This one actually gets really technical. It’s legal if you don’t use shells meant to disperse into shrapnel, and you use it for purely military purposes like smoking out enemy positions or screening the advance of ground forces.
But Israel is totally violating both of those things and has been for decades.
Do you know where that graphic comes from? The data on opensecrets.org indicates that Biden has received $5,688,069 between 1990 and 2024.
I’m not disagreeing that this is a problem. This is undoubtedly a route through which foreign money is making it into US politics and Biden is one of the biggest recipients of Pro-Israel funds. It just isn’t as much money as indicated by the graphic. It is $5,688,069 spread over 34 years but loaded heavily to more recent years.
Biden donations from Pro-Israel sources by election cycle:
2023-2024: $1,459,405
2021-2022: Unsure - Not in top 20 and can’t find full dataset
2019-2020: $3,753,304
All other election cycles, Biden doesn’t appear in the top 20. Simple math indicates that, outside of 2019, 2020, 2023, and 2024, Biden received an additional $475,360 over the rest of his career.
I don’t like to see that Biden received $3,753,304 in the 2019-2020 campaign cycle. That is way too much foreign influence in my opinion, even if it technically came from American organizations. That said, Biden spent $1,614,843,740 in 2019-2020 meaning that only 0.23% of that was from Pro-Israel groups.
The usage of white phosphorus is restricted under international humanitarian law. Although there can be lawful uses, it must never be fired at, or in close proximity to, a populated civilian area or civilian infrastructure, due to the high likelihood that the fires and smoke it causes spread. Such attacks, which fail to distinguish between civilians and civilian objects and fighters and military objectives, are indiscriminate and thus prohibited.
What we should be pleading for is a mandated reassessment by the State Department now that it’s clear they suppressed relevant information on the previous report.
I think any citizen who is paying attention knows Israel is committing war crimes. We need intelligence to confirm what we, the UN, the ICC, and the ICJ all see so that the support can end.
I usually assume those are trolls. Hell, I’ll argue against comments that paint all Israelis with one brush, or point out legitimate reasons Biden can’t just do what he wants, but there’s simply no denying or defending the atrocities committed by Israel.
As a Jewish person raised by a (now dead) father who thought Israel could do no wrong, I guarantee you he would make some sort of justification of this.
I don’t actually blame my dad for that, he spent half of his childhood in London during WWII just waiting for the Nazis to invade and throw him in a concentration camp and then afterward found out half of his relatives were murdered in the Holocaust, so he had some big blinders on when it came to “Jews have to be safe and Israel is necessary for that no matter what.”
That’s a justifiably skewed perception. I’d assume honest pro-Israel commenters aren’t old enough to remember WWII, but it’s not unreasonable to imagine a sheltered upbringing by a parent with that perspective distorting the narrative to their child. I’m glad you took it upon yourself to learn the world outside of his opinions.
I’m sorry about your loss. Your dad sounds like he was a resilient guy.
it’s not unreasonable to imagine a sheltered upbringing by a parent with that perspective distorting the narrative to their child. I’m glad you took it upon yourself to learn the world outside of his opinions.
Thank you, it took me a long time to break free of it and I still have to check myself sometimes when I see a criticism of Israel from having a knee-jerk reaction to it. My dad was both a force of personality and a university professor, so when he told you something, it was hard to disbelieve him.
That said, it always seemed off to me even back then, the way Palestinians were treated. But you didn’t really want to question my dad’s beliefs, so I didn’t really talk about it.
I’m sorry about your loss. Your dad sounds like he was a resilient guy.
Thanks. He was, and I loved him, but he could also be a major asshole. Anyway, he died in 2016, so I’m way past grieving. Obviously, I miss him, but I’ve accepted the loss a long time ago. He lived to 85, which is pretty good for someone who probably spent five years inhaling god knows what in the air from bombed buildings, I’m guessing a huge amount of asbestos.
That’s a good run. It must have been equally valuable and intimidating to have a professor as a dad. I absolutely see why you’d have difficulty challenging him.
My dad passed when he was 48 from being a stubborn smoking diabetic. He was a hard right winger who used to laugh at people like my mom for protesting Vietnam. Teaching him about racism when I was young was an uphill battle.
I hear you on how mixed feelings of admiration and opposition can affect a child. He’ll always be a part of me, good or bad. I like to say my dad taught me a lot, sometimes it was how to be, and others it was how not to be. There’s always a lesson.
Sorry to hear about your dad. Losing him that early must have been especially hard. I was already long married with a kid in Kindergarten when my father died, so it was a lot easier to cope with that much support.
My dad also taught me a lot and for that I will be forever grateful. He was a film historian, so the biggest thing he introduced me to was movies, but he also introduced me to amazing authors, got me interested in science, bought me computers back in the 80s when they were a lot more expensive, and he was a die-hard socialist, so even though he wasn’t especially progressive when it came to Israel, he was otherwise progressive. Interestingly, even though he was incredibly critical of the U.S. government, he used to call himself, “British by birth, American by choice.”
So yeah, just like you, good or bad, he will always be a part of me. The one thing I have tried to not have is his level of anger. I try to keep my temper as much as I can, although I can definitely lose it, but he died angry and I have vowed I will not do so.
Yep. I don’t buy that Lemmy is leftwing, it might have some leftwing users but I still see victim blaming shit here, war crime denials and I’m fucking done with the “enabling trump” bs. This fucking place is no better than Reddit despite how holier than thou some users are.
I would say that there are enough people, left or right, who are under no illusions about Israel that those who deny Israel’s war crimes are a small minority on Lemmy, but they do exist.
There are certainly people who justify Israel’s war crimes, and those are a lot more numerous, but there is also a small cadre of deniers.
Can we all please admit they’re committing war crimes now?
This one actually gets really technical. It’s legal if you don’t use shells meant to disperse into shrapnel, and you use it for purely military purposes like smoking out enemy positions or screening the advance of ground forces.
But Israel is totally violating both of those things and has been for decades.
There are 11,195,792 reasons they won’t admit Israel is committing war crimes
Do you know where that graphic comes from? The data on opensecrets.org indicates that Biden has received $5,688,069 between 1990 and 2024.
I’m not disagreeing that this is a problem. This is undoubtedly a route through which foreign money is making it into US politics and Biden is one of the biggest recipients of Pro-Israel funds. It just isn’t as much money as indicated by the graphic. It is $5,688,069 spread over 34 years but loaded heavily to more recent years.
Biden donations from Pro-Israel sources by election cycle:
All other election cycles, Biden doesn’t appear in the top 20. Simple math indicates that, outside of 2019, 2020, 2023, and 2024, Biden received an additional $475,360 over the rest of his career.
I don’t like to see that Biden received $3,753,304 in the 2019-2020 campaign cycle. That is way too much foreign influence in my opinion, even if it technically came from American organizations. That said, Biden spent $1,614,843,740 in 2019-2020 meaning that only 0.23% of that was from Pro-Israel groups.
Haven’t they been burning people down with white phosphorus for decades? They aren’t gonna start admitting it now.
I can hope.
Anyone who isn’t admitting it yet isn’t going to start doing so because of evidence.
Everyone knows it. Zionists don’t give a shit because they’re a garbage people.
It’s messed up, but using white phosphorus isn’t banned under international law.
White phosphorus munitions are not banned under international law, but because of their incendiary effects, their use is supposed to be tightly regulated.[57] Because white phosphorus has legal uses, shells filled with it are not directly prohibited by international humanitarian law. Experts consider them not as incendiary, but as masking, since their main goal is to create a smoke screen.[58]
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/10/lebanon-evidence-of-israels-unlawful-use-of-white-phosphorus-in-southern-lebanon-as-cross-border-hostilities-escalate/
Nice, thanks
What we should be pleading for is a mandated reassessment by the State Department now that it’s clear they suppressed relevant information on the previous report.
I think any citizen who is paying attention knows Israel is committing war crimes. We need intelligence to confirm what we, the UN, the ICC, and the ICJ all see so that the support can end.
You would be surprised even on
LennyLemmy how many deny Israel’s crimes.edit: Stupid autocorrect.
I usually assume those are trolls. Hell, I’ll argue against comments that paint all Israelis with one brush, or point out legitimate reasons Biden can’t just do what he wants, but there’s simply no denying or defending the atrocities committed by Israel.
As a Jewish person raised by a (now dead) father who thought Israel could do no wrong, I guarantee you he would make some sort of justification of this.
I don’t actually blame my dad for that, he spent half of his childhood in London during WWII just waiting for the Nazis to invade and throw him in a concentration camp and then afterward found out half of his relatives were murdered in the Holocaust, so he had some big blinders on when it came to “Jews have to be safe and Israel is necessary for that no matter what.”
That’s a justifiably skewed perception. I’d assume honest pro-Israel commenters aren’t old enough to remember WWII, but it’s not unreasonable to imagine a sheltered upbringing by a parent with that perspective distorting the narrative to their child. I’m glad you took it upon yourself to learn the world outside of his opinions.
I’m sorry about your loss. Your dad sounds like he was a resilient guy.
Thank you, it took me a long time to break free of it and I still have to check myself sometimes when I see a criticism of Israel from having a knee-jerk reaction to it. My dad was both a force of personality and a university professor, so when he told you something, it was hard to disbelieve him.
That said, it always seemed off to me even back then, the way Palestinians were treated. But you didn’t really want to question my dad’s beliefs, so I didn’t really talk about it.
Thanks. He was, and I loved him, but he could also be a major asshole. Anyway, he died in 2016, so I’m way past grieving. Obviously, I miss him, but I’ve accepted the loss a long time ago. He lived to 85, which is pretty good for someone who probably spent five years inhaling god knows what in the air from bombed buildings, I’m guessing a huge amount of asbestos.
That’s a good run. It must have been equally valuable and intimidating to have a professor as a dad. I absolutely see why you’d have difficulty challenging him.
My dad passed when he was 48 from being a stubborn smoking diabetic. He was a hard right winger who used to laugh at people like my mom for protesting Vietnam. Teaching him about racism when I was young was an uphill battle.
I hear you on how mixed feelings of admiration and opposition can affect a child. He’ll always be a part of me, good or bad. I like to say my dad taught me a lot, sometimes it was how to be, and others it was how not to be. There’s always a lesson.
Sorry to hear about your dad. Losing him that early must have been especially hard. I was already long married with a kid in Kindergarten when my father died, so it was a lot easier to cope with that much support.
My dad also taught me a lot and for that I will be forever grateful. He was a film historian, so the biggest thing he introduced me to was movies, but he also introduced me to amazing authors, got me interested in science, bought me computers back in the 80s when they were a lot more expensive, and he was a die-hard socialist, so even though he wasn’t especially progressive when it came to Israel, he was otherwise progressive. Interestingly, even though he was incredibly critical of the U.S. government, he used to call himself, “British by birth, American by choice.”
So yeah, just like you, good or bad, he will always be a part of me. The one thing I have tried to not have is his level of anger. I try to keep my temper as much as I can, although I can definitely lose it, but he died angry and I have vowed I will not do so.
Yep. I don’t buy that Lemmy is leftwing, it might have some leftwing users but I still see victim blaming shit here, war crime denials and I’m fucking done with the “enabling trump” bs. This fucking place is no better than Reddit despite how holier than thou some users are.
I would say that there are enough people, left or right, who are under no illusions about Israel that those who deny Israel’s war crimes are a small minority on Lemmy, but they do exist.
There are certainly people who justify Israel’s war crimes, and those are a lot more numerous, but there is also a small cadre of deniers.