Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Biden administration’s foreign policy is a mess and lacks any real consistency. This messiness was on full display in the president’s brief address on Thursday evening, a plea for Congressional funding of both the US struggle to get Russia back out of Ukraine and of support for the extremist Netanyahu government’s combination of targeting Hamas and its genocidal campaign against the civilians of Gaza.
Biden linked Ukraine’s struggle against Russia and Israel’s struggle against Hamas by depicting the conflict as one of authoritarianism versus democracy. Biden denounced Russian dictator Vladimir Putin for depicting Ukraine as an artificial country, granted an identity by the Soviet Union, which the Russian Federation could now withdraw at will. He made an analogy to Hamas’s determination to destroy Israel.
Everything is wrong with Biden’s equivalencies and analogies. It is not clear how “democratic” the government of Binyamin Netanyahu was before this crisis. Netanyahu is on trial for corruption. He brought into his cabinet parties that not so long ago were on the US State Department terrorist watchlist. Netanyahu and his extreme-right allies were attempting to gut the Israeli supreme court and to move Israel in the direction of an illiberal democracy. They spoke of wiping Palestinian towns off the map. That was the reason Netanyahu had never been invited to the White House.
Despite Biden’s gestures toward Palestinian dignity and self-determination, regarding which he instanced the toothless Palestine Authority of Mahmoud Abbas, his administration has stood idly by, as did the administrations of Trump, Obama, and Bush, as Israel has illegally poured hundreds of thousands of Israeli squatters into Palestinian areas, who have stolen the lands of Palestinian families and have increasingly subjected them to pogroms….
https://www.juancole.com/2023/10/historically-illiterate-hypocritical.html
***********************
Some information for Israelis (and the rest of us)
We’re anti-Zionist Jews and we see genocide unfolding in Gaza
Standing up for Palestine is also standing up to save the west from the worst of itself
After the truth-shower 