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In messages circulated on Friday, State Department staff wrote that high-level officials do not want press materials to include three specific phrases: “de-escalation/ceasefire,” “end to violence/bloodshed” and “restoring calm.”
The revelation provides a stunning signal about the Biden administration’s reluctance to push for Israeli restraint as the close U.S. partner expands the offensive it launched after Hamas ― which rules Gaza ― attacked Israeli communities on Oct. 7.
The emails were sent hours after Israel told more than 1.1 million residents of northern Gaza that they should leave their homes and shelters ahead of an expected ground invasion of the region. On Thursday, the United Nations said Israel had given Gazans a 24-hour deadline to move to the south of the strip, adding it would be “impossible for such a movement to take place without devastating humanitarian consequences.”
Asked about Israel’s evacuation order on Friday, U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby declined to reject or endorse it, calling it “a tall order.”
“We’re going to be careful not to get into armchair quarterbacking the tactics on the ground by the [Israel Defense Forces],” he added. “What I can tell you is we understand what they’re trying to do. They’re trying to move civilians out of harm’s way and giving them fair warning.”
IMO - The Biden Administration is tacitly endorsing what seems to me to be a coming genocide, and it’s kind of freaking me out. I don’t know if this is about domestic politics or if the Biden administration is actually low key cheering the slaughter on. Hamas is evil and should be destroyed, no argument here. But in the same way Hamas doesn’t believe Israel should exist, a good chunk of Isreal, particularly their current far right government, feels the same way about Palestinians, all of them. It seems Israel is not going to let a good crisis go to waste. Israeli military leaders have been using dehumanizing language, which is a tell tale sign of a coming genocide, they have suspended rules of engagement, my non expert opinion is the current blockade of food, water, and electricity, while inhumane on its face, is also in part to limit the ability of the world to learn about the war crimes about to be committed. The 24 hour order to move out of northern Gaza is impossible, Israel knows that, the Biden administration knows that, it’s clearly an effort to give Israel political cover for the mass amounts of civilians about to be slaughtered - if they stayed, they were part of or supportive of Hamas and so were legitimate targets, and even if not we gave them a warning to move and they failed to do so, so not our fault. I’d except this from a government who before all of this happened openly believed apartied was the ideal solution to the Palestinian conflict. I’m legitimately surprised the Biden administration is straight up cool with this going down, to the point that “end the violence/bloodshed” is by written policy a verboten phrase. It seems like some sick shit is about to go down, and the Biden Administrations hands are going to be dirty.
Joe Biden is worried about turning out the youth vote for he’s relection. He’s decided to be a passive accomplice to genocide. It’s a bold strategy Cotton let’s see how it plays out.
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We could have had Bernie…
“The targeting of civilians is a war crime, no matter who does it,” said Sanders. “Israel’s blanket denial of food, water, and other necessities to Gaza is a serious violation of international law and will do nothing but harm innocent civilians.”
I still wonder where we’d be today if we had Bernie instead. Much better off I bet.
“But we need someone more moderate” ugh I hate this so much
“Affordable, accessible healthcare? No! We need someone more moderate.”
Elects a president that wanted to nuke hurricanes, buy Greenland, and incited an insurrection
Ah now THAT’S moderation!
I guess it’s fun that sometimes reality is more bizarre than fantasy?
But it had been too much bizarre in the last few years. It’s been a bizarre global shitfest, with no time to breathe in between.
Also, nothing gets resolved.
Putin’s assault on Ukraine is going on for how long now? Climate change is shaping up to bring us godzilla level weather extremes in the near future. Everyone knows that and prefers to hate Greta, instead of hating the ones that could make a change.
Since i read the first headlines about Hamas at the Music Festival, i’m feeling extreme dread all the time. As if this started something awful that we all have yet to witness.
Each new headline seems to confirm my most hidden assumptions of what is coming next.
That’s how i feel anyway and i hate it.
Hey, shit might be fucked up but take it easy on the extreme dread unless one of these issues begins to threaten you personally. It just really doesn’t serve any good and you energy is better used elsewhere.
Remember what Mr Rogers mom always said, “Look for the helpers.” Remember the hole in the ozone we fixed? A lot of modern problems have some ingenious solutions in the works.
I know it’s not helpful for some but I really find comfort in the phrase: “It makes no sense to worry about things you have no control over because there’s nothing you can do about them, and why worry about things you do control? The activity of worrying keeps you immobilized.”
I know what you mean and absolutely agree. I don’t worry in a way that it would overwrite my “normal state” of emotions and render me immobilized.
My mom taught me early to not be desperate over things i can’t control.
The things happening now, make me think i should maybe worry a little bit more though and eventually start looking for things that i actually could do to help shape a better future.
I am not American but if I was I would have voted for this guy. This guy is a legend, such a great human being.
I wish there were more people like him in politics, as we really need people like him who protect people and not multi billion (trillion) dollar organisations.
It is a real pity he is so old now and won’t be a president. Humanity needs more people like him!
It is a real pity he is so old now and won’t be a president
Meh.
Bernie always said he never thought he’d be president.
He was running to drag the Overton window back towards the left, and encourage the next generation to vote and run for office.
And he’s been wildly successful at that. Which unfortunately means he probably won’t run for re-election again.
I did vote for him. I knew he wouldnt win. But I’d rather vote for who I want rather than against who I don’t want.
One of the things I appreciate about the RNC is that they don’t keep a thumb on the scales in their primary the way the democrats do. It bites them in the ass when the radicals win all the primaries and underperform in the general, but I do appreciate that they don’t have the paternalistic attitude towards their voters that the DNC seems to have with their bullshit superdelegate system.
Only because those radicals have thus far been useful idiots. Trump certainly bit them in the ass and turned the party on its head, but the party is still supporting capital. Had he come out the gate with a crusade on corporate America his campaign would have faltered very quickly.
The Administration knows there is no solution to this conflict. It also knows there is no state-side position which is politically expedient.
I’m going to say this as loud as I can. There will be no winners in this conflict. Ever. For anyone, involved or on the sidelines.
This memo is confirmation that the US administration knows there is no solution and doesn’t want anyone to say anything because no matter what they say it will make things worse. This is a tacit admission that there is nothing anyone outside can do. It’s like trying to extinguish a lithium battery fire - the stored energy will continue to be exothermic until it’s expended and any attempt to tamp it down is likely to make things worse.
It’s a shitty position were in, but this isn’t some Hollywood script where you can just write a happy ending. There is no happy ending.
They could make the statement that killing civilians will result in the immediate cease of funding and access to US munitions.
We aren’t exactly on the side lines here.
Yeah, we don’t exactly hold the high ground in the “not killing civilians when we’re on a patriotic rampage in a foreign country.” Heck, we don’t hold that high ground in our own country.
There is no strategy which will is acceptable to all political factions.
Certainly.
But given the extreme restraint Ukraine has been showing, it seems clear that “moral warfare” must have been emphasized as a condition for our support.
I would like those conditions to be passed on
I believe the Israeli government has made itself invaluable to us from an Intel perspective. That’s certainly going to factor in any calculus.
Right or wrong, this is what’s happening.
The Onion article about “steadfastly supporting Israel” being the better option because fewer people will get angry at you just keeps ringing true.
Perhaps. I mean your right on the eventual ending being bad. But the administration could at least pay lip service to “ending violence” and “restoring calm” even if they know that won’t happen. This memo demonstrates that the administration doesn’t want there to be any suggestion that the US is critical of whatever actions Israel chooses to take, up to and including genocide. They want the public to know the US is 100% behind Israel, no matter what. While also fully knowing Israel is currently committing war crimes and likely to escalate the violence. It’s not a good look.
You’re probably right that there will be no winners.
But the US has blood on it’s hands because we are the ones providing Israel with weapons and seemingly endless military backing. We didn’t pull the trigger but we gave them the guns.
And continued giving them the guns after they repeatedly misused them
I do wonder if Biden should be drawing some lines that would trigger embargoes. I agree that there’s no winning, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be pushing toward minimizing bloodshed. Right now, we can’t trust Israel to have restraint in how they root out hamas.
Arms dealers always win.
Point goes to the arms dealer faction from lemm.ee
Absent some unforeseen, HUGE event, these two sides are so entrenched and polarized that I’ve long theorized that the only way this ends is with genocide by either party.
They both have ancestral traditions and history on that land. Both have religious rights. There is NOT an enforced respect of sharing of the spaces or agreements.
How does one know their heritage, learn they have a birthright and yield it?
I’m not saying I want genocide. I don’t. I just don’t see these two groups going a different way now.
I want to be wrong.
There will be no winners in this conflict.
Israel wins.
This is absolute defeatist hogwash and/or deflecting complicity in a genocide. The US can absolutely step in and de-escalate the situation. There’s nothing holding us back except our alliance with Israel. If the US moves to de-escalate, the rest of the West and the world, will follow.
I agree that there will never be a real solution between these two… except one or the other getting wiped out the face of the earth.
srael will win, and by proxy, the US.
Also, the US benefits from Israel receiving American support because we can sell more weapons to them.
My current fear is that this conflict could spin out of control even more and plunge us into another world war, as hezbola is also threatened to join the fight from the north, as well as Iran and then the rest of the Arab nations.
We do fascism.
We sure do. I can hear the college version of me that believed “both parties are just two sides of the same captofacist coin” calling out from my memory saying “I told you so!”
I lived forty years in ignorant bliss. I’m miserable now. I don’t know which is worse. Spread love.
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My daughter is reading Howard Zinn, I’m finally reading Blackshirts and Reds. Old people get tired, lotsa naps.
I suspect there may be a domestic element at play no one has mentioned—Biden wants to appear extra decisive and effective to create a contrast with republicans in the house. A more nuanced position on the conflict would distract from that messaging.
But unfortunately, I’m not sure anyone is really paying attention to the house which has given republicans extra time to deal with their distinction without scrutiny.
On a more personal level, I also think that Biden is an old, somewhat biased man, and the Israel’s messaging around the brutality of the Hamas attack seems to have had an effect on his feelings about the conflict. So it may be a confluence of politics and personal blind spots. But this is all my speculation so take it with a grain of salt.
I think it’s simpler than that. I think Biden remains a die-hard imperialist, and he is enthusiastically embracing the same instincts that he embraced in the vote to invade Iraq, in the vote to give Bush authority to invade Afghanistan, and on and on and on.
It’s easy to forget what he genuinely believes, because – and I say this as a compliment – Biden’s entire policy book from the last five years is a 180 reversal from everything he’s said throughout his career. But this was a guy who thought John “Bomb-bomb-bomb, bomb-bomb-Iran” McCain was basically a guiding voice on foreign policy.
If Biden wanted to play it safe, he’d play it safe. Telling the State department NOT TO CALL FOR PEACE is not playing it safe, it’s just leading from the heart. And in his heart, he supports violence.
Biden is also old enough to remember the last time Palestine attacked Israel.
Coming genocide? It has been escalating slowly for a while. The amount of blood already on the hands of the IDF before this attack was already enough to drown them twice over.
Spineless fuckers
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The only way that happens is by getting heaps of younger lefties to fill the Dem bench from the bottom up so that the party insiders don’t have enough useless jerkoffs to fill their committees and key roles.
Democrats have had the exact same president ever since Bill Clinton.
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Defund the state of Israel
Thank you for posting this. Most of the Western world encouraging the escalating apartheid and genocide of the Palestinian people is freaking me out too
I have not been following this conflict very much, but can someone explain to me - why Israel actions are considered this bad? I’ll say it again - I have not been following this conflict, so don’t bash on me. Please explain instead of personally attacking me for not understanding this.
According to my understanding, Palestine can’t contain it’s terrorists groups and those terrorists groups literally attacked Israel and took a lot of hostages, so Israels response is to hit it back. Why is it considered bad? Terrorists organizations in Palestine is Palestine’s problem, isn’t it?
The clearest indicator should be the death and injury stats for Israel vs Palestine - this is a super one-sided, slow-burn genocide that’s about to escalate dramatically.
Israel are a nuclear power with a modern military, iron dome, US support, and a clear intent to genocide the Palestinians. Palestinians are armed with rocks, small arms and shoulder-fired rockets.
Israel has maintained Palestine, one of the most densely populated areas in the world as what’s widely recognised as an open air concentration camp, doing things we’ve seen in recent days - heavily restricting movement, cutting trade, food, water, and power, sending in troops or bombers on a whim, and using things like white phosphorus - a lot of this is a clear war crime.
Israel have been steadily taking over Palestinian homes - if Palestinians were to do the same, the consequences would start at every Palestinian in the area being executed by the IDF.
Israel has given Hamas support over the more secular, peaceful IDF because it’s useful to have a monstrous opposition as a pretext to do exactly what they’re about to escalate. While I strongly disagree with Hamas, I can see how Palestinians are drawn to joining them.
While Hamas is terrible, they’re not the Palestinian government, and don’t meaningfully represent the Palestinian people. Their attacks are predictably meet with disproportionate response and Palestinian civilian casualties every time. Palestinian and Israeli citizens are both the victims here - as much mutual hate as there may be between them. Hamas terrorism doesn’t justify the kind of indiscriminate attacks we have seen on Palestinian civilians, and will see escalate further over the coming days/weeks.
I’ll go looking for sources on some of this is needed and noone else beats me to it.
Thank you for explaining this.
Thanks for taking the interest and time to try to get your head around a particularly contentious, but ultimately quite straightforward issue.
I also realised I didn’t do a great job of directly addressing your question about Palestine dealing with Hamas. They certainly are a Palestinian problem to solve, but between the resourcing issues, the Israelis propping up Hamas, and the understandable response to Israel’s constant, very one-sided attacks, it’s an impossible task, and a problem largely created by Israel… Who see to have their own final solution in mind.
