2nd Biden admin official resigns over president's response to Gaza war

Collision Resistance@lemmy.world to politics @lemmy.world – 345 points –
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And he’s losing a LOT more votes from younger people for supporting the genocide of Palestinians without question.

Finding hundreds of billions of dollars without any question for more bombs that will kill more civilians, and yet never even raising a finger to fight for some of the these younger generations’ needs that were supposedly part of his agenda.

It’s not going to be pretty when Biden loses the election.

Young people don’t watch cnn msnbc fox etc… all of these networks never question the support of Palestinian genocide and unconditional support of israel.

The media young people watch question these things. Thank god

I can tell you don’t watch CNN or MSNBC because they totally are questioning things and are highly critical of Netanyahu, who is basically Israeli George W Bush. Young people can vote for who they want to vote for, but if they all toss their votes in the trash for a Russian plant like RFK Jr, I will be blaming them for the repercussions of a second Trump term as equally as I would blame his brainwashed cult.

They don’t care who you blame.

They also know that the blame will come with any loss, no matter how they vote.

The funny thing is that close to 2/3rds (more on many issues) of Americans actually support the policies that are on the far left (of American politics).

But because we have all been watching corporate media that is literally lying to us, we have been lead to believe that we don’t actually believe what we actually believe.

When you starting breaking down the policies and explain them in simple details, (should we all have healthcare), america is far left when it comes to policies we ALL support.

But ask a Republican if they like “Obamacare” and you will get a completely different answer. This is assuming we are not discussing policy minutiae within Obamacare just Obamacare in general….. and it is pretty much like this across the board….

America is FAR more leftist than the corporate oligarchy would have you believe.

But instead of burning down buildings because of police brutality, low wages, and lack of even the most basic social safety net…..

We are arguing over whether rail workers should get one hour of sick time a year….

It’s fucking ludicrous.

And I know y’all don’t like it…. A vote for a Biden is a vote for more of the same corrupt politics, corporate PACS and corporate donations and the revolving door of senators being bribed for their votes and lining their own pockets.

Y’all are arguing about whether a facist will be our leader, but we already live under a corporate oligarchy…

It's okay, many of them will learn when the fascists turn on empathetic people like them, people like their LGBTQIA+ friends, and an ever more purity-shifting test stupider than a swatch of paint held to their faces.

Because people (maybe some like you?) don't explain nuance and responsibility to them, just throw blame around and make noises about where all of the fault lays (it's never also on your--metaphorical you, I hope--laps is it?) and why this agenda is better and would not lead to this or that.

You don't need to address me if you prefer of course. I don't actually foresee any useful dialogue here so just yelling at two-faced clouds.

Happy new year…. Not avoiding anyone but yea,

These arguments about lesser of two evils, oh it’s not Biden’s fault he couldn’t do anything, oh (the Republican candidate) is going to bring facism.

People are tired of the same tired rhetoric. They don’t care. They aren’t going to just fall in line because you are shouting at them vote blue no matter who.

And a lot of career politicians don’t understand that the old way of doing things isn’t going to work anymore. It’s a slow change and yea hopefully we can claw back democracy from the corporate oligarchy, but I personally don’t have much faith. I probably will not vote for Biden but I do live in a pretty solid blue state in an extremely blue county, so i can leave President option blank without much recourse.

Sounds about right. I expect very little of the far left anarchists and they still somehow disappoint. Have fun torching your own communities after you willingly enable Trump back in power

It's not my fault both Biden and Trump suck. You know what will excite the far left? How about a far left candidate?

They quite literally don't exist in the United States. Fox addled brain rot right wing media consumers are told that someone like Obama was a communist... Hell someone as "progressive" as AOC isn't even radical and yet the right will tell you she's a female Mao.

We get milquetoast centrists masquerading as being on the left, while the right gets to have their actual racist Nazi leaders... No wonder they question why we aren't as hyped for Biden as they are for Mango Mussolini...

Because not many Americans want that? I don’t know how many times it has to be demonstrated. You won’t settle for a moderate candidate like Biden who will slowly push the country away from how unbelievably far right it’s gotten. You want to flip the system upside down and that’s not viable right now. Move the needle slowly but surely, or try to change everything and continue to fail.

Not many Americans want that because we've had decades of propaganda telling us how radical the left is already and scaring everyone to move to the right. That's why the right has gone so far right and we get pulled to the middle more and more so we can calm the scared people of spooky spooky socialist policies... If we continue we're literally never going to have actual leftists in government. As it is the entire world sees our political system as 2 conservative parties fighting for control.

And I totally agree with you but I don’t think the Democrat Party is all conservatives. Some are, for sure. But not all of them are Brandon Presley and Joe Manchin. It’s a liberal party, which aligns with the conservatives on several things but vastly differs on much more.

Liberalism in America has been hijacked by white collar criminals ever since Reagan fucked the country up. I agree that we need more socialism in America, but I don’t see how we’re gonna leap directly to it. What we can do is form a coalition to continue defeating the conservatives so we at least aren’t on track for extinction because of climate change. And before you say “Biden’s America is producing more domestic oil than any administration before” I would remind that if he didn’t, he would absolutely lose the upcoming election. When half the country is as conservative as it is, we’re not gonna see the change we want by electing a President who will have limited support in Congress. Getting people like Biden who at least pull the needle closer towards the middle is how it happens.

And then, maybe after a decade or so more Americans will realize they’ve been lied to by Gingrich, Trump, Rove, Bush, McConnell, and all the others who have set this country so far back.

Just my opinion. I don’t know if America can get to where you want it to be in our lifetime after 4 more years of Trump.

I pretty much agree with all of that minus the optimism lol

If Republicans haven't learned over the past 30+ years that they've been lied to again and again I don't see it happening any time soon as we have propaganda outlets designed to "keep the voters in line." They're really our biggest problem, everything we can't solve is because propagandists pit us against each other and mislead everyone.

My optimism comes from the fact that old people don’t live forever, and they’re reeeally against traditional medicine all of a sudden so I don’t see the boomers propping up right wing psychos forever

Biden isn't pushing the country away from being far-right, he just isn't nose-diving into it. The US needs radical change. Everything you've said is just buzzword nonsense.

I don't give a fuck about the average crayon eating over-medicated american retard. Half the country thinks climate change is a joke and Raptor Jesus will save us.

Who, Gives, A, Fuck?

Alright well unfortunately those people vote, so we can say we don’t care, but we can’t say that reality doesn’t affect the current situation we’re in politically. You can absolutely change their minds. So why not start with people like Andy Beshear who has already started doing this instead of someone who is too extreme for them and will only alienate more people?

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I do watch MSNBC on occasion. They slobbed Israels knob clear up until they killed like 13,000 people. That was apparently the line.

I think it's around the time israel murdered the hostages in cold blood that the likes of MSNBC was like "Wait a minute... maybe israel isn't telling the truth when they say everyone killed is a Hamas soldier?"

Yup, thousands of murdered brown children were fine for MSNBC, but three young Jews getting murdered while trying to surrender to their own military is where the moral outrage starts. It's pathetically transparent why they suddenly saw this as problematic.

How is he a Russian plant? He's related to one of the most influential political dynasties in America. During the Obama years he was the left's sweetheart when he was championing for the environment. Even going so far as calling for Exxon Mobil and Koch Industries to be put to 'corporate death'.

Biden and Trump love Exxon and sucking Koch. Maybe you should blame yourself for trusting soundbites.

A vote for a fascist and a vote for a genocide supporter are both tossed in the trash. A vote for someone else is not.

Yeah… that’s not how it’s going to work. You should probably look into this before you take part in fucking things up.

He doesn’t support genocide. There has to be a military reaction to the Hamas terrorist attack. The big issue is Netanyahu who doesn’t care who dies as long as Hamas is defeated. Biden’s team is critical of the civilian toll but they’re not going to force Israel at gunpoint to not go after the terrorists that raped and maimed over a thousand Jews on October 7th.

So why are they forcing at gunpoint Palestinians not to go after the terrorists who so far after October 7th killed 3k childrens?

The us government and whoever is in charge for it support both genocide and Hamas as they are using it as a warrant for israel to expand their borders. Do you really believe they are unaware of the fact that indiscriminate bombing of gaza will bread even more terrorist? They are bombing thousand of childrens, they don't care about their own either, politicians and billionares do not fight their wars and neither care about anyone below them.

You know what they say, "an eye for an eye is the best policy for peace."

"Violence begets peace."

... something like that.

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It was EXTREMELY cynical and transparent when the announcement of baby steps towards marijuana legalization came RIGHT as the latest polling showed a nose dive among youth support.

Because he/the DNC clearly had the power and clout to unilaterally make that move months or years ago, but didn’t feel the need to. Having the press release drop at 4:20 eastern was such a cringe ‘fellow kids’ moment designed to distract from the ongoing injustice that keeping it schedule I for decades has done to society.

I live in Georgia and I remember how they promised if we got both our Senate seats to turn blue they would have majority and weed would be legalized along with a third stimulus check. We beat the odds and Warnock won the special election. All of a sudden it was like an wave of amnesia and helplessness hit.

I've been waiting for them to play the legalization card again

Their interns spent a lot of time harassing people on Twitter for reminding them about the stimulus check promise. They were quick to revise the history of and gaslight you by doing some weird used car salesman math

Hope the young people will enjoy having Trump as their dictator. Maybe they’ll be just dumb enough to not notice him doing anything differently on the subject.

Be complicit in genocide or you'll end up complicit in genocide. We deserve to fail as a nation if those are our choices.

Trust me. One is WAY worse than the other. I hope you can learn the truth of this before you make a big mistake.

I've spent my whole voting life watching things only get shittier and shittier voting for the lesser evil. I stand by my claim that we deserve to collapse as a nation at this point.

You'll tell me thats a crap attitude, and it is. But I will tell you that no matter how you vote, the tipping point where it breaks into unsalvageable violence is getting closer and you better be ready for it. History shows us it always ends in violence when an empire hits this stage.

How is Biden worse than Trump? If anything trump was even more pro-Israel.

lesser evil

But they said voting for the lesser evil has only made things worse. Isn't Biden an improvement?

Lesser Evil, Greater Evil, all still evil.

It's like saying it's okay to take one step back because it could've been two.

I'm just having trouble understanding how it's a step back. Isn't it a step forward from where we were?

Like we got public infrastructure investments, money for renewable energy, funding for high speed rail. We wouldn't have any of those things if trump had won another term. It seems more like a little geriatric step forward than a step back.

Some people out there see him as the anti-war candidate since he didn't start any new wars in his first term. The bar is so pathetically low on candidates and warmongering

Drink a little piss, or eat a LOT of shit. Take your pick, because doing nothing doesn’t entitle you to skip this buffet.

Tell me you're in your teens or early 20s without actually saying it.

Begging for the beneficence of someone who has spent the last 6 decades pissing on us and being happy it's not worse is pathetic.

Don't worry. I'll "vote blue" like a good boy. But we rot as a country either way. It changes nothing except how long before the tipping point.

That's not to say we can't save our communities. Look inward. Local mutual aid and organization is going to mean more than ever. Just don't expect help from the corporate parties.

ROFL. I’m 51.

And I’ve lived long enough to know that we live within the grey area that exists between the polarized black and white everyone wants to see nowadays. I’ve also lived long enough to learn there’s nuance to EVERYTHING. And stubbornly crying about how an elected official’s stance on policies abroad is wrong- while ignoring the bigger picture at home- is a potentially catastrophic and downright dangerously ignorant line of thinking.

But you do you.

Were can be done with this discussion now. The fact that you’ve made knee-jerk assumptions without knowing a single thing about me speaks volumes on how much of a waste of time this discussion has been, and will be.

Enjoy your evening and move along.

There really isn't much nuance or gray area when it comes to genocide.

The United States' Biden Administration is currently funding and supporting a genocide in Gaza. That is unforgivable.

Trump would be even worse than Biden. But there are enough people in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Arizona who are going to be turned off by this (and by inflation, etc) that it won't matter.

The Democratic Party is fully to blame for this result, no American voter is culpable for what happens in November.

The 2024 election should be a slam dunk for any Non-Republican Party. The Democrats' political incompetence is solely to blame for any loss - and that incompetence is reaching a point where it is hard to believe that they are accidentally this stupid. All of this is going to support the "Monoparty" and other conspiracy theories, which are looking less and less like mere theories

Genocide from Trump comes with an extra helping of military enforced dictatorship and corruption, with a side order of LGBTQ+ oppression and racism…

But don’t let this get in the way of your bOtH siDeS’ism.

That isn't a convincing argument. It also isn't even responsive to what I said.

If you're trying to persuade people then that argument won't do it

But a candidate can lose many votes over one issue. And Biden willingly supporting the genocide of the Palestinian is bad enough to cost him the election. We have already proved as voters that we'll let trump win. It can happen again.

Okay. So, both support the genocide, but one will remove body autonomy from women, remove lgbtq+ rights, gut funding to education, and run the government like a dictatorship with the military threatening civilians.

Decide.

Maybe Biden should decide NOT to do some shitty things thatll cost him votes. It works both ways.

It only works both ways for people too stubbornly stupid to understand that they’re NOT the same thing.

If Biden loses for the stupid shit he does then good. Maybe democrats should stop trying to straddle the middle and fucking things up by not listening to their base. I dont think our country will be destroyed by him losing, even if it ends up being another four years of trump. Yeah it'll suck, but things can get better and showing their voters they wont stand behind him just because he has a capital D next to his name might be an eye opener. Or at least it should be.

I feel like, for many, the choice isn't voting for Trump if they're disillusioned with Biden, but just not voting for Biden. I'm aware the result of inaction is likely the same as voting for Trump, but cognitively it's easier to stomach.

Did you forget Trumps handling of Israel? He would support the genocide even more. THEY NAMED A SETTLEMENT AFTER TRUMP. If you still think he will be better for palestinians than Biden you are crazy

The only way I can rationalize how much they're fucking up this response is that the party is still reeling from being painted as anti-semitic in 2012 and 2018, and they know that a bunch of Jewish Floridians are single-issue voters. I guess they think it's more important to shore up the Jewish vote in Florida than it is to shore up the youth vote elsewhere, and they're taking the position that as goes Florida, so does 2024.

I know they have to make calculated decisions like this, but isn’t this kind of thing why Hillary lost, because she basically didn’t campaign at all in a few states because she assumed her support would stick with her because she deserved it and trump only had degenerate supporters

To be fair, there's no single thing that explains why she lost. It was a perfect storm of fuck ups, misinformation, miscalculations, FBI interference, and chaos.

Clinton captured a huge majority of Jewish voters in 2016. She certainly dropped the ball in ignoring the Democratic Party's weak spots, all of which Trump's team targeted with laser precision. But despite her huge margin among Jews in Florida, she may have lost enough disaffected Jewish voters to lose Florida altogether. The margin was 112,911 votes, and there are around 500,000 Jews estimated to live in Florida. Could that have been the straw that broke the camel's back? Maybe.

Trump's overt pandering paid dividends in 2020, when he actually gained Jewish support in Florida, and I suspect the party sees that trend in flashing neon lights, and they're working overtime to make damn sure Biden's pro-Israel bona fides are absolutely unquestioned 10 months from now.

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Florida is a red state. It's Trump's home state, It's a winner-take-all state. Biden won't be getting any electors from Florida.

If this is indeed the strategy, it's sheer foolishness. He's taking a hit nationwide just to shore up votes in a state he won't win.

I hope we're not running to win the popular vote and lose the election. Again.

An anti-Semitism scandal also wrecked Labour in the last UK election.

I think you're making this more complicated than it is. You're trying to view America's position as a domestic issue when it's an international one, and it's the international nature of the issue that explains America's position.

Although there is growing pressure and agreement that is real has gone too far, there is no appetite for suspending support for Israel.

The facts are:

  • There is no region of the world more essential to global security for the next 100 years than the Middle East;

  • Israel, though classified as a "flawed democracy" same as the US, is the only democracy in the region;

  • Hamas and Iran have a shared intention and goal to destroy Israel;

  • Israel is nuclear armed and will obviously not surrender to Tehran;

  • US support, specifically air and missile defense, is the thing that prevents Iran from invading Israel;

  • Open war between Iran and Israel will kill millions more people than there are in all of Palestine;

  • There is no appetite in Washington for another failed state in the middle east.

That's my two cents. The enemy here as usual is nationalism. Nationalists pervert everything, including democracy. Whether it's the nationalists in charge of Israel or the ones in charge of Iran.

Not a single thing you wrote takes away from the fact that this has very real political implications for Biden at the end of the year. Are you suggesting that Biden isn't considering how this will play in November? Because that would just be silly.

No. I'm suggesting that nobody in Washington really has any intention of doing anything differently with regard to Israel.

I'm not suggesting that they'd be weighing whether or not to do anything fundamentally different with respect to our relationship with Israel. I'm suggesting that they'd be weighing whether or not to come out with a more forceful messaging strategy for encouraging them to throttle back a bit and stop with the whole war crimes thing. There's a very real difference between dropping all support for Israel as a state and conveying a stronger sense of urgency for the innocent civilians that are being indiscriminately bombed. As it stands, voters are watching us not only do absolutely nothing to reduce bloodshed, but also actively send money and resources to the ones producing it.

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The media young people watch are also idealistic. Biden losing the election is only worse in every way on the issue they care about.

For what little it's worth, Biden has at least warned Netanyahu about the damage his war is causing to Israel's international standing. There's not a single Republican that would do that.

More importantly, is the media young people watch building up any alternative to Biden? Or do they just leave people disenfranchised and in a mental sea of despair and political paralysis?

Just wait until instead of merely keeping Trump's draconian border policies, Biden goes even further than Trump in order to secure funding for more bombs to slaughter Palestinians.

The 2024 election will be brutal.

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Weird they don't say who the first one was...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2024/01/04/second-biden-administration-official-quits-in-protest-against-handling-of-war-in-gaza/

"Days after Israel began carrying out aerial strikes in Gaza in response to a terror attack on its territory by Hamas in early October, a senior State Department official who worked on arms transfers became the first Biden official to step down in protest. Josh Paul, who served as a director at the department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, publicly announced his exit on LinkedIn in opposition to the provision of additional military aid to Israel. In his resignation letter, Paul wrote that he believed “the response Israel is taking, and with it the American support both for that response, and for the status quo of the occupation, will only lead to more and deeper suffering for both the Israeli and the Palestinian people — and is not in the long term American interest.”"

"and is not in the long term American interest."

Nope, but it is in old man Bidens interest for that juicy juicy Zionist/Jewish/Israeli vote... He obviously doesn't think there are enough Palestinians here or people who care about them and he knows that he has us by the short hairs... It's either Bomb Money Biden or Adolf Trumpler. Man I love the American voting system.

Anyone remember the turd sandwich vs the giant douche episode? Yeah that's us every 4 goddamn years.... And no, I'm not saying they're the same, I think a giant douche is miles better than a turd sandwich...

God I miss the 2008 election. Sarah Palin was a sack of crazy, but otherwise it was beautiful.

McCain, while someone I disagreed with on almost every issue, was a classy candidate who shut down unwarranted attacks on Obama's heritage and patriotism.

Dude also saved the ACA shortly before his death - acknowledging that while he didn't like it the GOP didn't have a better plan to replace it.

A-fucking-men.

I don't know enough about McCains past to say whether he truly was "good," but from what I would see of him during that election I at least had respect for him, I can't say that about any current Republican even though there are people like Mitt Romney who has his occasional good days. I definitely questioned McCains judgement for picking Palin though lol

I don't think it's the Jewish vote that concerns him, it's the donations.

There’s also Craig Mokhiber:

On October 28, 2023, Mokhiber stepped down as the director of the New York office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), four days before he was due to retire. In his final letter to High Commissioner Volker Türk, he harshly criticized the organization's response to the war in Gaza, calling Israel's military intervention a "textbook genocide" and accusing the UN of failing to act.

But he actually started his resignation in March of 2023, citing human rights violations in the West Bank.

There’s a great interview with him here: https://youtube.com/watch?v=wiGp2mvFLY0

Everyone who thought Biden was a progressive maybe forgot or wasn't old enough to remember the reason he was Obama's running mate is because he was a DINO (democrat in name only) and that was to ground some of the electricity of Obama's campaign as first black president. Obama was seen as too radical for America with his campaign promises.

Sounds weird today but at the time MSNBC was asking questions like "is Obama black enough to be America's first black president?".

Joe Biden as a VP turned out to be a liability for Obama. So they slapped some sunglasses on him and gave him an ice cream cone to stop him from making gaffes every time someone put a mic in his face. He is managed by CAA the same organization that manages actors. His persona is all PR. All people seem to remember is this manufactured persona when his actual political career is more in line with a republican and typical for a DINO serving as long as he has.

Either way you're going to have war unless we stop consenting to madness done in our name and that includes standing up for what you believe in.

It's not like Obama was super progressive. He was essentially just 8 more years of Bush with a fresh coat of paint and a bit more charisma. Hope and change my ass.

Genocide Joe don't care. You're still gonna vote for him.

Yep. Over Trump. I’d vote for him every election I can.

Who said that you need to vote for Trump?

I don’t think you understand how any of this works.

Oh, they do. They are pushing 3rd candidates to get Trump into office and cause the US to balkanize.

I'll take Genocide Joe over Treasonous Trump every chance I'm given.

I don't like either, but I will vote to keep the party that's okay with insurrection out of power every time.

I guess treason is worse than genocide? lesser evi...

Oh even that doesn't work anymore.

If the Democrats have an ounce of dignity left they run someone else. Both Biden and Trump are not an option.

Either red or blue is gonna win, they can do everything they want

The Dept of Education gets all the top secret info on the War in Israel (another country)./s

Yes because there are no secret it is there on tv, social medias, and in the international court of justice.

It must be nice living in a world where everything is black and white and all the answers are easy. It's not that way in the big chair. Maybe at the student loans deak.

If you having trouble figuring out black and white when a kid cant eat, drink, lose his mom and siblings, maybe burned skinned, or a sniper (admited) shot his kneecap, then maybe you are blind.

Habash was educated at the University of Miami and the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

"Should we fund genocide" has an easy answer.

Perhaps you should ask your congressmen. The White House doesn't allocate, it administrates. Even Tariq Habash knows that.

Well, let's address that. My representative supports genocide because she's a maga chud. Her opponent in the last election was Michelle Vallejo, a progressive. Since the Democratic Party would prefer a maga chud to a progressive in any given seat, they cut Vallejo's funding in the last month of the campaign.

But I said that "should we fund genocide" has an easy answer.

I did not ask "are we funding genocide" or "has Biden supported genocide using US funds appropriated by Congress" or "in which branch of government is the power of the purse vested."

"Should we fund genocide" has an easy answer. It has a morally correct answer. That answer is no. We should not fund genocide. It's clear that your answer differs.

Split hairs in support of the Netanyahu/Biden genocide at someone else.

Don't complain to me that your candidate didn't win an election.