Biden And The Jets

       Up until now, I've been a Biden supporter right down the line. I thought of him as a very good president. He got us a badly-needed infrastructure bill. His Inflation Reduction Act expanded healthcare coverage, lowered healthcare costs and called for investment in clean energy. His CHIPS act is boosting the production of semiconductors in the United States like a house on fire.
      Joe Biden  stands up for women's rights, LBGTQ rights, Black Lives Matter, civil rights, and social justice. Biden oversaw the creation of a bipartisan immigration bill that would pass if only hard-headed Congressional Republicans would come to their senses. Under his leadership inflation is down and employment and wages are up, and last month's jobs report surpassed all expectations.
      I was grateful for his bringing our relationships with our international allies back to normal after four years of his predecessor alienating our democratic allies and embracing dictators.

         I've been on board with Biden's support for Ukraine even as he battles Congress to send badly-needed military aid to that beleaguered nation. 
          But now I'm finding my up until now staunch support of Joe Biden suddenly on life support. Over - what else? - Israel.
           Like most of the rest of the world, my heart and support went out to Israel on October 7. And, like most of the rest of the world, my heart and support have evolved in the months since the focus of the Israeli Defense force, under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu,​

...has proven to be not rescuing the hostages but rather wiping the humans of Gaza from the face of the earth. And in this campaign of mass genocide there's been minimal  concern on Netanyahu's part for collateral deaths, whether they be the deaths of aid workers, or even of Israeli hostages themselves.         

    Now, I don't blame Biden for the the horrors committed by Hamas on the Israelis or the horrors committed by the Israelis on the Palestinians. He didn't start this war and in end he can't control the behavior of Hamas or of Netanyahu. And I was willing, in the early days, weeks, and months of the war, to believe that the delicate, high-level negotiations Biden was conducting with Netanyahu would be, though not ideal,  the  most possible path to ending Israel's assault on Gaza.
      But that path never opened and instead there continues day after day, week after week, month after month, more of the same news stories and unbearable images of Gaza being destroyed building by building, home by home, hospital by hospital, life by life, with the death toll up over thirty thousand and rising from injuries, starvation, and all the other things that the Gazan men, women and children are dying of.
       And it becomes clearer by the day that, as President of the United States and Israel's principle supplier of arms, Biden could have - and should have - demanded months ago that Israel cease fire and allow the safe passage of food and humanitarian aid to the Gazans. 
      But what ultimately pushed me to a position that I never would have believed I'd find myself in was the news a few days ago of Biden's response to the Israeli bombing of a convoy of World Central Kitchen workers bringing truckloads of food to starving Gazans. Biden's response was outrage, shock, horror, sadness and immediate  authorization for  the United States to sell Israel another 19 billion dollars' worth of fighter jets. 
         It was the jets that did it. It was the jets - along with the 2,000 small bombs, just the right size for killing civilians and aid workers, that Biden threw in with the jets - that pushed me into the camp of those former Biden enthusiasts who now question whether they can even vote for him in the upcoming election. Before the jets I could not understand where those of the Uncommitted faction - who claim that they will  vote for neither Trump nor Biden - were coming from. Since Biden's greenlighting of the jets and small bombs, now, sadly, I do. It's not out of anger or a desire to punish Biden or help Trump. It's out of an inability to vote against one's conscience.
            Joe Biden recently said that Benjamin Netanyahu needs to have a come to Jesus moment. Forget Netanyahu, he never will have such a moment. In truth it's Biden who needs to have his own come to Jesus moment. Because a very many of us would-be Biden supporters are very close to coming to ours.

​References
​https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/02/us/politics/biden-israel-weapons-deal.html

​https://news.yahoo.com/biden-administration-set-greenlight-18-200933896.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall