Gaza pier used for aid delivery has been reconnected, U.S. officials say

Wilshire@lemmy.world to World News@lemmy.world – 95 points –
US pier in Gaza to reopen for humanitarian aid after sea damage
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Exactly, it was (very relatively) cheap and quick. And they figured when, not if, it breaks, it will be again quick to repair. And it is interesting tech that could be useful down the line that they may figure is worth the cost in training alone.

The piece of shit cost $230 million and lasted 10 days

Modular military engineering materials are both obscenely expensive, and temporary. They are meant as a bandaid to quickly solve transportation problems to enable logistics.

Also, being modular, they can be replaced easily and quickly.

If you want a hardy lifetime dock, you're going to need months to years under ideal circumstances. And then Isreal could "accidentally" blow it up with a "rogue" strike, and there would be no option but to scrap the whole thing. Because most permanent docks aren't meant to handle military strikes.

But yeah, let's just ignore that the building constraints around this are just about the worst case imaginable. Let's just keep whining about how a solution isn't perfect and therefore worthless like all the other Leftist comments on Lemmy

They barely delivered any aid. This was a boondoggle.

It's amazing the military ineptness people excuse.

It's not ineptitude. Their hands are tied by the government from providing aid in any effective way.

Are you seriously saying that the U.S. has no leverage over the Israeli government?

I never said anything like that.

You said their hands are tied. That means they don't have leverage they could use.

"They" is pretty clearly referring to the military, as that's what we were discussing.

What's your solution, then? Overnight peace in the middle east?

I'd say the U.S. not offering Israel any more support until they open the borders to aid would go a long way to solving things.

But apparently that's going way beyond the pale.

And how exactly will that put food in the hands of the starving Palestinians?

Again with the "if it's not perfect, it's not worth doing" bullshit I'm so tired of hearing about this conflict.

Sorry... how will letting aid trucks into Gaza put food in the hands of starving Palestinians?

You know what aid trucks are, right?

Look we either spend a billion a year rebuilding this thing or we start looking for actual solutions to the problems we've caused. Do you want that? I thought so.

You can't be dense enough to believe that if the US stops sending Isreal aid, that suddenly Isreal will suddenly magically be completely disarmed, and aid trucks will suddenly be able to move freely. Aid trucks aren't even on the table.

Since that's not even close to what I said, no, that's not what I believe.

And what other conclusion is there to your answers?

Me: How would YOU put food into Palestinian hands?

You: Stop sending aid to Isreal.

Me: How does that put food in Palestinian hands?

You: Aid trucks

If that was what I said, you would be right. However, this is what I said:

I’d say the U.S. not offering Israel any more support until they open the borders to aid would go a long way to solving things.

I'm not sure why you think that sort of thing doesn't motivate a country we're giving billions of dollars in aid to, but it does.

However, this is what you said in response:

You can’t be dense enough to believe that if the US stops sending Isreal aid, that suddenly Isreal will suddenly magically be completely disarmed, and aid trucks will suddenly be able to move freely. Aid trucks aren’t even on the table.

I said nothing about disarming Israel. And I know aid trucks are not on the table, because no one is motivating Israel to put them on the table. Again, withholding the billions of dollars in money and weapons we're sending to Israel would go a long way to getting them to let aid trucks in to feed people. You seem to be suggesting that not sending them more weapons than they already have is disarming them. Which it is not.

Or are you saying Israel doesn't need American money and weapons anyway? Then maybe America should just stop giving them money and weapons regardless.

My point is that stopping aid to Isreal won't put food in Palestinian bellies any time soon. And when they're starving right now, it's a useless gesture.

Actually doing what CAN be done right now, which is bypassing land chokepoints by building a non-perfect dock to offload millions of lbs of food, is the best solution I've heard of thus far, to actually stave off the immediate problem of starvation.

I'm not saying I approve of continuing to send military aid to Isreal. We can attack this from multiple fronts, but getting food and medical aid into Gaza is the most urgent need. And I don't find your efforts to undermine the most effective, if flawed, means of getting those supplies into Gaza to be helping the Palestinian's plight in the slightest.

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The fuck does someone's political alignment have to do with this shit?

The tendency to make Perfect the enemy of Good.

It's a tired theme here on Lemmy, particularly WRT Gaza, and particularly in criticism of Biden's policy towards Isreal.

And then Isreal could "accidentally" blow it up with a "rogue" strike

Yeah maybe they should stop giving rockets to the rogue state that keeps blowing up their shit.

Let's just keep whining about how a solution isn't perfect

The only thing this is a solution for is to the problem of "what's a good way to pretend we're humanitarians while genociding the people we're pretending we care about", so yeah, it's worthless if you don't want that to happen.

We don't want a hardy lifetime dock. We want Israel to stop committing genocide and to allow aid by land and air routes.

Ok. And how has that negotiation been going?

I prefer to actually do what can be done in the short term, while we continue to work on long term solutions in tandem. Not just put all your eggs in the long term basket, and let the Palestinians starve if it takes too long, or doesn't happen at all.

Aid by land and air can be done in the short term, a lot faster then building a dock and shipping by sea. The only thing stopping that is a pure policy decision by Israel.

Personally, I think the US should continue with aid airdrops. Hell, I think they should load up trucks and roll through Rafah or any available crossing in Gaza.

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