Biden, a supposed foreign policy pragmatist, doesn’t seem bothered that the US is one of the few states that continues to wholeheartedly sustain Israel’s war on Gaza. In fact, Biden has staked his political future on his support for Netanyahu and Israel – and Biden is losing. In this year’s presidential election, where he will most likely face Donald Trump once again, Biden has already lost support among young progressives, Black and Arab American voters, who are all rightfully angry at his refusal to restrain Israel.
Biden allies are raising the alarm that he could lose Michigan, a swing state with substantial Black, Arab and Muslim American voting blocs, because of his Middle East policies. Congressman Ro Khanna, a Biden supporter and progressive Democrat from California who has tried to mediate between Biden’s campaign and Michigan Democrats, warned his team this week: “We cannot win Michigan with status quo policy.”
The Biden administration has consistently underplayed the leverage it has over Israel and Netanyahu. “I think that sometimes people pretend that the United States of America has a magic wand that it can wave to make any situation in the world roll out in exactly the way that we would want it to and that is never the case,” Matthew Miller, the state department spokesperson, said at a press conference on 12 February.
Miller’s flippant comment raises an important question: if Biden can’t use billions of dollars in military aid – and the ability to literally cut off Israel’s supply of bombs – to force Netanyahu to accept a ceasefire, what could Biden do with a magic wand?
Ya lost me at not supporting Ukraine funding.
And why no mentions of forcing Hamas to release all the hostages?
That was a brain fart on my part, I just fixed it.
Because that’s pretty fucking self-evident? Not sure what releasing the hostages would do, besides freeing the hostages- which to be clear is important on it’s own- but as far as the Genocide… Israel doesn’t care about the hostages except as a propaganda piece. Which is why they’ve killed orders of magnitudes more than they’ve freed.
Edit: it should be noted that Hamas has a standing offer to free their hostages if Isreal frees the 5k “prisoners” they keep without due process. (many of whom were swept up on the same day of the last exchange.)
The answer to your question could just have been this:
That’s what flipped me around on the issue.
Can he singlehandedly tell Israel what to do? Maybe I guess, but probably not. Israel knows we aren’t going to send the US Army in to defend Gaza. But he absolutely could have not sent the order to veto those resolutions. And he could have refused to send further weapons to Israel until there is a change.
Those measures would not be enough to satisfy many people, but they would demonstrate that he’s doing more than not speaking as glowingly about Israel as he would have prior to October 2023, which is about all he seems to have done so far. It would be possible to defend his decisions at that point. Currently I don’t see how it is.