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Ben Shapiro casually supporting war crimes
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this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2023
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The reason I know I'd fail as a politician is because the instant I get asked anything about Israel / Palestine, I'd either run away screaming or I'd throw my hands up and say "I'm not touching this with a ten foot pole, they both suck and everyone except the civilians caught in the crossfire deserve whatever they get."
This whole conflict isn't black and white morality, or even black and gray morality. It barely qualifies as black and slightly-less-black-if-you-squint morality. It's like Luke trying to blow up the Death Star, if the Death Star was populated mostly with families, children, and puppies, and Luke ate a baby while he was rescuing the princess.
To me it seems like the obvious answer, from the perspective of a country that provides significant financial and military support to Israel, is to withdraw that support conditional on Israel giving a defined minimum amount of concern to not committing war crimes and human rights abuses. Things genuinely necessary for defense, fine, the rest, we should not be complicit in.
That seems like an obvious answer, but we use Israel to further our foreign policy goals in the middle east and Israel uses our money. The nation's continued existence, not a given if foreign aid gets yanked, gives us a location from which to stage operations. That gives them significant bargaining power.
Just because the United States is always super Machiavellian about its foreign policy doesn't make it ok to bargain with the lives of innocent people. If we acknowledge that what Israel is doing is wrong, and that we are enabling it, the right thing to do would simply be to stop enabling it. Otherwise, we are partly responsible for it.
Most of that money also goes right back to US weapons manufacturers too so it is just one form of indirect aid for the US industry.