As I reported on November 22, I was shocked to find that, on a list of 18 U.S. Senators who voted to move forward with Bernie Sanders’s bill to block a $20 billion sale of weapons to Israel, was one of my own Senators, Democrat Dick Durbin. Here’s the whole list:
The measure failed miserably on the Senate floor, with none of its three provisions garnering more than 19 votes. But of course I wrote to Senator Durbin, expressing my dissatisfaction as a constituent, and chastising him for giving succor to Israel’s enemies and impeding the self-defense of Jewish state in its attempt to root out Hamas.
Yesterday I got this weaselly response from Durbin:
December 4, 2024
MY ADDRESS REDACTEDDear Dr. Coyne:
Thank you for contacting me about measures to block weapons shipments to Israel. I appreciate hearing from you.
On September 25, 2024, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont introduced six measures that would block a proposed $20 billion in arms sales to Israel. These sales include joint direct attack munitions and launchers, mortar and tank cartridges, F-15s, and other defense articles. Under the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (P.L. 87-195) and the Arms Export Control Act of 1976 (P.L. 94-329), the president must notify Congress of a pending arms sale. These statutes also give Congress the authority to suspend such a sale by passing a joint resolution of disapproval through both the House of Representatives and the Senate. All six of these measures were referred to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.
On November 20, 2024, the Senate considered whether to discharge three of Senator Sanders’ joint resolutions of disapproval, S.J. Res. 111, S.J. Res. 113, and S.J. Res. 115, from the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. While I voted in favor of discharging these three measures from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, all three of these measures were rejected by the Senate. S.J. Res. 111 was rejected by a vote of 18-79, S.J. Res. 113 was rejected by a vote of 19-78, and S.J. Res. 115 was rejected by a vote of 17-80.
My reason for supporting these measures is straightforward. More than 43,000 Palestinians have died in the conflict in Gaza since October 7, 2023, and 60 percent of them have been women, children, and elderly. The denial of humanitarian aid to Gaza threatens the lives of so many more.
I believe that Israel has not only the right to exist, but the right to defend itself in the face of threats such as from Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran. I consistently have voted for security assistance to Israel throughout my career to protect it from these threats. But this war must end. I will stand by Israel, but I will not support the devastation of Gaza and the deaths of thousands of innocent Palestinians.
For too long, this protracted conflict has inflicted untold suffering on innocent Israelis and Palestinians alike. I hope out of the ashes and pain of this current crisis that there can be a renewed focus on a two-state solution.
Thank you again for contacting me. Please feel free to keep in touch.
Sincerely,
Richard J. Durbin
United States Senator
I sent this response to Malgorzata, and when I woke up this morning she had written a response, one that I reproduce here with permission. Durbin is apparently as dumb and uninformed about the Gaza conflict as many Americans.
Malgorzata’s response is indented.
Durbin’s figures are taken directly from Hamas, figures that have been debunked many times.
Hamas doesn’t count combatants and civilians separately. In this fictitious number of dead are the non-existent 500 people allegedly killed in a strike on the hospital Al-Ahli. As was discovered and confirmed by independent authorities (and admitted by the real perpetrator: Palestinian Islamic Jihad), it was a misfired PIJ rocket that fell short, creating the strike. Instead of killing Israeli civilians, the rocket fell on the hospital’s parking lot (NOT THE HOSPITAL). It killed several people, but far less than 100—not to mention 500.
How many other Palestinian civilians killed by rockets from PIJ and Hamas rockets have been counted by Hamas’s Ministry of Health as having been killed by Israel? After previous wars between Gaza and Israel, when there was really time to count the dead and ascertain their identities, it always turned out that Hamas had counted everybody (including combatants killed in war as well as people who died in Gaza of natural causes) in their earlier communicates about people “killed by Israel”.
The percentages of women, children, and elderly given by Durbin (and Hamas) are also false. According to the IDF, up to 19,000 Hamas combatants were killed. Moreover, both Hamas and PIJ use teenagers as fighters. Everybody killed when he/she is under 18 is counted as a child. A 17-year-old fighter killed when shooting a rocket at Israelis is counted as a child. Even if you accept the false numbers given by Hamas, the ratio of civilian to combatant deaths is the lowest ever achieved in urban warfare by any army.
Further, not one person in Gaza would have been killed by the IDF if Hamas and PIJ didn’t invade Israel on October 7, 2023, didn’t kill, rape, torture, and burn 1200 Israeli women, men, children and the elderly, and didn’t take 252 hostages, including women, children and the elderly. There are still 101 hostages somewhere in the dungeons of Hamas, among them baby Kfir (9 months old at the moment of kidnapping) and his older brother Ariel (4 years at the moment of kidnapping).
From Jerry. I would add this. Besides credulously adopting Hamas’s misleading figures that count dead combatants as “innocent Palestinians”, Durbin implicitly calls for a cease-fire and explicitly for a “two-state solution,” something that, if implemented now, would be a disaster for Israel.
We already know that the ratio of civilians killed to combatants killed is far lower than seen in other conflicts in which the U.S. has engaged, including World War II and the more recent battles in the Middle East. Durbin of course ignores that, just as he ignores what happened on October 7 of last year. In his attempt to look evenhanded, Durbin has proven himself a useful asset for Hamas. And I will communicate this to the misguided Senator.
This is very insightful, thanks for sharing.
Dick Durbin is not paying close attention. He is simply scanning the surface of what most main stream media platforms are reporting. Sounds like he reads a headline from the NY Times and then moves on to something else. Sadly, that’s what most people know about the Middle East conflict.
Good! Sorry to see that Tim Kaine was among those 19, too. (NB: John Fetterman was not.)
But meanwhile, Hezbollah is apparently crumbling – further good!
Yep. Afraid that Tim Kaine is woke and often reluctant to take strong positions. I had hoped that maybe his time on missionary work in Central America would have acquainted him with real evil in the world but apparently not. I was similarly disappointed…but not surprised at his name on the bernie-bro list.
Why don’t these so-called progressives in the Senate turn their protest activities against the Iranian persecution and execution of the Iranian people? They support Hamas terrorists and remain silent in the face of Iranian terrorism. Hypocrites, all of them!
+1
And Iran is one of the most misogynistic societies in existence. “Systemic sexism” really is a thing there…they go way beyond microaggressions, manspreading and mansplaining. There is every reason to protest Iran, yet the far left seem more interested in attacking Israel.
I have liked Dick Durbin since he spoke on the House floor (he was then a Congressman) arguing for wood baseball bats. I still recall him saying that “any red-blooded American ash tree would gladly give its life for the chance to be at home plate.”
But his reply here is deeply disappointing.
The fact that Senator Durban cites those Hamas-provided numbers as fact tells me that he is not well informed and that he has naively bought into the narrative that Hamas wants to project. He sends the very same paragraph to every constituent who asks about his position in Gaza, so he is a potent purveyor of terrorist propaganda, probably unwittingly.
Indeed, as Malgorzata says, no innocent deaths would have taken place in Gaza had Hamas not killed hundreds of innocent Israelis on October 7 and kidnapped children, grandmothers, and grandfathers to hellholes in Gaza. All of the carnage would end instantly if Hamas would return the hostages and surrender the fight.
Durban probably knew that the initiative blocking the sale would fail. This means that he could vote either way and not change the outcome. Voting against the weapons sale could mean that he does want to weaken Israel, but it could also mean that his vote was performance art calculated to curry favor with (some of) his constituents. It’s hard to tell with these politicians, as they have figured out how to have it both ways.
Meanwhile, over at Pharyngula:
We have posters saying Israel’s is committing a “Holocaust”. I have searched FreeThoughtBlogs to see if anyone over there ever described the 500,000 killed in Syria, or the 500,000 killed in Sudan, as “Holocausts”. The answer is a big fat no. They only reserve this particular term for Israel’s war with fascists in an urban environment. Strange, eh? BTW, this poster says they will probably be accused of antisemitism by “pearl-clutching” types.
Then, the poster below that one above invokes the old “baby eating” trope in a roundabout way.
Further down, one poster claims Israel is trying to kill the “entire population of Gaza”, echoing PZ Meyers comments at the beginning of Israel’s response to the massacres carried out by Hamas Nazis, when he claimed Israel was going to murder 2,000,000. I’m surprised he didn’t say 6 million, but perhaps the first poster mentioned in the thread would.
PZ Meyers pops up in the comments lambasting a poster who references Jerry’s calling out of Durbin, adding (referring to Jerry) “I don’t want apologists for genocide here”. PZ then says “No one here is excusing the terror attack of 7 October; it was horrific and inexcusable.”, but actually, posters there did try to excuse it – and I have the screencaps to prove it.
I would suspect that both the 43,000 and the 19,000 figure are lies. First casualty of war is truth.
After all of Israel’s previous wars the preliminary numbers given by the Israeli Army were subsequently confirmed (even by Hamas). IDF is an army of a democratic country with free press and the government answers to civilian authorities and to courts. I wouldn’t put its words on the same level of (mis)trust as a terrorist organization whose latest invention in their propaganda war is to claim tht the reason foreign observers cannot find enough bodies to get the same result as does the Gaza Ministry of Health is that Israelis have now a new weapon that evaporates human bodies without leaving any trace.
So what are the IDF’s figures for the number of noncombatants that they have killed or have they not provided any? With regard To the free press has the government not sanctioned Haaretz and closed down Al Jazeera’s operation in Israel? Weren’t the government trying to reduce the power of the courts before the war? I don’t doubt that Israel is a far far more democratic and better governed country than Gazza but it does have a government that includes a prime minister that allegedly has a policy of funding his enemies and a cabinet that includes neo fascists (allegedly).
IDF did not provide any numbers of non-combatants. They usually do it long after the war when they have a chance to give reliable data.
Closing an enemy media (Al-Jazeera) which not only broadcast hostile propaganda and lies but even delivered information to the enemy who Israel was (and is) in war with is not a sin against free speech (at least in my book). Ha’aretz, in spite of printing many lies detrimental to the Israeli state, has not been closed and is free to publish more lies. I suspect from your comment that you believe a lot of them.
No, I don’t believe the lies of the editor. Actually, his ability to publish those lies is a strong argument for the existence of the freedom of the press in Israel unlike the closing of an ‘enemy media’.
Please read the posting roolz about excessive posts on a thread, thanks.
Wouldn’t place too much trust in Haaretz. The owner called Hamas “freedom fighters”.
Anybody who calls Nazis “freedom fighters” is a little suspect in my book.
Damn those high-temperature space lasers….
In Jenin in 2003, the Palestinians reported 3,000 dead. The IDF reported they killed 500. An official UN investigation concluded that 52 died. Mostly men of military age. The IDF is unreliable in such estimates.
Excuse me? Unreliable in a big OVERESTIMATE of killings. Are you not going to label the Palestinians as even MORE unreliable?
The so called “Jenin massacre” was 2002 (not 2003). I couldn’t find anything about IDF reporting 500 killed. Do you have a link to this information? Israel from the beginning disputed the high numbers given by Palestinian side. The number 500 dead was given by Saed Erekat from the Palestinian side. IDF disputed this.
Number of non-combatants killed doesn’t really matter. The important thing is the effort the military makes to kill no more than necessary to achieve the military objective the civil authorities of the country send their armed forces to do. To not kill gratuitously is the moral imperative. Civilians kept in harm’s way will die, often in large numbers. The IDF does not have to value enemy civilians at the infinite cost of its own troops in killing combatants perfectly “surgically”, for example by using infantry only and no high explosives from tanks, artillery, and aircraft to support them and reduce their own casualties.
If it is necessary for Israel’s military to kill everyone in Gaza in order to eliminate the ability of the statelet to make war on Israel, die they must. If they can’t lay down their arms and stop lending their ostensibly non-combatant bodies to their war-gang government’s efforts to drive the Jews into the sea, what else is Israel supposed to do? Starting a war you can’t win is a foolish thing to do. Not surrendering when you are losing is even more foolish.
Chances are Senator Durbin’s letter was a generic response to the issue written by a young, well educated staffer. The letter was trying to thread the needle between not seeming either pro or anti Islamic or Semitic while advancing the best argument to support the Senator’s vote. His vote was a vote that might be defensible in a different world, a world where nations and people behave rationally and decently and everyone shares modern, “first world” values. The Senator may have seen his votes as an inexpensive way to burnish his progressive credentials in that world. But, Israel and Hamas don’t co-exist in a world that looks anything like that and the measures got very little support so his vote was both performative and lacking in astuteness. Not his finest moment, or so I hope.
One wonders what Durbin’s view would be about arming Ukraine if Russian civilians were dying at the same level as are civilians in Gaza.
I have no issues saying I have little respect for either sides leadership. Too me one is just a violent gang no different to MS-13 that is now a government and the other who plays the long game.
One attacks civvies and uses their own as meat shields, the other just nudges them a little on the settlement thing to make them be annoying when they’re not blowing stuff up.
The Strip needs some form of intervention but by a third party military force but who’d both trust?
Why should the Gaza Strip be occupied by a third party?
It has been sovereign Israeli territory since 1948, within the legal borders of Israel as defined by the League of Nations. That it was temporarily illegally occupied by Egypt makes no difference at all.
That Israel removed its Jewish citizens from Gaza did NOT give sovereign ownership of the territory to the Gazans. Indeed, any possible nebulous claims of Gazans of some sort of quasi- self-determination or manifest destiny are very weak, given that the Gazans had a responsibility to live in peace with Israel under the Withdrawal Agreement, which they almost immediately abrogated with a reign of terrorism that has not stopped since 2005. There was no security wall surrounding Gaza, nor was there a naval blockade of Gaza in 2005. Gaza earned those measures because of extremist jihadi terrorism. Religion-based racist Jihadism should not be rewarded with territory. Imho.
I agree. There is no reason for Israel to surrender its sovereignty over any of its territory that it took back in 1967. It, and it alone, will need to pacify that territory to keep it from being a threat to the rest of Israel.
Have a third-party deal with Hamas’ remains and pacify and rebuilt Gaza after Hamas has been blown to hell.
I mean in the Peace Keeping sense.
Are you volunteering New Zealand’s Army for that job, Michael?
The UN already has a force of (ineffectual) peacekeepers observing the cease-fire at the de-militarized border in Lebanon. That didn’t work so well. Maybe your guys could do a better job.
Gaza is Israel’s sovereign territory. No third party can just walk in and do anything there unless Israel invites them in, as the Government of the Republic of South Vietnam invited in the Americans (and the Australians) to help it repel aggression from the North. But that invitation would be rescinded if the visitors started shooting at the wrong people, or tried to keep the host country from shooting at the right people.
The USA would have fun there. I know there are neutered peacekeepers there, can’t do anything as all due to ROEs keeping them back.
Though to be fair, us, Sweeden, Japan, Singapore and even Mexico would do better. The Swiss if keen as well. We did better in Afghanistan.
I’m cynical enough to know that Hamas is what an MS-13 style is when it leads a nation trough force and intimidation, they even hijack ambulances with volunteer medics to do their dirty work.
Japan knows all too well when fighting even after their military is totally destroyed but keen on fighting when the intent of killing their entire population first, their leaders even intellectually regarded the Potsdam Deceleration quite reasonable.
I abandoned Pharyngula a long time ago and am impressed anyone has the stomach to visit that blog anymore. I’m bookmarking this blog entry as insightful and rational. It doesn’t take paragraphs of explanation for me to see things clearly in this matter after 10/7.
Would be happy to add my name to anything Jerry or Malgorzata’s are sending to Dick Durbin. I’m also unhappy with his easy but unreasoned response.