• freshcow@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    8 months ago

    I don’t find that argument compelling at all without more of a source. As if we haven’t already gone above and beyond in supplying arms and funding to Israel’s government. Why should a piece of paper compel the United States to continue to unconditionally fund a genocide?
    Let’s not forget, Biden has gone out of his way to bypass Congress to provide further weapons to Israel. And his administration has repeatedly vetoed any UN resolutions pertaining to the situation.

    • lutillian
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      edit-2
      8 months ago

      Summary of our obligations from the state department https://www.state.gov/u-s-security-cooperation-with-israel/

      The two that apply here are that arms can be dispersed with only congressional notification and that we’re have multiple bilateral defense agreements with them.

      Hamas issued an attack on Israel which triggered the bilateral defense agreements and one way to remedy would be to deploy supplies to the region with congressional notification.

      Just imagine the damage to the region if we took bilateral defense to it’s logical conclusion and dispatched actual military aid.

      This is not Biden “going around Congress”. This is Congress explicitly granting permission in advance to do it as long as they are notified.

      (Worth noting I’ve never looked this deeply into this before so I’m learning about this clown fiesta as well. It goes pretty deep…)

    • OpenStars@startrek.website
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      8 months ago

      You can find the entire text of the treaty online btw. Google is enshittified now so I would not know how to search for it, but I do recall that I’ve seen it once:-).

      But in general that is simply how America works: Congress passes the laws, then the President enforces those. The line gets blurry when the President suggests things to Congress to pass, like a budget, but ultimately if Congress refuses, there is nothing he can do (his power lies in vetoing laws that are passed, but there is no corresponding veto to anti-block things that they refuse to pass; with only minor exceptions possible e.g. changing how he uses his own budget to change things within solely the federal government - which Israel is not a part of).

      This is to prevent a totalitarian regime from rising up, which the founding fathers seemed to fear more than just about anything, given how we started by kicking out the English King, and then we decided to build in protections to ensure that another local one could not rise up from within.