Lurker > Doe

Stop giving right wingers ammo to propagandize.

Yeah it's great, although I've never finished it. I went as Rigby to ComicCon and got so much attention.

I get where you are coming from. But do this after the election. We don't need Trump in office.

The Biden administration in recent days quietly authorized the transfer of billions of dollars in bombs and fighter jets to Israel despite Washingtons concerns about an anticipated military offensive in southern Gaza that could threaten the lives of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians.

The new arms packages include more than 1,800 MK84 2,000-pound bombs and 500 MK82 500-pound bombs, according to Pentagon and State Department officials familiar with the matter. The 2,000-pound bombs have been linked to previous mass-casualty events throughout Israels military campaign in Gaza. These officials, like some others, spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity because recent authorizations have not been disclosed publicly.

The development underscores that while rifts have emerged between the United States and Israel over the wars conduct, the Biden administration views weapons transfers as off-limits when considering how to influence the actions of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

We have continued to support Israels right to defend itself, said a White House official. Conditioning aid has not been our policy.

Some Democrats, including allies of President Biden, say the U.S. government has a responsibility to withhold weapons in the absence of an Israeli commitment to limit civilian casualties during a planned operation in Rafah, a final Hamas stronghold, and ease restrictions on humanitarian aid into the enclave, which is on the brink of famine.

The Biden administration needs to use their leverage effectively and, in my view, they should receive these basic commitments before greenlighting more bombs for Gaza, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said in an interview. We need to back up what we say with what we do.
The Israeli government declined to comment on the authorizations.

Four Hamas battalions remain in Rafah, say U.S. and Israeli officials. More than 1.2 million Palestinians have sought shelter there after being forced from their homes during Israels extensive bombing campaign over the past five months. Biden suggested that a scorched-earth invasion of the city along Gazas border with Egypt would cross a red line for him.

Biden requested that Netanyahu send a team of security officials to Washington this week to listen to U.S. proposals for limiting the bloodshed. Netanyahu canceled the visit after the United States refused to veto a United Nations Security Council resolution that called for a temporary cease-fire in Gaza and the release of hostages, but which did not condemn Hamas.

Israeli officials have not allayed U.S. concerns about the impending operation in Rafah, but they agreed to reschedule the meeting in Washington, the White House said.

The 2,000-pound bombs, capable of leveling city blocks and leaving craters in the earth 40 feet across and larger, are almost never used anymore by Western militaries in densely populated locations due to the risk of civilian casualties.

Israel has used them extensively in Gaza, according to several reports, most notably in the bombing of Gazas Jabalya refugee camp Oct. 31. U.N. officials decried the strike, which killed more than 100 people, as a disproportionate attack that could amount to war crimes. Israel defended the bombing, saying it resulted in the death of a Hamas leader.

Israeli officials deny that their military campaign has been indiscriminate and say civilian casualties are the fault of Hamas for embedding its fighters among the population in Gaza.

Bidens decision to continue the flow of weapons to Israel has been strongly supported by powerful pro-Israel interest groups in Washington, including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which is spending tens of millions of dollars this election cycle to unseat Democrats it views as insufficiently pro-Israel.

AIPAC, alongside congressional Republicans and several Democrats, oppose any conditions on U.S. military assistance to Israel. The U.S. can protect civilians, on both sides of the conflict, by continuing to ensure Israel receives as much U.S. assistance as is needed, as expeditiously as possible, to keep its stockpiles full of lifesaving munitions, Reps. August Pfluger (R-Tex.) and Don Davis (D-N.C.), and Michael Makovsky, president of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, wrote in a recent column. Doing so is also morally right and in the U.S. interest.

Bidens recurring approvals of weapons transfers are an abrogation of moral responsibility, and an assault on the rule of law as we know it, at both the domestic and international levels, said Josh Paul, a former State Department official involved in arms transfers who resigned in protest of Bidens Gaza policy.

This is a policymaking process that is fundamentally broken, and which makes everyone from policymaking officials to defense manufacturers to the U.S. taxpayer complicit in Israels war crimes, he said.

Advocates of the policy inside the administration say behind-the-scenes discussions with the Israelis have succeeded in delaying the countrys Rafah operation, which they now dont expect to happen until May. But at least part of that delay is due to Israels military operations in Khan Younis taking longer than anticipated.

The United States sent a letter to the Israeli Finance Ministry earlier this week informing Jerusalem that the sanctions imposed by the Biden administration earlier this year against violent settlers were not intended to compel Israeli banks to close the accounts of targeted individuals, an Israeli official tells The Times of Israel.

Several major banks took this step in order to avoid violating the sanctions, which the Biden administration began issuing earlier this year after determining that the Israeli government was systematically failing to clamp down on settler violence.

The sanctions infuriated Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich who characterized them as a draconian obstruction of Israeli sovereignty, and the far-right lawmaker threatened to take steps in his capacity as head of the treasury that would significantly impede the Palestinian economy, the Israeli official adds, confirming reporting in the Israel Hayom daily.

Ostensibly wary of such retaliatory actions, the US agreed to send a letter to the Finance Ministry clarifying that the sanctions were not intended to cut off those targeted from the entirety of their assets.

Rather, they should still be allowed to access their bank accounts for basic sustenance purposes. Purchases beyond this scope, including foreign transactions will remain barred, the letter clarified, giving Israeli banks the nod to partially re-open the accounts of the handful of settlers targeted, according to the Israeli official.

There have been two rounds of sanctions since the policy was first unveiled on February 1, with four being targeted in the first batch and three in the second along with two illegal outposts.

A third round is expected in the coming weeks, a US official told The Times of Israel, adding that the US plans to add new names to the list every month or so.

Funny because on average their prime delivery has become faster over the years. Any other useless things to complain about?

Ireland said on Wednesday it would intervene in South Africa's genocide case against Israel, in the strongest signal to date of Dublin's concern about Israeli operations in Gaza since Oct. 7.

Announcing the move, Foreign Minister Micheal Martin said that while it was for the World Court to decide whether genocide is being committed, he wanted to be clear that Hamas' Oct. 7 attack and what is happening in Gaza now "represents the blatant violation of international humanitarian law on a mass scale."

"The taking of hostages. The purposeful withholding of humanitarian assistance to civilians. The targeting of civilians and of civilian infrastructure. The indiscriminate use of explosive weapons in populated areas. The use of civilian objects for military purposes. The collective punishment of an entire population," Martin said in a statement.

"The list goes on. It has to stop. The view of the international community is clear. Enough is enough."

In January the International Court of Justice (ICJ), also known as the World Court, ordered Israel to refrain from any acts that could fall under the Genocide Convention and to ensure its troops commit no genocidal acts against Palestinians, after South Africa accused Israel of state-led genocide in Gaza.

Israel and its Western allies described the allegation as baseless. A final ruling in South Africa's ICJ case in The Hague could take years.
Martin did not say what form the intervention would take or outline any argument Ireland plans to advance, but added that the step was decided following legal and policy analysis and consultation with several partners including South Africa.

Martin's department said such third party interventions do not take a specific side in the dispute, but that the intervention would be an opportunity for Ireland to put forward its interpretation of one or more of the provisions of the Genocide Convention at issue in the case.

I ask her why she brought up Mountain Standard Time and she starts reading a Yu-Gi-Oh card. I leave her there while she continues to read the Yu-Gi-Oh card for the next 8 hours.

It's literally one day

Killing the public option was a far worse thing that he did

Then it should be easy for you to explain to me, right?

What was the joke again?

What's the joke, actually?

I mean, it is trivial and has no bearing on any bigger picture. But when did it stop being a time honored internet tradition to call out institutions and old people trying to use memes?

forget to switch accounts?

Are you OP

Ok, I guess that's fair

Seems like a trivial thing to call out tbh

Damn.

I guess I'm changing my vote to the guy who wants Gaza for waterfront real estate and has regularly stated that we need to bomb the fuck out of muslims.

OP also has a history of disliking Biden and the Democrats.

I admit I don't really know the full context behind POV and how it's used on Twitter, but the way I understood the post is that Biden is taking a "selfie", which means the photo is from his POV, snapping the shot of him and Harris. Basically saying that the people shown through his POV (which is through the lense of his selfie), they support healthcare.

Is that not right?

Technically, sure
But it was against Putin, so who cares?

It's not like it was aimed at an actual human being with feelings

I don't. They bought into it because at their core they're horrible people.

And you'll see that same town fight to stop pro housing laws that will increase the housing supply of the city