Nov 2, 2023
Biden Reacts With 'Humanitarian Pause' After Protestor Confronts Him On Ceasefire
President Joe Biden was interrupted by protestor Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg, who called for a ceasefire during a Minnesota fundraiser.
- 16 minutes
Overnight for the first time.
President Biden calling for a humanitarian
pause in the Israel-hamas war.
Mr. president, after being interrupted
by a protester demanding a cease fire,
the president responding, quote,
I think we need a pause.
In the face of increasing pressure,
President Joe Biden refuses
[00:00:18]
to call for a cease fire.
Instead, he engages in this nonsense BS
effort to call for a humanitarian pause
without really describing what that means.
What is a humanitarian pause?
Humanitarian pause.
Meaning, hey, maybe we can get Israel
to stop the bombardment,
[00:00:34]
the aerial bombardment, and the airstrikes
that are killing literally thousands
of civilians in the Gaza Strip,
maybe for half a day, maybe for a day.
Maybe we can get some humanitarian aid in,
and then after that, Israel can continue.
Is that what the humanitarian pause is?
What is that?
[00:00:52]
He stopped short of calling
for a cease fire because he
doesn't believe in a cease fire.
Because this American government,
a country that is supposed to be
a superpower, is actually not able to make
[00:01:07]
a moral conscience decision
about what Israel is doing right now.
We just have to support it.
Everything that the right wing
Israeli government wants to do,
even if it means that thousands
of civilian lives will be lost.
[00:01:22]
So since then, by the way, two Democratic
senators have called for a cease fire.
We're going to get
to those details in just a moment.
Neither one of them
are named Bernie Sanders,
which is so incredibly depressing.
But let's get back to Biden.
[00:01:39]
Then we'll get to the senators
who are calling for a cease fire.
So he was giving a speech at a campaign
fundraiser in Minnesota when a person
who identified herself as Rabbi Jessica
Rosenberg, she's with the Jewish Jewish
Voices for peace, interrupted his speech.
And this is what she said to him.
[00:01:55]
Mr. president, if I care about Jewish
people as a rabbi, I need you to call
for a cease fire right now.
Calling for a cease fire.
You can hear people in the audience
telling her to get out.
[00:02:11]
Leave.
Imagine being offended
for calls for a cease fire.
Like, hey, you know,
we'd like the bloodshed to stop.
Can we can we move toward
a peaceful resolution here?
Get out, get out! Man.
These blood hungry Americans
in that room specifically was.
[00:02:31]
He responded to her by basically saying
that he wants a humanitarian pause.
Am I being am I being too vicious here?
Do you think a humanitarian pause
makes sense in lieu of a cease fire?
I think it makes sense for the PR campaign
that they're trying with this.
[00:02:46]
I think they're trying everything that
they can do as far as public perception
without actually doing the right thing,
but I don't think it can last long.
I don't know if you saw the protests
that happened
in Grand Central Station in New York.
[00:03:02]
Many Jewish Americans
were at the forefront of that protest
calling for a cease fire.
Obviously in London, there were
huge demonstrations in places like Turkey.
And again, the here's the thing.
And that that I feel a little bit more
heartened by is that even the coverage
[00:03:22]
of this specific attack on Gaza
just has a different tint than anything
we've ever seen in the past, just the idea
that opposition to this brutality would
appear at all on places like CNN, MSNBC,
The New York Times is very new, so Joe
[00:03:43]
Biden can be as politically inept as show
as much political cowardice as he wants.
But the tides are changing.
And I think, most importantly, Anna,
that I would like people to think about,
[00:03:58]
not just be heartened by so much of the
demonstrations that have been happening,
just an outcry of of people demanding
peace when Blinken went to Qatar and he's
talking to the leaders over there, you
kind of got the sense that they were like,
[00:04:14]
look, bro, y'all can try to do this.
But if y'all want to have partners
in this part of the world
that are receptive to the things
that y'all care about, y'all need to stop
because our people will rebel against us.
[00:04:30]
I know that it seems like the Saudis
and the Qataris and the Emiratis
are these entrenched regimes, right?
That used to be the case
for the Shah in Iran, too.
That was our boy over there.
And because of US backed policies and
repression, the people over there rose up.
[00:04:50]
They ain't been allowed
in those parts ever since.
And so I really do truly believe
that people in the Arab world
are going to have to bring some pressure
to bear on the United States,
even those ridiculously brutal regimes,
even they're going to have to step up
[00:05:07]
and be like, guys, we can't do this.
Our people will not have us if we do this.
There are mass protests
in Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt.
The Arab world is on fire right now. Okay.
[00:05:23]
This is again,
I've said it a billion times.
I'm going to say it again.
We are barreling
toward a giant regional war.
And for everyone in that room who told
that rabbi to sit down or get out,
I really hope that they're enlisted
in the military,
[00:05:39]
because I think it would be wrong
for the men and women in this country
who do not cosign to the brutality that is
being carried out by the IDF as we speak.
It would be unfair for them
to go fight in those wars.
So those who are egging the war on,
I hope you got your war boots on.
[00:05:57]
I hope you're enlisted.
You better not be a chicken hawk, okay?
They have no problem with the young men
and women of this country
fighting these disgusting wars
that could have been prevented because,
hey, they're at a fundraiser in Minnesota.
[00:06:13]
I'm going to venture to say
that these are moneyed interests.
These are people living high off the hog.
They don't have to worry about
the consequences of that regional war.
They get to sit in their cushy homes.
They get to buy our politicians,
and they get everything they want
[00:06:31]
as the rest of us suffer
for the brutality that they egg on.
That is what's happening in that room.
That is who Biden is, the guy who looks
at all that carnage in the Gaza Strip
and provides cover for Netanyahu, a far
right Israeli politician who could not
[00:06:51]
care less about human lives, including the
human lives in his own goddamn country.
Let's keep it real, okay?
Couldn't be bothered
to keep his own civilians safe.
Was too busy trying to take
apart their democracy
[00:07:06]
by disempowering their judiciary branch.
Too busy with all of that, too,
to notice that there's a terrorist plot
that he could have foiled
if he was a little more focused.
So hey, what a great way to stay in power.
What a great way to get people's minds off
[00:07:23]
of his dismantling of Israel's democracy.
Just go ahead and bomb
the crap out of the Gaza Strip.
Who cares how many civilians die?
It's disgusting.
Absolutely disgusting.
Well, and I just want to hit on something
that you said earlier
that I think is important, right?
[00:07:40]
You said people have a problem
with you calling this ethnic cleansing.
There's. What else.
- Is it?
- There's.
- Tell me how to describe it.
- Yeah.
Tell me how it's not.
Again, if you want
to look up the the Zionist project.
Right.
It's the idea that there
should be a Jewish state.
[00:07:57]
Some people who are new to an
understanding of this conflict might say
to themselves, well, why couldn't they
just have had a state of Israel or
whatever they wanted to call the state and
just included the indigenous population?
[00:08:13]
That would defeat the purpose
of having an ethno Jewish state.
That's the entire point of the project.
It has to be a Jewish ran state.
And so that's why these
people are being excluded.
[00:08:30]
It's because they're not Jewish.
So the conflict in and of itself
to begin with is the fact
that they're not of that ethnicity.
And so when you when you start doing more
and more settlements
in places like the West Bank
to expand your state, and literally
[00:08:50]
because this is another thing and I don't
know that we have time to get into it.
I think a lot of Americans, the way they
get taught the concept of a settlement
or a settler, is these nice Puritans that
came on the Mayflower and came to America,
and they just built up their nice places,
and they put some churches in it, and they
[00:09:08]
made the Native Americans Christians.
And it's the concept of a settler
or a settlement is not pejorative.
It has an innocuous,
innocuous ring to it, to most Americans.
But when they say people are settling
the West Bank, what does that mean?
[00:09:24]
The Israeli army comes,
pushes a bunch of Palestinians out,
kicks them out by brutal force, keeps
the army there while they build it up.
And that then expands
the borders of the Israeli state.
[00:09:40]
So they replace native Palestinians and
put on Israeli settlers to replace them.
It's it's literally an ethnic cleansing.
The reason why these folks are not being
allowed to be part of the state of Israel
[00:09:59]
is that they're not Jewish, because that's
the entire point of a Zionist project.
And again, there are people
who will say, well, it's justified.
Every time we've been in other people's
states, we've been displaced.
We got genocided by the Germans,
and there are people
[00:10:16]
that will make that argument and don't
want to argue that point with people.
What I would say is, you can't deny
that this is an ethnic cleansing.
The entire Zionist project
is an ethnic one.
Listen, I don't think
that a one state solution
[00:10:32]
is feasible in any way, shape or form.
I think that what's currently happening
takes this whole situation,
this entire conflict,
a billion steps backwards, not forward.
And my issue is, if you want
a two state solution, which I do,
I think that the 1967 borders
should be recognized and honored.
[00:10:51]
The problem is,
the borders weren't honored.
I mean, even in recent years,
how many stories did we did about
the illegal settlements in the West Bank?
There mean there's no outrage about that
right here in the United States?
[00:11:06]
No outrage about that.
No outrage from Netanyahu.
He loves the illegal settlements.
He pursued the illegal settlements.
So anyone who says, look,
all we want is peace, okay?
We want to we want to honor the borders
and we want a two state solution.
[00:11:25]
You can't say that while simultaneously
supporting someone like Benjamin
Netanyahu, who had no issue with Israelis
building illegal settlements in the West
Bank, which is not governed by Hamas, it's
governed by the Palestinian Authority.
[00:11:43]
And it's important that you know that
because as you see footage of what's
happening to Palestinians in the West
Bank today as a result of this war.
Don't let anyone lie to you and tell you
that it's because of Hamas, because even
though it's governed by the Palestinian
Authority, those Palestinian civilians
[00:12:01]
in the West Bank are seen as subhuman.
They've been treated as such.
So the idea that the violence
is one sided, it's been one sided
is laughable to say the least.
It has not been one sided.
You need two parties to agree to peace.
For peace to exist.
[00:12:21]
And peace means
that you have two free states.
Okay, not a free state
and an occupied state.
Two free sovereign states.
That should be the goal.
[00:12:37]
But currently with the United
States is Cosigning.
Two is the opposite of that.
Now I want to get to the.
Two senators who finally saw
what's happening and realized,
[00:12:52]
okay, I guess enough is enough.
The first who spoke out today was,
believe it or not, Senator Dick Durbin.
So I want to go to that video. Let's watch.
I think a lot of people listening
to people in power, the.
President, you, Secretary Blinken,
calling for a humanitarian pause,
[00:13:10]
are asking themselves,
why is that different from a cease fire
two years ago, 2021, during an escalation
of violence between Israel and Gaza?
You called for a cease fire and you said
you, quote, couldn't disagree more
with Netanyahu's policies, quote, when it
came to the treatment of Palestinians.
[00:13:26]
Is a cease fire needed now?
I think it is, at least under in
the context of both sides agreeing,
for example, the release of those
who have been kidnaped
should be part of this immediate release.
That should be the beginning of it.
[00:13:42]
An effort should be made
to engage in conversation
between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
Let's face it,
this has gone on for decades.
Whatever the rationale from the beginning,
it is now reached an intolerable level.
We need to have a resolution
in the Middle East
[00:13:58]
that gives some promise for the future.
Dick Durbin, not a progressive Democrat,
not a democratic socialist
like Senator Bernie Sanders,
who has failed to call for a cease fire
much like President Joe Biden.
He wants a humanitarian pause.
[00:14:15]
The cowardice demonstrated by Bernie
Sanders is so utterly depressing.
Now we have another Democratic senator
who called for a cease fire
soon after Dick Durbin did.
Senator Chris Murphy with a newsy
statement on Israel, quote, it's time
[00:14:33]
for Israel's friends to recognize
that the current operational approach
is causing an unacceptable level
of civilian harm and does not appear
likely to achieve the goal of permanently
ending the threat from Hamas.
In a subsequent tweet,
Andrew Desiderio writes that Murphy,
[00:14:53]
who's been in close touch with white House
and and the state about the war in Israel,
says Israel should immediately
reconsider its approach and shift
to a more deliberate and proportionate
counterterrorism campaign surgically
targeting Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders
and terrorist infrastructure.
[00:15:13]
And that seems to be an admission
that the IDF hasn't been engaging in these
surgical strikes, that they've been pretty
belligerent in indiscriminately bombing
the Gaza Strip, including the south
of the strip, where Palestinian civilians
[00:15:29]
were told to evacuate to for safety.
I mean, obviously, I'm just as dismayed
as you are by Senator Sanders refusal
to get in the fight right now.
It just seems like he never wants
to completely go against Joe Biden.
[00:15:44]
Whatever influence that he may have
in within the the administration.
It's it's predicated on him not coming out
and publicly killing the guy ever.
And so I think that's that's
what we're seeing here.
[00:16:01]
It's it's he's been kind of attached
to Joe Biden at the hip.
Some would say he's
the administration's leftward flank.
But you know, the strings that come
with that is that he doesn't come out
and just oppose him as he should right now
in a in a situation that's as dire as
[00:16:19]
anything that's faced his administration
since Biden got elected.
So I'm not surprised by that.
But, you know, again, shouts to Dick
Durbin and Senator Murphy for coming out
and calling for what's right.
And that's an end to the bombings.
Absolutely.
[00:16:34]
Thanks for watching.
If you become a member,
you get to watch all this ad free.
Except for, of course,
this ad still hits the join button below.
Now Playing (Clips)
Episode
Podcast
The Young Turks: November 2, 2023
- 17 minutes
- 8 minutes
- 16 minutes
- 11 minutes
- 10 minutes
- 8 minutes
- 6 minutes
- 16 minutes
- 7 minutes