We’ve reached the point where Everything that Joe Biden and his mouthpieces say about the Gaza war is a lie.
They say that they deplore civilian deaths in Gaza, and yet they send more money for Israeli munitions and block any effort to hold Israel back, “casting international humanitarian law to the winds.” And when they are pressed about this, Biden’s surrogate Nancy Pelosi says that no American arms have gone to kill Palestinian civilians.
They say that Israel has a strategy to defeat Hamas. It has no strategy. (Even the liberal Zionists admit.) It has only rage and anguish, at the highest level.
They say that this war has given hope to the two-state solution. This is the talking point from Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, Chris Coons, Martin Indyk, Tom Friedman, J Street and the State Department. But Netanyahu is dead set against a Palestinian state.
So they say that the problem is Netanyahu – he’s the “pinchpoint,” Senator Coons says — but the Israeli Knesset voted overwhelmingly this week to oppose a Palestinian state.
They say that Biden has argued with Netanyahu about the embarrassing fact that Israel is wantonly killing 10s of thousands of Palestinian civilians. But there is actually No diversity in Israeli leadership over collective punishment, smashing Gaza to bits and mass murder and ethnic cleansing. Over 2/3 of Jewish Israelis oppose humanitarian aid to Gaza.
The State Department and Tom Friedman declare we are just trying to keep alive the dream of normalizing Israel with Arab autocracies so as to spread peace through the bad neighborhood of the Middle East. But Saudi Arabia says it won’t dream of such a thing till Palestinians have sovereignty. And everyone knows that a chief cause of the horrific Hamas attacks on Israeli families in their homes was that the international community was taking Palestinians for granted.
It’s all lies, because Biden knows that the truth will just hurt him. All of America, even evangelicals, are for a ceasefire. Michigan progressives are deserting Biden. The rage is “unprecedented,” even the NY Times says. “The chorus of voices from foreign capitals has grown thunderous in recent days… “
Biden and his friends tell these lies for a simple reason that I talk about to the point of boredom (because so few talk about it). He needs the Israel lobby on his side, way more than he thinks he needs Michigan progressives.
This week Biden had a fundraiser in L.A. co-hosted by Haim Saban – whose only issue is Israel – and a vice-chairman of the ADL— which says that to oppose Zionism makes you an antisemite. Ticket prices, $3,000 to $250,000.
And as Saban told TheWrap, Biden is “pristine” on Israel in these “dire times.”
He’s paying a political price… There’s never been a president as supportive in facts, not only in words, of Israel… [M]ost specifically, in these dire times for Israel, he’s been pristine.
Without the U.S., Israel would be fighting with “sticks and stones.”
These lines from the leading Democratic donor should have been on our airwaves and leading papers. But no, this is a scandal in plain sight because it would just feed the claim that pro-Israel Jews have outsize political influence in the U.S., which everyone knows anyway. And by the way, a PR firm with close links to the White House is an attack dog against journalists who say a kind word about Palestinians.
Biden is pristine because the American Jewish community and Israel are deluded about Israel.
They believe Israel is a robust democracy. No, it is a robust apartheid state– all the human rights organizations affirm– a Jewish supremacist state in which Palestinians have second-class and no-class rights– an order that Palestinians will reject, by any means.
So today Israel perpetrates a likely genocide against those people, killing nearly 30,000 Palestinians, most of them trapped civilians.
And Biden is pristine in his support of this slaughter because he needs political backing in the U.S.
Back in 2015, Obama said that only Israel in all the world was against the Iran deal and it would be an “abrogation” of his constitutional duty if he went with Israel.
Today all the world but Israel wants the slaughter to end, and Biden is abrogating his constitutional duty so as to be pristine in support of Israel.
The difference between Obama and Biden is that Obama was in his second term and could take a stand against the tail wagging the dog. Biden is in his first and cannot. So he and everyone around him just lies.
Joe Biden and Bibi Netanyahu are war criminals. They need to face a trial at The Hague.
Whether the MAGA criminal cult leader, or Joseph R. Biden, when it comes to Palestinian rights, freedom, and the security of their children, neither man will step up and do the right thing.
Trump, not only cut off aid to the Palestinians, his crooked son in law also made him move the US embassy to Jerusalem (for Adelson’s millions), something NO other US President wanted to do, for obvious reasons. Which begs the question at this point, where is Kushner, and why is he not volunteering to bring peace, and stop the massacre going on in Gaza? He totally ignored the Palestinians, and arrogantly deprived them of any input into what directly affects them, and their rights to self determination. I guess he is busy counting his billions of dollars gifted by an Arab leader.
As for Biden, He has as a devoted zionist, chosen to side with the people accused of war crimes, and facing genocide charges, and has ignored all the pleas, protests, and UN requests, that beg for a ceasefire, so that innocent lives, especially little children, can be saved. He is not budging, he is not wavering, he is not supporting human rights, nor working to end a brutal occupation. He has cut off all aid to UNRWA, not hesitating to question the accusations without any evidence, of a nation notorious for lying to the world. This old grandfather seem to think that Palestinian children starving, dying, and suffering in the cold, are all okay. There is no other explanation for his inhumane reaction to their plight. That is the message he has consistently sent to the world.
When Navalny was killed by Russia, Biden immediately imposed 600 sanctions against Russia.
When Israel kills 30,000 civilians including nearly 14,000 little children (and counting), how much MORE sanctions do they deserve? How many sanctions against Israel by the US so far, for violating international laws, and the war crimes that human rights organizations all say that they have damning evidence of? Zero.
Thanks for another cogent analysis, though I question the acceptance of the notion that Biden has no choice. That may be the logic of Beltway realpolitik, but it is a sort of lowest common denominator. I recall LBJ quoting Proverbs 29:18 to say, “where there is no vision, the people perish.” With hindsight, many would say that his vision was a good one on some important issues, but flawed on some important others. I would say the same is true of Biden. When I see the daily news from Gaza, I think of the malign vision conveyed by Psalm 137:9, “Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.” I expect a better vision–and more moral courage–from Mr. Biden.
I tried to post a version of this yesterday, but I think it was consigned to the spam filter when I tried to edit a minor error after hitting the post comment button. It’s no great loss, but is a lesson to use care when posting.
More musing on what “pristine” means:
Writing at The Nation Sophie Hurwitz considers at some length a question that has increasingly bothered me in an article titled “Why Does Biden Keep Making the Same Offensive Comment About Jews?” The subhead reads “Over and over again, Biden has said that no Jew in the world would be safe without Israel. What is he talking about?”
Initially, I thought perhaps this was a sign of dementia . . . a man out of touch with present day reality thoughtlessly repeating a slogan he had heard years ago. Perhaps, I thought, this was some version of the “eternal sunshine of the spotless mind.” A “pristine” mind untroubled by contemporary facts and moral quandaries. But Hurwitz notes that Biden has said this repeatedly, for years, though there have been variations. In the distant past, he spoke more about American interests. Thus, in 1986, while pushing through an aid package for Israel, “Were there not an Israel, The United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interests in the region.”
She explains that:
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/biden-jews-israel-safety/
“They believe Israel is a robust democracy. No….Palestinians have second-class and no-class rights– an order that Palestinians will reject, by any means.”
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Mondoweiss could inform on what Palestinian citizens of Israel are thinking about their citizenship.