andrewrgross

I know, right? ?

It looks so sharp you could cut pastrami with it! Very satisfying, imo.

Again, I totally understand. I have been down the road that your friends are on.

This question you're asking has been a point of debate since the start of the zionist project a century ago.

The concept of some form of peaceful coexistance used to be the default position of liberal zionists, which in this context means supporters of universal human rights who believe in the establishment of a sovereign Jewish national homeland. The counterweight to this that has emerged -- particularly since the conquest and occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights in 1967 -- has been secular Jewish Supremacy and Religious Zionism. These are technically distinct, but ultimately both are far-right ethnonationalist/ethnosupremacist groups that advocate for a maximalist approach. Both believe in the complete conquest and ethnic cleansing of historic mandate Palestine.

The problem is that following the Oslo Accords, the far-right recognized that momentum was slowly shifting their way, and the liberal zionists never fought it. They liked the idea of rights and justice, but they didn't really have the stomach to advocate for the agency of Palestinians. Many are scared of Palestinians. Many recognize how utterly inconvenient their continued existence is. It was assumed that after a generation, they'd give up and their culture would've dissolved, but it didn't happen. Media shifted to the right along with the center of power in Israel, and US government -- historically a bulwark against the Israeli far right -- kept moving with them.

Most of your friends were probably raised much as I was. They probably got a tree planted in Israel for their b'nai mitzvah. They may have gone on a Birthright trip. And as they got older, they got more uncomfortable with the the side of Israel they saw during the Second Intifada and Operation Cast Lead, but accepted the universal pacifier: "It's complicated."

Which brings us to today. The illusion of any chance of agency or self-determination for Palestinians -- in both the occupied territories as well as Palestinian citizens living in Israel's formal UN boundaries -- has been rendered an obvious farce. Which means that everyone is really forced into largely three paths:

1. Radicalization. Much of the Israeli public has openly endorsed a second Nakba. They leave and live or stay and die. But staying and living should no longer be an option afforded to them.
2. Rebellion. You put on a shirt that says "Not in Our Name!" and throw tomatoes at John Fetterman. You tell the world that Netanyahu and his band of fascists are gaslighting the whole planet, and genocide is flat out antithetical to Jewish values.
3. Resolution. You just look away. It'll be over soon. Afterwards, if your kids ever ask about it you can say that you were against it. But hey: we can't mourn forever. And tickets to the new resorts in the Gaza settlements are heavily subsidized by the government, so who are you to say no to a nice vacation?

Biden is has been in camp 3 his whole career. As I mentioned, he justified violence against civilians in a private meeting during the Reagan administration. He's always had an appetite for breaking a few eggs.

I'm in camp 2. I want a one-state solution. It can be binational states or whatever, but I want everyone to have free movement across the territory, full rights, and for everyone to get access to the same national budget for schools and hospitals.

Your friends are probably demoralized and don't know what to feel. But if you don't take any action, the default option is 3. I hope they'll join me in 2. I'm furious that my son won't enjoy the privileges I did. Jewish safety and our reputation around the world are the prices that are being paid for a bunch of real estate.

I'm sorry this is all so long. I don't know if you'll read this, but as you can tell, I've got a lot bottled up. I bet your friends do to. Give them my love and support.

That's all fair. Just for clarity, I want to firmly distinguish that I don't think Joe Biden's zionism is at all the same as Pat Robertson's zionism. What you're talking about, I think is the evangelical messianic cult belief that a holy war in the middle east will usher in the second coming of Christ. I've heard that the president of France thought that George W. Bush was in that camp a bit.

Biden, from all that I've read, simply shares the zionism of liberal Jews. It's the same kind of Zionism I grew up with. It's a belief that the return of Jews to Israel is a triumphant story of 20th century humanist values making the tragedy of the Holocaust and the second World War into an inflection point at which we as a global civilization broadly turned away from barbarism and colonialism and racism in favor of enlightened future of international law and justice. It was predicated on the notion that Jews had been mistreated for millennia, and finally were receiving reparations. And our victory (as Jews) was the symbolic case that would define the future of political and economic liberalism that was the birthright of humans around the world.

As long as you don't ever think about the Palestinians, it's a powerful, uplifting narrative. That's what Biden is on. But the reason that Bibi has sat on the thrown for so long is because unlike folks like Biden, he knows how the gefilite fish is made, and he's not squeamish about making it.

Do you know where the term "scapegoat" comes from? It's biblical. We used to transfer our sins onto goats and then sacrifice them. We made them dirty with our sins so we could claim to be clean. That's what Bibi has always been. His job has always been to do the things that that liberal zionists have always wanted done but cannot bear to soil their own souls doing.

Look: this isn't really as much of an anti Biden sentiment as it sounds. I know it hurts to hear these things. Believe me, I know.

I grew up a zionist. When I was 10, I won an art contest at my local JCC for a sculpture that was just the shape of what I thought was Israel on top of a star of David. I put as much thought into it as a kid drawing stars and spaceships. But that shape I thought was Israel included the entire region between the Jordon River and the Mediterranean sea. If I were Palestinian and the emblem were a crescent moon, that piece of casual art would be widely recognized as a call for genocide. And it won a Jewish art contest. It wasn't even good art. It was years before I understood why the judges liked it.

Biden is a die-hard Zionist. He doesn't consciously know the purpose and end-stage goal of his beliefs any more than I did when I was 10. But what is happening is the piecemeal annexation and ethnic cleansing of the entire region of historic mandate Palestine. That is the goal of Zionists, even the liberal ones. They do a lot of mental gymnastics to make sure they never have to think about it, but a year of unchanged policy for which this outcome was fully known is the simplest proof in the world.

I'm sorry. In most regards, I liked and admired Biden. I don't believe he ever meant to do evil. But he did mean to do what has happened in Gaza. And it happens to be very, very evil.

By trying to play it safe, Biden & co. ensured that the conflict would become more drawn out and expand,

This is how you know it's a proxy war.

As you point out, Biden's decisions were obviously ones that would prolong the war rather than affording a decisive counteroffensive. This was because the goal of slowly bleeding Russia's military out to weaken a rival power and bolster the American weapons manufactures was placed more highly than than trying to put Ukraine into a position of strength from which to demand a ceasefire on their own terms.

I don't know what Zelensky wanted, or what his plans were. But I think the most obvious and sensible approach would've been to privately lay out the bargain: the US gives Ukraine more or less everything that it wants to kick Russia's ass for a couple of months with the awareness that a full defeat of Russia by Ukraine is impossible, and pursuing a regime change would be inviting a nuclear world war. As such, the US goes hard, and puts Ukraine in a position to make the most modest concessions necessary to end the war in a way that lets Russia survive while having demonstrated that the overall approach was a disaster.

Could Putin decide to try again a few years later? Sure. Is it likely? And would that situation have been worse than what we're about to watch Trump and Putin do? Jesus Christ, not by a Texas mile.

Letting the war continue under any terms into Trump's presidency should've been viewed as the number-one all-time greatest military vulnerability to Ukraine, and should've been prevented at any cost.

I don't want to diminish that by claiming to have all the answers, but I would suggest a few things.

Preface: My overall advice would include a complete overall to the status quo US approach to Israel and the middle east pre-10/7. The prior plan -- which was to help buy the support of all of Israel's neighbors to isolate Palestinians from any consideration was deeply immoral, inhumane, and as 10/7 showed us, strategically unsound. But for the sake of the thought exercise, I'll answer as if I supported Biden's overall objective, which is to maintain the apartheid regime under a veneer of plausible deniability that preceded 10/7.

First, Biden should've imposed a series of limits of Bibi from the start of the war. He should've privately laid out the objectives the US would support and the length of time available to conduct it, and "leaked" some of these discussions. He acknowledged the risk that Israel would overreach as the US did during 9/11 -- which by the way, HE himself bears great responsibility for. He was the ranked minority member of the Senate foreign relations committee in 2001. Antony Blinken was his main foreign policy advisor when he passed the Patriot Act, the Authorization for Use of Military Force that began the Global War on Terror, and the separate Authorization for Use of Force to invade Iraq in 2022. Considering all this, there was no reason to agree to give Israel a blank check for actions he publicly acknowledged were likely to create a disaster.

Second, he should've made clear during the first ceasefire in November of 2023 that the war was now over. They'd already killed tens of thousands of people and collapsed most of the infrastructure in Gaza. They'd made their point, and it was time to get the hostages home and negotiate a "day after" arrangement. Again, I would advocate for an actual long-term peace plan for Palestine, because the whole framework prior to the war assumes a permanent immiseration of Gaza that I do not support, but if that's what you want, this would've been a practical time to do that.

Third, there was always the problem that Netanyahu was trying to stay out of jail. He knew that if the first ceasefire held, it would mean that the war cabinet would dissolve, opposition leaders would call for elections and an investigation into the failures of 10/7, he'd lose office, face trial, and likely go to jail. Personally, again, I think this sounds very appropriate. But if you're Biden -- who genuinely thinks of Bibi as his little brother despite the fact that Bibi is a ruthless psychopath who would slit Biden's throat without hesitation -- you could offer to cover Bibi's ass by arranging for his complete pardon in exchange for peacefully ceding control.

Overall, this isn't really chess. It's more like a standard operating procedure. But truth be told, Biden did what he did because ultimately, this was all the outcome he wanted.

I know that sounds sick and deranged, but if you go through his entire career, it's always been there. From when he shocked Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin by justifying violence against civilians in a private meeting in 1982 to his repeated acts to undermine Obama in his dealings with Netanyahu, Biden has always been committed to a maximalist approach towards Palestinians. And now we're here.

I mean no disrespect, but I think you need to exercise a much more critical lens. If only as an exercise in understanding other viewpoints, even if you think they're somehow incorrect.

Biden didn't need to tear up treaties or threaten to invent new powers. He literally just had to obey US law.

A law known as the Leahey law states very, very frankly that it is illegal -- completely against US law -- for any US agency to knowingly provide weapons which they believe will be used to commit human rights abuses or violate international law.

Numerous whistleblowers in the state department -- Stacey Gilbert, Annelle Sheline, Josh Paul -- flagged the provision of weapons to Israel as a clear violation of the Leahy law. They repeatedly pointed out that internally, the State Department had clearly determined that weapons were routinely being used in a manner that made further deliveries a criminal act under US law. This happened in full public view. These three people (as well as others outside of the state department) resigned from the jobs they'd worked their whole lives for out of duty to the constitution to publicly disclose that Blinken and Biden were knowingly acting in direct violation of US criminal law. That's what makes this so frustrating. Biden had no excuse. Despite every claim to the contrary, his complicity in the war crimes in Gaza were conducted knowingly and deliberately. It was not passive, it required active, determined will to carry out. I think that based on numerous public testimonials from within his administration, frankly, the International Criminal Court had sufficient evidence to charge Biden with war crimes as they did Netanyahu and Galant. But obviously charging the US president is just way too hot a potato.

Biden withheld a single item: 2000 lbs bombs. That was a purely symbolic gesture. That in no way limited Israel's ability to conduct the war. And that was on purpose. If it had, he wouldn't have done it.

No one prevented him from withholding anything. I'm not sure what you think Republicans forced him to do, but that is the sole item that was withheld, and that restriction persisted until he left office.

This is very, very painful stuff to digest. But I hope you can take a deep breath and at least sit with these facts for a moment. I think we should all do so out of respect for people like Gilbert, Sheline, and Paul who sacrificed their careers and reputations over these plain facts.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/27/opinions/gaza-israel-resigning-state-department-sheline/index.html

I find it tragic the lack of strategic thinking or imagination that the national security world is capable of.

If what you're saying is true, this is the best outcome. Biden did the best that one could do. This result is the result you get from implimenting the best possible strategic war planning of the strongest military in all of history.

That's preposterous. If Biden, Blinken, and Austin sat down and applied the world's most formidable military power to simulating outcomes, among possible outcomes would certainly be these two:

1. Trump wins, withdraws all support, and possibly begins sanctioning Ukraine or supplying weapons and intelligence to Putin. Zelinsky is killed and Ukraine comes fully under Russian control as a puppet state.

2. Zelinsky agrees under pressure from Biden to negotiate a ceasefire in 2022. European leaders buy into a plan where they muster an overwhelming pressure campaign of limited duration to apply maximum pressure to Putin economically, and Biden warns that if Putin doesn't come to the table, all bets are off: Ukraine enters into a complete mutual defense pact with the US, and we begin building long range ballistic missile launchers on their border. OR; Ukraine agrees to surrender parts of Crimea and the Donbas in exchange for a complete withdrawal. Russia acquiesces. The war ends. Both sides are mad, but Trump comes into office more than two years after Russia has completely withdrawn, and Ukraine maintains a sizeable stockpile of American weapons, making a resumption of the conflict unappealing to Putin.

I don't love outcome 2. But can we not pretend that this was not an option obviously available to Biden? An option he refused to even consider, despite the obviously enormous risks?

Biden should've compelled an end to this by any means necessary before Trump took office. This was not an unforeseeable outcome, and they made no effort to even consider a response strategy.

I do not understand what your point is.

What lesson did you take from the fiasco with Bibi? Biden claimed for months that he was going to get Bibi to agree to a ceasefire, and that it was close, and that the major obstacle was Hamas. And that they were working "tirelessly". And critics continued to insist that if he was serious, he needed to call up Bibi and say that he either accept a ceasefire or continue the war with rocks and sharp sticks, but that one way or another, Israel was about to stop firing US-made bullets at kids. And we were told that it doesn't work that way.

And then Trump said that Bibi had to agree to Biden's ceasefire by January 20th or there'd be "hell to pay". Obviously not because of any humanitarian concern, but the point is that it was obvious all along: when the US is your essential supplier, the US can largely dictate exactly when you sit down at the negotiating table.

Do you see some other lesson here besides that Biden was terrible at diplomacy, specifically because he never really wanted diplomacy?

No: because that assumes that Putin knew Trump was going to win.

Both sides knew that the outcome of a coin flip election could make or break the terms of any future agreement, so Putin had no way to confidently know that a negotiation in 2025 would yield better terms than 2024.

I mean, it's all hypothetical. Maybe Putin would rather go for broke, because he's insane and an evil asshole. Maybe he'd rather die blowing up the whole world than every accept a stalemate. But the theory that there was no room to negotiate is preposterous.

I can definitely say in this moment, though, that Biden's refusal to even discuss negotiating a ceasefire was certainly a massive, costly mistake.

This is uncomfortable to say, but the US President has pretty much unconstrained authority to control the diplomatic matters of most of our allies. It's not unlimited, but it's obviously enough that the President of the United States can -- if they choose to -- simply dictate the end of a proxy war. I think this is really more obvious common sense than some fringe theory, but for any skeptics, Trump demonstrated this by commanding Benjamin Netanyahu to accept a ceasefire deal he hated that Biden had ostensibly been trying to secure for about 7 months. The only difference between Biden's seven months and Trump's seven days was that Trump didn't ask. He just dictated what was going to happen.

That is... horrible. It's not a basis for international relations or peace or sovereignty or respect for allies...

But it is a frank demonstration that Biden could end the war in Ukraine at pretty much any time. Any month of the year that suited him, he could've picked up the phones and said it was time to strike a deal.

He couldn't end it on the terms of his choosing! The terms would've sucked at all points, but negotiated settlement was always an option. And at any point if he'd done that, I can guarantee you that Ukraine would've gotten a better "deal" than what whatever is going to be imposed on them by Trump & Putin.