Summary
Trump plans to lift the Biden administration’s freeze on supplying 2,000-pound bombs to Israel and reverse sanctions against Israeli settlers.
Summary
Trump plans to lift the Biden administration’s freeze on supplying 2,000-pound bombs to Israel and reverse sanctions against Israeli settlers.
The article is literally stating that Trump is giving the green light to giving Israel more powerful bombs to genocide with, and also to give Israeli West Bank occupiers their access to US financial resources again.
The occupiers are the state of Israel. Biden had some very limited sanctions against specific extremists who weren’t also Americans, but no one in their right mind thought that was somehow stopping the occupation.
Yes, that what I said, though I can see how the ordering of my words could be ambiguous.
And Trump is removing them. Therefor Trump is, in an objective and literal sense, empowering those people subjected to those sanctions by removing sanctions that Biden had put in place.
Those sanctions didn’t actually do anything about the occupation. It’d be like sanctioning some random ultra-Z Russians rather than their leadership or institutions and acting like it’s curbing the occupation of Crimea. A few specific Israelis couldn’t bank with the United States, but they can just route through American-Israelis in their ranks instead. Them specifically banking wasn’t in any way important to the occupation.
Lifting the sanctions by Trump is bad, but more on the symbolism than the impact.
Trump could have said hey this sanction isn’t working, we need to strengthen it so that it does. But he instead said get rid of this sanction entirely. I get that you’re saying “well it didn’t really work and they had access to it anyway.” I do. But by your own account they had to go through extra steps to get it and now they don’t. That’s empowering. Even if just in the psychological sense that they now get to think “hey Trump is doing things to make it easier for me to keep occupying this land.” They now know that Trump is aiding them, so that gives them a greater sense of purpose and power to continue. And now they get more of the bigger bombs with which to do it.
This is just such a minimal impact it’s hard to get worked up about it. It’s wrong and it’s bad and it’s worse, but we have not lost a force for good in losing Bidenism. Bidenism with respect to Israel was evil. And Trump is eviler, but on this issue, there’s really not much worse it can get. On many many other issues Trump is incomparably worse, but no one should pretend Biden was in any way a bulwark against genocide and occupation.
This very story demonstrates it. In a raft of reversing Biden policies, the only things he could do for Israel was unrestricting a single bomb and removing some token sanctions. That’s the sum of Biden’s efforts to restrain Israel.
The “it’s worse” is all I’m arguing about. Not the degree to which it’s worse, just that it is worse at all. And by the definitions of the word empowering, Trump being worse than Biden is empowering the Israelis.
I haven’t been arguing that Biden has been a force for good in this conflict. Agreement that Trump is worse was my only objective. So 🍻
We’ve already been giving them these bombs.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us-has-sent-israel-thousands-2000-pound-bombs-since-oct-7-2024-06-28/
Your link is published in June of 2024 and states:
Here’s a link from July of 2024
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-resume-shipping-500-pound-bombs-israel-us-official-says-2024-07-10/
I can’t find anything saying we resumed shipment of 2,000 pound bombs in the remainder of 2024. So it seems to be true Trump is now reversing Biden’s [since May 2024] policy of withholding these bombs.
It also states that Biden sent over ten thousand 2,000lb bombs before pausing that single shipment. I don’t understand why you’re trying to split hairs here as if it makes any difference (irrespective of the 500lb bombs continuing to be shipped, the $20 billion shipment of fighter jets, bombs, and missles in August, and the $8 billion weapons shipment he approved two weeks ago).
Because this comment thread is about whether Trump’s actions are empowering the Israelis. It’s apparent to me that most people are using a different definition of empowering than I am.
Even though these actions don’t have a large practical impact on their military capability, or financial means, it does send the message that Trump isn’t interested in placing even performative restraint on Israel. Thus, he is empowering them to do even more.
Well if we’re splitting hairs, how does the ceasefire fall into your definition of empowering the Israelis? That’s not something we’ve seen at any point in the past 15 months of slaughter.
I don’t think Trump really deserves credit for it, but Biden surely doesn’t. Not only did he allow them to cross red line after red line while supplying them with money and weapons the entire time, but he also blocked numerous UN resolutions on the matter while standing alone with Israel.
There is reporting today that Israel has already violated the ceasefire.
https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2025/1/20/palestinian-child-killed-by-israeli-sniper-despite-ceasefire
edit: hit submit instead of preview and left out the link.
ps - I don’t think Biden handled it well and I agree that Kamala did not campaign well on it. I think the circumstances of the ceasefire are far too reminiscent of the Iran Contra situation with Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. I think Netanyahu supported Trump and purposefully timed it to that end.
He’s approving one shipment (Israel has been using 2000 pound bombs since October 7th and I haven’t heard anything about them stopping after that shipment was paused) and lifting sanctions on the four West Bank settlers Biden had sanctioned. This will only hurt Palestinians about as much as the original moves by Biden had helped them, which is to say: not at all.
From Oct 7 2023 to Jun 28 2024 (the date of the reuters article that is being posted) we had shipped thousands of those bombs. We paused a shipment in May of 2024 (stated in that reuters articale), and here’s an article from July of 2024 saying we still had not shipped any of them
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-resume-shipping-500-pound-bombs-israel-us-official-says-2024-07-10/
And I’ve found nothing indicating we have sent any more 2k pound bombs since May of 2024. So if we had, please provide a source reporting it.
Perhaps we should try to agree on what empowering means, though:
Trump’s actions are empowering the genocide because they are clearly supportive of both Israel’s bombing and occupation.
Apparently there haven’t been any shipments since may, so my bad there.
I mean the problem is that this doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. You either do things or you don’t, things like empowering or slamming or come to Jesus moments are all rhetoric and rhetoric only matters when it starts affecting the real world. We’ll have to see if the ceasefire holds; if it does then it makes sense (in US foreign policy terms, I of course hate it) for Trump to continue shipments, if not then we can start talking about leopards eating faces. The settler sanctions had zero effect on the real world, so they don’t matter no matter how “empowering” lifting them may be.