The United States is expected to lift its hold on the shipment of ammunition and weapons designated for the IDF, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Office said on Tuesday, just one day after the Israeli leader accused the Biden administration of preventing the delivery of those arms.
“US Ambassador to Israel Jack Lew told Prime Minister Netanyahu yesterday that the ammunition and weapons that the PM referred to are in the process of being delivered to Israel,” the PMO wrote in an English language post on X.
Any geopolitical role that Israel fulfills could easily be filled by Turkey. Israel offers very little for the US, at this point it can’t even be said that they’re really an ally democracy (if they ever were). It’s a hyper-militaristic apartheid state.
But that’s kind of my point, Israel is indeed a client of the US and, whatever you think about US hegemony, Israel shouldn’t be calling the shots here in terms of the support we do or don’t give them. It makes Biden look so incredibly weak to tolerate the endless slaps to the face from Netanyahu’s tantrum and for them to dump money into our elections without a single Dem leader calling for a ban on AIPAC money. It makes no sense even from an imperialist perspective or a security perspective or however one wants to frame it, nevermind the clear moral depravity of continuing to send them aid.
Even Ronald Reagan withheld munitions from Israel when they indiscrimately bombed Lebanon and literally described it as a holocaust right to the Prime Minister’s face. It literally took less than a half hour after that call for the Israeli PM to halt the bombing.
I despise Reagan, but if even someone as despicable as him can understand how to wield political power to bring the Israeli far-right to heel, Biden has no excuse. Which is why I think there has to be something else going on here.
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That’s a real possibility, yeah, there is no doubt that he is a Zionist. And I don’t mean to speak with more certainty than it really warrants, it’s more just difficult to really believe he’s not coming around to the fact that the far-right “forever war” Israeli government is not only bad for the US, but even makes Israelis themselves less safe by perpetuating conflict and stoking the cycle of violence.
He is perhaps a Zionist without the stomach for ethnic cleansing that’s required to fulfill that world view.