The US will begin air dropping food aid to the people of Gaza, President Joe Biden announced on Friday, as the humanitarian crisis deepens and Israel continues to resist opening additional land crossings to allow more assistance into the war-torn strip.
Speaking in the Oval Office, Biden said the US would be “pulling out every stop” to get additional aid into Gaza, which has been under heavy bombardment by Israel since the October 7 Hamas terror attacks.
“Aid flowing to Gaza is nowhere nearly enough,” the US President said, noting “hundreds of trucks” should be entering the enclave.
Biden said the US is “going to insist that Israel facilitate more trucks and more routes to get more and more people the help they need, no excuses”.
He also noted the efforts to broker a deal to free the hostages and secure an “immediate ceasefire” that would allow additional aid in.
I’m a bit out of the loop. Did he stop funding Israel or is the USA helping both sides?
Congress controls the purse, they have been providing foreign aid to Israel since long before he was elected. Biden directs the armed forces, and is using them to supply aid to Gaza.
That said, the US has been ‘helping both sides’ for ages. We provide more money to Israel than any other country, and also contribute more to UNRWA than any other nation. The goal of the US has been to reach a two state solution, so it makes sense to fund both states.
Ah. Thank you.
Dont get hopes up, its a a stunt for reelection
Almost everything any politician does is because they think it will help them get reelected. That doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing to do.
Everyone’s in here giving Biden shit like not voting for him and letting Trump win will make things better for anyone.
You know that you can vote for someone AND be critical of their future, past and/or present decisions right?
You’re right, but there are a lot of people (that I’ve seen, at least) who are willing to abstain from voting over Biden’s handling of this.
It’s the trolley problem. It is much more difficult for people to be an active part of genocide by voting for Biden than simply not voting and allowing a worse outcome to happen if Trump becomes president…
Seems like they missed the lesson of the trolley problem, then.
Perhaps we should work to make sure no one is on the tracks instead of pulling the lever?
We should do whatever we can to keep people off of the tracks in the future. But that’s not mutually exclusive with pulling the lever right now, since the trolley is already heading towards people.
It’s an easy decision to make if you aren’t the one tied to the tracks. Palestinian Americans are losing their families and flipping that lever will neither bring them back nor make the situation better. Not only that, but flipping the lever without any real change of action from the DNC just means they can just trust their base to overlook genocide again and again in perpetuity as long as republicans remain the worse choice (which will be always).
There’s a time and place to be critical of dumbass politicians taking half-measures on important issues, but doing it now is potentially undermining the election in favor of fascist criminals.
Seems like Biden should listen to his constituents if he wants to win re-election.
It sounds like he’s starting to. He’s gone from full-throated support to silent complicity to actually calling Israel out. I hope he can do more.
When Biden ran in 2020, this was the argument I heard from Biden supporters: sure, Biden may not be perfect, but we should support him anyway, and then, once he gets elected, we’ll hold his feet to the fire.
Yet now, when people try to hold his feet to the fire, they’re accused of supporting Trump. Funny how that works.
My argument is: Biden may not be perfect, but he’s a whole hell of a lot better than the guy that tried to start an insurrection and appointed a Supreme Court justice that got rid of Roe v. Wade. Holding his feet to the fire is a waste of time because the house always wins; the People will be the ones to bear the burden of any sort of loss for the Democrats. All I can do is hope that people will finally be pushed too far and revolt against the government, but that will be a whole hell of a lot harder if the 1st and 2nd Amendments are infringed on any more than they already are.
Revolting against the government is far less feasible (and far more ethical) than simply voting for an alternative party.
1996 had the lowest recorded percentage of voter turnout in the past century, at 51.7%. Assuming there’s currently about 250 million eligible voters in the US, that is equivalent to about 129 million voters.
Imagine you were a wizard and could force everyone on Lemmy to vote for a single third-party candidate. Also assume every account on every instance of Lemmy is a US citizen capable of voting. Lemmy has about 421 thousand users. Even if each account on Lemmy could magically convince 50 other eligible voters to vote for the same independent candidate, that would only amount to about 21 million votes, or about 16.3% of all votes in the election going towards that candidate.
Voting in an independent party is nothing short of impossible in the US.
What does Lemmy have to do with it? I never brought up Lemmy!
Cool, cool. Are we still supplying weapons to Israel? Give the weapons to Ukraine and tell Israel that’s enough genocide for now.
Didn’t he claim he will airdrop humanitarian aid in Ukraine.
Damn you guys behind the pond should introduce a law setting the max age a person can hold a presidential position. There is a reason why old people are not given a driver’s license and you should take the cue and do something about it.
Oh we let old people drive too, there’s not really any tangible system for ensuring they’re still capable. There’s a way your doctor can have it pulled but healthcare is privatized so they’ll just shop around for the guy who’ll say it’s totally fine if they have to.
My ex’s mom randomly passed out completely multiple times a day sometimes, it never got pulled - until some innocent pedestrian paid the ultimate price for eagle fuckin American “freedom.”
Congratulations “Uncommitted” voters and other protesters, it looks like you are at least part of making Biden’s “blank check” support of Israel too politically expensive to continue. It will be interesting to see how this plays out as Biden tries to balance actions around an angry electorate vs. pro-Israel factions and money (which non-profit watchdog Open Secrets says he’s the largest recipient of). Especially with the unofficial cease-fire deadline of Ramadan only 10 days away which is expected to be the launch of an Israeli offensive in Rafah barring a temporary cease-fire agreement. I say temporary because Netanyahu is cited in that article as saying, “If we have a deal, it will be delayed somewhat, but it will happen. If we don’t have a deal, we’ll do it anyway”.
I hope this “no excuses” change in tone will yield meaningful results and most importantly relief for the civilians in Gaza.
I feel like it was that gunning down incident with the humanitarian aid that ultimately tipped the scales.
I know I’ve been going on defense for Israel a lot recently, but I am kinda playing messenger boy as a neutral for being both here and some pro-Israel groups. The Michigan vote didn’t really phase them, that incident did. Seen them even sharing more info about how ridiculously strict Bibi is with aid in general.
Nah israel did shootings like that every week. Biden doesn’t care about brown people dying. I’d argue that the hospital massacre israel committed was far worse optically
Michigan did this. All the people that refused to bend the knee and vote for Biden in December if he continues the Genocide.
And Aaron Bushnell. His sacrifice was a huge turning point.
This is what pisses me off about “moderates”. All they give a damn about is optics and winning the next election. The rest of us understand that the only power we have is our vote, and if we don’t use that power to its full extent, which means threatening to withhold it, we’ll never get any concession from any politician.
The rest of you are quite literally shills who simply don’t give a shit about what’s happening in Palestine. You just do what you’re told to and act like that makes you a good person. You weren’t even willing to do the bare minimum of using your voice, because you dummy actually care.
Immediate but not permanent. Stop giving them bombs and ammo if you are sincere Joe. Oooooooh nooooes you’re not.
Also where does it say in the article that he calls for an immediate ceasefire besides the title ??It is all about dropping humanitarian aid, which in fact is to allow IDF continue the massacre. It is nowhere in other news outlets that he calls for a ceasefire. Also also also, I would expect he is the only one who could enforce it, rather than ask it. Nice distraction attempt. .
Anyway damage is done, good luck with Donut T fellow Americans. The not
They haven’t sent them either of those things since last year. Only aide for Gazans recently.
If you were sincere in caring for gazans you’d be aware that when you say good luck with trump, you’re saying good luck with him to Palestinians, who will definitely suffer much worse under him. He will encourage bibi to finish them off. He’s very vocal about this.
Ohhh nooooos you’re not
Biden has been trying his very best this year to give israel 15 Billion in weapons as fast as possible.
Trump can’t do much worse than this Nazi style Genocide. If there’s still Palestinians left to Genocide after November that is.
There is always worse
If Biden doesn’t want worse he’ll have to do better.
calling for a ceasefire when it matters the most: before the elections. good job Biden.
when he realizes he is probably going to lose the election because a lot of his former voters don’t support genocide as much as he does
When those same former voters watch Israel murder every Palestinian while Trump actively cheers them on and rounds up all Palestinian Americans to deport them for further ethnic cleansing.
2024 where the harm reduction vote goes to whoever supports genocide less fervently. Thanks DNC!
Sucks because Trump is going to stay behind Isreal too. The people that refuse to vote for Biden because of this likely just won’t vote. Which = Trump.
It’s in Netanyahu’s interest to drag this out until November and do everything he can to make Biden lose to Trump. After that, all he has to do is mention the chonky fascist’s “big manly hands” and he gets to do all the genocide he wants while continuing to keep his corrupt ass out of jail.
Biden needs to wake the fuck up.
Now tell your UN ambassador to reverse the veto in the security council so UN troops can actually do something about this.
We’re going to pull out EVERY Stop! Like Air Dropping food to Palestine and Bombs also to Palestine!
Calls? Did he call Netanyahu and threaten him to withhold weapons? We’ve heard this one before. Time to start showing results.
Israel has two weeks to sign a letter that says “we won’t commit war crimes”? This is after the date israel said they are going to invade Rafah.
Furthermore israel has violated like 8 “red lines” Biden gave them and no consequences ever happened.
Israel didn’t even show up to the talks in Cairo today. Netanyahu isn’t feeling an ounce of pressure from Biden.
Just had to wait for there to be 30,000 Palestinian deaths first.
9/11 had 2,996 deaths for a little bit of context. Just imagine what would be happening right now if there were 30,000 dead Americans.
America has 9/11s of covid deaths monthly, long after Biden “ended covid” with Trump’s strategy of “just stop reporting the numbers”. That’s what our journalists also do with all of the people murdered by Israel. Keep them out of sight, out of mind.
To be fair, it is medically hard to determine whether elderly people die with covid or from it.
I’m sure that it is, but it’s not just elderly dying, plenty of kids and their parents are suffering. I just read a NPR puff piece about a landlord who finally got their investment property ‘back’ by evicting their tenant… a recently widowed healthcare worker with a child. It’s almost like we shouldn’t be trying to just return to ‘normal’ with an uncontrolled pandemic raging.
As many people die from covid as do from influenza or RSV at this point. I’m not saying it’s not a serious illness but I am saying it’s very far from “an uncontrolled pandemic” and saying it is is hyperbolic to the point of disregarding any other point you made.
As many people die from covid as do from influenza or RSV at this point.
I understand you don’t feel affected by covid anymore, but you’re incredibly wrong.
CDC estimates for influenza deaths in the 2022-2023 flu season: 21,000
CDC cumulative covid deaths from Sep 9, 2023 minus Oct 1, 2022: 84,560
Honestly, I’m not seeing a death count for RSV, but based on this RSV Burden Estimates, it’s at most: 10,300 per year.
And this is all shown pretty well in the Trends in Viral Respiratory Deaths in the United States graph.
Not denying covid is more deadly than influenza or RSV, but you still have to account for the fact that covid might kill an old person that would otherwise die to influenza in a month or two (or something else, they are old and their bodies are degrading inevitably). That is why sustained increased death rates in corrolation to covid numbers is a better qualifier for the argument that we have to take precautions to limit people dying. I have been of the understanding that after the major initial waves, death rates are not higher than usual and hence unsustained.
Even if I ignore you moving the goalposts, would you really look at a graph like this
that’s a few years out of date and assume the total deaths settled back down into the old pattern?
I’m not finding a more up-to-date data source for deaths per month, but it’s not like you’re providing any kind of data that covid isn’t still killing a lot of extra people per year.
They waited and will wait until the goal is achieved which is destroying gaza and drive as many palestinians away so that israel can extend its state.
“war-torn strip”???
More like, “massacred and obliterated strip”. Not much of a “war” going on here
He’s taking the Michigan numbers seriously. Let’s hope it’s not too little too late.
If we can get a similar result in another swing state, we might see real progress
And if they DON’T then SURELY more Bombs and Billions of Dollars to Israel will stop them!
Bro do you want the fucker to change course or not?
Yes. Yesterday.
Well shit, let’s just hop in the Time Machine!
Some people are literally never going to be satisfied.
News flash: if you tell everyone that you won’t be satisfied with anything remotely possible, people will stop listening to you.
Stop being like MAGA chuds who don’t even know what they want. They just want “to win”.
Stop pretending Biden achieves anything before he does it.
We heard this dumb excuse of “we’re trying” for months while Biden keeps sending israel more bombs.
Aiding a genocide is a crime is it not?
Do you want him to stop aiding in genocide or fucking not?
Judging by my comments, what do you think?