“Three U.S. C-130 cargo planes dropped 66 total bundles, equating to about 38,000 pork-free meals, into the territory on Saturday morning. The bundles were split between three planes, the official said.”
“The airdrop is expected to be the first of many announced by President Joe Biden on Friday. The aid will be coordinated with Jordan, which has also conducted airdrops to deliver food to Gaza.”
Ambassador Robert Ford (retired) spent his entire diplomatic career in the Middle East and North Africa since 1985, including being appointed as Ambassador to Syria by Obama, and by Bush Jr as Ambassador to Algeria.
He’s dead right, and I don’t know how anybody is calling this a victory for anyone except the few mouths this limited aid can help. The whole world saw an American ”Strategic Ally” treat us the same as countries they went to war with several times.
Bretton Woods and the Pax Americana is starting to crumble, while the Global South is watching. This is an incredible display of US weakness on the global stage, not the ‘they/them army’ the alt-right pretends is an issue. Biden’s inability or unwillingness here is astounding - he can’t/won’t pressure an “ally” to not starve civilians to death, while the international community looks for any American leadership to break the deadlock on the ground in Gaza and the UNSC.
So if I give an arsonist a can of gasoline and some matches, which he then uses to burn my neighbor’s house down; and I then give my neighbor a PB&J… am I a good guy or bad guy?
Don’t get me wrong - please don’t stop sending the PB&Js, but could we please stop giving supplies to the fucking arsonist??
You can’t really see it clearly but my guess would be it’s a unit hat. The military issues soldiers unit hats to wear as an alternative to normal headgear sometimes. It’s a morale thing since the unit caps tend to be more like baseball caps than military headgear.
here is a shot of some air force civil engineers wearing their unit hats.
Army parachute riggers wear those red hats so they can be picked out of the crowd to assist paratroopers. It could be them or their equivalent in the Air Force, but I’m not sure if Air Force riggers wear the same hats or not.
The people in the photo are rigging the chutes on those pallets and are either Army or Air Force based on the camouflage pattern.
I think you are seriously underestimating just how expensive the airdrops are. It’s not an adequate solution, but it is something that will help prevent some people from starving to death.
Yes, yes, Palestinians are lucky to have US' help. If it wasn't for US, they could avoid genocide against them, but on the other hand they would miss these free goodies.
This guy notoriously believes (or posts like he believes) that all media is secretly controlled by the US government, which is in turn controlled by the Jews…it’s uncomfortably close to and sometimes crosses the line
Spending millions of dollars of relief aid for the millions of dollars of genocidal actions they funded that caused for a need for relief aid in the first place.
This is like the Mafia sending you flowers in the hospital after they broke your knees.
Gotcha. So if I read the comment right, in this case it probably isn’t relevant that the US not selling the weapons would result in the same outcome.
I read the original comment as pointing out the hypocrisy in both providing aid whilst arming the attackers. As well as pointing out the commenters issues with the US being complicit in the attacks.
In my opinion, it doesn’t matter if they would have done it anyway, the US is still guilty of being complicit regardless of how much aid they provide.
Yes the US still bares some guilt, but compared to the guilt the Israelis bare its inconsequential and not really worth the effort, because even if you managed to get the US to stop shipping weapons, it wouldn’t stop thr genocide, so your effort is way better used trying to get the US to stop Israel from comiiting genocide, for example by not vetoing un resolutions.
Tldr there are better things to be at the US government about regarding this genocide.
Literally yes. If Israel didn't have unconditional US support they'd have run out of bombs a long time ago. And probably gotten partitioned by their neighbors.
Any help is better than none, that’s obvious. However, 38,000 meals is not NEARLY sufficient when the UN’s humanitarian office lists 2.2 million Palestinians at Crisis or worse levels of food insecurity (stage 3 of 5), of which over 500,000 are at the Catastrophe level (stage 5, the most serious before death). So you can see it would take 14 drops of that size (and each meal would have to get to the right people) to feed only the over 500,000 most desperately starving people a single meal, much less a day’s worth of food.
The same report says there is no access to clean water in northern Gaza. There is also a lack of medicine with hundreds of thousands of people dangerously ill.
The only remotely sustainable solution is to follow the advice humanitarian agencies have been giving this whole time - allow MANY more trucks into the region. There were about 500 aid trucks entering Gaza daily prior to Oct. 7th - since then it’s very roughly 10-30% of that most days. If Biden and the rest of the Western powers actually want to turn this crisis around, they are going to have to pressure Israel to immediately open up crossings and stop interfering with aid delivery. I sincerely hope this is just the start of a much more concerted humanitarian effort than has been allowed. Otherwise I’m afraid these air drops will be little more than a political trick done so that people can say, “but look, we helped!”
Robert Ford, a former US ambassador to Algeria and Syria wrote on X that being forced to carry out airdrops on Gaza (instead of delivering supplies by truck) was “Israel’s worst humiliation of the USA I’ve ever seen”.
No offense. But that’s just about the dumbest thing I’ve heard in a long time. (I know you’re just the messenger.)
Us begging for Israel to stop genocide, them telling us “fuck off”, and then aiding Israel anyways is FAR more humiliating. Why is every politician not named Bernie Sanders Israel’s bitch?
I voted for Bernie in 2016 and 2020. But I’m not convinced the politics were on his side. He polled favorably against Trump, but Trump only praised him. He knew it would cause division if he did well against Hillary. I think if he won, the socialist rhetoric would have jumped, and his favorable numbers would have dropped significantly.
I do wonder about if Hillary had taken the race seriously. If she had taken the Bernie voters seriously instead of saying she didn’t need them. If she had taken the emails issue seriously instead of playing dumb.
Also, if Biden had dropped out of this race. But also if Trump didn’t run again. I think Nikki Haley would easily beat Biden with the moderate vote. But I think another Dem candidate would easily beat Trump with the same moderate vote.
Israel says many of the dead were trampled in a chaotic crush for food aid, and its troops fired warning shots after the crowd moved toward them in a threatening way.
So we are totally uncritically accepting their narrative now, got it.
I don’t like how the news gives so much credence to what they say. But at least they’ll usually qualify it with “Israel says” or “IDF says” so we know it’s bullshit.
Edit: Oh and anything ADL. Although that one is less obviously BS for those that don’t know who they are.
How is quoting someone/thing “uncritically accepting their narrative”? They’re telling you what Israel said. It’s up to you to believe it or not, but it’s journalistic malpractice to just not report the alleged justification from one of the parties involved. What are you asking for, exactly?
I mean, I’m with you that omitting context on this developing situation is inappropriate, but that’s not what we were discussing. You’re right, the statement is disputed, but it is a fact that it is the statement they have made. Journalists have a responsibility to report the facts to you, and that’s what we currently have from one of the major parties involved. And your last take regarding disputed statements not being covered just makes no sense. Literally all political coverage would be unethical under that framework. I have a right to know the batshit insane things powerful people are saying and it’s up to me to draw my own conclusions from the facts and perspectives provided.
Basically several NYT and BBC (bbc not covered in the above) stories and articles have been show to be basically plants.
Then there is the shockingly uncritical way that the US government took the Israeli report on UNRRA, that upon any inspection, has 0 evidence attached to it.
Its a total shit show. If it wasn’t actual fascism on the line at the ballot box this November, I wouldn’t be voting for Joe Biden, and even then, he makes it harder to stomach every week.
I live in a red state. Republicans have made me actually worry about my children’s future in more ways than one. I will be lining up to vote for Democrats for the foreseeable future unless there’s a truly radical candidate running D (maybe RFK Jr if he ever runs).
I hate that my choice is to vote against my children or not. I wish both parties were rational. Instead the real election is the primaries. And this year there basically wasn’t one.
All it takes to stop Trump is for a single person, Joe Biden, to stop helping Israel genocide Palestinians.
I mean, even if Joe Biden is helping Israel out of Principle (whatever genocide-loving “principle” that is) and would have to swallow that principle to “stop Trump”, it says a lot that Joe Biden refuses to do so and has his team running around demanding that millions of Americans are the ones who swallow their Principles “to stop Trump”.
Add comment