DL Open Thread: Thursday, October 19, 2023

I think that President Biden’s trip to Israel was inspirational and substantive.  He has genuine empathy, and he demonstrated it both on a one-to-one basis, and in his attempts to get the parties to cool down.  It looks like he’s had some success–securing an agreement to get supplies to Palestinians through Egypt, and getting Israel to at least think through the hazards of an all-out assault on Gaza.  There are times when being presidential matters.

BTW, here’s why Israel should rethink such an assault–They’re Walking Into A Trap:

Hamas’s leaders and their Iranian backers have a conscious strategy. Like almost all other acts of spectacularly bloodthirsty terrorism, Hamas’s assault on southern Israel was designed to provoke an emotional and equally or even more outrageous response by the targeted society. Hamas and Iran are attempting to goad the Israelis into Gaza for a prolonged confrontation—which is to say that the intended effect is precisely the ground assault Israel is now preparing in order to root out and destroy Hamas as an organization, kill its cadres and leadership, and destroy as much of its infrastructure and equipment as possible.

Hamas surely would not have meticulously planned its audacious assault without also extensively planning a response to the hoped-for Israeli counterattack on the ground. The Israeli military will likely encounter a determined insurgency in Gaza. After all, Israel has had control of the land strip from the outside, but not on the inside. Israeli dominion over Gaza’s coastal waters, airspace, electromagnetic spectrum, and all but one of its crossings, including the only one capable of handling goods, has made Gaza a virtual open-air prison—run by particularly vicious inmates but surrounded and contained on all sides by the guards.

I think this was what Biden was warning Israel against.  He cited the war with Iraq as an example of how allowing blood lust to guide you can lead to disaster. 

‘Donald Trump Is Going To Get Someone Killed.’  He already has, and he’s upping the stakes with his rhetoric:

Mr. Trump has never respected the norms of political behavior and there’s little reason to think gag orders will provide meaningful discipline either. As on Jan. 6, his supporters shed traditional rules as well. The day is fast approaching when someone picks up a gun or builds a bomb and then seeks to follow through on Mr. Trump’s words. If and when that happens, he will say that he did not specifically direct or cause the violence, and he will probably escape without criminal charges — but the blood will be on his hands.

If Trump Doesn’t, Rethugs Will:

Senator Lindsey Graham wants to see Gaza flattened. Congressman Max Miller said the laws of war should be to be swept aside. A former US ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, suggested that Palestinians as a whole were responsible for Hamas’s crimes.

American politicians have rushed to plant their flags firmly with Israel after Hamas killed more than 1,400 people, and abducted about 200 others, in its unprecedented attack from the Gaza Strip. Some have echoed the demand by the Israel Defence Forces – “You either stand with Israel or you stand with terrorism” – reminiscent of the heated rhetoric in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on the US.

The Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted: “Anyone that is pro-Palestinian is pro-Hamas.”

Muslim groups in the US have warned the outpouring of extreme language is threatening the safety of Arab Americans following the killing of a six-year-old boy and the wounding of his mother by their landlord in Illinois in an apparent hate crime prompted by the Israel-Hamas conflict.

The police said Joseph Czuba stabbed the boy, Wadea Al-Fayoume, to death after entering their apartment and shouting: “You Muslims must die!”.

Veteran State Department Staffer Resigns Due To ‘Inhumane’ Arms Policy:

Veteran State Department official Josh Paul resigned from the agency on Tuesday over President Joe Biden’s approach to Israel-Palestine, telling HuffPost he felt he had to do so because he knew he could not push for a more humane policy within the U.S. government.

“I have had my fair share of debates and discussions and efforts to shift policy on controversial arms sales,” said Paul, who spent more than 11 years at State’s bureau of political-military affairs, which handles weapons deals. He most recently served as the bureau’s director of congressional and public affairs.

“It was clear that there’s no arguing with this one. Given that I couldn’t shift anything, I resigned,” he told HuffPost on Wednesday evening in his first media interview since he revealed his decision, which he also described in a LinkedIn post.

The department received “a clear top-down guidance that we are moving forward with everything we can,” Paul said. Asked when he decided to quit, he told HuffPost: “I wouldn’t say there was a single decision point — it was watching things unfold over the last 10 days.”