Washington to Israel: Turn the lights back on in Gaza
Washington to Israel: Turn the lights back on in Gaza
The White House is leaning on Israel to restore internet and mobile connections in the Gaza Strip as the blackout lingers.
The Biden administration is pressing Israel to restore telecommunications access to Gaza amid a massive blackout that has stretched a record six days and left millions of Palestinians without power or internet.
Administration officials fear the blackout will make it difficult for anyone to know what is happening between Hamas and the Israeli military as the war in Gaza continues, potentially worsening an already dire humanitarian situation. The U.S. has “been in touch with the government of Israel over this blackout and have urged them to turn telecoms back on,” said a U.S. official at the White House, speaking anonymously due to the sensitivity of the discussions.
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Israel: "No."
Like, does anyone expect anything else?
Israel is well-aware that they have the US government by the balls. Not because the provide anything of exceptional use to the US government, but because their propaganda efforts and political bribery can make or break a politician's career.
I wish that this nightmare would allow the US a chance to change that. Establishing Israel like this in the first place was a really bad move, and a lot of Jewish people were even saying as much at the time, I've heard.
There is an excellent contemporary article by the Jewish writer Hannah Arendt that I would recommend.
https://www.commentary.org/articles/mortbarrgmailcom/to-save-the-jewish-homelandthere-is-still-time/
And even if the Jews were to win the war, its end would find the unique possibilities and the unique achievements of Zionism in Palestine destroyed. The land that would come into being would be something quite other than the dream of world Jewry, Zionist and non-Zionist. The “victorious” Jews would live surrounded by an entirely hostile Arab population, secluded inside ever-threatened borders, absorbed with physical self-defense to a degree that would submerge all other interests and activities. The growth of a Jewish culture would cease to be the concern of the whole people; social experiments would have to be discarded as impractical luxuries; political thought would center around military strategy; economic development would be determined exclusively by the needs of war. And all this would be the fate of a nation that—no matter how many immigrants it could still absorb and how far it extended its boundaries (the whole of Palestine and Transjordan is the insane Revisionist demand)—would still remain a very small people greatly outnumbered by hostile neighbors.
Under such circumstances (as Ernst Simon has pointed out) the Palestinian Jews would degenerate into one of those small warrior tribes about whose possibilities and importance history has amply informed us since the days of Sparta. Their relations with world Jewry would become problematical, since their defense interests might clash at any moment with those of other countries where large numbers of Jews lived. Palestine Jewry would eventually separate itself from the larger body of world Jewry and in its isolation develop into an entirely new people. Thus it becomes plain that at this moment and under present circumstances a Jewish state can only be erected at the price of the Jewish homeland.
That's whom I was thinking of. Nice one
Of course, I must also emphasize that millions of Israelis have no further sin than being born in Israel, and that though the establishment of Israel was a mistake, Israel also has a right to exist in the modern day under the same terms as any other country.
Yeah true. Nobody's going to give us a mulligan on the last few centuries. We're stuck with the mistakes
No Israel state doesn't mean they all die. It just means a new state that combines Israel and Palestine into one large state where everyone has equal rights and combines resources. Like the Jewish people do fine in every other modern country in the world. That's the one state solution and it's the best one.
Functionally, no Israeli state means mass ethnic cleansing. Furthermore, people have a right to self-determination.
If Palestinians and Israelis got together and decided to make a single, non-discriminatory state, that would be wonderful. But neither side is interested in that kind of one-state solution.
Sometimes I wonder: Could a president forcefully standup to Israel and live out a term? I seriously feel that between the insane volume of lobbying by AIPAC and the implication of having caused such a rift in the political paradigm that no politician would ever dare be as firm as I’d hope they would.
And the GOP alternative will say to Netanyahu:
Stop being a bitch and finish them already.
I’m not being an apologist. I just have become really sad about all this. Feeling pretty hopeless since this all started. Not that the feeling is new, just really turned up.