President Biden told a Democratic lawmaker and members of his Cabinet after the State of the Union address that he told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that they will need to have a “come-to-Jesus meeting.”
Biden’s comments, captured on a hot mic as he spoke with Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) on the floor of the House chamber, came after Bennet congratulated the commander in chief on his speech and pressed him to keep pressure on Netanyahu over increasing humanitarian issues in Gaza.
If you’re going to go back 100 years, why stop there?
Why not blame the Ottoman Empire, the Rashidun Islamic Caliphate, the Byzantine Empire of Eastern Rome, etc.
The fact is that Palestine and Israel as countries were created at roughly the same time. Israeli Jews have existed there for thousands of years. The tribe called the Philistines have been there possibly just as long, and supposedly the were often at war with the Judah and Israelites. Though the Philistines were neither arabs nor muslims, who came in around 500 years ago during the Rashidun Islamic Caliphate (still a long time, longer than America has existed).
There has never in thousands of years of history been a free, self-governed, single state of Palestine. Both the Israelis and Palestinians have cultural and historic claims over the region going back hundreds, if not thousands, of years. This suggests to me that the only real and viable solution for peace is a two-state solution in which both sides lay down arms and learn to coexist peacefully. Neither Netanyahu nor Hamas are truly interested in a two-state solution, and as such I consider them both to be enemies of peace.
(And before you spend to much time defending Hamas, please know that disproportionate violence targeted directly at civilians, sexual violence against civilians, kidnapping of civilians, hiding militants behind a civilian human shield, etc., are ALL actual war crimes, and that Hamas has openly supported genocide against Israeli Jews since their founding charter in 1988.)