He also called on Israel to take immediate steps “to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering, and the safety of aid workers” and “made clear that U.S. policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel’s immediate action on these steps,” according to the White House statement.
Finally.
I wonder if the recent news stories about “Lavender” and Israel’s grotesquely high acceptable civilian casualty rates had any bearing on this seeming shift in policy.
Probably not as much as an American citizen being killed by Israel on Monday, unfortunately.
Probably more likely the recent WSJ polls showing him losing his ass across all swing states. He’s a cipher. He’ll just move with the numbers.
Its not like the absurdity of Israels ongoing genocide stopped him before; philosophically, Biden basically is a Zionist. He’s one of the most pro-Israel Democrats there is.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/03/trump-biden-polls-2024-00150322
Whatever he is, I’ll gladly accept Biden’s change in position on this.
And he IS moving in the right direction, even if at a glacial pace; Trump just wants to blow it all up already.
You might have missed it, but Trump has already pivoted on Gaza. It happened at neck snapping speeds. He’s pivoted to being highly critical of Bibi and is basically telling Israel they need to be done. He’s basically trying to be to the left of Biden on Gaza at this point. Now if that would hold up once he’s in office… eh. But that’s the rhetoric as of today/ a few hours ago.
Huh, well that’s me corrected, for the next five minutes at least, lol. To be honest I don’t see it as anything but verbal posturing, because his eagerness to blow it all up is rooted directly in the crazy ass Christofascist/evangelical end times religious thing he and his churchy stans have going on right now, where they think if they can arrange things so that armies surround Jerusalem (a biblical prophecy that would indicate the imminent return of Jesus) it punches his divine plane ticket and they can get him back sooner.
I can’t even begin to parse the rest of that delusional shit, but even beyond the deranged biblical twist I don’t think he’s going to be able to keep it up, just because his base is made of pro-Israel brown-people haters who will probably not take this well if it continues. But thanks for taking the time to let me know the wind has whipped him around again, I had no idea.
This will be a bit of a tangent, but I can’t believe people approved of Trump’s time in office. Are people’s memories that short? Every day was something else crazy. He basically caused this economic crisis by messing with the money in dumb ways, killed an Iranian general almost dragging us into a war, worsened this crisis in the Middle East, kids in concentration camps being separated from their families, unbelievable high amounts of corruption and turnover, impeached twice, botched Covid because they were mad at blue cities and didn’t like governing, and it ended with an attempted coup. It just never ended. Every day was something new and stressful. 51% of people saying they approved of Trump’s time in office from that article you posted just blows my mind. Just shows how dire straights America is in, how strong the propaganda is in Fox News and OAN.
And the sad part is that it doesn’t matter what I think, it only matters what the people in those swing states they polled think.
I think its not that complicated for people. They look at their bank accounts, they look at their wallets, they look at their job prospects and world around them, and they can pretty easily conclude: their lives were better under Trump.
It doesn’t matter that Trump had nothing to do with things going well then, and was likely making it worse, because peoples lived experience was that their lives were better. Biden inherited a shitwagon going off a shit cliff. He did turn things around, a bit. But a bit is not enough. People are still suffering. They look at the state of things and think “Well things were better then”. Its not a complicated calculus, even if its wrong.
The majority of people aren’t watching OAN or Fox news even. They arent watching anything really. Their calculations are very very simple.
no doubt the IDF indiscriminately blowing up aid workers has something to do with it
Western aid workers, most importantly.
Over 100 aid workers have been killed since last October, but the others weren’t nearly as newsworthy due to being of Arab descent.
In circumstances eerily similar to the recent drone strikes on WCK, aid workers and medical staff working with Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) were bombed and killed by Israeli forces even though they had notified the IDF of their location, and their convoy was fired upon as they tried to evacuate workers and their families from northern Gaza.
You may want to add an “apparently” to that or I’m afraid it could be taken the wrong way…
How fucked that indiscriminately blowing up children isn’t sufficient, but I’ll take whatever positive progress possible.