Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen, who is a leader in the Democratic foreign policy establishment, gave an extraordinary speech on the Senate floor on Monday night, excoriating the Netanyahu government for deliberately blocking aid to civilians. He and Sen. Jeff Merkley traveled to the Egypt side of the Rafah crossing around five weeks ago, and Van Hollen came back livid at Israel’s deliberate stalling of aid. On the Senate floor, he said that he had recently heard reports that children are now beyond starving and are actually dying of starvation. He texted Cindy McCain, the head of the World Food Programme, and asked if the rumors were true. He quoted her response to him: “This is true. We are unable to get in enough food to keep people from the brink. Famine is imminent. I wish I had better news.”
He drove the point home: “Kids in Gaza are now dying from the deliberate withholding of food. In addition to the horror of that news, one other thing is true: That is a war crime. It is a textbook war crime. And that makes those who orchestrate it war criminals,” he said , adding that he had recently spoken with officials at humanitarian relief organizations. “Every one of them, every one, has stated that their organizations have never experienced a humanitarian disaster as dire and terrible as the world is witnessing in Gaza.”
The senator’s speech pulsed with moral clarity — until it petered out into a stumbling rationale for his forthcoming yes vote. He would still be voting to send some $14 billion to the people he had just described as “war criminals,” he said, because the bill also included $60 billion for Ukraine’s war effort and humanitarian aid for Sudan, Gaza, Ukraine, and elsewhere. (It also ponies up $8 billion for a Taiwan war effort.) He acknowledged that the aid money wouldn’t be worth anything to the Palestinians if Netanyahu wouldn’t let it in, and he pleaded with Biden to pressure Netanyahu to do so. But if even this level of moral clarity from somebody like Van Hollen isn’t matched with any action, it’s hard to see why those pleas will be heard this time.
When the roll was called, only Sen. Bernie Sanders and Merkley, Van Hollen’s companion on that recent trip to Rafah, voted no. It needed 60 votes to overcome a filibuster, and thanks to significant opposition from Republicans, it only got 66. A small bloc of Democrats could have blocked it and forced the Senate to consider each spending piece separately.
I would prefer to help Ukraine DEFEND itself from a persistent aggressor trying to conquer it, as we have the ability.
That said, it most certainly isn’t worth further participating in an ongoing genocide to accomplish that.
Would have preferred neither given that it was all or nothing. We aren’t doing right getting more Palestinians murdered to save more Ukranians, I understand the decision purely strategically, but no, it doesn’t balance itself out ethically.
Fix campaign finance
The capitalists would sooner raze this nation to ash using the means of state violence they control than cede their legalized bribery power and governmental capture they spent decades and billions getting codified.
That’s why we need either revolution or collapse before things can even begin to improve. The good news is that, even in light of our peasant’s cowardice, self-delusion, and oligarch stoked infighting preventing revolution, collapse will come, entropy is absolute, and when corruption and decadence comes to run the table, Rome. Always. Falls.
I just wish I could be there to see the currency we were propagandized to beat each other to death over being used as kindling for warmth as we remember we need one another again without their media in our ear stoking animosity, competitiveness, and jealousy to keep us divided.
I don’t disagree, but this is stressing me out. Tell me about the fucking rabbits for a minute.
So the genocide against Ukraine isn’t worth as much to you as the genocide against Palestinians? As others have pointed out, without this money, Israel can still continue to to what it does. However, without this money and other support from the west, Ukraine will fall.
This claim really shows your bias. I consider a Ukranian and Palestinian life to be of equal value as human life. I don’t respect the divisive construct of nation states, they keep us at each other’s throats to maintain the power structure of people who consider all human life except theirs expendable, so your life means the same as theirs to me, a human life.
The point is, choosing to shoot through either of them to save either of them makes it our atrocity. Saving an innocent life is never worth taking one in the process. It isn’t a wash.
You can say it doesn’t matter all day, but if that were the case, there wouldn’t be pressure to do it. Giving money to Israel today is giving money to the Nazis in the 1930s, or Russia today, even if they already have enough money.
But hey, we topple entire governments by military force to make way for our capitalists to exploit their resource markets, so baddies gotta baddie. It’s not the US ever gave the tiniest of shits about basic human decency. We had to be attacked by the axis to finally fight the Nazis. We were never an ethical people.
Getting out of the theoretical world now, how else do you realistically propose to support Ukraine? Like it or not, unfortunately both parties in the US are very pro-Israel.
I’ve already given my position. I want to support the people of Ukraine defending themselves from genocide. I would, however refuse to do so if the ONLY way to support them is to shoot through the people of Palestine defending themselves from genocide. Would it be worth you killing someone/everyone you love to provide aid to Ukraine? Killing Palestinian civilians should be just as repulsive a proposition, the only difference is bias.
In giving them more money post genocide commencement, it is now an American-Israeli coordinated genocide as far as I’m concerned, just as we did with the Native Americans.
That’s where we differ then, since the risk of Russia gaining power in the world is completely unacceptable. Besides the immediate threat to Europe, Russia is responsible for disinformation campaigns across the West and has caused untold damage with Trump and his ilk. To me, that is the greatest danger we need to address and defending Ukraine is top priority.
I wish politicians would unlink unrelated funding programs, but that’s a problem that can’t be solved in the short term. Ideally pressure continues to mount against the Israeli response to the situation in Gaza (as it is doing, albeit too slowly).
Israel is going to commit the genocide regardless of U.S. assistance, it is too locally popular. People in Israel are more angry about their own dead soldiers than the families those soldiers were killing. And even in the hypothetical of the U.S. cutting support and pressuring Israel into a ceasefire, this is not the first atrocity they have committed in the Gaza strip and it won’t be the last. They’ll just wait a decade, amass supplies once more, and give it another go.
On the other hand, there is a very real chance that without U.S. assistance, Ukraine will lose the war and Russia will inflict its own genocide that we will be completely powerless to stop. In the face of that reality, the U.S. would not be getting more Palestinians murdered by sending aid, but we will be getting more Ukrainians killed by withholding it.
We should absolutely continue to have the conversation about Netanyahu’s atrocities, to keep the war crimes fresh and on the minds when Israel has their election in two years. We cannot let them forget, but that is the only way we can meaningfully enact change in Israel. Spitefully letting Ukraine suffer for political theater will not enact that change.
no, we need to shut down the genocidal fascist regime of isreal. sanctions, etc. quit using BS elections to shut down conversations
Okay but they’re a democratic nation. What, we’re all onboard with the U.S. doing unethical regime changes against the will of the local populace now? Yeah, those have always gone great, right!
It has to be done by election. The people in Israel need to choose for someone else. They honestly were already close before this, Bibi’s approval was getting pretty low before the attack. This isn’t some mistake the U.S. gets to whip it’s dick out and solve, that just gets Israeli terrorists destabilizing the region.
oh my god you’re so pathetic. the starving children in gaza being bombed in their tents are supposed to wait for a fucking election they can’t even vote in to save them? you’re using elections to shut down the conversation. how about this: when Isreal voted in bibi, they consented to russia level international level sanctions. election conversation over