The U.S. military will be conducting airdrops of humanitarian aid into Gaza in the coming days amid tense negotiations for a pause in the fighting between Israel and Hamas, President Joe Biden announced on Friday. The mission is designed to increase the flow of humanitarian assistance into Gaza as Palestinians struggle to get food, water, medicine and other aid.
I get that airdrops are something of last ditch effort, pretty much the worst possible way of getting aid into Gaza. And the amount of aid that can be airdropped is probably too small to make much of a dent in the starvation of Gazans being used as a deliberate weapon by Israel. Why not use ships and landing craft instead?
But it's something. And it's a deliberate provocation to Netanyahu, practically daring him to do something about it.
So yeah, it's a day late and a dollar short, but maybe it's a start.
I'm sure within a few weeks, Netanyahu will be announcing his "sincere regret" that IDF shot down a US military plane "by accident."
If history is any guide, Bee-bee won't "announce" and the US won't, either. Much less complain. Remember the Liberty.
Remember the Liberty incident was in the 60s. Pre social media and the internet. There’s no plausible way a bunch of Americans could be shot in a military plane and just vanish from the news, whether or not Israel “announces” it.
The very second a bunch of Gazans crowd around the dropped goods the IDF will open fire on them. Guaranteed. It'll be like setting up bait on a game trail and waiting in a tree with a rifle for some poor critter to show up.
You know the answer to this; cowardice. Fear on the administrations part that something bad happens to an American, either at the hands of the IDF or Hamas.
That possibility is mitigated by keeping Americans thousands of feet in the air, instead of standing on a dock moving crates.
Could this more accurately be described as "prudence"? I mean just imagine what the result of a terror attack on the US military in Gaza would be. I guarantee you this: it would not be good for the Palestinians in Gaza.
And I do really love how brave you are willing to be with American soldiers while you sit safely at home.
I think this reasoning is likely part of the answer: to be more efficient than air drops landing craft would have to be supplemented with trucks, temporary docks, etc., all of which would need security in a war zone.
But I would call this prudence rather than cowardice. The success & sustainability of the humanitarian operation is going to depend in part on making sure US troops are not drawn into the conflict itself.
Secure supply by land and sea, at meaningful volumes, is a political problem, requiring detailed negotiated agreements among both belligerents. Lack of such agreements, and breaking agreements once made, are what have impeded supply by land.
US air drops need not wait on the political process because the risk of US military engagement, while not zero, is far lower.
"to be more efficient than air drops landing craft would have to be supplemented " That's not true. Even just pulling up and dumping the stuff on shore and leaving would be at least an order of magnitude more efficient than air drops.
You can't just pull up and dump the stuff on the shore. You will still need personnel on the ground.
It's an *INCREDIBLY* bad idea to use the US military as a buffer between the Israeli's and the Palestinians. There's no way that can end badly.
Tell me what port in Gaza has the facilities and the infrastructure (like heavy cranes for example) for large ships and landing craft?
Landing craft don't need either docks or cranes. Presumably you could get egyptian truck drivers and drive off the landing craft and then just leave. They could exit at Raffa or be picked up hours later.
This is not as easy as you imagine. If you get all the way on to shore, such that a truck can just drive off, you may get stuck there. Even if you don't, the vessel and the trucks are extremely vulnerable while unloading. The loss of craft in an opposed landing is enormous. You're counting on Hamas not deciding that it's worth attacking.
Transferring cargo onto a landing craft is wildly inefficient, far more so than getting it into a C-130. Their cargo capacity is pretty small. An absolute essential element of all amphibious plans is to capture a real port, of which there are none in Gaza.
Presumably. Man you have a lot of Egyptian truck-driver friends.
They must all be cousins of Thomas Friedman's sources that drives taxis.
I doubt the airdrops will be happening from thousands of feet in the air.
I would be very surprised if they aren't. I haven't seen actual figures, but the Franco/Jordanian drops are very clearly coming from something in excess of 12,000 feet. The crews require supplemental oxygen while the doors are open, and the radius of the dropped supplies has been very large. Much of them have landed in Israel or the sea.
Should the costs associated with the air drops be deducted from the foreign aid we send to Israel?
yes
For the win.
Why not use ships and landing craft instead?
Because Gaza has no port facilities. Without those, delivering cargo by ship is almost as inefficient as airdropping it.
Because it's impossible to deliver cargo over the beaches without a presence on the ground, and, in the chaos of active combat operations, that's asking for American casualties.
Doing air drops because our close ally won't let food trucks in.
Meanwhile the lop-sidedly pro-Israel people I know double down on how Israel's low international stature is really all about anti-semitism.
Indeed. That said, the only way to adequately supply Gaza is by land transportation through the crossings controlled by Israel. Anything else is barely better than performative. If rushing in and airdropping or beach landing supplies without negotiating it with the Israelis served to make them even more ridiculously intransigent, it would likely make things worse than better.
Hamas loves this. They have destroyed Gaza and gotten Israel to do it for them. They had to know the crazy Israelis would level the place after the attack on 10/7 and hostage taking. I have to assume that was their desire. Anyway... this is a waste. Hamas wants the civilian population to suffer and so do the Israelis.
Look for the Israeli war machine to track these aid packages and either blast them out of the air (could include "weapons", right?), or confiscate and "inspect" them ("Oh, too bad! these cans might be used as weapons! destroy the whole shipment!")
Not to mention getting more chances to machine gun several hundred starving Palestinians who are rushing towards the drop, like they did earlier this week. ("Oh, they all trampled one another to death! With bullets!!")
Not that the US shouldn't try. But also observe closely the reception this aid gets. And if any US aircraft comes under fire... there need to be consequences.
Even Netanyahu realizes shooting down a US plane would be a step too far...
Or does he?
I'm less worried about the Israelis deliberately shooting at Americans than I am the chaos of an active combat zone leading to something no one really intended.
I see your mind is always made up that Israel is wrong and bad, but I have to take special issue with your depiction of the aid deaths.
Version1, put out by Hamas - The Israelis decided to machine gun hundreds of civilians. The Israelis LIKE machine gunning civilians
Version 2, Israeli and I understand an independent observer - Things got chaotic at the site, Israelis fired some shots in the air, people started panicking and people got trampled and run over by panicked drivers.
Anyone vaguely objective recognizes number 2 is far more likely.
Meanwhile, you are off fantasizing about impossible scenarios involving dogfights between Israeli and American jet fighters.
The IDF didn't need to machine gun everyone. They shot into a crowd of people with their backs turned and this created the stampede that did so much damage.
tango, you are saying no one was shot?
"An Israeli military spokesman said that soldiers had opened fire “when the mob moved in a manner which endangered them.”"
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/01/world/middleeast/gaza-convoy-israel-ceasefire.html
Confidence in the veracity of IDF statements isn't boosted by their inability to keep their story straight.
Bingo. The pro-Israel commenters around here keep insisting that IDF statements should be taken at face value. Which is truly bizarre.
I missed the part that the Israeli troops shot at some folks who were approaching them, my bad. Does not change the fact that the Israeli account seems a hell of a lot more plausible than the Hamas account.
It's kind of sad, the bunch of you who would not trust an Israeli statement that it was daytime outside at high noon but seem to accept Hamas' claims with nary a shrug...
You have to be the stupidest person on the planet.
I have read far stupider on this subject. Like the guy I keep running into who claims that the Israelis exercise no sovereignty over the Palestinians in the West Bank.
I am stupid for believing the story that seems supported by the drone footage and agreed to by US intelligence? You are just supporting my point with your contentions.
You're saying people don't trust Israel. It's possible, butI don't think that's true. People don't trust Netanyahu. They are not the same.
You might even have a useful point if you weren't mendaciously claiming that all of the statements contradicting the IDF are coming from Hamas. But, as usual, you're lying about that.
Except that I am not, you are mis-stating what I said. But I disagree with you, so I gotta be a liar. Pitiful.
By the way, what do you understand happened there? Do you buy @Salamander's story of machine-gun happy Israelis slaughtering hundreds as was initially put out by Hamas or the Israeli story, supported by drone footage and accepted by US intelligence of confusion and chaos where perhaps 10 Gazans were killed by Israeli fire and the rest through trampling and being run over and the like?
You are, again, lying:
Version1, put out by Hamas - The Israelis decided to machine gun hundreds of civilians. The Israelis LIKE machine gunning civilians
Does not change the fact that the Israeli account seems a hell of a lot more plausible than the Hamas account.
It's kind of sad, the bunch of you who would not trust an Israeli statement that it was daytime outside at high noon but seem to accept Hamas' claims with nary a shrug.
You have very definitely been claiming that the only opposition to the IDF story is coming from Hamas.
Except for the Gazan physician who reported that 80% of the injuries he saw were from gunshots.
Your lies are for the newly born. And already extensively debunked. I don't particularly care why you crave negative attention -- everybody here has got your number, troll -- but since you're busted wide open, why don't you take your freak show elsewhere?
"Oh, they all trampled one another to death! With bullets!!" they really were trampled to death or run over. See the CNN video footage. But even a three year old can figure out that if you fire with tanks at a crowd of people everyone is going to run for their lives.
Note the post by ProbStat, above, that some 80% of the injuries were from bullets, not being "trampled." This is an observation by a doctor who was treating the wounded, not speculation or the standard self-serving propaganda that Israel always, without fail, has been putting out.
It not a lot, but it is a whole lot more than Orange Cheeto would do. Perhaps the folks in Michigan voting uncommitted in the Primary should remember that in November.
As far as offloading from the sea, as stated above there are no facilities, and I would guess that for Hamas, shooting a US serviceman would rank even higher than shooting the IDF
This is an important and frequently overlooked point. The election in November is a binary choice between Biden (who is willing to do something to ameliorate the suffering of people in Gaza) and Trump (an evil man who revels in human suffering). That’s basically it—every vote in November for anyone but Biden or just sitting out the election is the same as a vote for Trump.
I think it's more a message to Israel than anything else.
Mike Johnson is against the airdrop. He says we shouldn't send aid to Palestinians until we airdrop AR-15s to Texans so they can fight the invaders on our own border.
Seriously, this is a good thing. Everything the US can do to help the Palestinian people should be tried.
That said, does anyone agree with Mehdi Hasan here? "Joe Biden has the power to pick up the phone and end this war." I guess if I believed that I might be upset with Biden too, but I don't think it's remotely a realistic take on the current situation.
"Joe Biden has the power to pick up the phone and end this war."
Yes, I'm sure he wants to believe this so he can justify his own opposition to Biden. Just remember, I don't think Cornel West is on any state ballot as of right now.
There were 122 comments on the last thread about this conflict and 122 different answers as to what authority the President has or doesn't have regarding this conflict. So someone please who actually knows something fill us in as to what reality is instead of fantasy.
I don’t think that Biden’s got any leverage over Bibi. Bibi is basically a leader who’s placed his own political survival and staying out of jail above the survival of his country. He’s allied himself with religious and political fanatics who’ve made the same Faustian bargain for power.
Add to that an understandable but unfortunate desire for bloody vengeance on the part of most of Israel’s Jewish citizens which makes the war itself popular even if Bibi is not and you’ve got an intractable problem over which Biden has no power and has nothing to offer Bibi who knows that he’ll likely last only as long as the war does.
Agreed. Good points.
It is not a provocation
Saying it is such is absurd and pretending Biden is being tough with Bibi
Jordan has been doing air drops for months now. And they have to be done in coordination with Israel so planes or materials are not shot out of the sky by IDF
My thoughts exactly. It's not even new for a Western nation because Jordan has been doing it together with France since at least Jan. 4th. The US could have joined that effort but it wouldn't have gotten the same PR.
One consequence of coordinating with the Israelis is that they appear to be demanding that the airdrops be done from such high altitudes that there is a lot of drift in the drops, with significant amounts of the supplies landing in Israel, the Mediterranean, or the buffer zone that Palestinians get shot if they enter.
So, will this continue as long as the Berlin Airlift did?
America should immediately end any further arms supplies to Israel. Instead, the administration is reportedly looking for all kinds of ingenious ways to keep the supply of bombs and shells flowing.
Biden's response to this conflict has been immeasurably worse than the "disastrous" Afghanistan pullout. He should swallow his pride, admit he's been led by the nose by Netanyahu, fire Blinken, and demand a permanent ceasefire as the price of any further aid of any kind to Israel.
Blinken is far less pro-Israel than Biden.
Because the goal isn't to relieve suffering, but to make a showing that Biden cares, and despite the risk and difficulty, will do what it needs to do to help support Gazans. Call my cynical on this topic, but that's what's needed to placate Biden critics, even if they don't realize it.
Prove me wrong. People are superficial in their outrage and care more about what they see, not what is done behind the scenes.
Remind me why we didn't step into the fray to stop the killing of thousands of innocent children in Syria from chemical weapons, or the religion-based Rohingya genocide.
"stop the killing of thousands of innocent children in Syria from chemical weapons" Obama believed if following the constitution and asked congress for permission. they turned him down. so he was forced to settle for the complete destruction of Syria's chemical weapon's stockpile.
Obama could have done more. Take a look at what the US is doing in support of Ukraine, all without boots on the ground or pilots in the air...well except targeting data and surveillance support that is.
Again, if people -- members of Congress, elected by the people -- were truly concerned about the killing of children, they would have approved support. Neither the polls nor Congress supported this. And why? Because it's not really about the killings.
What a sick relationship between the U.S. and Israel. Israel, in plain sight, has been doing its “river to the sea” annexation since the 80’s. Yes the very same vision as it bitterly complains that Hamas has posited. Neither side in this mess is on the side of the angels.
The U.S, has responded with money and political support for Israel but apparently doesn’t have any leverage to influence the Israeli’s indiscriminant massacre and now starvation of the Arab population of Gaza. Yes Hamas did terrible things but we now have to face the reality of Israel’s own inhumanity. Having to air dropp aid is an admission of America’s loss of influence.
Very hard to take for those of us who sympathized with the Israelis over these many years.
Same journey for me.
For me, my sympathy for Israel began to wane in 2005, when the transparently bogus "withdrawal" from Gaza was implemented.
For me, it started with The Last Tempation of Christ in '83 or thereabouts. In my defense, I was an English major at the time.
That's my position as well. There are no good guys in this conflict. It's just two groups of violent fanatics fighting each other. The fact the US is totally supporting one of those groups is inexcusable.
Yup. That’s it. Ain’t no good guys to be seen.
The only thing you left out was that these are religious fanatics. Wherever you have lots of religious fanatics you find a high body count. Let’s be grateful that our religious fanatics remain in check. So far.
"Yes the very same vision as it bitterly complains that Hamas has posited" The difference being the Palestinians are indigenous to Palestine. In 1880 less than 2% of the population was Jewish and the majority of those spoke a dialect of spanish.
You say that as if it implies an obvious conclusion.
But in 1880 less than 2% of the population of the state where I live was European. (Approximate numbers). Since then that 2% drove the indigenous people off most of their land using extreme violence.
Similar statements apply to the rest of the U.S., likely including where you live.
Is your conclusion any different for your state or mine than for Palestine? Why or why not?
I think there are a couple major problems with making that parallel.
First, the times. America sponsored plantation slavery during much of the time the Native Americans were driven out -- does that mean we shouldn't criticize slavery in much more recent history -- ? I hope not.
Second, most of the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans was replacing a rather low population density culture with a relatively high population density culture (an exception is the driving out of the Cherokee People from Georgia and the Carolinas after they had adopted basically European agricultural practices). The foundation of Israel replaced one agricultural population group with another, by force.
(I don't mean to say that it's completely acceptable to drive out hunter gatherers if you're an agricultural society, but that's almost certainly the way things will eventually go even without malicious intent.)
Israel's founding relied on something like our Trail of Tears atrocity -- one of the most shameful events of our history -- many times over.
And over a hundred years later.
Voting rights, for one thing.
I think almost every American born before about 1970 grew up inundated with pro-Israel propaganda so thick they never questioned it.
I know I did.
Same here. That's part of the reason why some of us who have learned more of the actual history are so disappointed, angry, infuriated with Israel.
Indeed. To the point that it was on NYT best-seller lists. When I finally started digging -- and believe me, it wasn't hard, even in the early 80's -- the facade crumbled remarkably quickly. even more remarkable was the reaction of supposedly free-thinking supposdely reason uber alles type guys whose reaction was essentially to close their eyes and tell the bad books to shut up and go away.
These days? Being Pro-Israel is exactly like being pro-Confederacy. The truth is out there and easily accessed by that supercomputer most people call a phone. If they're susceptible to propaganda it's because they want to be.
Josh Marshall, good as always, gift link:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/what-can-the-us-do-to-bring-the-israel-hamas-war-to-and-end/sharetoken/Jmuj9WihaXlh
Sounds like it's going to be PUBG Mobile IRL
Robert Ford, a former US diplomat, called being forced to carry out airdrops on Gaza "Israel's worst humiliation of USA I've ever seen".
If the Gazan death toll reaches half a million -- which I think is quite likely, given the food, water, and medicine embargo -- will Israel's apologists finally wake up?
Or will it take a full million?
I'm pretty sure that if Israel killed a full 6M Palestinians, the Israel apologists would still just keep on apologizing, because they fundamentally don't believe Palestinians are people.
And before anyone leaps up to say "WHAT ABOUT" - yes, the same is true of Hamas apologists. There aren't any good guys in this conflict. and that's been plonkingly obvious for a long time now. Being a partisan for either side at this point is bizarre.
There are a lot of fundamentalists in Israel (and here, of course) who look down on all the rest of us as not being 'chosen' ('saved'). The corollary is that whatever happens to the rest of us as a result of their actions is none of their concern, nor should it be. These people are to be pitied, perhaps, but never, ever trusted. _Especially_ with power over others.
Palestinians will be targeted and fired upon at the drop sites by Israel using US weapons.