What is the motivation to keep sending Benajmin Netanyahu military aide while the Gaza crisis continues?
I hope it is kosher to post this under ~talk. I know people are sick of this topic, so I put plenty of tags in to help those not interested avoid seeing this thread. FWIW, you can go into your Settings and enter keywords to filter threads on ( via tags ).
To my question.
Netanyahu has been killing people with no means of defense.
What is President Biden's motivation to keep sending military aide to Israel while Netanyahu continues to do this?
I have a few guesses, but none of them on their own or together seems to justify the political or humanitarian costs:
- Somehow it is in the geopolitical interest of the U.S. to do so
- Israel would be destroyed without military aide ( but defensive weapons can still be sent )
- The U.S. benefits from Israeli intelligence
- Congressional republicans aligned with Christian Nationlists want to see Israel live out a Biblical prophesy and it would cost President Biden politically if he were to push a decrease in military aide - assuming he could.
- President Biden might have lost Jewish American votes, BUT Jews are a minority in America and many American Jews are against what Netanyahu is doing.
Those are the possibilities I could come up with. Am I missing anything? All of these possibilities together do not seem to be worth the political cost President Biden incurred. Is there something I missed?
A big part is simply standing by your allies. Alliances work because members stand together when it is hard and they disagree. Maintaining faith in the US to standby its allies is widely held political doctrine in Washington.
Another is that you maintain leverage in a situation by staying involved. Once you cut all support, what levers do you have left to apply pressure? Biden is pushing for a path to a two state solution, or at least that is part of the negotiation framework being discussed at talks going on now. The leverage to push that goes away if you step away from your ally. Additionally, Biden has repeatedly been getting fairly blunt with Netanyahu. So, diplomacy.
It's also an election year. It's hard to see what changes there might have been if the timing was different. I suspect you would have seen a bit more of a forceful push, but the politics in the US and Israel are both fraught, with Netanyahu and Biden playing chicken.
Lastly, I'll say that the older generation doesn't have the same view of Israel as the younger generations. If you've been around long enough you remember when Israel was the underdog in the region and really getting aggravated and provoked. The power balance has shifted significantly from 1967, and the issue in the 90s also didn't help change certain perceptions. The younger crowd often sees Israel through a lens where they are the more powerful force and the antagonist, and engaging in ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. So those memories and views are in tension.
So it's not really a simple situation.
The last point is one of the most important ones. Israel turned 25 the year Biden started his Senate career. He’s literally older than the State of Israel. In 1973 it was still a relative newcomer, and was starting to no long be the scrappy underdog in the Middle East. And the context of its establishment (on the heels of the worst act of antisemitism in history, and one of, if not the, worst genocides) was a lot more proximate for the Silent Generation and early Boomers than for Millennials, Zoomers, and even many Gen Xers.
One interesting aspect of the Biden-Harris swap that I don't hear mentioned yet is that we'll go from a "nothing to lose" second-term presidency, where Biden may have more leverage, to another "I'll have to run again" first-term 'hobbled' presidency.
Well Harris has been a strong supporter of a ceasefire, so I can't see her being any worse.
Most people want a ceasefire, but the devil's in the details. Unless she's willing to give Israel an ultimatum that they unconditionally withdraw, abandon any remaining hostages, and let Hamas do what it will or else, I can't see a ceasefire happening until Hamas is completely exterminated regardless of how much anyone supports it.
I can. Arab Americans have made it clear that supporting a ceasefire without strong action is not enough for them and that they are willing to attack their political own to get it.
The most recent election results from Dearborn suggest that it doesn't matter much. Palestinians have also made it clear that Trump is the worst possible outcome for them. Anyone that says they won't vote for Harris due to Gaza is fundamentally unserious. In polling, foreign policy, and Israel specifically, are the least important issues for the vast majority of Americans.
What good is leverage if you don't use it? I wasn't thinking of all support, just offensive weapons. Why couldn't Biden send them defensive weapons only and let them run out of offensive weapons. I realize there isn't a clear cut line between the two sets.
I'm not saying that isn't how they see it. On October 7th Hamas as uniformed troops invaded Israel, took hostages, killed unarmed people minding their own business, and then committed further atrocities against those hostages. I think every country surrounding Israel except Egypt and Jordon ( correct if I am wrong ) has a standing policy of destroying Israel if they can. How can a younger generation see Israel as holding all of the cards?
Interesting reply, thank you.
I suspect the information needed to answer that will be privately held for some time yet. I seem to recall there being some sort of withholding or delaying of large bombs due to repeated use of 2,000 lb bombs in populated areas, but forget the details. But ultimately, it's never just one issue; it's a confluence of things.
I don't think it is an entire generation; rather, you have this spectrum of views on culpability in the decades long conflicts, and the younger crowd tends to view Israel as more culpable than the older crowd, but there are still individuals from all ages across that spectrum.
I can't speak to the mind of others or for a generation of people, but from what I've broadly seen in the news, online, and in person, there does seem to be a generational component. I think people naturally tend to put more stock in things that they have observed in their lifetime than in prior decades, and for someone who is 25 years old now, their context on their "adult" perception of things might only stretch back ten years. Which is well after most of the power rebalancing.
Edit: and to the reverse, I think older folks are slow to update perceptions because change is slow, and it can be hard to evolve closely held views we developed in our younger, formative years.
Interesting questions! Have a great day!
I don't want to, but I have to agree. The default of many people in regards to politics is to have the view from what they saw/heard growing up and not look into the history unless they have a particular interest.
What part of my post was nuance trolling, or even directly stating a position on the war or specific actions?
Biden has been a lifelong Zionist. Here are some excerpts.
50 years has passed since he first publicly called himself a Zionist. As of a month ago, he still called himself a Zionist. Maybe we should just accept that he is a Zionist, because this has been a very constant part of his ideology and public image for 50 years.
I'm surprised more people don't know about this. It's not like Republicans have a monopoly on Christian Zionism.
While I agree with your statement, I think a more important point is that it illustrates how far to the right the mainstream democratic party really is.
I wanted to wait until I felt unhurried to read that article.
I think it bolstered /user/krellor's point about different generations seeing the war in different ways having seen different parts of the history of that region "live".
I do not want to get off track from my question in the original post, so I addressed that first. In passing I will say that article, while hepful, seemed like a hatchet job against Biden and Zionism - but that is another 2-3 conversations. :-)
I don't mean this as a criticism of any specific poster, but it is a bit alarming to see how underinformed people are regarding the US's presence (and policies) in the middle east. Per Reuters, the US has military bases in Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, among others. It may go without saying, but many of these countries are staunch allies of the Americans - it's not so simple as "Israel is the only ally in the region." Kuwait (like several others in the region) is a major non-NATO ally of the Americans and Kuwaitis have a higher opinion of the US than the French do. In fact the largest American base in the region (in Qatar) is majority funded by gulf countries.
Americans by default only get international news when that news effects the U.S., otherwise it is almost like a blackout unless someone makes a special effort like reading the BBC site. Even then, the locations of US military bases isn't a frequent and common piece of information.
Your post was useful. I don't think anything would have been lost by leaving out the quoted sentence.
Thanks again.
Just so you know, I appreciate you trying to get more informed by creating this discussion. I think you were also onto something by pointing out that the explanations you've considered still lacked something, even put together. As I've pointed out in my comment, I think that part is Biden's ideology (Zionism) in this matter.
As a more general point, sometimes the discussions around these issues focus too much on practical or "realpolitik" explanations, without consideration for the role of ideologies.
This is valid constructive criticism and I appreciate it! I should have been clearer. I think your questions and post are great, and I don't think that people intrinsically need to understand the middle east. My concern is specifically regarding instances where people have a very poor understanding of the region, but still answer questions like these ones unselfconsciously, without including any caveats and without recognizing the limits of their knowledge.
Not a previous commenter, but I personally would have omitted the countries you mentioned despite knowing it because in my opinion the alliance between Israel and the U.S. is different enough from the others. I would hazard a guess that others on here do the same out of convenience rather than thinking that Israel is literally the only ally in the region.
It doesn't matter how many are there. If you can't stand by one they'll leave. Countries aren't run by black and white written moral codes. It'll just undermine the USA's authority. Now, people will come saying, what do you want then, USA committing genocide? Well that's not a new thing in human history.
like @krellor said
USA just can't leave Israel in the hands Iran backed Hamas.
And even among them, the relationships among themselves is often complicated and at times conflicting.
This chart is outdated, being from 2014, but still it should give you an impression of how complicated the middle east is. Pair this with some of the countries having unstable border by design(Iraq being a good example, thanks to the Brits and French), oil, key trade routes going past or through some countries, and the only thing that's easy to see if how complicated the region is.
In the case of Israel and Palestine, it's even more complicated because that conflict is never easy in any aspect. Why support for Israel was high and is changing, too, is something that's complicated. Though I don't really blame anyone for wanting simple answers at times.
I sure wish there were as well.
I think an aspect people often don't think about is that Israel also sometimes acts as a proxy for US interests against Iran, and other enemies.
The Hezbollah commander that Israel assassinated their the attack on the Druze children's soccer field was also wanted by the United States for an attack on a Marines barracks in 1987 that killed something like 300 people, to the tune of a $5m reward. Israel also has a shared interest in preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, and it causes the US president far fewer problems when the attack comes from an Israeli airbase instead of an American one
Another likely element is that Dems are keenly aware of how UK Labour under Corbyn got absolutely wrapped around the axle by accusations of antisemitism, and want to avoid that association by continuing to support Israel materially even as they criticize Netanyahu and push for a ceasefire. And even then pro-Israel lobbies were able to leverage the charge to take out multiple progressive Dems in recent primaries.
There has been a lot of misinformation on this. While AIPAC funded challengers against some progressives, their ads focused on stupid decisions those congress members made. The best example was Cori Bush voting against Biden's infrastructure bill. It's a popular bill. To many people, her vote proved that she cares more about theatrics than the meat-and-potatoes of lawmaking to deliver for her district.
Progressives like AOC that are developing real policy making chops and carefully picking fights are still successful. This article from the AP is a pretty neutral look at why Bowman and Bush lost: https://apnews.com/article/squad-aipac-progressives-congress-cori-bush-0de0a96929368db72145b033261415ca
Well of course the challengers ran more broad-based campaigns, but AIPAC clearly funded those challengers because Bush, Bowman, etc. were so outspoken against Israeli action in Gaza. It's nothing sinister, AIPAC has the same right to push for their causes as any other lobby. But the prospect of attracting that kind of negative attention is definitely making Dems more skittish about openly opposing Netanyahu than they might otherwise be.
Right, I wanted to clarify how those two specifically lost because they're the exception that prove the rule. Ilhan Omar's race wasn't contested because she's a strong retail politician. AIPAC didn't get involved because they expected her to win her primary. AIPAC's influence is overstated. There are much more powerful industrial lobbies to worry about.
Though believe it or not, money has extremely limited impact outside of primaries: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/money-and-elections-a-complicated-love-story/
My uninformed understanding is that the US needs a country in that region that is a strong ally and dependent upon our funding. If Israel falls then we may never get a US-friendly country there ever again. So the US supports their war crimes to support its own future war crimes.
In general, the US wants little to do with the Middle East at this point. Bush's misadventures are widely considered a mistake (the exception is war hawks that want to bomb Iran). The goal since Obama has been pivoting to Asia to support countries that are dealing with China's aggression in the region. The Middle East is just a long troubled and combative region, and many Evangelical Christians in government think Israel is critical due to its role in bringing about The Rapture...
I've heard that too. What would the US need with a strong and stable ally in that region? A military base in case the flow of oil is threatened? Eyes on the ground, intelligence about emerging events and conflicts?
Israel specifically is its own mess (as you're well aware), but the region is critical to international maritime trade which the US has long served as a protector for. This is one reason why the Houthis are such an international headache.
The other reason is to counter Iran. The US's other big ally against Iran is Saudi Arabia, and well...the relationship has ups and downs due to the authoritarian whims of the Saudi monarachy...
Wouldn't Jordan already meet that criteria?
I'd be happy to have someone fill out my knowledge in this area.
It's 1, 3, and 4. Plus what @krellor said.
It's advantageous to have an ally in the midst of openly adversarial (Muslim) countries. Its intelligence ties into that directly.
And not just Republicans, but old school Christians are in favour of the biblical prophecy.
All in all, that's but one side of the conflict. It's too tangled to make a straight up assessment either direction.
Israel is a designated major non-NATO ally, it's true. But so are Jordan (a neighboring [Muslim] country) and Egypt (a neighboring [Muslim] country). Other (Muslim) designated major non-NATO allies in the area are Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar. Given that there are only 20 in the world, that's fairly significant.
Let's say the quiet part out loud: It's because Israel isn't muslim. We're all thinking it. It's not good logic, but it's what everyone's thinking.