bookwyr.meHow Former Biden Officials Defend Their Gaza Policy
SoftestSapphicwww.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/how-former-biden…
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as usual, Chotiner is possibly the best journalist on the planet when it comes to actually asking follow-up questions, and being willing to go "hold on, wait a minute, WTF?"
this is the guy Biden appointed as ambassador to Israel, making excuses for killing children:
When you would call them in the middle of the night and say, “What on earth happened?,” what was usually the answer?
The general pattern was that in-the-moment stories were inaccurate, and that the Israeli military and government establishment were not in a position to fully explain yet. We could almost never get answers that explained what happened before the story was fully framed in international media, and then when the facts were fully developed, it turned out that the casualties were much lower, the number of civilians was much lower, and, in many cases, the children were children of Hamas fighters, not children taking cover in places.
Sorry, what did you just say?
In many cases, the original number of casualties—
No, I meant the thing about who the children were.
They were often the children of the fighters themselves.
And therefore what follows from that?
What follows is that whether or not it was a legitimate military target flows from the population that’s there.
Hold on, Mr. Secretary. That’s not, in fact, correct, right? Whether it’s a legitimate target has to do with all kinds of things like proportionality. It doesn’t matter if the kids are the kids of—
If you’re in a command-and-control center, that’s different than if it’s a school that’s emptied out and innocent civilians are taking shelter there. If you’re the commander of a Hamas unit and you bring your family to a military site, that’s different. I’m not saying everything fits into that, and I’m not saying it’s not a tragedy.
return2ozma
So for all the people saying they voted the "lesser evil". Your lesser evil is justifying the slaughter of children based on who their parents supposedly are or were.
Also hist claims that the casualties would then show to be lower and much less civilians is ridiculous in the face of even the IDFs internal database showing that they murdered 83% Civilians.
Jacob Lew is just saying here that he has been feeding blindly on Israel propaganda and then regurgitating it through his administration to the general public.
The bigger evil is still worse, hurting MORE people.
Leftist purity culture is why there isn’t a bigger leftist movement. The propaganda told you to shoot yourself in the foot and most have never stopped pulling the trigger.
- a practical leftist that ignores propaganda
The "practical leftists" were fighting the people who wanted the supposedly better party to not be this cruel and abominable evil. The division was caused by the "practical leftists" who willfully employed themselves to spread the propaganda, that genocide should be acceptable as a "lesser" evil. The "practical leftists" were integral to the strategy of the oligarchy, that is financing and dictating bot mayor US political parties what to do, in waging their war against the people in the US and people abroad.
The only strategy not to loose, is not to play that game. We see some initiatives into that direction with people like Mamdani and we see that the "lesser" evil and the "bigger" evil are largely working together to fight against anything that could not be evil.
Boomer Humor DoomergodJordan Lund once wrote that Biden just HAD to send those bombs to defend america against Iran.
Personally I think if you spread genocidal propaganda you're as bad as pulling the trigger
Why does no journalist ever ask why government officials want Israel to be our ally. Just because they were for x number of years has no bearing on whether or not they should have been or should still be our ally. Russia was our ally, guess what, they’re not anymore. We don’t have to ally ourselves with murderous countries.
The whole interview centers on Israel must be our ally so we must do stuff for them. They shouldn’t fucking be our ally!!! They’ve been committing atrocities for generations at this point!
He got super close to asking that, and Lew’s answer was completely infuriating, as was every response he gave. But you’re right, I wish they would ask it outright.
Genocide is a shared value all right, but the US doesn't like to admit it.
They have never been allies. They have never put Israeli lives on the line to do anything for the US. They're a parasitic client state that only takes. At best, they sell at a discount to us. They're no more an ally than Saudi Arabia is.
Isreal is an ally because it's a FOB for the US to use against the middle east.
That, and modern Evangelical Christianity hinges on the Jews controlling the holy land as a precursor to the apocalypse. And Evangelical Christians vote Republican.
I’m not actually asking for the answer. I want a journalist to actually get a government official to admit whatever personal reason they have so that we finally stop supporting this genocidal nation. Nobody is going to try to vote to remove these people from power until they actually admit their reason.
Politics. Over the years there have been quite a few UN votes where only Israel stands by the us. Supposedly clandestine operations that the us wanted to stand apart from. The alternative would be having to think about why the rest of the world opposed
Holy fuck. That’s one hell of a mask-off moment. And it shows in the astounded reactions of the interviewer in the transcript.
Man, Jacob Lew seems like a piece of shit, after reading all of that.
"We're honest politicians. When we're bought, we stay bought."
Wow, what pieces of shit. I had often wondered if it was just pride and sunk cost fallacy, but they’re pieces of shit
Maybe I’m naive but I bought into it at first. Israel did suffer a horrible terrorist attack, their citizens were kidnapped, and terrorists were hiding among Palestinians, so a military response could be expected. But there’s got to be a point where they recognize the harm to innocent civilians, where enough is enough and they’ve long past it for most people. Yet still trying to justify it?
The article is paywalled does anyone have the full text?