MESSAGE
| DATE | 2023-11-27 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] Blood Money
|
Opinion | Democrats Want ‘Conditions’ on Israel
The Editorial Board
4–5 minutes
Israel agreed on Monday to a two-day extension of its truce with Hamas
to gain the release of more hostages, a priority of President Biden. But
another idea is gaining ground among Democrats that is more dangerous:
condition U.S. aid on how Israel conducts its war of self-preservation.
The stipulation is said to be merely that Israel follow international
law. But since Israel does follow international law, and the U.S.
already can withhold foreign assistance on human-rights grounds, the
condition is unnecessary—but not harmless. During wartime, it would
signal to Israel’s enemies that the U.S. has gone wobbly on the campaign
to destroy Hamas.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D., Conn.), chairman of the Foreign Relations
subcommittee on the Middle East, made positive noises about the idea
Sunday. “We regularly condition our aid to allies based upon compliance
with U.S. law and international law,” he said, adding, “I think that you
can defeat Hamas without this level of civilian casualty,” which he
calls “unacceptable.”
Asked on Friday, President Biden said conditioning aid is “a worthwhile
thought,” but “I don’t think if I started off with that, we’d ever
gotten to where we are today. We have to take this a piece at a time.”
Asked twice to clarify, national security adviser Jake Sullivan wouldn’t
rule out the idea.
Not for the first time, Democrats are following Sen. Bernie Sanders (I.,
Vt.), who called for the condition on Thursday. “We cannot be complicit
in actions that violate international law,” he wrote. “That includes an
end to indiscriminate bombing.” Mr. Sanders is responding to the
increasingly loud street protests against Israel by the Democratic left.
This is an example of how the proposal to condition aid is linked to the
libels against Israel that one hears whenever it defends itself.
Israel’s counteroffensive has been the opposite of indiscriminate.
Forced by Hamas to fight in a densely populated urban area, Israel has
hit more than 15,000 targets. If those had been indiscriminate strikes,
the death toll would be many times higher than even Hamas claims.
Hamas has attacked Israel indiscriminately every day of the war,
beginning with the Oct. 7 massacre. Each of the terrorist group’s more
than 10,000 rocket attacks has been a war crime, firing on Israeli
cities without care for who or what gets hit.
Mr. Biden doesn’t need to condition aid to influence Israel. He
persuaded Israel to delay and moderate its ground invasion, decline to
escalate with Hezbollah, use a smaller force in north Gaza, allow more
aid and pause some operations. He encouraged Israel to delay again
before turning to south Gaza and helped shape the hostage deal and pause
in the fighting.
This heavy involvement—some would say micromanagement—has been geared
largely toward ends other than Israeli victory. But imposing this new
condition on U.S. aid would be different. Amid a campaign of
vilification of Israel on precisely this issue of international law, it
would constitute a threat.
U.S. aid to Israel isn’t sacrosanct, and many on the Israeli right have
long argued that peacetime aid—mostly credits with U.S. arms
manufacturers—fosters unhealthy dependence. But this push from the left,
in wartime, has nothing to do with the flaws of foreign aid.
The purpose is to warn Israel that it will risk losing U.S. support if
it tries to complete its mission of toppling Hamas; and that
Hamas-induced civilian casualties mean Israel can’t destroy Hamas’s
terrorist capabilities. Is that the emerging position of the Democratic
Party?
Our guess is that Americans reject that view, and that if these
questions were put to a vote, so would most U.S. lawmakers. That would
be a message worth sending to Israel’s enemies. Republicans, why not
help Israel by putting Democrats to the test?
--
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town
that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological
proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
http://www.mrbrklyn.com
DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
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Being so tracked is for FARM ANIMALS and extermination camps,
but incompatible with living as a free human being. -RI Safir 2013
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