General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsSenator Sanders: We cannot be complicit in current approach of Israeli government
Dec 4, 2023
https://www.sanders.senate.gov/press-releases/prepared-remarks-sanders-expresses-concerns-about-foreign-aid-supplemental-bill/

Donkees
(32,648 posts)Let me say a few words to express my concerns about the $106 billion emergency foreign aid supplemental bill that we may soon be considering. There are pieces of this bill I strongly support, but in its present form I do not think it serves the interests of the American people. Let me explain why.
First, while I strongly support Ukraines valiant efforts to defend itself against Putins invasion, and Israels need to defend itself against incoming rocket and missile attacks, I am deeply concerned that this legislation has no investments to address the needs of working families in the United States 60 percent of whom are living paycheck to paycheck. Lets be clear: it is not only foreign countries that face emergencies. We face enormous emergencies in this country right now in terms of child care, primary health care, housing, and much more. The American people do not want us to continue to ignore these issues.
Second, at a time when Congress will likely soon pass a $900 billion defense bill, this supplemental bill includes tens of billions that should be covered as part of the base defense budget and handled through normal appropriations, not allocated as emergency spending. We can save tens of billions of dollars in this bill and dedicate that money to some of the enormous domestic crises we face.
https://www.sanders.senate.gov/press-releases/prepared-remarks-sanders-expresses-concerns-about-foreign-aid-supplemental-bill/
malaise
(280,860 posts)Rec
Beastly Boy
(11,660 posts)yardwork
(65,459 posts)Beastly Boy
(11,660 posts)He was rather active in opposing Hillary, Trump's only obstacle to gaining the presidency.
In the case of israel's political opposition to Netanyahu, he did nothing.
riversedge
(74,273 posts)"I am deeply concerned that this legislation has no investments to address the needs of working families in the United States 60 percent of whom are living paycheck to paycheck"
Celerity
(47,896 posts)Aussie105
(6,731 posts)Israel comes up with a swarm of justifications, but from a distance it looks Israeli is pursuing a scorched earth policy.
What is the Israeli plan once every building has been flattened, and every Palestinian person, Hamas or not, been either killed or driven out?
And does America want to be seen by the rest of the world as complicit in that process? Facilitating and supporting it?
Lonestarblue
(12,248 posts)For years, we have seen Israeli settlers killing Palestinians in the West Bank and taking their lands and we did nothing. The aid money and war equipment just kept flowing. I do not defend the heinous Hamas attack, but Israel left violence as the only option for Palestinians to defend their lands and try to prevent Israel from taking it all. Netanyahus public statement that Israel would annex the West Bank and open all of it to right-wing settlers may have been the impetus for Hamas to attack because with the Palestinians forced out of the West Bank any hope of a future state would be gone.
Some will say that Palestinians rejected statehood in the past. They were never offered statehood. They were offered negotiations to reach agreement with Israel, and Israel has always made demands that Palestinians could not accept. Netanyahu is on tape bragging that he deliberately blew up the Oslo Accords to prevent any Palestinian state and that he would never allow one. And this is the person that Israelis have chosen to lead them.
Its long past time for the US and other nations to put conditions on our support of Israel and to help Palestinians build their own state. Hamas is a problem now, but killing hundreds of thousands of innocent civilian to kill a few thousand Hamas fighters is not acceptable. Israel has some of the best spyware and intelligence operations in the world. They know that the top leaders of Hamas are not even in Gaza. They could track the funding of Hamas and cut it off. They could identify how Hamas is getting weapons into Gaza and work with countries like Egypt to shut the smuggling down. Israel has other options than murdering many thousands of Palestinians and bombing their homes to leave nothing but rubble in Gaza. At the moment, though, it appears that they prefer killing as many Palestinians as possible.
democrank
(11,250 posts)marble falls
(63,255 posts)librechik
(30,801 posts)USA is caught in very dangerous triple or quadruple bind.
David__77
(23,900 posts)I hope others agree or shortly come to agree. This is like minimum action to help salvage the US reputation.