President Joe Biden said Israel's war on Gaza has killed "thousands of thousands of innocents"—but did not acknowledge the role of U.S. weaponry.

Progressive Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Cori Bush raised signs calling on President Joe Biden to “stop sending bombs” to the Israeli military as he pledged during his State of the Union address Thursday night to provide more humanitarian aid to Gazans and decried the war’s grisly death toll.

“This war has taken a greater toll on innocent civilians than all previous wars in Gaza combined. More than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed, most of whom are not Hamas,” Biden said. “Thousands and thousands of innocents, women and children. Girls and boys also orphaned. Nearly two million more Palestinians under bombardment or displacement.”

“A U.S. port delivering meager amounts of humanitarian aid and empty rhetoric mean nothing when they are delivered alongside U.S. bombs,” said Jewish Voice for Peace Action late Thursday.

  • @xmunk
    8•7 months ago

    Bernie has opposed the latter. I think the former is unfortunately unrealistic.

    • @[email protected]
      3•7 months ago

      Considering the extent of the Settlements in the west bank, I don’t see how any other option would be realistic. But it absolutely needs a lot of international pressure for it to work, and it would be quite complicated to put into practice.

      The settlements represent land-grabbing, and land-grabbing and peace-making don’t go together, it is one or the other. By its actions, if not always in its rhetoric, Israel has opted for land-grabbing and as we speak Israel is expanding settlements. So, Israel has been systematically destroying the basis for a viable Palestinian state and this is the declared objective of the Likud and Netanyahu who used to pretend to accept a two-state solution. In the lead up to the last election, he said there will be no Palestinian state on his watch. The expansion of settlements and the wall mean that there cannot be a viable Palestinian state with territorial contiguity. The most that the Palestinians can hope for is Bantustans, a series of enclaves surrounded by Israeli settlements and Israeli military bases.

      So a two-state solution is no longer a viable option and that is why I have become a supporter of the one-state solution, a single state with equal rights for all its citizens. Ideologically, I don’t have any problem with a one-state solution. Ideologically, it is very attractive, it is a noble vision of two communities living in harmony in one space with equal rights for all its members. But, I am not naïve enough to think that the one-state solution is a realistic prospect because there is no support for a one-state solution in Israel. And if pushed really hard I think Israel would withdraw to the wall on the West Bank and annex whatever bits it wants of the West Bank. It would annex the main settlement blocks in Ma’ale Adumim, and the whole area around Jerusalem, and it would do so unilaterally rather than have a one-state so I am not in the least bit optimistic that the one-state solution is a viable proposition. But this is where I stand and I blame Israel for eliminating the alternative of a two-state solution.

      - Avi Shlaim 2017