DL Open Thread: Saturday, Feb. 24, 2024
Why Did It Take Them More Than Three Years To Do This?:
The United States on Friday restored its longstanding policy that settlements are inconsistent with international law, reversing a stance implemented by the former administration, hours after Israel announced a plan to advance the construction of thousands of new settlement homes in response to a terror shooting in the West Bank.
“We’ve seen the reports and I have to say we’re disappointed in the announcement,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in response to a question on the matter during a press conference in Argentina.
“It’s been long-standing US policy under Republican and Democratic administrations alike that new settlements are counterproductive to reaching an enduring peace.”
Despite pressure from progressive pro-Israel organizations, the Biden administration had held off for over three years in revoking the Pompeo doctrine, as it avoided moves seen as overly confrontational with Jerusalem.
But the swift nature in which the US moved with Friday’s announcement highlighted Washington’s ever-shrinking patience with Israel’s policy in the West Bank, as the administration continues to come under fire from progressives at home and many allies abroad over its broad support for Israel in the war against Hamas.
OK, now the settlements are illegal again. What’s Feckless Joe gonna do about it? Or, for that matter, anything having to do with Netanyahu?
Is Supreme Court Justice Sotamayor OK? She’s reportedly the only Justice who travels with a medic. Where have I seen this movie before? Ah, yes. Here:
Her dissents, with their trademark clarity and righteousness, have made her a favorite of many liberals. But the window in which President Joe Biden and Senate Democrats have an all-but-guaranteed ability to appoint her replacement is rapidly closing. Polls show Biden neck and neck with former President Donald Trump in their likely November rematch, and Democrats face hostile odds of holding on to their slim majority in the Senate, which approves Supreme Court appointments.
Looming over it all is Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s fateful decision not to retire from the court under Democratic President Barack Obama, and the minimal party pressure she faced to do so. When Ginsburg ultimately died in September 2020, with Trump in the White House and only weeks before an election he would lose, Trump seized the opportunity to replace her with her ideological opposite.
Even Rethugs Realize That The IVF Ruling Is A Political Bridge Too Far. Someone even put words into Trump’s mouth:
“Like the OVERWHELMING MAJORITY of Americans, including the VAST MAJORITY of Republicans, Conservatives, Christians, and Pro-Life Americans, I strongly support the availability of IVF for couples who are trying to have a precious baby,” he said in a post on Truth Social.
Let the scrambling begin.
Speaking Of Trump (aren’t we always?), when will the press cover and show evidence of his declining mental state? It’s all right there. Feel free to click on each and every except from his ‘speech’ to the National Religious Broadcasters Convention.
Memo to any would-be self-respecting news outlet: How about paying attention and reporting on this?
Chris Coons At The Yamaha. Neither Coons nor the ‘reporter’ say anything of substance. He wants to be Secretary of State so-o-o-o bad.
What do you want to talk about?
The US should have declared the West Bank settlements illegal long ago, or at least when they began the rapid expansion fueled by US expatriates. Now that they are built, the price of doing the right thing is much higher.
However,there is a huge vacuum in “international law” that is silent on security, and leaves Israel to choose among multiple bad options for protecting its own security:
Bad option #1: Remove all settlements but continue a military occupation of the West Bank to prevent cross-border attacks. Works for short term but is unustainable and undesirable.
Bad option #2: Exit the West Bank entirely but blockade weapons imports, and respond militarily to any cross-border attacks. This is exactly what happened in Gaza but failed, as nihilist extremist groups took over Gaza as their terror platform.
Bad option #3: Exit West Bank and Gaza entirely, remove settlements, no blockade, no occupation, no US aid, no military response to cross-border attacks. This is the solution demanded by the anti-Israel “world opinion” and the US hard left.
Bad (better) option #4: Announce openness to a two-state solution and put the onus on regional powers to explain how mutual security guarantees would work. This would have to be a post-Netanyahu, post-Hamas initiative.
Not to mention, any figure on either side who gets behind a land-for-peace deal is likely to be assassinated by his own extremists.
Option #5: A one-state solution where Jews, Muslims, and Christians all have equal rights.
Also, a recent piece on Israel from DeBoer with some genuinely thoughtful opposition in the comments section.
https://open.substack.com/pub/freddiedeboer/p/this-is-zion?r=pu1q3&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
A one-state solution with equal rights for all dissolves the Jewish state of Israel. That’s why it wasn’t listed with the others.
Yes.
“A one-state solution where Jews, Muslims, and Christians all have equal rights.”
The lion, wolf, and the lamb all vote on what to have for lunch. Brilliant! Can’t wait for the constitutional convention to meet.
Yeah, and the Palestinian innocents and children are once again designated as the sacrificial “lambs”. Look at the pictures of those shanties in the West Bank alleged to be settlement homes and tell me that’s how justice for all will be achieved. They are military outposts occupied by Jewish extremist terrorists.
John Kowalko
Dehumanizing ethnically cleansed refugees living under siege and apartheid. Cool story, Mr Puck.
If you read a bit of history this was the same line the apartheid government of South Africa used. They couldn’t possibly let the Blacks and Coloureds (official term) live equally because they’d kill all the whites.
This was a lie and actually didn’t happen. Everyone should remember that. This is a Zionist myth. Don’t fall for it.
(Same argument used in antebellum American. Can’t free the slave because they’d kill us all. Never happened of course.)
It’s not about killing all the Jews. It’s about them not having a homeland because they’d never win another election in what is nominally not a theocracy but is quite close to one.
So your waving away of the consequences is moot.
You’re talking about democratic consequences.
Puck’s talking about animals devouring each other. So when “losing” minority control over an apartheid government is on par with the total destruction of the Jewish people we have a big problem.
We have to treat these people as sub human because they… won’t vote for us?
I appreciate you trying to water it down though. Although I would think if genocide is required to maintain the idea of a nationalist ethno-state it’s still diabolical.
Are you arguing that Israel should be a nationalist ethno-state ruled by violent apartheid in perpetuity? Seems bad.
I’m not arguing for anything. I’m noting what the situation is, and why the problem will not go away in my lifetime and probably not in yours either. It’s a bad situation, and has been for several thousand years now.
There already is a one-state solution where Jews, Muslims, and Christians all have equal rights. It’s the United States.
Correct and in Israel they don’t. Because Zionism is a racist colonial project. Which is weird to watch you defend.
I have no idea what your point is now. There can’t be more than one of these states? LOL.
Every settlement that is created is an affront to basic human rights. The subtext underlying this Israeli government’s policy is genocide. And this Israeli administration doesn’t even care that it is genocide. These Israeli conservatives mock the holocaust that killed 6 million European Jewish people.
In all truth, Jabotinsky understood this in the 1920s. It wasn’t even subtext. It was text!
Read The Iron Wall to learn more! He opined that a military of 50,000 would be require to cleansed the land of Arabs. Has little to do with the current administration.
Again, please try a cursory review of the history. Khalidi and Pappe are best, Avi Shlaim is also very good.
It’s a 125 year-old colonization process. Zionism was only conceived of in the 1880s-90s. Balfour Declaration is 1917. This is NOT a thousand year-old, complicated conflict.
I think you should stop perpetuating these myths.
Ah, so the whole region was at peace before Zionism.
It’s not my problem to solve, and I won’t try, because it’s unsolvable without massive violence. Why you think this region of the world, above all others, deserves your attention is your problem, not mine.
And it most certainly is a complicated conflict. If you won’t concede that you’re just a propagandist.