An online subscription to the New York Times—mine, anyway—comes with a daily newsletter that highlights some topic of interest and then summarizes the day's news, with links to the full articles in the paper. Since there was a lot of news made in Gaza earlier this week, Wednesday's newsletter had a small section with bullet points, each one linked to a different article on the war there. The overarching event, of course, was the air strike on the convoy of aid workers from World Central Kitchen. Seven workers were killed in the attack. The second bullet point says:
Biden said he was outraged by the deaths, adding, "Israel has not done enough to protect aid workers."
The fifth bullet point says:
The Biden administration plans to sell F-15 fighter jets, worth billions, to Israel.
[Links in original.] People love a good Bible story, but we have to stop treating Israel like the prodigal son: Yes, you've behaved shamefully, here are some F-15s! What if, instead of privately fuming, Biden did something like cancelled military aid to Israel? They don't need it anyway. To fight Hamas? It's weird how, in discussions of foreign aid, assisting Ukraine is packaged with assisting Israel. Let's make some distinctions, beginning with the identity of the enemy in the respective cases: Russia, an outlaw superpower with the world's eighth largest economy, versus a terrorist organization.
In another of the newsletter's bullet points, we are told that Israel "took responsibility" for the strike on the aid workers. What can this even mean? I think "took responsibility" means "acknowledge we did it"—as if there was some doubt on that point. Only question is, whether it was intentional. Israel says, No, it was a "tragic mistake" (and now leave us alone while we proceed as before). I hate how despicable acts immediately get clouded over with vacant exercises in public relations. It's hard to be too cynical about Israel. I used to think the settlement movement in the West Bank was a way to change facts on the ground that would then have to be taken account of when one day a final settlement would be negotiated: a realpolitik means of obtaining favorable terms, in other words. In reality, however, the settlement movement is just illegal annexation of territory, and the coalitions that have governed Israel for a generation now have never had any intention of negotiating anything, ever.
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