Summary
Elise Stefanik, President Trump’s nominee for U.S. ambassador to the UN, stated during her confirmation hearing that Israel has a “biblical right” to the occupied West Bank, aligning with far-right Israeli officials.
Stefanik sidestepped support for Palestinian self-determination, blaming their leadership for failures.
Her stance signals a shift from Biden-era opposition to Israeli settlements, with Trump lifting sanctions on Israeli settler groups and nominating pro-settlement figures like Mike Huckabee for key roles.
Stefanik also vowed to audit UN funding and block aid to Palestinian refugee agencies.
Let the shoulder patting commence.
As recently as yesterday, someone on Lemmy was showcasing to me the cease-fire Trump skillfully engineered in Gaza, with his straight-talking diplomatic skills, as an example of what Biden could have been doing any time he felt up to getting on Trump’s level, and a reason why Trump was better.
I had the same thing happen. The idiot then quoted Sartre at me, the one about anti-Semites, as a sorta gotcha. Called me a BlueAnon, and told me that it was even more shameful I was one because I’m Canadian. Literally all I’d said was that the Biden administration negotiated the cease fire. Honestly? It was kinda funny watching them wind themselves up to a froth.
What was Biden actually doing (as opposed to just saying) regarding the West Bank which you liked better?
(My impression is that Biden’s sanctions on the settlers has no practical consequences, but I’m not 100% sure of that.)
Not nominating a UN ambassador who said Israel had a biblical right to it, for one thing.
Biden’s “stop or I’ll say stop again also here’s more weapons” level of ‘resistance’ to Netanyahu sure wasn’t anything to be real proud of, but I’ll take that over enthusiastic encouragement any day. Trump also has unpaused some of the military shipments that Biden had paused, today, on day one. Sending even more weapons than Biden was one of his key priorities for the next few years, apparently.
Edit: Also, Biden sanctioned settlers in the West Bank, which never happened before, which Trump also undid on day one. Also, Biden resumed shipments to Palestinian aid organizations which Trump had stopped. Has Trump stopped those again? I don’t know whether that rose to the level of a day-one priority, but I’m absolutely sure it is coming.
As it stands in terms of manifested actual political effects, not virtue signaling and token efforts, Trump managed to push for the ceasefire Biden was unwilling to apply pressure for.
We will see, how the politics of Trump look, when it comes to material on the ground effects, but Biden proudly stood by and gave more bombs while watching daily how women and children are murdered with them and millions of people have their everything destroyed.
So so far Trump did much more for Palestinian lifes than Biden. That is not a big achievement of Trump. It just shows that Biden indeed is genocide Joe, who chose every day to continue this, despite all it taking to end it being a phone call.
Also as Biden delivered weapons while Israel was murdering US aid workers he directly violated US laws.
You know they’ve still been shooting people in Gaza past Sunday, right?
An Israeli sniper just shot a kid. Yesterday or today I think. They also air-struck a refugee camp in the West Bank, which hasn’t been happening recently.
I don’t even know why I’m still here, having these conversations. This place is very weird. On most of Lemmy, it’s kind of isolated spots of “yay Trump he fixed it, Israel’s gonna be good now” from time to time, but mostly it just gets laughed out of the room. On [email protected] it’s like a mob of it.
That is, unfortunately, just what happens when Israel accepts a ceasefire. It’s definitely not good, but it’s better than when the genocide was going full steam ahead.
The ceasefire doesn’t cover the West Bank. Again not good, but this is how Israel does things and isn’t an indication that the ceasefire is going to fail.
Why does the ceasefire and gaza matter when the genocide is going full steam ahead in the west bank? Genocide Joe could’ve got the ceasefire agreed on those terms too without taking $100m from Adelson for the privlege
So your answer to the question is “nothing”? And yes, the sum total of four settlers Biden sanction do qualify as “nothing”.
I know. It never stops.
Not that it’s the point, but here’s a summary of the sanctions at one point. 11 individuals, 11 entities, I don’t know what changed about it after that: https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-issues-new-batch-of-sanctions-targeting-west-bank-settlers-amid-rampant-violence/
He also paused some weapons shipments, he re-funded Palestinian aid organizations, he tried to get them food, yada yada yada I’ll just repeat what I said about it before since you seem to have missed that part of it:
I would broadly agree with you that the sum total of what Biden did was infinitesimal. He was hitting a boulder with a rubber mallet. He was throwing water bottles at a house fire that he helped ignite. The difference is, Trump is showing up with gasoline, a whole truck full of it, and spraying it on and wants to burn five other houses in addition to this one. Biden at least wasn’t doing that. That makes Trump way worse, even though Biden is bad. I don’t know how that simple logical construction turns into this post-graduate equation that people can’t fathom, or means that they claim I’m saying Biden wasn’t abetting a genocide, but that’s how I see it.
I eagerly await the strawman through which this fairly crystal clear explanation, in my view, gets turned into something else which it isn’t.