have to suffice.
In a time where so many awful events are happening, I have to say I got some catharsis watching Joe Scarborough and Hillary Clinton grump together about how younger people are correctly calling a chain of SoS and presidents war criminals for their actions and how terrible it is that there is pushback on Madeleine Albright's name getting put on a building.
In a series of town hall meetings with students, faculty and staff last week, City College President Vincent Boudreau attempted to quell anger and frustration about his decision to deploy the NYPD to break up a pro-Palestinian encampment on April 30, after campus police proved “inadequate” in his telling.
[L]ast week he told faculty members Tuesday that he stood by the move to clear the encampment, adding that he wished he’d done so sooner. The remarks were made at a previously unreported online town hall meeting with faculty that was viewed by THE CITY. Boudreau spoke to students at a similar online town hall Wednesday afternoon, which was also observed by THE CITY.
“Allowing the site to harden. That’s my one regret,” he said. “If what you’re implying is that we have to allow demonstrators free run of the campus…I reject that.”
last week he told faculty members Tuesday that he stood by the move to clear the encampment, adding that he wished he’d done so sooner. The remarks were made at a previously unreported online town hall meeting with faculty that was viewed by THE CITY. Boudreau spoke to students at a similar online town hall Wednesday afternoon, which was also observed by THE CITY.
“Allowing the site to harden. That’s my one regret,” he said. “If what you’re implying is that we have to allow demonstrators free run of the campus…I reject that.”
CUNY has since approved another $4 million to hire 100 additional private officers at City College, with 30 of them already there to patrol the usually open Harlem campus, he said. The emergency procurement to handle “campus unrest” through the end of the semester at a weekly cost of $600,000 a week, follows mid-year layoffs and expected funding cuts of more than $100 million by the end of the year.
But wait, what's this I see about the CUNY City College President when he was a college student?
Boudreau, a political scientist specializing in the politics of social movements, was arrested at least five times while pushing for the university to divest from South Africa as a grad student at Cornell University in the 1980’s. He was one of hundreds of students there arrested over the course of several months in demonstrations that included sit-ins and the erection of a “shanty town” where students camped out for 65 days.
In a series of town hall meetings with students, faculty and staff last week, City College President Vincent Boudreau attempted to quell anger and frustration about his decision to deploy the NYPD to break up a pro-Palestinian encampment on April 30, after campus police proved “inadequate” in his telling.
[L]ast week he told faculty members Tuesday that he stood by the move to clear the encampment, adding that he wished he’d done so sooner. The remarks were made at a previously unreported online town hall meeting with faculty that was viewed by THE CITY. Boudreau spoke to students at a similar online town hall Wednesday afternoon, which was also observed by THE CITY.
“Allowing the site to harden. That’s my one regret,” he said. “If what you’re implying is that we have to allow demonstrators free run of the campus…I reject that.”
last week he told faculty members Tuesday that he stood by the move to clear the encampment, adding that he wished he’d done so sooner. The remarks were made at a previously unreported online town hall meeting with faculty that was viewed by THE CITY. Boudreau spoke to students at a similar online town hall Wednesday afternoon, which was also observed by THE CITY.
“Allowing the site to harden. That’s my one regret,” he said. “If what you’re implying is that we have to allow demonstrators free run of the campus…I reject that.”
CUNY has since approved another $4 million to hire 100 additional private officers at City College, with 30 of them already there to patrol the usually open Harlem campus, he said. The emergency procurement to handle “campus unrest” through the end of the semester at a weekly cost of $600,000 a week, follows mid-year layoffs and expected funding cuts of more than $100 million by the end of the year.
But wait, what's this I see about the CUNY City College President when he was a college student?
Boudreau, a political scientist specializing in the politics of social movements, was arrested at least five times while pushing for the university to divest from South Africa as a grad student at Cornell University in the 1980’s. He was one of hundreds of students there arrested over the course of several months in demonstrations that included sit-ins and the erection of a “shanty town” where students camped out for 65 days.
I would just like to say again that to be a UN aid worker you have to have a considerable portfolio of doing foreign aid and also be able to speak the language of the region.
Killing them isn't just to try to dissuade more aid workers from coming in, it's depleting the supply.
Meanwhile as Israel bombs Rafah and prepares to assault it. Via Washington Post.
The Biden administration informally notified congressional committees Tuesday that it planned to move forward with more than $1 billion in weapons deals for Israel, said U.S. officials familiar with the matter, a major transfer of lethal aid that comes a week after the White House paused a single shipment of bombs due to concerns that a planned assault in southern Gaza could cause immense civilian casualties.
The arms deals allow for the potential transfer of $700 million in tank ammunition, $500 million in tactical vehicles and $60 million in mortar rounds, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.
The decision underscores the administration’s reluctance to defy pro-Israel donors in the Democratic Party who criticized Biden’s decision to withhold a shipment last week that included controversial 2,000-pound bombs that have been involved in mass casualty events in Gaza.
An exchange from the State Department press briefing today:
QUESTION: And we have Israeli politicians saying that they want to see Gaza being erased off the map. We have Israeli politicians saying that they are going to move back in and recolonize Gaza with the people of Gaza or not. Do you hear any echoes on that from language that you’ve used about other conflicts from that platform?
MR PATEL: So we have been pretty clear that that kind of rhetoric has really no place in the discourse as we talk about this region of the world. I will also say that some of those things, they are inconsistent with what our viewpoints and beliefs are for the day after this conflict. We are not for a reoccupation of Gaza by Israel.
Ultimately, what we want to see is a Gaza that is reunited under the Palestinian Authority, a Gaza where Hamas is no longer a threat to the Israeli people, and a Gaza that can no longer be a springboard for terrorism. And that is what we are working towards.
Rhetoric is simply that – it’s rhetoric. It’s a distraction, and sometimes the language and the verbiage and the word choice that is used is incredibly problematic. But that is not what we’re focused on. We’re focused on the facts and we’re focused on doing whatever we can to bring a conclusion to this conflict.
"Unless it's rhetoric deployed on a college campus against the Israeli government, in which case we will demonize, brutalize, and criminalize every last one of you monsters."
An exchange from the State Department press briefing today:
QUESTION: And we have Israeli politicians saying that they want to see Gaza being erased off the map. We have Israeli politicians saying that they are going to move back in and recolonize Gaza with the people of Gaza or not. Do you hear any echoes on that from language that you’ve used about other conflicts from that platform?
MR PATEL: So we have been pretty clear that that kind of rhetoric has really no place in the discourse as we talk about this region of the world. I will also say that some of those things, they are inconsistent with what our viewpoints and beliefs are for the day after this conflict. We are not for a reoccupation of Gaza by Israel.
Ultimately, what we want to see is a Gaza that is reunited under the Palestinian Authority, a Gaza where Hamas is no longer a threat to the Israeli people, and a Gaza that can no longer be a springboard for terrorism. And that is what we are working towards.
Rhetoric is simply that – it’s rhetoric. It’s a distraction, and sometimes the language and the verbiage and the word choice that is used is incredibly problematic. But that is not what we’re focused on. We’re focused on the facts and we’re focused on doing whatever we can to bring a conclusion to this conflict.
"Unless it's rhetoric deployed on a college campus against the Israeli government, in which case we will demonize, brutalize, and criminalize every last one of you monsters."
What is the pay for White House department press flak? Cause surely it ain’t fucking worth your fucking soul.
The City College thing is especially funny when you realize there's a high school located within the grounds right next to the encampment. The high school was not shut down, unlike college buildings much further away. Students were not relocated to another school for the duration. They just had classes. The security theater is just laughable.
If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing
In The Destruction of the European Jews (1961), the historian Raul Hilberg argued that the elimination of a people is “a step-by-step operation.” First comes defining the group, then expropriating its resources, then concentrating its members in one place, and finally annihilating them. Saddam’s campaign against the Kurds, we determined, fit Hilberg’s paradigm to perfection. It clearly met the definition of genocide under international law: “Intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.” We were never able to arrange a trial of Saddam’s government in the International Court of Justice (ICJ), but the Iraqi interim government used some of our evidence when it tried Saddam and other leading officials, including his cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid (known as Chemical Ali), and executed them.
I stepped down as executive director of HRW in 1993, a year before the slaughter of the Tutsi in Rwanda. The organization called that, too, a genocide. In this century it has only used the term to characterize the persecution and slaughter of the Rohingya in Myanmar.
In late December, when South Africa brought to the ICJ its accusation that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, I did not join some of my colleagues in the international human rights movement in their support of the charge. I was deeply distressed by Israel’s bombing campaign, particularly by its frequent use in densely populated areas of 500- and 2,000-pound bombs—supplied by the United States—that were killing large numbers of civilian noncombatants. (On May 8 Biden halted the shipment of such bombs to prevent their use in Rafah.) Such weapons are clearly inappropriate for use in those circumstances. Yet I was not convinced that this constituted genocide.
I thought then, and continue to believe, that Israel had a right to retaliate against Hamas for the murderous rampage it carried out on October 7. I also thought that Israel’s retaliation could include an attempt to incapacitate Hamas so that it could not launch such an attack again. To recognize this right to retaliate is not to mitigate Israel’s culpability for the indiscriminate use of tactics and weapons that have caused disproportionate harm to civilians, but I believe that Hamas shares responsibility for many of Israel’s war crimes. Hamas’s leaders knew, when they planned the attack, that Israel had the most right-wing government in its history, at immense cost to the civilian population of Gaza.
Hamas’s operatives do not wear uniforms, and they have no visible military bases. Hamas has embedded itself in the civilian population of Gaza, and its extensive network of tunnels provides its combatants the ability to move around quickly. Even if Israel’s bombers were intent on minimizing harm to civilians, they would have had difficulty doing so in their effort to destroy Hamas.
And yet, even believing this, I am now persuaded that Israel is engaged in genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. What has changed my mind is its sustained policy of obstructing the movement of humanitarian assistance into the territory.*
As early as October 9 top Israeli officials declared that they intended to block the delivery of food, water, and electricity, which is essential for purifying water and cooking. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s words have become infamous: “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly.” The statement conveyed the view that has seemed to guide Israel’s approach throughout the conflict: that Gazans are collectively complicit for Hamas’s crimes on October 7.
Since then Israel has restricted the number of vehicles allowed to enter Gaza, reduced the number of entry points, and conducted time-consuming and onerous inspections; destroyed farms and greenhouses; limited the delivery of fuel needed for the transport of food and water within the enclave; killed more than two hundred Palestinian aid workers, many of them employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the principal aid provider in the blockaded territory before October 7; and persuaded many donors, including the United States, to stop funding UNRWA by claiming that a dozen of the agency’s 13,000 employees in Gaza were involved in the October 7 attack or have other connections to Hamas. (An investigation by former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna, released on April 22, concluded that Israel had provided no evidence to support its allegations and that UNRWA is “irreplaceable and indispensable.”) The air strikes on April 1 that destroyed all three vehicles in a World Central Kitchen convoy, killing six international aid workers and a Palestinian driver and translator, seemed a continuation of these policies. Israel’s explanation that this was the result of a “misidentification” has aroused skepticism. As a result, other humanitarian groups may be deterred from providing aid.
The cumulative effect of these measures is that many Palestinians—especially young children—are starving. In April the Gaza Health Ministry reported that twenty-eight children have died of starvation. That number could multiply many times over if reports on food insecurity are valid. On April 10 USAID Administrator Samantha Power answered “yes” when asked, at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, whether famine is already occurring in Gaza. On May 3 Cindy McCain, executive director of the World Food Program, stated on NBC News that there is a “full-blown famine in northern Gaza.” Deaths from famine are only a fraction of the total fatalities reported by the ministry. As of this writing, 34,904 Palestinians have been killed, including at least 14,685 children and 9,670 women, and another 78,514 have been injured. Though some Israelis dispute these figures, they are in truth probably an undercount because they do not include those buried under the rubble.
Many of those who survive malnutrition will suffer long-term consequences such as increased susceptibility to illnesses and psychological damage. In Gaza’s north, UNICEF found in February that malnutrition among children under five had nearly doubled in a month. The obstruction of humanitarian assistance is unlikely to affect Hamas combatants directly. Even in conditions of famine, men with guns find a way to get fed. It is those who bear no responsibility for Hamas’s crimes who are suffering most.
All access to the territory is controlled by the Israel Defense Forces, which have denied entry to Israeli and Palestinian human rights organizations and to international organizations like HRW and Amnesty International. Limiting the ability of these organizations to gather information and make detailed reports on the conflict hardly insulates Israel from criticism for its abuses. That is because international observers judge the conflict in Gaza on the basis of principles and assumptions that the human rights movement has helped to establish.
Jewish Biden appointee resigning:
"I can no longer in good conscience continue to represent this administration amidst President Biden’s disastrous, continued support for Israel’s genocide…what is the point of having power if you will not use it to stop crimes against humanity?"
WASHINGTON (AP) — An Interior Department staffer on Wednesday became the first Jewish political appointee to publicly resign in protest of U.S. support for Israel’s war in Gaza.
Lily Greenberg Call, a special assistant to the chief of staff in the Interior Department, accused President Joe Biden of using Jews to justify U.S. policy in the conflict.
Call had worked for the presidential campaigns of both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, and was a longtime activist and advocate for Israel in Washington and elsewhere before joining the government.
She is at least the fifth mid- or senior-level administration staffer to make public their resignation in protest of the Biden administration’s military and diplomatic support of the now seven-month Israeli war against Hamas. She is the second political appointee to do so, after an Education Department official of Palestinian heritage resigned in January.
Her resignation letter described her excitement at joining an administration that she believed shared much of her vision for the country. “However, I can no longer in good conscience continue to represent this administration,” she wrote.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Call pointed to comments by Biden, including at a White House Hanukkah event where he said “Were there no Israel, there wouldn’t be a Jew in the world who was safe” and at an event at Washington’s Holocaust Memorial last week in which he said the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attacks that triggered the war were driven by an “ancient desire to wipe out the Jewish people.”
“He is making Jews the face of the American war machine. And that is so deeply wrong,” she said, noting that ancestors of hers were killed by “state-sponsored violence.”
Posts
Everyone who signed off on that report is a coward.
3DS: 2981-5304-3227
Can already tell the excuse: "now's not the time though"
If not now, when?
Steam
I was reading about how planners for the DNC are trying to make it partially online/streaming because of worries about protesters inside and outside of the convention.
A lot of stressing over mayor of Chicago Brandon Johnson being on the side of the protesters, not the party.
Lots of stressing about being on the wrong fucking side of the issue instead of just not being on the wrong fucking side of the issue.
Dumb motherfuckers reap what they sow.
There's other, much more awful precedence going back to 68 and I didn't realize till now that the DNC was in Chicago this year and boy does history love to repeat itself in the worst ways
Waves.
Oh of course, that's US humanitarian assistance. All the humanitarian assistance from the UN, well, I guess the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of that, thus necessitating the construction of a floating pier.
But that does not necessitate ceasing the shipment of military aid from the United States to Israel, apparently.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I just…I don’t even know what to say at this point.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Former Diplomat Josef Burton:
Rather than quote the entire statement, which is reiterating information we are already aware of, I think their sub-heading really sums it all up:
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WoW
Dear Satan.....
No?
Worth a shot.
That ambulatory bag of wrinkles is the exact wrong person to lead the nation at this moment.
We are a nightmare society
EDIT:
I am too tired to rebutt this massacrist drivel bit by bit so a simple “fuck you and go to hell Cohen” will have to suffice.
But wait, what's this I see about the CUNY City College President when he was a college student?
Imagine selling out your morals this hard.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
3DS Friend Code: 0216-0898-6512
Switch Friend Code: SW-7437-1538-7786
What else can you really add to this
Killing them isn't just to try to dissuade more aid workers from coming in, it's depleting the supply.
https://archive.is/xMM4w
"Unless it's rhetoric deployed on a college campus against the Israeli government, in which case we will demonize, brutalize, and criminalize every last one of you monsters."
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
What is the pay for White House department press flak? Cause surely it ain’t fucking worth your fucking soul.
International Law isn’t real, it’s just whatever the hegemon feels like
Laws only exist if there are consequences.
https://apnews.com/article/resignation-gaza-war-biden-israel-a55c20d136f08127d16bce6ced1af82d