While I usually pay no more attention to the news than to the wind, gusting this way and that in the daily headlines, this Gaza thing has gotten to me.
The last straw? While the rest of the world scurries around (somewhat lamely, it seems to me) trying to get food into Gaza, the Israelis target a Gazan marketplace. (!)
So, here goes:
Think of the negotiations between Biden and Netanyahu as a card game. (Most negotiations can be thought of like that.)
What cards does Biden hold?
Biden holds the whole deck in his hand:
all the clubs--US military aid;
all the diamonds--US economic aid;
all the hearts--world opinion;
all the spades--two centuries of moral restraints, from the Sermon on the Mount, through the recognition of the irrationality of revenge, which leads to only a cycle of escalating violence, to the rule of international law, epitomized by the Geneva Convention.
Those are the cards that the Biden holds.
Against this strong hand, what cards does Netanyahu hold?
There is only one card Netanyahu can threaten Biden with: A negative reaction by the Jewish electorate if Biden were to use the cards he holds to put an immediate stop to the violence of Israel’s warmongers-in-power.
And that card, which inspires such fear in Biden and the Democratic Party, is a wild card, the value of which will be revealed only sometime after November 5, when the number-crunchers finish analyzing the election returns.
If the Biden administration were to use the United States’ clout to end the attack on Gaza and force a realignment of Israeli politics, would more Jewish voters feel anger rather than relief? Who knows?
Or are Biden and the Democrats cowering before the perceived power of AIPAC? According to the website fivethirtyeight.com, “decades of research suggest that money probably isn’t the deciding factor in who wins a general election, and especially not for incumbents.”
The strength of Netanyahu’s dubious wild card, even though the United States holds every other card in the deck, depends on the paranoid obsession with reelection, on the part of both parties, which has made a loony bin out of Washington.
If fear of losing an election, even to the likes of Donald Trump, is behind the United States’ continuing toleration (despite the State Department’s rhetorical remonstrations) of Israel’s vicious siege of Gaza (kindly being referred to as a “war”), then Biden and his administration are culpable accomplices in the ongoing massacre and enforced starvation of a civilian population simply because it has fallen into the hands of a band of fanatical terrorists.
The last straw? While the rest of the world scurries around (somewhat lamely, it seems to me) trying to get food into Gaza, the Israelis target a Gazan marketplace. (!)
So, here goes:
Think of the negotiations between Biden and Netanyahu as a card game. (Most negotiations can be thought of like that.)
What cards does Biden hold?
Biden holds the whole deck in his hand:
all the clubs--US military aid;
all the diamonds--US economic aid;
all the hearts--world opinion;
all the spades--two centuries of moral restraints, from the Sermon on the Mount, through the recognition of the irrationality of revenge, which leads to only a cycle of escalating violence, to the rule of international law, epitomized by the Geneva Convention.
Those are the cards that the Biden holds.
Against this strong hand, what cards does Netanyahu hold?
There is only one card Netanyahu can threaten Biden with: A negative reaction by the Jewish electorate if Biden were to use the cards he holds to put an immediate stop to the violence of Israel’s warmongers-in-power.
And that card, which inspires such fear in Biden and the Democratic Party, is a wild card, the value of which will be revealed only sometime after November 5, when the number-crunchers finish analyzing the election returns.
If the Biden administration were to use the United States’ clout to end the attack on Gaza and force a realignment of Israeli politics, would more Jewish voters feel anger rather than relief? Who knows?
Or are Biden and the Democrats cowering before the perceived power of AIPAC? According to the website fivethirtyeight.com, “decades of research suggest that money probably isn’t the deciding factor in who wins a general election, and especially not for incumbents.”
The strength of Netanyahu’s dubious wild card, even though the United States holds every other card in the deck, depends on the paranoid obsession with reelection, on the part of both parties, which has made a loony bin out of Washington.
If fear of losing an election, even to the likes of Donald Trump, is behind the United States’ continuing toleration (despite the State Department’s rhetorical remonstrations) of Israel’s vicious siege of Gaza (kindly being referred to as a “war”), then Biden and his administration are culpable accomplices in the ongoing massacre and enforced starvation of a civilian population simply because it has fallen into the hands of a band of fanatical terrorists.