He pressed Pelosi on whether the United States has a red line for Israel and whether they “own” the Gaza operation as much as their ally.
“If you don’t like what Israel is doing, and the president has made it clear that some of what Israel is doing he doesn’t like, and you go on supplying them with hardware to do these things you own this operation every bit as much as they do, don’t you?” Sebastian asked the former House Speaker.
Current polling shows 61% of Democrats approve of how Joe Biden is handling the Israel-Hamas conflict.
I saw a poll last month that said 50% of Biden voters believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Either way, it’s a substantial enough fraction to cause a notable change in messaging from Democratic leadership.
It’s not inconsistent for Democrats to believe that Israel is committing genocide and approve of Biden’s handling of the issue.
It just implies that Democrats don’t hold Biden responsible for what Israel is doing.
I call those people gutless. They so scared of Republicans they wont dare utter any negativity toward the president even though they agree that a genocide is happening. He’s been supplying weapons and vetoing ceasefires, I can’t believe the majority of the crossover of those two ideas is dumb enough to not think any of it is Bidens fault. Its more likely they’re scared.
UN resolutions won’t change Israel’s behavior. But there’s an argument to be made that Biden is working behind the scenes to prevent the situation in Gaza from being even worse. Sometimes the carrot is more effective than the stick.
If the UN resolution wont change their behavior then Biden wouldn’t have reason to veto it. But obviously it would change something he was not okay with changing.
It wouldn’t change Israel’s behavior, but it would make it more difficult for Biden to try to influence Israel.
It’s proving impossible to influence them outside of revoking funding, so why make yourself responsible for genocide, multiple times, for the dipomacy of someone who publicly says hes not going to listen to you. During an election year even, it makes Biden look weak and guilty. He can’t even reign in someone dependent on his cash.
We don’t know if Israel is impossible to influence, because we don’t know if they were originally planning something different.
And trying to influence Israel does not necessarily make Biden responsible for what Israel does.