Biden calls for immediate cease-fire in Gaza, wants to condition future aid to Israel

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Well hey, I think an ideal solution is to incorporate Washington and Oregon to be a part of Canada, and Jammu Kashmir, Punjab, Rajasthan and Gujarat to be a part of Pakistan.

Why is your idea morally fine and mine is not?

I’m not saying my proposal is moral , just the least immoral out of the options which is sometimes the option that has to be taken . Anyway your analogy as usual does not fit as usual as the Pacific Northwest is not run by a government that is run by Nazis and constantly attacking Canada . So the Situation you are proposing does not matchup at all .

The amount of evidence I've provided that Washington and Oregon are run by nazis is equal to the amount of evidence you've provided that Palestine is run by nazis. Anybody can make any claim that they feel like making at any time. That doesn't mean claims automatically hold weight.

Read up about the grand mufti

Son, I’ve read Fuzzy Bear’s posts.  I’ve argued with Fuzzy Bear.  Fuzzy Bear is a (forum) friend of mine.  You, OSR, are no Fuzzy Bear.

[certified hummus supporter 🇵🇸🤝🇺🇸🤝🇺🇦]

Fetterman breaks from Biden here:

-Snip-

On today's episode of Fetterman glazing Israel...

[Bleach Blonde Bad Built Butch Bodies for Biden]

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-19433343.amp

Personally I think Hitler 1 was decent but Hitler 2 sucked. Hopefully the director goes back to his roots with Hitler 3.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

This got to page 9 in 34 hours? Not surprising tbh.

[KaiserDave]

It has been obvious for at least four months that the Israeli government has no long term plan for this campaign. “Destroy Hamas” is not a long term political plan for Gaza. What we have witnessed since then has just been the inevitable catastrophe of Netanyahu trying to prolong things so his political fortunes improve. The killing of aide workers is one of many war crimes I’m sure we will discover in this politically motivated humanitarian crime.

[quesaisje]

The PLO is looking for a UN vote on statehood this month. That gives Biden even more personal leverage with Israel, because it's something that no future president could reverse. But he would need to convince the government that the US withholding its veto is actually on the table.

[Stand With Israel. Crush Hamas]

The PLO is looking for a UN vote on statehood this month. That gives Biden even more personal leverage with Israel, because it's something that no future president could reverse. But he would need to convince the government that the US withholding its veto is actually on the table.

If he was to go ahead with this, it would likely be the end of his administration's leverage with Israel permanently. I don't think he's even considering it - remember, even Obama didn't on his out-the-door revenge spree.

[KaiserDave]

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and co. were incompetent war criminals but at least they had a long term political plan for Iraq and Afghanistan, even if a vague one. The construction of new liberal democracies in those countries, Israel hasn’t even the shadow of a political agenda. This is because they do not want a viable Palestinian state and this is the number one goal of the Netanyahu policy, far more than defeating Hamas or keeping Israelis safe against terrorism. Despicable.

[It’s so Joever]

The PLO is looking for a UN vote on statehood this month. That gives Biden even more personal leverage with Israel, because it's something that no future president could reverse. But he would need to convince the government that the US withholding its veto is actually on the table.

If he was to go ahead with this, it would likely be the end of his administration's leverage with Israel permanently. I don't think he's even considering it - remember, even Obama didn't on his out-the-door revenge spree.

He should keep it as an option just to push Netanyahu into possibly acting like an ally for once.

[Stand With Israel. Crush Hamas]

The PLO is looking for a UN vote on statehood this month. That gives Biden even more personal leverage with Israel, because it's something that no future president could reverse. But he would need to convince the government that the US withholding its veto is actually on the table.

If he was to go ahead with this, it would likely be the end of his administration's leverage with Israel permanently. I don't think he's even considering it - remember, even Obama didn't on his out-the-door revenge spree.

He should keep it as an option just to push Netanyahu into possibly acting like an ally for once.

Yeah, but the thing is it's a button you can only push once, and it poisons relations with the Israeli center-left as well, His goal should be to push Netanyahu out, and he seems to be focused in that direction.

[It’s so Joever]

The PLO is looking for a UN vote on statehood this month. That gives Biden even more personal leverage with Israel, because it's something that no future president could reverse. But he would need to convince the government that the US withholding its veto is actually on the table.

If he was to go ahead with this, it would likely be the end of his administration's leverage with Israel permanently. I don't think he's even considering it - remember, even Obama didn't on his out-the-door revenge spree.

He should keep it as an option just to push Netanyahu into possibly acting like an ally for once.

Yeah, but the thing is it's a button you can only push once, and it poisons relations with the Israeli center-left as well, His goal should be to push Netanyahu out, and he seems to be focused in that direction.

Even keeping it as a bluff would be helpful.

[Steve from Lambeth]

Ben-Gvir's ministry isn't actually important.  Bibi changed its name when he gave it to Ben-Gvir to make it sound as important as possible.

There's a reason you always hear about Ben-Gvir saying insane stuff but never hear about him actually doing anything.

McDonald's won't hire someone like him to flip burgers. Keeping him out of any position of government shouldn't be too hard an ask.

Good job they've defranchised all their Israeli branches now, eh?

[Ancestral Republican]

Good for Joe. It's time to end this war.

No, it isn’t.  Deif, the Sinwar Brothers, Mashal, Haniyeh, and Al-Nakhalah (among others) are still alive which means the war cannot and will not end yet.  A temporary ceasefire until Israel gets its act together on this is one thing.  Prematurely ending the completely justified war on Hamas for good is quite another.  And neither Biden nor the US can force Israel to do so.

The problem isn't that the war on Hamas isn't or is Justified. That's a given.

What seems to me the problem is that Israel is using a baseball bat to kill off the ant infestation and destroying the house in the process.

I'm no military expert, but Israel is in the same spot the US was in the Vietnam War. It's using traditional heavy handed tactics against an enemy that is using Gueriella Warfare, much like the North Vietnamese/Viet Cong did against the South Vietnamese and the US.

And we all know what happened in Vietnam right ? The US didn't exactly lose militarily, but they didn't win either,  they lost on the public relations.

Militarily, Israel is very clearly winning the war and Hamas objectively has no path to victory.  The only way this ends is with the Palestinian people getting completely annihilated.  Whatever else, one believes, you can take that to the bank.  For better or worse, that is the simple reality and it won’t change with Netanyahu out of power.  

Fixed that for you.

See the problem yet?

Yes, the problem is that you’re erroneously conflating “Hamas” with “Palestinian.”  

Nope. I'm not sure how you would have come to that conclusion from my comment. Israel's stated drive to wipe out Hamas has led to large-scale civilian casualties amongst the Palestinian people (and non Palestinians alike.)

[Ancestral Republican]

Man, Biden went from having a far better foreign policy than Trump earlier in his presidency to now being about even, perhaps worse even than his predecessor here. I can't even blame him though as part of his base is just preventing him from being more decisive. Like, I 100% know that trump would have solved the houthi problem by now (hint: bombing the everliving crap out of them). Biden can't do that though, because bleeding heart liberals. Now he's going to prevent Israel from doing the Rafah offensive thereby absolutely strengthening Hamas' hands in the hostage negociations. Pathetic.

Biden has zero principles . His views are whatever direction his party is moving in at the moment and he’s been like this for his whole career

I actually think Biden is genuinely pro-Israel but the pressure coming from within his party is unbearable.

The pro Israel wing of the Democratic Party should stage protests too . Make it clear they have influence too

We don't protest, we simply vote. There are going to be some exciting primary results in the next few months that will make this clear.

What's wild is that yours is becoming an extremist position among people who were once the absolute milquetoast-est of the milquetoast.
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4577097-tim-kaine-gaza-israel-hamas/

If you're making Tim Kaine look like Bernie, there's a problem. But enjoy those, uh, "exciting primary results." I'm sure Israel won't do anything else to make this position even less tenable.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Good for Joe. It's time to end this war.

No, it isn’t.  Deif, the Sinwar Brothers, Mashal, Haniyeh, and Al-Nakhalah (among others) are still alive which means the war cannot and will not end yet.  A temporary ceasefire until Israel gets its act together on this is one thing.  Prematurely ending the completely justified war on Hamas for good is quite another.  And neither Biden nor the US can force Israel to do so.

The problem isn't that the war on Hamas isn't or is Justified. That's a given.

What seems to me the problem is that Israel is using a baseball bat to kill off the ant infestation and destroying the house in the process.

I'm no military expert, but Israel is in the same spot the US was in the Vietnam War. It's using traditional heavy handed tactics against an enemy that is using Gueriella Warfare, much like the North Vietnamese/Viet Cong did against the South Vietnamese and the US.

And we all know what happened in Vietnam right ? The US didn't exactly lose militarily, but they didn't win either,  they lost on the public relations.

Militarily, Israel is very clearly winning the war and Hamas objectively has no path to victory.  The only way this ends is with the Palestinian people getting completely annihilated.  Whatever else, one believes, you can take that to the bank.  For better or worse, that is the simple reality and it won’t change with Netanyahu out of power.  

Fixed that for you.

See the problem yet?

Yes, the problem is that you’re erroneously conflating “Hamas” with “Palestinian.”  

Nope. I'm not sure how you would have come to that conclusion from my comment. Israel's stated drive to wipe out Hamas has led to large-scale civilian casualties amongst the Palestinian people (and non Palestinians alike.)

I thought you were saying that because you replaced “Hamas” with “the Palestinian people” in a way that - given the context of the sentence seemed to me like you were conflating the two.  I’m glad that wasn’t what you were doing.  Sadly, there are some posters on both the pro-Israel and anti-Israel sides who have done this since the conflict started, so it’s not as far-fetched as it would be in any sane world to think that was what you were doing.  

Now to address the argument you were actually making: I guess I fundamentally disagree that it is impossible to take out Hamas without annihilating the Palestinian people.  Don't get me wrong, there are serious issues with how Israel has handled the war: the indifference to Palestinian civilian deaths*, Netanyahu handling the war in a way that increases the chances of it dragging on much longer than necessary (ex: using enough troops to maintain a clear upper hand militarily, but not enough to simply sweep through Gaza in a few months), the (until the past few days) refusal to help address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, bombing the Iranian embassy in Syria, and - whether intentionally or accidentally - the horrific bombing of clearly marked aid workers, etc.  I could go on all day.  

That being said, while there is quite obviously no plan for what comes next the way there likely would be with a non-Netanyahu PM (even someone like Gantz) and this is a huge problem since another equally rabid terrorists group could certainly fill a power vacuum in Gaza, taking out Hamas itself off the board is quite doable and I’d argue it could have been done with fewer civilian casualties.  Honestly, I don’t think anyone knows what the civilian death toll is.  We know Hamas is just making up numbers as they go, but I also wouldn’t believe any civilian death toll figures that Israel puts out right now either (when things settle down, we’ll know more).  

What I do know is Gaza has become a hell on earth.  There is a war going on in a small, very densely populated area between one side (Israel) whose government sees dead Palestinian civilians as a trivial cost of doing business and the other side (Hamas) are a gang of grifter terrorists whose whole strategy is focused on maximizing Palestinian civilian casualties and never had any interest in governing to begin with (even before the war, most people in Gaza lacked basic things like water, garbage pickup, etc and this was primarily a product of Hamas’ disinterest in improving the living conditions of Palestinians).

So why am I so confident that Hamas itself can be dismantled without the Palestinian people being more or less wiped out?  Well, setting aside the fact that it is pretty obvious that Israel is not trying to wipe out the Palestinian people, Hamas isn’t as decentralized as most terrorist groups, much less to the degree it pretends to be.  It’s not nearly as centralized as Al-Qaeda’s FuhrerPrinzip-like command structure, but on October 6, 2023, Hamas really was a group that depended upon like 10 or so people (probably more like 20 if you’re not limiting it to the very top guys).  And these guys don’t have some clear replacement ready to jump in and fill their shoes.  Obviously, there are potential replacements, but they’re generally not even the shadow of the person they’d be replacing in terms of effectiveness.

A great example is Al-Arouri.  Ever since he died, Israel has been wiping the floor with Hamas in Lebanon and taking apart the powerful machine he build there piece by piece.  Meanwhile, Hamas’ Turkish and West Bank wings functionally died with him and ceased to be meaningful operations.  He was replaced by some glorified money man who was so bad at his job that Al-Arouri’s responsibilities have since been divided up amongst various Hamas folks, none of whom have been even remotely as effective as Al-Arouri was.  As a result, while obviously vacant positions can always be filled, dismantling Hamas as an effective force really is just a matter of taking out various certain key individuals.  Granted, two of those guys are camped out in Qatar which complicates things, but the point stands.  Plus, their military leadership has taken one hell of a beating.  Yes, Deif and Mohammed Sinwar are still out there, but much of the military leadership and most of the guys in line to eventually replace the Hamas military leadership have been taken out.

Israel needs a plan for what comes next so another terrorist group doesn’t fill the void, but dismantling Hamas itself is certainly a very achievable goal and not one that requires some sort of mass annihilation of the Palestinian population like you seem to be suggesting.


*It calls to mind Elie Wiesel’s quote about how “ [t]he opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.”

[Landslide Lyndon]

Sunak also called for a humanitarian ceasefire and condemned the deaths of aid workers. I guess according to OSR he too caved to the far-lefties.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-68751550

[ProudModerate2]

Israel winning is more important than international law

Oh wow...

Scary stuff! 

Did that really come out of his mouth?
Jesus Christ!