Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin met with Israeli officials in Tel Aviv on Monday and vowed continued US military support for the Israeli onslaught on Gaza despite the massive civilian casualty rate.
In a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Austin said the US “commitment to Israel is unshakeable,” according to The Times of Israel. “America’s commitment to Israel is unwavering, and no individual group or state should test our resolve,” he said.
Austin vowed the US would continue to provide Israel with “the equipment that you need to defend your country,” referring to bombs and other military aid the US has been shipping to Israel since October 7 on a near-daily basis.
US officials have said they want Israel to wrap up the current phase of its war, which involves constant airstrikes and a ground campaign, in the next few weeks and take a more targeted approach against Hamas. Austin said the US had thoughts about more “surgical” operations but made clear the timeline of the onslaught is up to Israel.
“Regarding the timeline, this is Israel’s operation, and I’m not here to dictate timelines or terms. Our support to Israel’s right to defend itself is ironclad, as you’ve heard me say a number of times, and that’s not going to change,” he said.
At a press conference with Austin, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said the Israeli military will “continue to operate in different levels of intensity” as it sees fit and will eventually be able to “transition gradually to the next phase.”
When discussing civilian casualties, Austin said that “protecting Palestinian civilians in Gaza is both a moral duty and a strategic imperative” but also gave cover for the Israeli slaughter of civilians. He said the density of Gaza’s population makes it “very, very difficult to conduct any military operation.”
While US officials claim they are concerned about civilian casualties in Gaza, they are not considering placing any conditions on military aid or limits on the use of US-provided bombs. Since October 7, Israel’s onslaught has killed over 19,000 Palestinians, including over 7,500 children.
There’s very little hope for a world in which people like this are permitted to engage in butchery and genocide with impunity.
There’s no statute of limitations on war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, or murder.
You’ll know if this worries certain people when they avoid travel outside safe havens for the rest of their lives.
(go ahead, Donald, your broken clock is right this time of day, jump in and say it, this is a “P/R (V) (N)” Free Zone, I promise.)
Go read this piece. We may not exist:
What Daniel Ellsberg Knew About Doomsday
by Norman Solomon and Tom Engelhardt
https://original.antiwar.com/solomon/2023/12/17/what-daniel-ellsberg-knew-about-doomsday/
“”First of all, you’re often telling them what they would like to believe – that we’re better than other people, we are superior in our morality and our perceptions of the world.””
Boy, doesn’t THAT quote elegantly define some of our Commenters on these boards…
Thank you for calling attention to that article so I could move it up in my To-Read queue. Excellent stuff.
Then let us put Hamas leaders on trial. they started this mess.
Only them?
Not the mass murderers who used them as an excuse?
Most likely not any justification for slaughter of innocent non-combatants & CHILDREN… Let’s convene Nurnberg & let the judges rule!!!
Sure, you could put any surviving Hamassian leaders on trial – if any are left alive after this slaughter.
Just, don’t be surprised if some or many of your ‘blameless victim’ ASI political leaders (“Defense calls Prime Minister Netanyahu to the stand”) are called as witnesses during the trial, and asked some verrrrryyy inconvenient questions.
“Mr. Prime Minister, approximately how many days or weeks in advance of the October 7th attack were you aware of the impending attack ? I remind you, sir, you are under oath.”
“Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever.”
-Thomas Jefferson-
Yet further support for the theory that Hell is rapidly expanding and the “H” of its HVAC infrastructure being constantly updated.
Our country’s diversity shows how advanced and unified we became. It’s especially handy when we have problems with certain kind of other people. It gives us more credibility when we send someone like Condoleezza Rice, Susan Rice, Colin Powell, or Lloyd Austin. …No? You’re probably right. I’ll take off my tin foil hat now. (Sarcasm)
Yes, and the R’s and the D’s both play that game. I bet Colin Powell died with a shitload of guilt.
Wars, I love you but as a verifiable psychopath, I doubt he had the ability to feel guilt. Like a butcher feeling sorry for cows. Besides, he can always justify it with, “If I don’t do it, someone else will.”. Try it. It works and it’s very satisfying. Someone posted a video clip of an Israeli settler to document how effective it is.
You’re probably right, he was a general after all. I guess I just think he wasn’t as much of a brick as Austin so that threw me off a touch.
There is rally on 01-13-2024 at 1:00 pm in Washington D.C. at the National Mall calling on the Administration to stop tyranny’s genocide and ethnic eradication of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
U think more than a handful of people really care? LOL!
If the crowd chants ” no more Biden ” the Administration will make Israel stop. A retired judge and his wife we know will be in attendance. But more importantly , George Washington had an ill equipped handful and they cared, the British empire misjudged, the rest is history.
Biden seems oblivious to his own reelection prospects. Otherwise he’d have already announced he’s not running and endorsed someone who might be able to beat Trump.
Yup. Although, learned helplessness might be more the case than obliviousness.
It’s really pretty damned stunning how recklessly the Dems are throwing away the presidency and the administration and most of the rest of the government are destroying whatever remains of the US reputation.
Biden seems oblivious. It’s an age thing. I’ve watched him stumble through not just ambulatory events, but verbal command, etc.
It’s an age thing.
He’s too old for the job, but I believe his stubbornness reflects a vague realization that he is trashing his own legacy. What he is too ignorant to understand, is that this impending fall from grace extends from his mindless and pedestrian allegiance to cold war shibboleths. It’s the Senate Foreign Relations Committee all over again – except no one is laughing this time.
“There is rally on 01-13-2024 at 1:00 pm in Washington D.C”
1/ Want to “channel your grief and rage” [JVP, below] into action?
There are local pro-Palestine rallies – demanding a ceasefire, now – daily, all over the US.
Plus many open letters to sign onto.
2/ What little the US does will be only because the Democratic Party fears losing due to the activists demanding the ceasefire that a majority of Americans and large majority of Democratic voters want.
3/ Jewish Voice for Peace is one of the organizations leading these demands alongside Arab American organizations.
4/ It is very easy to join up with JVP and take such action as is possible – however inadequate it may seem, I promise you, you will feel better – now, and in the future, when you will be able to look at yourself in the mirror and know you did not stand by and do nothing in the face of your government’s intolerable atrocity.
https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/
https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/join-us/
Thank you.
Hamas and its masters do not allow the right of peaceful protest that you enjoy.
And that makes the slaughter of thousands upon thousands of innocents justified?
The Netanyahu Israeli government is filled with psychopathic murderers, and the Biden-Blinken-Sullivan-Austin administration is not much better.
Biden and his evil doers are WORSE!
I agree, Jay. It’s obviously wrong to engage in ethnic cleansing and mass murder but the Israelis are doing it as part of a deluded and destructive drive towards self-preservation as they see it.
But how much worse is it to assist and thereby share in such butchery simply for $ and political reasons as our “leaders” do?
I have given up all hope for the USA, it is lost in corruption, lust, greed, and pure evil.
I have not given up and I suspect you haven’t either, judging from your taking the time to comment 🙂
The greed and lust will lead us into bankruptcy, from which fertile soil a new republic MAY arise … there’s always hope.
I do not see any of it as “evil”…. Simply misguided…. There is huge potential for ALL of us to do things differently…
Meanwhile,look at the actions of Hamas on Oct 7-quite psycopathic.
Not nearly as bad as the Israeli response.
Cutting of fingers and genitals,displaying rape victims as trophies,kidnapping babies-these things will justly provoke a severe response.
I think most of those claims are pure B.S.!
At the very least, exaggerated. Nothing exaggerated about Israel’s response.
Now multiply that 10 times and you have Israel’s response. Wait a few more weeks and you can multiply it by 20.
One thing all of us should know by now, we are governed by pathological killers. They serve the MIC and AIPAC and their own pockets. That is true for most of the advanced nations, Scholz in Germany is just the second Zelensky, selling Germany and the EU and NATO for cannon fodder with help from the UK and France like they did the Ukraine and fund the slaughter in Gaza. The heroic IDF soldiers are fighting unarmed civilians, mostly children, with bombs, like the US does, how heroic.
Hamas shelters among civilians-civilians suffer.
They are the fighting children of Palestinian families, a resistance movement and they shelter at home if there is a home. Hamas are Palestinians fighting their brutal oppressors, no matter what you want to call it. They are legal, the Israelis and Americans are the war criminals.
Palestinians are unarmed civilians, mostly women and children who are being brutally killed by denying food, water, energy, basic shelter and medical care, and every sq. inch in Gaza bombed without air raid warnings, the most brutal death even for helpless babies under rubble. To me this is the worst in modern history what two nuclear powers do to a defenseless people mostly women and children. Who are the real evil people, Satan on steroids is guiding them, Biden and congress and the Zionists in Jerusalem? The butchers of Gaza.
Any human with a conscience must condemn them, they are devils incarnate.
“Regarding the timeline, this is Israel’s operation, and I’m not here to dictate timelines or terms. Our support to Israel’s right to defend itself is ironclad, as you’ve heard me say a number of times, and that’s not going to change,” he said.
Indeed we have Lloyd. In fact, you say it damn near every fucking time you open your piehole.
An MIC. stooge, tool, Ghoul.
Babies in incubators and disabled people on ventilators are quite the threat.
Israel as a Zionist fascist genocidal state has absolutely no right to exist. Why should it have rights as a supremacy state like Nazi Germany?
“Babies in incubators and disabled people on ventilators are quite the threat.” to be fair that’s about all the IDF can handle
Maybe this guy is legally complicit!!! If he was saying this about a guy beating his wife. Genocede of tens of thousands is more bad & less likely to be taken as some sort of a right…..!!!!!
Israel will do all it wants and as long as the USA bows before them, as a slave to its master,,the world will sit back and do nothing. Likewise, when the SHTF in the USA expect the same treatment meted out to USA citizens, especially if U are Caucasian. The USA had the same policy against the native tribes, if a small group carries out a raid and or atrocity, Washington orders the total wipe out of villages, man, woman, child, horses, supplies. Nothing has changed, Humans still evil MOFUers!! 🙁
You had me until the “Caucasian” crap.
A rigorous response to the Oct 7 pogrom is quite understandable.Blame Hamas and its masters.
USA should have never been involved from the beginning. But I have to ask, what did Israel expect? Desperation caused desperate acts.
Gad you’re fucking sickening.
So, no “individual group or state” can shake us but a whole lot of them can? Is that what this erudite spokesman for MIC saying? How many nations voted for the ceasefire at the UNSC and overall Assembly again? Will any of them put their asses where their vote is like the Houthis have?
“Will any of them put their asses where their vote is like the Houthis have?” None, talk is cheap, war is not.
Israeli real estate firm pushes settlement building in Gaza
https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2023/12/19/israeli-real-estate-firm-pushes-settlement-building-in-gaza
That is not going to happen. The IDF does not want a permanent commitment in Gaza.
The IDF like the US military will do what it is ordered to do by the political establishment.
“ Even before the current war in Gaza, several ministers representing the Religious Zionist party had already commented that the reoccupation of Gaza is inevitable. But now, right-wing commentators and Knesset members are trying to build on top of the public rage to advocate for the official operational objective to reoccupy Gaza and reestablish settlements there…
Member of Knesset Amit Halevi of the Likud Party has already published a detailed plan, where he suggests building border fences around five main cities in Gaza to fragmentize Palestinians further and increase Israel’s military control. This plan reflects a similar strategy for creating settlements as the one then-Labor Minister Yigal Allon suggested for the Jewish settlement in the West Bank and Gaza Strip after the 1967 War (known as the Allon Plan). According to Halevi’s plan, Israel would also establish five mega-settlements between Palestinian blocks, each with a population of 100,000 Jews, as an enhanced human buffer zone.
https://forward.com/opinion/568553/israel-settler-movement-gaza-reoccupy/?amp=1
True, but the political establishment in Israel tends to listed to the IDF.
Hyenas
Hyenas are kinda cool though.
“America fully supports Israel’s inalienable right to slaughter babies but we politely suggest for the cameras that maybe you slaughter a little less babies.”
-An American statesman
At least we can confirm that Affirmative action does not filter out assholes.
Every time these creeps open their mouths they reveal themselves for what they actually are – racists.
Israel, despite its wealth, is a very backwards country ruled by a demographic that takes their Torah literally, and a faction of conventionally corrupt together with one of enthusiastically sadistic zio-nazis. They have found a powerful ally in the equally corrupt and degenerate; and, if not stupid, old and feeble in heart & soul, ruling class of America. God help us all this Xmas, says Jim Cravat.
equally corrupt and degenerate; and, if not stupid, old and feeble in heart & soul
You left out “cowardly”… The most essential ingredient.
… and cowards to the very backbone of their soul.
What does “coward” mean to U?
…. as in bombing hospitals, entering a UN shelter and mowing down point blank the women and children, … etc. ad nauseam.
They have been well taught by Hamas.
There’s a real problem on that head. Despite it’s being oblgatory preface (“horrific & brutal assault”) for appearing on any platform, we’re still waiting to learn what really happened on “Oct. 7”.
How many killed were Hamas, how many Israeli soldiers, how many police, how many armed settlers, how many unarmed civilians, how many killed in all categories by the IDF raid, and how many caught in crossfires?
Was the Hamas raid terror, or hostage taking to trade for their own?
With all the timely and accurate intel why wasn’t it prevented? and why take 5 hrs getting to the rescue? Why won’t the IDF release all the surveillance material, messaging and videos?
All of your characterizations are merely the crudest manufacture of low grade military propaganda types meant for the delectation of an unsophisticated population to swallow and parrot.
Cutting pieces off living human victims,kidnapping babies,parading rape victims as trophies is fact,not propaganda.
Denial by those who find truth in conflict with their world view is their own problem.
… the lurid effusions of a crude, corrupt, and monumentally obscene political culture, “the charred remains of Liel Hetzroni” its ‘masterpiece’.
That sounds like the real events that happen frequently in the USA, FACT. Did HAMAS do these things,,I have seen NO proof. Probably B.S.
backbone of their soul
Not that they have either but yes I agree.
Now lets get back to earth.None of the Abrahamic faiths take their holy books literally. Israel is not backward,with advanced agriculture technology,arts and health sciences. As far as sadism-Hamas actions with its torture.rape,and mutilation,are the true sadists.
Not really. Netanyahu is not religious. He uses religion as justification for ethnic supremacy and fascism. All Zionists do.
Zionism as a Fascist Ideology and Movement: Zionist Relations with Nazi Germany by Faris Yahya Glubb
https://liberatedtexts.com/reviews/zionism-as-a-fascist-ideology-zionist-relations-with-nazi-germany-by-faris-glubb/
BB pitched the slaughter of the Gazans with the story of Amalek, … not to mention Gollant, Ben Gvir, Smotrich, … nso on. Thence, the effective stupidity rate of Israel.
Not stupid, just using the same PROPAGANDA style that is used in the USA. It works!
Oh I know they are using biblical storytime as justification. The fact is they are willing to kill all for power, including their own people.
And using those stories are dog whistles for genocide. Not much different from simply calling them untermench.
I am sick of hearing about Israel’s right to defend itself. This is not defense. This out and out MURDER! Why are we paying these b@stards? Now according to Mid East Eye the IDF is desecrating Palestinian cemeteries. How low can you go?
He really likes having people killed. He fits in well at State.
Austin ought to be shunned as a war criminal, as we shunned ex-Nazis after 1945.
The US hired “ex”-Nazis after 1945.
Thomas, there was a very good reason for that,,as I am sure U know. 🙂
Now I are an Israeli!
Can we call Austin a globalist DEI toady without being called “racist”? That’s the farce of the “race” war in America.
Well, yes, you can call him that.
But I’ve not seen any reason to believe it’s true. He’s no more stupid, evil, or corrupt than any number of other generals and politicians who’ve served in his position and similar positions. Have a look at photos of Robert McNamara, Caspar Weinburger, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsefeld some time and tell me if you blame race-based “affirmative action” etc. for their actions and views.
“‘America’s commitment to Israel is unwavering, and no individual group or state should test our resolve,’ [the US Sec. of Defense] said”…
…’including US citizens,’ Austin added off record. ‘No: permanent, unconditional US military and political support for Israel is too important to be influenced by the foolish desires of American voters.’
Asked to explain the implications of his position for American democracy, the Sec. of Defense elaborated, ‘Shut up, you.’
So Genocide Joe’s lap poodle Lloyd Austin is in Israel comfirming the U.S. commitment to mass slaughter. I hate to bring up the race issue, but truth be told what is going on is an ethnic cleansing. Has Lloyd looked in the mirror lately and checked out his skin color? Guess what happens when the IDF gets done with the Arabs. People of Lloyd’s ethnicity somewhere in the world may well be next.
“Biden seems oblivious to his own reelection prospects.” (Knapp)
Biden is not the sole actor here – winning elections is the prime imperative of the Democratic Party, the organizational actor undergirding the Biden WH.
Its bet has been it will lose fewer votes by enabling Israel’s atrocity than by limiting it.
Pro-Palestinian activism and voter sentiment is proving them wrong.
Yea, the White House and Democrats are trying to ‘split the difference’ with their bullcrap pretense of being a restraining hand.
It’s not working. They can’t split the difference on this one.
Upshot: If the Democratic Party loses in 24, it will know why. And – my prediction – much as it blames US voters whose democratic electoral will it spurned, it will have to put forward candidates and positions that mark a strong turn away from the US-Israel ‘special relationship’…or lose again.
Like the intolerable death and suffering of the Palestinian people, this domestic fracture will not deferentially retreat from sight.
+++
An alternative description:
Its bet has been that it will lose fewer votes by enabling Israel’s and America’s racism than by shining a light on it.
No. They don’t learn. Or they do but don’t care. After Trump they forced Biden just as they did with Clinton and they are doing it now.