A career State Department official resigned from her post on Tuesday, saying she could no longer work for the Biden administration after it released a report concluding that Israel was not preventing the flow of aid to Gaza.
Stacy Gilbert, who served as a senior civilian-military advisor to the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM), sent an email to staff saying she was resigning because she felt the State Department had made the wrong assessment, The Washington Post reported, citing officials who read the note.
The report was filed in response to President Joe Biden issuing a national security memorandum (NSM-20) in early February on whether the administration finds credible Israel’s assurances that its use of US weapons do not violate either American or international law.
The report said there were reasonable grounds to believe Israel on several occasions had used American-supplied weapons “inconsistent” with international humanitarian law, but said it could not make a definitive assessment - enough to prevent the suspension of arms transfers.
Pulling support from Isreal isn’t nearly as popular as someone who is in the progressive / lemmy bubble would think. And besides public opinion, Isreal has a very strong lobby. Also, while there are more vocal American Jews standing against Isreal now, they’re far from united against Isreal.
I know it seems like it’s a clear win because of the echo chamber in here, but it could cost them not only the presidential election, but down ballot as well, if they go against Isreal. And I’ve said it before, chasing the Leftist vote is an exercise in futility. They will just move goalposts, and you may very well lose more voters appeasing them than you gain. And the votes you do gain will be fickle.
It sucks to say, but their strategy is solid. And we need to celebrate the small wins to encourage their slow break from unconditional support.
Edit:
Lemmy as a whole - “Political polls are very unreliable and next to useless”
ITT: “A specific poll agrees with my opinion, and thus should be treated as the absolute truth”
Uh huh. Re: echo chambers
I’ve seen a number of polls that reiterate how strongly youth and democrats oppose israel’s actions and call it genocide. I don’t think it’s an echo chamber effect.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/642695/majority-disapprove-israeli-action-gaza.aspx
This poll from March shows 55/36 disapprove/approve.
Moreover, democrats disapprove at 75% vs 18% approve and independents disapprove at 60% to 29% approve. Sure, republicans approve at 64%, but ain’t no republicans switching to biden over gaza.
Those numbers are brutal for democrats, and getting worse. More obvious genocide from the israelis and feeble lies from biden isn’t going to reverse that trend.
It’s easy to say disapprove, you should look at the rankings of what issues are on their minds. Gaza is down there.
Conveniently up until the election.
A fair point.
Polling does not agree with you. It’s certainly not a slam dunk but the majority of voters want military aid conditioned on not committing war crimes.
Completely Pulling support is one thing, but “conditioning support” has broad bipartisan public appeal. Bernie Sanders can articulate this well; support for Israeli defense programs like Iron Dome, and cutting support for offensive artillery that’s being used to storm Gaza. Why can’t Biden say the same, instead he’s trying to split hairs on whether tanks into Rafah doesn’t count as a ground invasion (and making himself look stupid in front of voters).
When did doing the right thing become unelectable?
So solid that polling says the opposite, the media is starting to catch on, and there is a report that dem strategists are freaking the fuck out over how shit Biden’s chances are. CNN miraculously figured out that, surprise surprise a lot of it has to do with Biden’s handling of Gaza.
Sry, but you’re delusional if you seriously think that the Israel thing isn’t a huge factor towards why Biden has lost so much support. We are literally seeing a democratic president aid Israel in commiting a genocide.
Outside of lemmy I get tons of information about the ongoing genocide. As far as I can tell, the democratic strategy is not solid. They’re going be in for a rough realization that Trump stands a very good chance of becoming the next president. But I suppose we just have to wait and see, I wouldn’t count on Biden winning, and neither our NATO allies as they’re Trump proofing themselves.