The law ( the Leahy Law) requires that the US vet any foreign military receiving US arms. However, that doesn’t happen with Israel
I think a lot of U.S. politicians and legacy media outlets were genuinely caught off-guard by the backlash. Prior to the Netanyahu era, support for Israel in the U.S. was basically non-controversial. But he fucked that up just like he fucks up everything else.
Netanyahu has been an unmitigated disaster in every conceivable way, for a long time. The Israeli people really need to kick him to the curb.
I mean, at this point he’s squandering good will and sympathy generated for Israel after a terrorist group specifically targeted civilians for rape, torture, and murder. It feels like something that should be impossible - I mean, it’s not like anyone sane would side with freaking Hamas.
If you’re opposed to Hamas, it should be trivially easy to maintain the moral and political high ground over them. Yet he’s somehow failing even that.
Cripes, what a clusterfuck.
I keep reposting this one quote: “The bar to clear was on the ground and y’all brought shovels.”
Look into his dad and his grandpa, it has a history
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Shrug, the US elected Trump and are acting like they want to do it again…
Oh good, whataboutism always takes a conversation to interesting places, said no one, ever.
No one is defending the United States. People are saying the nexus of U.S. corruption and Israeli corruption is proving itself to be a plague on humanity.
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It’s less the backlash and more the attacks on Jews that are surprising.
The US has always had a small, vocal minority that hates Israel.
Yeah, and the “vocal minority” gained strength when Netanyahu spoke before a joint session of Congress and insulted everyone to the left of Mussolini. And then the 2014 Gaza War was disproportionate and all over social media. And then Netanyahu named a fucking settlement after Trump, America’s worst president since Andrew Johnson. And now he’s razing Gaza and belongs at The Hague.
I didn’t even think about the whole, entire Levant much prior to that shit. I have no connection to the wider Mideast and frankly, still don’t think it’s interesting. I like nature more than religion so there’s nothing in Jerusalem for me. (Tel Aviv sounds nicer.) But now I’m like, “Please stop bombing civilians using the weapons I apparently have to pay for. For some reason? Is Israel strategically important? Why?”
And Likud-ass people are accusing me of hating Israel. I didn’t have an opinion but now I do. Fuck all religious nationalists with a broomstick no one has sanded down.
Yes this is a good example of the vocal minority
Cat’s out the bag, dog. Shouldn’t have had world’s most incompetent prime minister.
Blame Netty
Israel has more influence over American foreign policy than American citizens.
At this point I do believe that US government are owned by Isreal. Influence is an understatement of US response to anything Isreal related.
Trump literally move the US embassy putting US citzen at risk for no valuable reason.
The CIA staged a coup in Iran in 1953 at the behest of Britain/British Petroleum when the newly elected PM decided to nationalize the oil fields. Iran remains Israel’s greatest geopolitical foe, because of Israel’s ties to the West.
The Suez Canal, an originally French/British colonial venture, which carries an absurd amount of cargo from former British colonies into the Mediterranean, was the cause of the Six Day War; not to mention there’s a plan for a new canal through Israel to avoid all the nasty geopolitical issues the Suez Canal raises.
The US has a network of Middle Eastern allies and enemies and meddles in the affairs of every middle eastern nation because they’ve got all that sweet light crude we love so much.
Do you think, maybe, that the US’s (and more broadly the West’s) objectives in the region outweigh, possibly, whatever “influence” Israel has over our politics?
“If Israel didn’t exist, we would have to invent it.”
Very true because money speaks volumes and people don’t VOTE, and many of those who do have no understanding of how to recognize real balanced news so they just go with the loudest, most agenda driven sources.
Try to run for office without the support of the Israel lobby… there goes your PAC money. Obama ran with Biden as a nod to the Israel lobby because Biden was their darling and Obama was known to attend pro-Palestine conferences.
The US is a global empire built on oil, which makes Israel (an ideologically similar nation in the middle of the largest oil producing region on earth) a natural partner. Influence doesn’t really have anything to do with it.
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Yes that’s how foreign policy work?
The Jews own all the media outlets and control the judiciary and the police. That’s why.
No. Just no. Go home and rethink that.
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Hey I found one in the wild, neat!
Is that you, Adolf?
Because it turns turns billions in public funds into billions in private profits.
The fact that those profits come at the expense of children’s lives doesn’t worry the oil and gas industries, so why would it worry weapons manufacturers?
They could get the same effect by arming Ukraine without looking like a bunch of assholes
Unfortunately, that’s not how greed works. They’ll never say “no thanks, we’ve made enough profit from Ukraine”.
No one’s suggesting they say that
I am. Would be hella refreshing for these arms dealers to grow a conscience, even if just a tiny one.
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You can take your Mein Kampf conspiracy theories and fuck off.
We can see who America arms and your bullshit doesn’t even hold up for the Israeli rulers responsible, let alone an entire race of people scattered all over the world.
The US is an Israeli puppet state.
You can credibldy argue that Israel has an outsized influence of US foreign policy, but to call the US an “Israeli puppet state” is such a hyperbolic exaggeration that it sounds less like a valid criticism and more like the old “Jews control the world” antisemitic hate speech.
The US has far more influence on Israel than vice versa
Its hard to tell sometimes whether somebody is using phrasing like that naively or as a dog whistle (which is why its an effective dog whistle). The reality is Israel plays a critical role in maintaining US empire and public image and Netanyahu is cashing in those in for a racist child-killing spree.
Agreed. The USA is simply too powerful to ever become anyone’s lapdog, they’re a force unto themselves
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I must have missed the memo where raping women to death, slicing off their tits, and mutilating their vaginas is classified as “resisting oppression”.
Hamas is bad. Very bad.
Edit: I should have included the sauce.
must have missed the memo where raping women to death, slicing off their tits, and mutilating their vaginas is classified as “resisting oppression”.
I missed the proof this happened
I did too, but what we do have proof of, in the form of hours and hours of grisly trauma-inducing footage, is quite bad enough. While we can rightly condemn its overuse, there is no universe in which the Israelis can be blamed for reacting with force.
so why spread lies?
Video testimony of an eyewitness
Police have privately shown journalists a single horrific testimony
this isn’t proof
Fog of war. All information about the war is provisional at this point. The full truth will come out eventually. In the meantime, I can at least believe that the BBC saw what they say they saw. If the footage itself was faked, we will find out at some point.
Here you go. But be warned, it is hard to read.
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Yes, I agree with you. It’s a tale as old as time.
Song as old as rhyme
Beeyu-tee aaaand…the Beeeast
Let’s not commit to hyperbole. Netty is just a manipulative ass who needs Israel distracted with another war
fucking oppressed palestinian people, how dare they resist genocide, right?
There is no genocide of Palestinians. Less than 1% of Palestinians have been killed in this conflict
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
a. Killing members of the group; Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
b. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
c. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
d. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
I’m not totally convinced that this is Israel’s intent—most of what I’ve seen points to a brazen and sociopathic indifference typical of 7th graders and goofy “strongman” populists like Netanyahu alike—but the percentage of the population killed does not factor in determining whether it is genocide.
They’ve killed 0.6% of the population, counting enemy militants.
Gaza is 5x the density of Mosul, in which the US (who quite obviously was not committing genocide) killed ~10,000 civilians.
Things can be shitty and not be genocide.
Again, I really don’t to weigh in on whether or not it is genocide, if only because I’m not gonna change anybody’s opinion here. Alls I’m saying is that the qualifications for genocide do not include the destruction of the entire, or even the majority of, the population.
Any sane look at the situation makes it obvious it is not genocide
Raz Segal is an associate professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Stockton University and the endowed professor in the study of modern genocide.
TIL A Jewish professor of Holocaust and genocide studies is insane.
And I’m still not trying to argue with you on that. I’m just saying that the numbers you’re citing do not support your case. There are most definitely situations where killing 0.6% of a population would be considered genocide.
True fact.
Don’t ask that question, it’s anti-Semitic.
A sad and horrifying reality. The biggest success of Zionism is that it has hidden itself behind antisemitism.
Why is the US still sending an endless supply of arms to Israel without conditions?
This is the actual answer.
This lobby group is extremely effective and any legislator that opposes them will see their primary or electoral opponents get millions of dollars in funding.
Look, AIPAC sucks but do you guys really think we wouldn’t be dumping weapons into the middle east if it weren’t for the Israel lobby? Like the US government doesn’t have its own reasons for doing so?
Like someone else said here, it funnels public money into private profits. What I do not get however is this system only furthers inequality which is going to snap the system at some point to the detriment of all, including the billionaires who will increasingly be in a hostile environment. Why shit on your own doorstep when you could make it better for all including yourself and your family. Really foolish thinking but oh well, as really, we seem absolutely committed to this dark path.
These billionaires think they and theirs are above everything. They can kill millions without a real danger to them and theirs. Lack of fear.
short term profits trump long term savings, none of these people can see beyond the end of the quarter
This isn’t short term, Eisenhower was warning about the military industrial complex
Snesley Butler wrote War is a Racket in 1935. This is nothing new unfortunately.
That’s an easy answer. If you’re rich enough, you have private security and a mansion with acres of land surrounded by razor wire. You won’t feel a thing.
Maybe if you have private security robots unconnected to the internet. Maybe they do, I don’t know.
Obviously the US government is sending an endless supply of arms to Israel without conditions because doing so serves its purposes.
The question that you need to ask is how it serves its purposes - how is it that the US government benefits by enabling Israel’s Palestinian genocide.
My theory, also supported by other US government actions in the Middle East (such as the Iraq war) is that the US government’s overall goal in the Middle East is destabilization.
And that stands to reason, since the Middle East’s wealth administered by stable and progressive governments rather than reactionary autocracies could he a threat to western hegemony.
Or more simply, a Middle East consumed by strife can’t be stable, and thus can’t invest sufficient time and resources into being a serious player on the world stage, since too much of its time and resources is diverted into dealing with internal strife, or pissed away by the dysfunctional governments that have come to power as a result of of the strife.
And Israel, and specifically the overt violence and oppression and now genocide failing to hide behind a shabby mask of “defense” and “security” in which Israel continues to engage, is key to that strife.
If you look at US foreign policy in the Middle East through that lens - asking yourself, at every turn, how does this accord with the presumption that the broad goal of the US government in the Middle East is destabilization, then a lot of things that don’t make sense otherwise suddenly do.
My theory, also supported by other US government actions in the Middle East (such as the Iraq war) is that the US government’s overall goal in the Middle East is destabilization.
The exact opposite is the actual reason the US supports Israel.
Oh, you sweet summer child.
I’m not one for conspiracy theories, sorry.
This is correct. I was down with that post until this same sentence. Dude started off on the right path and then just went 180 in the wrong direction.
Israel is the sole democracy in the middle east, defined as a flawed democracy (same as America) by political science.
If we stopped supplying it with weapons and might, it would be overrun by Iran and the Israeli people would be killed to the last. Iran will never stop arming and funding terrorism against Israel. Any apparent respect Iran shows to Israel’s borders or legitimacy is an act, a pretext of peace, an armistice really, until they wage total war against Israel. Iranians man, don’t let the world have anything nice. It is not in America’s national interest to let the only democracy in the region fall, and lose any hope for human rights in the middleeast.
Agreed. Though I don’t demonize Iran to the same extent they’re clearly enablers of a lot of crap vs USA simply selling guns to an actual government that has a head of state etc
Yep. You don’t need a fancy graduate degree in IR to know this. US policy in the Middle East has always been a pretty open book. The fact that it’s often been disastrous isn’t evidence of some vast conspiracy to keep the Arab world down. To the contrary, it’s evidence of deep stupidity, hubris, arrogance and wilful ignorance on the part of US leadership. Never attribute to malice that which can more easily be attributed to stupidity.
MONEY. This isn’t fucking rocket science.
It kinda is, the US IS sending them rockets.
What money? From whom?
It always amazes me how cheap it is to buy politicians, as compared to how much spending they decide on.
I do think the EU should more heavily invest in bribing USA politicians, especially since it’s been legalized. The ROI just seems amazing.
And I wish that I was being sarcastic, but I’m not. EU pro democracy bribes and dark money pac’s could be a counter to authoritarian states their dark money/influence projects, helping out the embattled USA democracy. And when the USA fascists see that their pro democracy opponents are receiving as much/more money from slush funds, then they might be more open to the idea of making all bribery illegal again.
It’s funny when some of this corruption in the US is brought to light, you envision these huge sums of money, secret bank accounts, etc. Then it’s just some loser hiding 10k in gold bars under his bed or some shit.
Gateway tineout
US taxpayers.
…they already have that money
It’s a convenient way to transfer money to arms dealers.
They already have that money
How do you work that out?
He’s just a sad troll. I recommend blocking him. Everything I see him say is ridiculous and out of touch with reality.
Military aid is money already apportioned.
What are you talking about? There aren’t even enough munitions for Ukraine.
Anything we give away is something we could have sold to at least attempt to recoup American taxpayer investment.
I’m not sure why you people keep peddling the narrative that millions, or even billions of dollars in military equipment is worthless.
Sorry, that’s a lie. It’s because you don’t understand what’s happening in the world around you. Your comments are testaments to that fact.
There aren’t even enough munitions for Ukraine.
I assure you the US can produce enough weapons to kill every man, woman, and child on this planet many times over.
I’m not sure why you people keep peddling the narrative that millions, or even billions of dollars in military equipment is worthless.
I don’t think it’s worthless. I think it’s a good use of resources
I assure you the US can produce enough weapons
Who pays for the added production? It’s like you’re arguing the US has more than enough with weapons it was going to replace anyways, then when that’s not actually enough you’re trying to make it seem like production is free, too.
I’m not understanding - is it your view that we cannot supply weapons because production is too costly?
Because that’s silly. The ROI is absurd here.
Fuck Israel. I say this as a Jew so color me antisemitic, the US Congress 🖤
You’re not antisemitic, you’re just stupid.
When the next Holocaust happens (we can see the world persecuting Jews in these very months…), and Israel will be the only one to save you, turn them down, because you obviously hate them so much.
Because our government is controlled by the AIPAC lobby.
Money
To fuel the next crisis, obviously.
About 500 billion dollars worth of oil and gas is the answer.
There is an opportunity here to develop the gas fields in offshore Gaza, on behalf of the Palestinians," Hochstein told The National, adding “as soon as we get to the day after and this horrible war ends, there are companies willing to develop those fields.
You read “help” I read “colonialist looting”. Guess only time will tell
Pasting from my reply elsewhere in the thread
The main issue is as soon as the Genocide started all talk of aid and economy building went out the window.
…
The US just wants access to the gas reserves, they don’t care who controls it, as long as they’ll be aligned with the petro dollar.
Israel will control the reserves after the genocide is over, that’s the point. Israel wants access to that revenue stream and bombing Palestinians is a really reliable way to ensure that.
Lol people on here talking about the US wanting to genocide Palestinians and in the meantime were actively working to build them an economy for after the war
The main issue is as soon as the Genocide started all talk of aid and economy building went out the window.
Read the article with a critical eye.
The US just wants access to the gas reserves, they don’t care who controls it, as long as they’ll be aligned with the petro dollar.
Israel will control the reserves after the genocide is over, that’s the point. Israel wants access to that revenue stream and bombing Palestinians is a really reliable way to ensure that.
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The US produces more oil than OPEC
But fossil fuels are a finite non-renewable resource. The more they extract the less they have left, and I doubt they are gonna wait untill it runs out to start looking for other sources.
I’m sure they will have a team assess the ROI
Seems like the Guardian is all kerpluxed that US is using diplomacy behind closed doors rather than announce everything to the world. Tuff stuff.
How has that diplomacy worked out the past 80 years?
With a blip during Trump fairly well
Did trump invade two countries in 2000s for dubious reasons?
Asking for a friend.
No, he just released 5,000 Taliban and signed a surrender.
That’s what happens when a country loses a war after 20 years of fighting.
Name a battle lost to the Taliban. There was none. Trumps drawing down of forces is what lost that war.
Imagine winning every battle and still losing the war 🤡🤡
If US armed forces were winning so much… tell me why Taliban controls Afghanistan today without going to the iF We WanTS We CouLdz NuEk "eM
So much cope here lol
Sometimes? Very well.
In this case? It’s clearly not.
Freed hostages would disagree.
17,177 Palestinians would have something to say if they still could.
Which is a meaningless point in the conversation, but I sure you feel better.
Just because you don’t like inconvenient facts getting in the way of your argument doesn’t make them meaningless.
It is meaningless to the point. That’s all you can do. Spit out some shit you heard on the street and hope it sounds important.
hey now, bootlicking is a perfectly valid form of diplomacy
Did you read the article?
Why is that diplomacy taking two months when Reagan stopped the bombing of West Beirut with a phone call?
Reagan retreated from Lebanon.
Making secretive arms deals in order to “jump over” the regulations, protocols and overall legislation meant to enforce transparency and accountability over this specific type of bussiness is not diplomacy, Its corruption
The story doesn’t talk about arms deals. It only tells about support . I don’t know what you consider secretive, but if you know about it my guess is it is not.
Lol
Tell me you didnt read the article without telling me you didnt read the article.I’ll give you a hint, look at the title. The whole fucking article is about the US supplying weapons to Israel without following US legislation.
Oh so assertive…
