Israeli forces have taken out a convoy of three trucks that was bringing food to Gaza. Apparently, the 32,000+ civilians they’ve already offed in their Project Vengeance, now in its fifth month, haven’t been enough. Deliberate starvation is next on the menu for the unfortunates trapped there.
As the IDF knows, its ability to destroy life in Gaza — hardly different from what the Russians are doing, albeit more incompetently, in Ukraine — wouldn’t be possible without American around-the-clock deliveries of munitions. Israeli generals have acknowledged that, if US deliveries stopped, so would Israel’s offensive.
Nothing screams “leverage” more than this admission. Yet what is Washington’s response to what by any measure is an ongoing war crime? “Biden’s not changing Israel policy after deadly strike on aid workers.” Washington could stop the madness with three words to the Israeli government: “Deliveries stop now.”
Why Biden refuses to do this goes unexplained. It’s said that he “was privately enraged by the deadly strike,” but that that is “as far as he and the White House will go for now”. He is said to have “upbraided Israel … calling for ‘accountability’ to those responsible and demanding more humanitarian assistance be allowed into Gaza”.
Call it the Gaza Medley, a series of tunes played for months. The basic notes, though, are always the same: Israel commits a war crime, Washington professes outrage and demands that Israel do better, Israel shrugs (or even tells Washington to fuck off), and goes to the airport to collect the latest delivery … for use in the next day’s war crime.
Not surprisingly, questions are being asked, even by people in the Administration: “It’s just rinse and repeat with the Israelis. The American political system can’t or won’t draw a real line with them and that is regrettable.” Those who’ve been paying attention over the long-term will say, No shit; it’s been this way since 1967.
What the Administration does do is have John Kirby, NSC spokesman/clerk, spout the catechism: “We are still supporting their right to defend themselves and we’re going to continue to do that.” To be sure, Kirby isn’t talking to Americans; he’s assuing Israelis that Washington will continue to back unconditionally Israel’s crime spree.
What any sensible person knows is that what Israel has been doing stopped months ago being about defending themselves. The real objectives are two-fold: first, to reinforce the narrative that Palestinians, even the most docile, have a single choice: permanent subjugation or abandoning their land. Second, to prepare the world for forced expulsion.
As for the convoy wipe-out, Kirby lets us know that the US is “also going to see what the result of the investigation is. I’m not going to get ahead of decisions that haven’t been made yet.” If anyone has mastered the art of non-investigation investigations it’s Israelis, always two steps ahead of American provincial rubes. Guarantee: Kirby will agree it was all an accident.
Yet we know this was no accident. The convoy was marked “World Central Kitchen”. Israelis hit it “multiple times despite having been informed of the convoy’s movements,” i.e., Israelis knew it was coming, when and where. Yet Washington will lamely accept at face value General Halevi’s claim of “misidentification at night during a war in very complex conditions”.
When trying to figure out Biden’s near-pathological, unconditional support for Israel, one stumbles onto news that what really upsets people in Washington about this latest case is that they “are close to” the head of World Central Kitchen and “have dined in his many restaurants” in Washington. Clearly, the 32,000 Palestinian civilians wiped out to date are mere statistics.
Not that that will cause Biden to change course. Such a move “would break, rather than bend, the relationship with Israel. … [It] would end any sway the US has with Israel over protecting civilians”. This is fatuous in the extreme. The US has leverage of over Israel; it just refuses to use it. How, then, is the US currently compelling Israel to protect civilians?
Say what one will about Trump’s dragging morality and decency into the sewer, but he has never directly aided and abetted the killing of thousands of people, and the intentional physical destruction of a people and its living space. That will render hollow Biden’s likely claim during election season that Trump represents moral squalor. Biden’s right up (down) there with him.
