Biden called for an “immediate ceasefire” yesterday in a phone call with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, telling him that “strikes on humanitarian workers” and “the overall humanitarian situation” are “unacceptable.” Biden also, we are told, “U.S. policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel’s immediate action” and on steps to “address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering, and the safety of aid workers.”
By pure accident, the first thing I saw was Pentagon spokesman John Kirby (he’s the smart and competent one of the two primary White House paid liars) gaslight the press when asked how the U.S. policy toward the support of Israel in the war could be “unwavering” (as described by officials) and yet the Administration is also saying that it is considering changing that policy in light of the civilian casualties in Gaza. Kirby, with a straight face. said that the two statements were not inconsistent, prompting incredulity from his questioner. Of course they are inconsistent; in fact, they are contradictory. This is one more example of Democrats deliberately playing to the ignorant and uncritical voter.
Why aren’t Democrats
Equally infuriating is the reason for Biden’s <cough!> wavering unwavering. The party doesn’t like the polling numbers, and the Democrats’ strong, fact-and-history-challenged far left base has awarded “persecuted” status to the Palestinians while designated Jews as the white, genocidal, colonial villains. This means they are angry at Biden—can’t have that!—so his “unwavering” support of Israel now includes providing aid to Israel’s enemy that has been suffering from assaults by U.S.-provided weapons and calling for a cease fire in Gaza that will give the Hamas forces an opportunity to regroup.
Brilliant. This is, as EA has noted before, attempting to appease both sides of violent dispute simultaneously. The Biden Administration has no integrity. After the most recent ugly display, I wouldn’t expect any ally to trust the U.S. as long as Biden is in the White House.
Democrats are “pouncing” on the recent misguided Israel missile strike that killed several World Central Kitchen aid workers in the Gaza Strip. Israel, for diplomatic reasons, is groveling apologies, agreeing that the incident “should not have occurred.” That’s right: it would not have occurred if Hamas had not broken its ceasefire with Israel in October with a brutal terrorist sneak attack on civilians, making the war essential and justified. Unintended deaths of civilians and non-combatants in Gaza are not “unforgivable” as the World Central Kitchen, a nonprofit founded by celebrity chef Jose Andres, called it this week, announcing that it would pause all operations in Gaza following the death of its workers. Such deaths are inevitable. How do you prevent them? Well, don’t start wars. Or, going a bit further back in time, don’t elect terrorist groups to run your government, since they tend to start wars. Or: don’t send humanitarian workers into a war zone without accepting the reality that doing so puts their lives at risk.
Matthew Continetti , a senior fellow and the inaugural Patrick and Charlene Neal Chair in American Prosperity at the American Enterprise Institute and earlier the founding editor of the conservative Washington Free Beacon, has the moral and ethical clarity regarding this Washington fiasco that Biden, the Axis, and all those protesting students do not. He writes in part that the current shift in Biden’s policy-framing is..
a threat to conditional military assistance to Israel based on absolutely no evidence and grounded in a ridiculous and unachievable standard of conduct. The move is cynical, opportunistic, and counterproductive. Biden has lost the plot.
Gee, what a surprise.
The writer continues,
Biden has let anyone within earshot know that he is frustrated and angry with Israel’s strategy and tactics. He approved of Sen. Chuck Schumer’s (D., N.Y.) call for new elections in Israel and the replacement of Netanyahu’s government. His advisers have been trying to prevent Israel’s planned offensive in the city of Rafah, where Hamas’s remaining battalions use the hostages and 1.5 million Palestinians as human shields. Last month, Biden’s U.N. ambassador chose not to veto a resolution calling for an unconditional ceasefire in Gaza—a diplomatic warning that America may not always be there for Israel.
But its support is “unwavering.”
…. “The U.S. must do more to tell Prime Minister Netanyahu this war needs to end now,” [chef Jose Andres]told Reuters [after the deaths of his workers]. “The people of Israel need to remember, at this darkest hour, what strength truly looks like,” he wrote in the New York Times. Who does Andrés think he is, calling for a unilateral ceasefire, lecturing Israelis on the nature of strength? He’s not the Pope. He’s a gourmand who serves traif….
The Pope has no business calling for a ceasefire either. More from Continetti:
…For six months, huge swaths of the press have painted Israel in the worst possible light. Netanyahu could say the sky is blue and a thousand fact-checkers would scrub his claim for signs of misinformation. Pro-Hamas falsehoods, meanwhile, are recycled without second thought. The casualty numbers from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, the bogus tale of the Israeli rocket “fired” at al-Shifa hospital, the blood libel that Israelis separated Palestinian babies from their mothers, the lie that the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East was free of Hamas infiltration—these stories were peddled in bad faith before Israel had a chance to rebut them.
Which is why a sense of moral clarity in this conflict is so important. Hamas is evil. Hamas could end the war it started by surrendering its cadres and releasing its prisoners. Hamas refuses. Hamas would rather sacrifice the civilian population of Gaza on the altar of its genocidal ambition and suicidal desires. Hamas brutalizes children, abuses captives, steals food, fires its rockets indiscriminately, wears no uniforms, and hides behind schools, hospitals, and mosques. Hamas does not just commit war crimes. It is a war crime. …
The political heroes of this moment are the men and women who have retained the ability to make clear distinctions between Israel and Hamas, between freedom, equality, and the rule of law and violence, terror, and fear.
Bingo.
Ethics Alarms 
Bingo is right. I’m not sure how Israel can prevail in a three front war-air, land, and cynical, hypocritical and misinformed public/world opinion-but I am sure that if Hamas is not neutralized as a political and military force the future of Israel is in doubt.
Defense Secretary Gates was right when he scored Biden’s record on foreign policy. Biden’s batting average has not changed since. You do not conduct foreign policy based on what a self serving constituency wants you do so to protect the overall interests of all citizens.
What troubles me is that the press pushes the narrative that Trump wants to waken NATO by demanding they meet their financial obligations or we might not run to their defense yet the only real American ally in the middle east is being undermined militarily and politically by the Biden Administration. Are Americans really that ignorant about world affairs?
Yesterday, Blinken stated that Ukraine will become part of NATO while knowing full well that Russian forces have become reconstituted with the help of Iran and North Korea. For all those who stand with Ukraine without question because of the evil Putin, will you stand up for the US if China negotiates an alliance with Canada or puts military assets on our border?
If that was to happen, it would be cause for concern, and we’d definitely want to put our military on alert, but it would not be cause for invading China.
Well, last year, we found over 20,000 military aged Chinese men entering the country illegally. This year, we have already surpassed that number. There are camps in Mexico and Central America specifically for military aged Chinese men to make the trip north across the US border. They are being caught sneaking onto our military bases with regularity now. We just release them back into the US with no monitoring. The Chinese government is a totalitarian surveillance state. No one comes or goes without permission. Oh, a Chinese ‘billionaire’ with military ties bought 140,000 acres in Texas and is now running part of the energy grid there, allowed by US regulators.
Remember, all Chinese ‘billionaires’ report to the Chinese government. When the head of Alibaba, Jack Ma, called for the Chinese government to let him put more warehouses in the US, he ‘disappeared’ into reeducation camps, the government ‘assumed control’ of Alibaba, and Ma reemerged a couple of years later (after no contact at all) working for the Chinese government.
In unrelated news, the Biden administration has created a new law that all electrical transformers have to be made with amorphous steel that we buy from….China. Its illegal to make those transformers with US materials.
In other unrelated news, the Biden administration ordered the FDIC to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to China for losses from bank failures, accounts that weren’t insured by FDIC, didn’t pay any premiums towards FDIC, and that exceeded FDIC limits on coverage (well over $250,000).
Don’t you dare try to connect these unrelated items to the money China paid to the Biden’s family because that would suggest that the current US executive branch is controlled by the Chinese government through elite capture.
I’d like to know what your sources are for all these. Found the Chinese billionaire buying the land in Texas, but also found a Texas law that prevents Chinese owned businesses and Chinese associates from owning electric infrastructure in the state. Found something about transformers, but it’s a proposed DOE rule that sets five years for transformers to have a higher percentage of amorphous steel, which was backed by an American company in South Carolina that makes the steel. Can’t find anything about the FDIC paying China millions of uninsured losses.
Sometimes I think people don’t know or don’t appreciate what “unconditional surrender” means or entails. The purpose of securing unconditional surrender is to gain an end to hostilities and begin the process of moving to a new future. The old way is gone, you can’t go back and “reset”. Anyone who talks about “reset” or “go back” isn’t thinking clearly. As long as Hamas does not give unconditional surrender, this will not end. Hamas is listed by the United States as a terrorist organization. Hamas is also the elected government of Palestine. That means Palestine, is currently, an enemy of the United States. By calling for a ceasefire, this administration has given hope and comfort to an enemy. What they should have done was declare to Hamas and the Palestinian people that Israel won’t stop and Israel won’t be stopped by the United States. Only through total defeat and the loss of all hope can Hamas and Palestine lay down and accept unconditional surrender. That’s what will take to end this conflict.
It is not unreasonable to back both sides in a conflict. It only makes sense, however, if you are selling weapons to both sides for a profit. I said reasonable, not ethical. If you are GIVING aid to both sides, you are either stupid or you are trying to get them to destroy each other.
I wonder which is true of this Administration. I suppose both could be true.
As a quality arm chair quarterback when it comes to policy, while I think that you’ve accurately described the symptoms, I don’t think the problem stems from trying to placate both ends of the left-spectrum, it comes from a forced reconciliation of reality and ideology, which is always a little messy.
The reality is that America isn’t going to pull support from Israel, and that pulling support from Israel isn’t actually a popular position in America, so how weak do you want to look saying you’ll do something you’re not prepared to do, and/or how many votes are you willing to lose in the effort? Biden is trying to signal All-The-Good-Things to his base while having to juggle doing nothing so as not to lose the narrative completely.
The problem is that America’s far left has a disproportionate control of the narrative while having a proportionate share of the votes. Everything Biden’s administration does is red meat to some faction of the progressive base (red meat seems wrong… vegan tofu, or something), as if the progressives were going to vote for anyone else… Meanwhile managing to, to some extent, alienate everyone, because you can never keep all of these jokers happy.
What Biden should do is ignore his base, which would normally seem like a disaster waiting to happen, but the reality is that Biden ran in 2020 as a moderate centrist and be blew Trump out of the water. There is a desire in America for centrist sanity.
Define Centrist. It appears that a false narrative about both candidates was being pushed by the media.
I define centrist is one that sees the American people come first but the country does not exist in a vacuum.
I define a centrist that tries to minimize government involvement in citizen’s lives
I define a centrist that accepts the idea that different citizens have different ideas about bodily autonomy and does not seek to persecute one over the other with the legal system.
I define centrist that promotes equitable justice
I define centrist as someone who respects the checks and balances of the three branches of government
I see a centrist that does not seek to engage in proxy wars across the globe.
I know which one is closer to being a centrist by my definition and it was not Biden.
I mean… You can define centrist however you want, I suppose.
Look, up until very recently, two things were true:
Neither of these things are true today. The NDP, as a party, are trying to out-Liberal the Liberals, but even with that in mind, America’s left are, by far, more progressive than your average Canadian.
But these topics are related… The NDP is hemorrhaging support, and party leadership is watching in horror as their supporters are going to right-of-center parties. This is because right of center parties are talking about issues that matter to them: Wages, prices, inflation, mortgage payments. Meanwhile, left of center parties are talking about queer issues and the environment. What we’re seeing in real time is a significant segment of Canada being drawn to the right because the people in charge of the left are horrifyingly out of touch.
Something similar should be happening in America: “It’s about the economy, stupid”, and there’s a gap between what Democrat leadership believes, or at least says they believe, and what the party moderates or centrists believe. This is a spectacular time to peel off support from your opponents. The problem is that America’s Republican Party leadership is ideological in a way that doesn’t lend itself well to politics, and mirrors the way that Democrats are ideological. Instead of talking about the economy, you’re doing culty Trump loyalty testing while talking about abortion.
The first party to embrace sanity wins.
But everyone now knows that President is as far from being a moderate centrist as I am from being a Martian. He’ll be laughed off the stage if he declares himself as such. Now…whether moderates will still vote for him? That’s the million-dollar question. But regardless, the President cutting support of Israel, even if it’s only a feint or a threat, is fraught with peril.
Joel wrote:
He’ll be laughed off the stage if he declares himself as such.
No, he won’t. His lie will be feted by the media as statesmanship, and proof he was the right man for the job. Many will listen.
The Left will pout and protest, of course, but they are going to do that no matter what Biden does short of endorsing Hamas and the Palestinians and stopping aid to Israel.
But Biden is too beholden to the radicals in his party to “moderate” now, even as a straight lie. The Left, and now a mentally infirm Biden, is too convinced of their respective rectitude to back off. The media, despite their bias, are more realistic than either those advising Biden or dementia-Biden himself these days. He’s about as in-charge of the US Executive as I am.
Rather than calling for a ceasefire from the Isrealis, call for a surrender from Hamas. Same result, better chance of a lasting peace.
Exactly.