The Biden administration is evil and stupid, leaks reveal

SCOOP: Blinken tells Israelis humanitarian pause will buy Israel time for Gaza operations (Axios)

Some highlights:

The Biden administration says it supports Israel's goal of dismantling Hamas' military capabilities but it is increasingly under pressure from some Democrats in Congress and its allies and partners in Arab countries to push for a ceasefire in Gaza.

The Biden administration is indubitably aware at this point that 1) Netanyahu is mostly just killing random Palestinians and 2) that Netanyahu, based on his past statements and present actions, views Hamas as an asset and has no interest fully eliminating Islamism in Gaza. The naïvité of taking Israeli statements at face value is astounding.

• because of the pressure the U.S. is facing, a humanitarian pause will help Israel buy more time for its ground operation, the U.S. and Israeli officials said.

• Blinken's message, according to one U.S. and two Israeli officials, was: "We don't want to stop you, but help us help you get more time."

• Israeli leaders, including Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, IDF chief of staff Herzi Halevi and Netanyahu, told Blinken a pause wouldn't happen unless the hostages were released [. . .]

• Blinken and his aides think the Israeli leaders haven't shut the door on the idea of a temporary ceasefire and that they can get them to agree to some kind of pause like they did when Israel agreed to allow aid trucks into Gaza, the officials said.

Israel has flatly refused negotiations to release the hostages, preferring instead to blindly assault the territory where they’re being kept, to the objections of the hostages’ families. Hamas obviously has no incentive to release Israeli hostages without some sort of deal. This is essentially just saying “no” to a pause. What does the Biden administration think it can accomplish by merely asking things nicely of a government that obviously blows them off (“oh sure Mr. Biden, I hear you about those civilian casualties” *immediately blows up a school bus*)

In his meetings on Friday, Blinken also raised the need to start planning for the day after the war, U.S. and Israeli officials said.

• Blinken presented three principles when thinking about the day after the war: no Hamas rule in Gaza, no Israeli occupation in the Strip and no chaos in the enclave.

After the War in Afghanistan, it should be clear that present actions will only serve as fodder for terrorist recruitment in the future. The only way to diminish “Hamas rule” is to prop up and negotiate with a secular, peaceful authority such as Fatah and to give them the resources to replace Hamas. Obviously, Netanyahu will never do this. So what the fuck does the White House think it’s doing?

The only charitable way to interpret this is that the White House intends to get the Israelis to physically undermine Hamas infrastructure, after which the US itself will go in and fund a massive nation-building project, somehow forcing Israeli concessions in both the West Bank and Gaza to forge a two-state solution that would curb the development of future terrorism. Given Netanyahu’s extreme recalcitrance toward a two-state solution and Biden’s sheepishness toward Netanyahu, it seems unlikely that this is the plan.

Domestically and in foreign policy, the Biden administration is achieving nothing while sacrificing credibility on all fronts. It feels as if the goal is just to support Israel as an ideological end in itself—which is fucking evil. What the fuck is wrong with these people? If you’re going to be evil, at least get something pragmatically out of it.