[quote=“EddyTeddyFreddy, post:3895, topic:991317”]
Tonight in the speech, the President will announce that he’s directing the US military to lead an emergency mission to establish a port in the Mediterranean on the Gaza coast that can receive large ships carrying food, water medicine, and temporary shelters,” a senior administration official said Thursday.
How long before it will receive an air strike by the IDF?
…newsflash: enough people will be making a decision not to vote for Biden and his administration at the next election because they believe this his administration is complicit with Israels genocide in Gaza. And there might just be enough people sitting out the next election in strategic states that it may well lose the election for the Democrats.
Those are the consequences in a democracy “don’t care about the little people”, even care enough to try and earn their vote.
If you are onboard with the idea that Biden and co are complicit with the genocide, then that’s okay with me.
Of course, I’m aware of that. You literally quoted me saying “and I don’t think they are.”
I’ll be honest, I wasn’t paying that much attention when this happened, to my eternal chagrin. I’m paying attention now. And I think that Gaza has opened not only my eyes to this, but to millions of people like me who tended to not look beyond the official narratives.
And I’ll say what I said again: at this stage? Motives don’t really matter.
I was referring to statements that had literally been made that day. Because it isn’t just Ben-Gvir. Once again, I’ll refer you to the South African Submission to the International Court of Justice, page 59, Section D, titled “Expressions of Genocidal Intent against the Palestinian People by Israeli State Officials and Others.”
There is absolutely no shortage of quotes in that document that were compiled months ago. And there are no shortage of quotes from Israeli leadership every other week that continue down this line.
I haven’t just quoted doctors.
I’ve cited the World Health Organization often, and many other humanitarian agencies and NGO’s on the ground as well. I’ve extensively quoted from western media sources including one that actually managed to get into Gaza and report directly from one of the hospitals.
And yes, Israel are wantonly destroying hospitals with no terrorist or tunnels in sight. Heres a video posted by Eliya Cohen cheerfully bulldozing the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital, the only dedicated cancer hospital in Gaza, to the ground.
Do you know how many hospitals are currently still functional in Gaza?
4 .
4 out of 36 hospitals.
32 hospitals have either been destroyed or put out of action.
Those articles (many that I’ve read) have claimed that hundreds of terrorists have surrendered.
But watch this video:
Clearly the same people. Clearly the same weapons. Clearly the scene was staged.
How many people in that video stripped to their underwear do you think were Hamas terrorists? How many of them ended up being released? Where were they taken? Did they have access to the Red Cross? And the evidence they were terrorists, is that the same as the evidence that those UNRWA workers were terrorists, that Israel never produced?
From the Guardian:
A reminder that International Humanitarian Law both acknowledges and allows for weapons to be stored in “hospital storage rooms” so that combatants could be disarmed when taken for treatment. We don’t know if these were actual “caches” or simply arms that were stored, but the videos that the IDF have released, from what was allegedly found (and mysteriously grew in size) behind the MRI machine to the pistol allegedly found hidden in the baby incubator: these aren’t things that would require a hospital to get shut down.
The mere existence of tunnels isn’t enough to make a hospital a target under the Geneva Conventions and International Humanitarian Law. And some of those tunnels (under Al Shifa) were built by Israel themselves decades ago. That’s how they knew they were there.
Both the New York Times and the Washington Post both published investigations into Al Shifa and found that Israel’s claims largely didn’t hold up. But even if I give you Al Shifa, you’ve still got 31 other hospitals to explain.
We don’t need to argue.
If you are that confident in your sources, then the evidence must be pretty clear. I’m open to changing my mind.
But we need to be pretty clear here: the standard for what the Geneva Conventions and International Humanitarian Law allows for when hospitals are targeted is set at an extremely high threshold. If terrorists were operating out of the hospitals, it isn’t enough to just make that claim and be done with it. There would have been actionable intelligence before the siege of each hospital happened, and clear evidence for each detainee after each hospital were raided. That is the standard you would be expected to meet. I don’t need the names of the terrorist subjects. Just evidence that this evidence (both pre- and post-raids of each hospital) exists.
Because I want you to examine the underlying premise here. Why would terrorists be using hospitals in the first place? The idea is that hospitals are “shields”, and that hospitals are protected, and that would mean they could operate out of them without fear.
But it became very obvious early on in this war that Israel didn’t care about that. And we watched as they systematically surrounded, placed under siege, then eventually raided each hospital, from the north to the south, one by one.
Everybody knew what was coming. It followed the exact same pattern over and over again.
And when I first started posting about Nasser Hospital several weeks ago, the writing was on the wall. I shared when the hospital was first surrounded, and when the buildings around the hospital began to get targeted. I shared when hospital staff started to stay home in droves, knowing perfectly well if they went into work they were likely to be arrested, accused of being a terrorist, stripped to their underwear, and taken away to who-knows-where.
This was weeks before the raid.
Everyone knew it was going to happen.
So why on earth would hundreds of terrorist stay behind? On what planet does that make any sense? If hospital workers were smart enough to go “heck, our hospitals next, I’m staying well away from there!” then why would hundreds of terrorists remain, and when the hospital got raided, not even put up a fight?
The reality is that those who stayed behind were fucking heroes. We know who they are. We have their names. They are actual doctors and nurses and paramedics and cleaners and people who said that they wouldn’t abandon their patients. They stayed behind even though they knew what was coming.
There is no military/defensive justification for shutting down a healthcare system. There is no military/defensive justification for shutting down 32 hospitals.
Only 4 hospitals, working several times over capacity and only able to service those that are close to them, remain. The Geneva Conventions and International Humanitarian Law require that hospitals not be targeted unless they were being “used for acts harmful to the enemy.” And if they are being used for acts harmful to the enemy, that once those acts are nuetralised, the attacking power must do everything it can to keep the hospital operational. And that clearly hasn’t happened here.
…some context for the “emergency” mission to establish a port.
It appears to be connected to the Amalthea Initiative, the Cypriot plan laid out in November to do this very thing.
The plan was actually followed through on, except for the port. From early January:
So the “sea bridge” has already been established, a system to inspect the cargo before it goes into Gaza already exists and has been in operation for at least three months now. It just needs the port.
Which is why this is so incredibly frustrating. This will be announced at the State of the Union, again, to divert attention away from the humanitarian disaster that is happening on the ground. If the US had jumped onto this months ago, the port would have been built by now.
There are countries and humanitarian agencies around the world that have been working tirelessly raising funds, putting in volunteer work, many putting their lives at risk to help Palestinians trapped in Gaza. None of them are making a big song-and-dance about it. The port (as long as it’s used only for bringing in humanitarian aid) will be a welcome contribution to the aid effort. But it’s part of a much larger international aid effort, and it’s coming much too late. (they are estimating at least 1-2 months to get it built)
A port would have long term capacity but there are military craft specifically designed to land on a beach. an LCAC will carry 60 tons. They might be used to bring in the infrastructure for the port but there’s no reason why they can’t bring in food too.
If they do that and Trump wins as a consequence then I fully expect Trump to pull any and all aid from Gaza and throw his administration’s weight entirely behind Netanyahu and his narrative.
While the situation for Gaza right now is horrific under Trump it will be even worse.
That’s not the only risk…
Unless those alternatives take weeks to put into place, in which case you need to find a way to get food/supplies to people so they can survive long enough to benefit from the better delivery methods.
If you had said that a couple months ago I’d agree with you, but we’re not a couple months ago, we’re now, and due to [reasons] we have the current situation. At this time we have people actively dying from lack of food and no other realistic way to get them anything other than airdrops, with the full knowledge that that might not work. That’s what makes it a desperation method. If you want to argue things should have been allowed to get to this state I agree completely but after the rant about how awful, disgusting, and morally bankrupt the situation is I want to hear a plan to do something about it.
That’s in part because, as already noted multiple times, air drops are far from an ideal solution to supplying people with stuff.
The “best place” for them is an open, flat territory which may or may not be exactly where the hungry people are located. That’s dictated by the mechanics involved in dropping stuff out of the sky with unguided parachutes. You can’t precision drop them at a precise address on a city street. You don’t want them getting hung up on rubble or coming down directly on refugee tents.
The “best food” is stuff that can be packed to survive the drop, including a potentially very rough landing. It might also, depending on circumstances, be stuff that’s already packed and ready to drop while more suitable rations are being assembled into a package for this purpose. My understanding is that the USAF went with MRE’s on pallets because they keep those ready to go for supplying our own troops so that could be put into play immediately, but getting together something like HDR’s (Humanitarian Daily Rations) would require packing things up for an air drop. If you want to argue that something else should be used that might take even more prep time to get ready to drop.
Yeah, I don’t see anyone here trying to make that claim.
Huh. I did not know that. But that also means that the packaging is a factor. I don’t think you could drop, say, a 20 pound sack of flour like that without it bursting open.
…its a “we don’t want to offend Israel, we are getting hammered in the polls, let’s get some cheap PR” move."
It isn’t a serious attempt at doing anything about the deliberate policy of Isreal to starve the people of Gaza. Because throwing a few pieces of bread at starving people isn’t a realistic response here.
Tell Israel that the US won’t give them any more aid money or arms until the siege is lifted.
America has the power to do that. There is no shortage of food. There is no shortage of trucks. It’s all literally waiting there at the border for permission to go in.
Thats the plan.
And if you tell me thats not going to happen? Then the Biden administration, and, if he gets voted in at the next election, the American people, will be complicit in this genocide.
Because that’s the only thing that will prevent famine. It won’t be the airdrops. It won’t be the port that might not even happen. Gaza needs food. It needs water. It needs fuel. It needs medical supplies. It needs shelter. It needs waste removed. There are bodies being buried in the streets. There are still bodies trapped under the rubble. There are estimated to be 17,000 orphans in Gaza. No healthcare system. Almost no hospitals any more.
There is no other plan that will prevent mass death. Its either put pressure on Israel or hundreds of thousands of people will die.
Then open the borders and let the trucks in.
It such a pathetically small amount of food that I’m wondering why we are talking about it at all. Sure, it’s better than nothing. But it’s barely more than nothing.
I’m on board with that but as I keep saying it’s not realistic to expect that to happen given our current government. That’s true whether it’s Biden or Trump in office. By all means, keep asking/lobbying/protesting for it because there’s that slim shadow of a chane it might work (on Biden). But waiting until that change happens isn’t addressing the immediate problem.
We are already complicit in this genocide. That train has left the station. The only question is whether we’ll continue to be complicit or not.
I agree Biden’s handling of this has been shit for the Gazans. But Trump? He’s called for Israel to “finish the problem” and shows not one whit of sympathy for the Gazans. He’s already stated he would completely bar any Gazan from entering the US for any reason, so I guess just screw the innocents. That’s on top of his proposed ban on Muslims. Any illusion that the Gazans would fare better with Trump in the White House should be dispelled. As horrible as Biden’s response has been it’s the best we’re going to get from the American government. Which is sad, deplorable, and awful but I don’t have the power to turn the ship of state around. Jumping up and down and saying “I don’t like this!” won’t change that.
Famine is already here. Preventing it would require a time machine. People are already dying, have died, from lack of food.
You can’t prevent mass death - well, not without that time machine. It’s already here. Best estimates are 30,000 dead in Gaza, and I suspect there are plenty more than that. It’s already here.
At present the only way to do that would be to invade Israel, remove its current government, and physically prevent the IDF from approaching the border. Do you really want to do that? Because I guarantee the knock-on effects would be horrific.
Either we talk the current Israeli government into a change of plan, wait for their government to change, or force regime change. How well has choice #3 worked in the past? What consequences would there be to doing that to a nation that is supposed to be our ally?
From the Talmud:
whoever saves one life saves the world entire.
If I could save but one life I would save that life, because that one life is worthy of saving.
You’re right, airdrops are a pathetically small, near-futile gesture. Nonetheless, they could save a few lives, and those lives are worth saving. If that is all that we can do today then we should do it, while working to do more tomorrow.
It’s the right thing to do in a situation where there isn’t much rightness.
…well then hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are gonna die.
And you will be.
I haven’t argued that Trump will be better for Gazans. Trump will be worse for Gaza. He will be worse for Americans. He will be worse for the world.
But jumping up and down as if these airdrops actually mean anything won’t change a thing. It’s next to useless, it’s pathetic, and it shows how incredibly weak the US is on the world stage.
And the very least I can do is here in this thread, continue to point out that this isn’t a “desperation move”, it’s PR. America doesn’t get any credit for this. Biden doesn’t get any credit for this. They call him “Genocide Joe” in much of the world now. For many, that will be his legacy.
Or they could cut off funding and arms and use every lever of diplomacy instead.
Why would I want to do this ridiculous thing? I’ve already told you what move I would advocate, and its a much more realistic scenario than whatever it is you are talking about here.
Why are you acting as if I would ever advocate for choice #3? And you shouldn’t assume that there will be a change in government, or that the replacement government will be anything more than maybe marginally better than the current one. The US either uses every single lever of power to get aid into Gaza, or stop sucking oxygen out of the debate. Just restart the funding to UNRWA and be done with it.
From Banquet Bear: it’s better than nothing, but let’s stop pretending that this pathetically small amount of food “saves the world entire.”
No.
They are not going to save any lives.
It’s literally a lottery. If a drop doesn’t land on peoples heads and kills them, if they strike it lucky someone might get a single MRE maybe once every few weeks, maybe only once in a month. That isn’t going to save their life. There is no larger plan at play here. Nothing but randomness. No distribution strategy.
The right thing to do here is to put pressure on Israel to let the trucks through. Because it isn’t just about food. Water. Shelter. Fuel. Medical supplies. Medical care. Its all staged and ready to go. Everything that Gaza needs is sitting right there, outside, in hundreds of trucks, ready to roll in.
From Save the Children:
From Doctors without Borders:
Everybody is saying the same thing. Every humanitarian agency on the ground is ready to go. They know what needs to get done.
Nobody here is promoting the airdrops as anything other than a gesture, but keep stuffing hay into that strawman.
What, exactly, do you want the US to do? What “strong” tactics do you want to see?
If America isn’t getting any credit then it’s hardly PR. Nor is the US the only country doing this. The US wasn’t the first to airdrop aid, it is not the only one doing, and if the US stopped other nations would continue airdrops. Why aren’t you complaining about those?
Yeah, and Putin could wake up tomorrow and decide invading Ukraine was a bad idea and call his army back to Russia but I don’t expect that to happen, either.
What, other than “funding and arms”, do you think the US has to pressure Israel? Please do list those items, I’m very curious what levers you think we have over another country.
Although the US funding to UNRWA was stopped it still continues from many other countries. I get the impression you think the US is the only country involved in this besides Israel and that’s just not true.
Then why are you complaining about it? Do you think airdrops should be completely stopped? Do you think their risks/hazards outweigh their benefits?
And you know that as an absolute fact because…?
The World Food Programme disagrees with you, by the way.
What, exactly - other than sending in the US Marines to take over - do you think is going to convince the IDF to open up that border? Please do share with the rest of the world your solution to that problem.
Contrary to rumor, Israel is not a vassal state of the US, nor is it in any way bound to obey the dictates of the US President. The Israeli government is doubling down on their genocide. We can either try an end-run around them to get aid into Gaza or we can invade and take over. Which do you want to see happen?
…not a strawman. There are people in this thread who have been advocating for airdrops as a solution to the looming famine for months.
What part of “cut off aid and arms to Israel” isn’t clear to you here?
I’m not giving them any credit.
Obviously, plenty of other people are.
And when the other countries started doing it, nobody made a song and dance about it.
I’m literally only responding to you because you keep bringing this up.
If you are arguing that the US shouldn’t give Putin billions of dollars in aid and arms then you won’t get any argument from me.
What else do you need? Why do you need a list? This is enough.
But you’ve already said it. America won’t do it. They won’t do anything to upset Israel. They are hand-in-hand with them on this. Partners in genocide.
We are talking about what else the United States could do to help prevent famine, to help prevent hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza from dying.
One of those things they could do is recommence funding to UNRWA. They were previously the largest contributor to UNRWA, $422 million in 2023, 30% of the budget, and if the US restarted their contributions that would be a clear signal to all of the others that are still holding out to recommence their funding as well.
Because for starters: you keep talking to me about it. So I’m responding to everything you say to me. I’ve honestly got nothing else to say about it. But if you keep coming back to me repeating the same things over and over again, I’ll keep giving you the same answers.
I think airdops should be coordinated with the humanitarian agencies on the ground, and be part of a larger, group effort to bring to bring relief to Gazans. Imagine if the US coordinated with WHO to drop urgently needed medical supplies to the hospitals. Or with UNRWA so they could clear a zone somewhere and do low altitude drops instead of high altitude ones.
I think it’s a poorly thought out strategy because the entire endeavor has political goals, not humanitarian ones.
No, they don’t “disagree” with me. You quote an article from 2021, describing a different situation and a different strategy. Northern Gaza isn’t in a “remote area.” The Erez Crossing is right there.
President Biden deciding to no longer be complicit in the genocide. That would be a start.
If that means threatening the next election because the people have no other levers, then so be it.
Then the United States can just cut off all funding and arms to them then. No problems, no drama.
Because the United States has effectively told them, “it doesn’t matter what you do, we won’t do anything to stop you. We’ve got your back, no matter what you do next, including starving millions of people and causing hundreds of thousands of deaths.”
It isn’t a binary option, and nobody here, especially me, has advocated for the position of “invading and taking over.”
How many times do I need to say “cut off funding and arms and use every lever of diplomacy that you can?”
And when that doesn’t work… then what?
…you’ve got to actually do it first.
The “and then what” comes later. Because if the United States actually did this, and everyone else followed suit, then Israel would run out of bombs to use on Gaza eventually. That isn’t something that can happen now. Not with an open checkbook. And eventually economic pressure will have an effect. South Africa didn’t end institutionalised racial segregation overnight. It took decades of international pressure, boycotts, protests, riots, both within and from the outside. You keep pushing and pushing and pushing. The US blocked sanctions against South Africa for the longest time, just like they are blocking sanctions here. You just have to keep fighting.
People in America can’t directly protest the Israeli government. But they can pressure their own government to stop funding this “war.”
Parachute style. This is how they’re currently doing airdrops in Gaza.
Open container style. This shows the actual MRE’s being dumped into cardboard boxes prior to airdrop. You can see the boxes tumble out of the plane. And they’re using C-17’s which have about 4 times the capacity of a C-130.
Can the US government do this though? I’m asking, I honestly don’t know. I just recall a case in Canada where the previous government promised APCs to Saudi Arabia. Years later, the Saudis basically said, “hey Canada, where’s our APCs? We’ve got dissidents to squash!” and the government of Canada was made to feel uncomfortable about this. However, the Saudis had set up the deal in such a way that if Canada cancelled out of it, it would somehow end up costing more money than just sticking with the original arrangement. (In case you were wondering, the government of Canada released a report later that basically said “we haven’t found any evidence that they have used this equipment to abuse human rights.”)
In the case of Israel, I feel as though they are thoroughly aware that the continued flow of arms and funding is at least somewhat subject to whichever direction the US political wind is blowing and they are absolutely prepared for the idea that the US may stab them in the back. So if I’m Israel, I’m structuring my arms deals so that they cannot be dropped at a moment’s notice. If there are unbreakable contracts set up for the next twenty or thirty years (or even twenty or thirty months at this rate), cancelling them now would be symbolic.
Also from what I could find following links on Wikipedia, Israel has been preparing for this for ten years now, as the US apparently did cut off military aid under Obama: https://web.archive.org/web/20150729121906/http://www.worldtribune.com/2014/10/20/israel-plans-reduce-arms-u-s/
…if the US government can’t stop supplying arms and funds to a genocidal regime that is actively perusing ethnic cleansing, then let’s all just give up and go home.
“I’m sorry, we signed a contract, and we can’t get out of it” is probably the worst excuse in the world for this to continue. It’s what I would expect from a small business dealing with Amazon, not from the most powerful nation to ever exist in the history of the world.
And if there isn’t a “we can rip up this contract because you are committing mass-murder” clause in there somewhere, just add it, rip up the contract, and deal with the consequences.
I thought Israel was by far a net arms exporter, though they need the US’s business a lot more than the US needs theirs. In any case, I had the impression it was pretty much accepted wisdom by Israel that they only have a limited time window to get away with whatever they can before other countries, primarily the U.S., make a few phone calls and make them stop. America certainly can do it if it come to that.
…the WP:
It doesn’t matter if they are by far a net arms exporter or not. The US is providing arms and taxpayer funds that it could use as leverage if it wanted too.
“Eventually”
See - that’s the problem - the people in Gaza are starving now, “eventually” might as well be never for a lot of them.
What are you going to do in the meanwhile? Complain that airdrops are inefficient/expensive/whatever? It took years to end apartheid in South Africa, Gaza doesn’t have years.
Sure they can. Plenty of anti-Israel protests going on in the US all the time right now with people pretty directly saying “stop this war” and “stop this genocide”. Unless you’re using a different meaning of “direct”?
Sure. And some are, and they absolutely should. A big obstacle, though, is that there are far too many in the US who think Israel is entirely in the right and fully support them, even want to criminalize people speaking out against these atrocities. Just like the anti-Vietnam war movement in the US back in the 1960’s.