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Friday, March 22, 2024

The fraud of Biden’s call for a “ceasefire” in Gaza

March 22, 2024
The Biden administration, the leading imperialist sponsor of Israel’s Gaza genocide that has killed 32,000 Palestinians, displaced nearly 2 million, and imposed starvation on the entire population, is introducing a UN resolution supporting an “immediate ceasefire” in Gaza.
 
  IDF troops detain and torture people at Shifa hospital in Gaza.
The cynicism of Biden’s call for a “ceasefire” while continuing to fund and arm the government massacring over a hundred Palestinians every day and starving the entire Gazan population is beyond description. The Biden administration hopes that by proclaiming its support for a “ceasefire” loudly enough, it will make the world’s population forget that it fully supports and enables the US-Israeli “final solution” of the Palestinian question.
In reality, every major action taken by the Netanyahu government, from the ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza in October to the assault on al-Shifa Hospital over the past weekend, has been coordinated and approved by the Biden administration, which continues to funnel to Israel the weapons used to massacre the population of Gaza.
In a call with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Sunday, Biden called for discussions with a “team” of “military, intelligence and humanitarian experts” on Israel’s impending onslaught on Rafah, underscoring once again American imperialism’s direct participation in the genocide against the Palestinians. The southernmost city in Gaza is currently packed with over 1.5 million Palestinians with nowhere else to go.
Unlike multiple UN ceasefire resolutions previously vetoed by the United States, the latest resolution explicitly links a ceasefire to the achievement of Israel’s military goals.
The resolution ties the call for a ceasefire to the demand for the release of hostages by Hamas, stating, “The Security Council determines the imperative of an immediate and sustained ceasefire ... and towards that end unequivocally supports ongoing international diplomatic efforts to secure such a ceasefire in connection with the release of all remaining hostages.”
This is a restatement of language used by Biden in his warmongering State of the Union address earlier this month, in which he declared, “Hamas could end this conflict today by releasing the hostages, laying down arms, and surrendering those responsible for October 7th.” In that speech, Biden said that the US has “been working non-stop to establish an immediate ceasefire that would last for at least six weeks.”
The claim by the Biden administration to support a “ceasefire” in Gaza is belied by one fact: It continues to be the policy of the United States government that Israel has carte blanche to commit any war crime in Gaza, without leading to a reduction of US weapons shipments.
Earlier this month, Biden declared, “The defense of Israel is still critical. So there’s no red line where I’m going to cut off all weapons.”
Last week, when asked if there was anything Israel could do that would curtail US funding, Principal Deputy Press Secretary Olivia Dalton replied, “I don’t think it’s productive to assign ‘red line’ terminology to what is a very complex set of policies.”
The unmatched hypocrisy of the Biden administration on the Gaza genocide flows from the contradiction between the interests of American imperialism and the sentiments of the vast majority of the American and world population. While Washington is determined to resort to the most barbaric methods, including genocide, to secure its hegemonic position in the latest redivision of the world among the great powers, millions of workers and young people around the world oppose the war crimes being perpetrated by the US and Israel against the population of Gaza.
It is for this reason that the White House has deliberately sought to hide its leading role as the enabler of the Gaza genocide. Earlier this month, press reports revealed that the Biden administration sought to hide weapons transfers for use in Gaza by splitting them up into over 100 separate transactions, each falling below a minimum threshold for reporting to Congress.
The secret weapons shipments include, in the words of the Wall Street Journal, “at least 23,000 precision-guided weapons, including Hellfire air-to-ground missiles, drones, and Joint Direct Attack Munition kits, which turn unguided bombs into ‘smart’ bombs,” as well as bunker-buster bombs.
The Biden administration has spread falsehoods about every aspect of Israel’s genocide. On March 18, the Washington Post published an article based on extensive interviews with Biden administration officials, revealing the extent to which the White House consciously lied to the public to justify the genocide.
Three weeks after the October 7 attacks, “top Biden officials” delivered a private briefing in which they admitted that Israel was carrying out deliberate airstrikes against civilians.
The article reported, “On Oct. 27, three weeks into Israel’s punishing counterattack in Gaza, top Biden officials privately told a small group assembled at the White House what they would not say in public: Israel was regularly bombing buildings without solid intelligence that they were legitimate military targets.”
And yet, to this day, every time a White House official is asked this question, the White House asserts that the bombings of civilians amount to a series of unfortunate accidents. For example, when asked in December whether Israel was carrying out indiscriminate bombing, White House spokesman Matthew Miller said, “We have not made a formal determination to that question.”
In a subsequent statement, White House national security spokesman John Kirby said, “There is a clear intent by the Israelis ... that they are doing everything they can to reduce civilian casualties.”
The Washington Post account proves that both of these statements were flat-out lies.
In yet another example, the Biden administration gave Israel a green light in November to attack al-Shifa Hospital by declaring, in the words of Kirby, “We have information that confirms that Hamas is using that particular hospital for a command-and-control node.”
In reality, no such information existed, because the Biden administration knew the claims by Netanyahu were false. The Post cited Senator Chris Van Hollen, who declared there was a “disconnect” between the “administration’s public statements and the classified findings” presented to Congress.
The Biden administration, together with the other major imperialist powers, bears responsibility for the Gaza genocide. American imperialism sees it as an essential component of its efforts to subjugate and dominate the Middle East, which is focused on preparations for a region-wide war targeting Iran.
The struggle against the Gaza genocide is the struggle against the imperialist governments that are enabling it, as part of a global eruption of imperialist barbarism throughout the Middle East and around the world.
Workers and young people all over the world must take up the struggle against the Gaza genocide as a critical component of the building of a mass antiwar movement armed with a socialist perspective.

 Apologists for Israel’s Mass Murder in Gaza Fall Back on ‘Antisemitism’ Claims
If we condemn Hamas for its October 7 attacks in Israel, we’re not accused of anti-Arab bigotry. Nor should we be. Nothing could possibly justify the atrocities that Hamas committed against hundreds of civilians, who were the majority of the 1,200 people killed as a result of the attacks by Hamas forces. And nothing can justify the taking of civilian hostages.
But if we condemn Israel for its actions since then, we might be accused of antisemitism. Meanwhile, nothing could possibly justify the atrocities by Israel in Gaza, where the death toll is now estimated at 32,000, while uncounted thousands of other Palestinian people are buried under rubble. Seventy percent of the victims have been children and women.
The U.S. government continues to make the atrocities possible. As retired Israeli Major General Yitzhak Brick said midway through the second month of the war: “All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it’s all from the U.S.” He added: “Everyone understands that we can’t fight this war without the United States. Period.”
Because of federal laws and minimal decency, the U.S. should have cut off all military aid to Israel long ago. A single standard of human rights should apply. But adhering to that simple, basic precept can provoke the virulent epithet of “antisemitism.”
The gist of the trick is to equate Israel with the Jewish religion – and then to equate opposition to Israel with antisemitism.
And so, writing in the New York Daily News last November, an official at the American Jewish Committee declared that a “virus of antisemitism has spread to the U.S., where college campuses and city streets have been taken over by anti-Israel protesters raging, ‘From the river to the sea!’ – a call for the mass murder of Israelis, and ‘Globalize the Intifada!’ – an appeal to kill Jews worldwide.”
As Peter Beinart pointed out in a 2022 essay, “Under the definition of antisemitism promoted by the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee and the State Department, Palestinians become antisemites if they call for replacing a state that favors Jews with one that does not discriminate based on ethnicity or religion.”
While Israel continues to slaughter children, women and men – no more guilty of anything than a crowd you might see at a local supermarket – the extreme misuse of the “antisemitism” charge often boils down to: Be quiet. Don’t protest. Don’t even speak up.
Of course antisemitism does exist in the United States and the rest of the world, and it should be condemned. At the same time, to cry wolf – to misuse the term to try to intimidate people into silence while Israel’s atrocities continue in Gaza – is an abuse of the word antisemitism and a disservice to everyone who wants a single standard of human rights.
Last week, 17 rabbis and rabbinical students went to Capitol Hill urging a ceasefire and an end to the unconditional U.S. military aid to Israel. Rabbi May Ye said: “We are rabbis representing hundreds of thousands of Jews affiliated with Jewish Voice for Peace Action imploring our leaders to end their complicity in the Israeli military’s genocidal campaign in the name of tzedek (justice) and real safety for all people.”
Are we supposed to believe that those rabbis are antisemitic?
The Jewish American author Anna Baltzer grew up learning about the evils of antisemitism. “Much of my family was killed in the Holocaust,” she wrote. “My grandparents arrived at Ellis Island traumatized by the unfathomable murder of their families in the gas chambers of Auschwitz while the world let it happen.” And she added: “We must get clear that Israel’s wiping out of entire families in Gaza is not simply revenge for October 7; Israel is continuing its long-existing practice of forcing Palestinians out of Palestine and closing the door behind them.”
Do Baltzer’s words make her antisemitic?
In mid-October, 43 Jewish American writers, academics and artists – including Michael Chabon, Francisco Goldman, Masha Gessen, Judith Butler, Tony Kushner, and V (formerly known as Eve Ensler) – released an open letter to President Biden saying: “We condemn attacks on Israeli and Palestinian civilians. We believe it is possible and in fact necessary to condemn Hamas’ actions and acknowledge the historical and ongoing oppression of the Palestinians. We believe it is possible and necessary to condemn Hamas’ attack and take a stand against the collective punishment of Gazans that is unfolding and accelerating as we write.”
Along with denouncing Israel’s “war crimes and indefensible actions,” the statement added: “We write to publicly declare our opposition to what the Israeli government is doing with American assistance.”
Do those words mean that the signers of the statement are antisemitic?
Or how about the more than 100 Jewish Americans who signed the statement released this week denouncing AIPAC, the Israel-is-never-wrong lobby?
Ten years ago, 40 Holocaust survivors issued a statement condemning Israel for its “wholesale effort to destroy Gaza.” The statement, also signed by 287 people who were descendants of Holocaust survivors or victims, called for “an end to all forms of racism, including the ongoing genocide of Palestinian people” and decried “the extreme, racist dehumanization of Palestinians in Israeli society, which has reached a fever pitch.”
Were the 327 Jewish signers of the statement antisemitic?
For that matter, when I write here that the Israeli government has been committing mass murder and genocide in Gaza, does that mean I’m antisemitic?
There’s a word for seeing – and saying – that Israel is engaged in large-scale crimes against humanity. And that word isn’t “antisemitism.” It’s realism.
 
Every Person Killed in Gaza Has a Name
March 21, 2024
 
A pretty woman has her picture taken with others in her family. She rests her head on her hand, gazes softly at the camera, a wisp of a smile on her face, aware of her beauty. The woman on her right, possibly her sister, makes the V for victory sign with her fingers, and the smile of the third woman, possibly their mother, is restrained. The picture was taken at some kind of graduation ceremony.
It was the last graduation ceremony. The woman in the front of the picture is Jannat Iyad Abu Zbeada. She dreamt of teaching at Gaza University. Earlier this month her face looked out from the front page of The New York Times. She was 21 years old. In an initiative to which it is impossible to remain indifferent, the newspaper presented some of the faces behind the numbers, some of the stories behind the dead, some of the people behind the terrorists.
Thirty-one thousand dead from the war in the statistics became 23 human stories. “They served cappuccinos, repaired cars and acted onstage. They raised children and took care of older parents. They treated wounds, made pizza and put too much sugar in their tea.”
“Their stories offer a snapshot of the vast human loss – about one in every 73 of Gaza’s 2.2 million people.”
As portraits of our hostages and our dead accompany us in the media, in social media, on the streets, as their stories are being told nonstop for about half a year now, it is necessary to have a look at the other, even darker side of the reality as well, the side we refuse to respect, to acknowledge, to feel or observe.
Heba Jourany was a physiotherapist who dreamt of visiting Ireland. Youssef Salama had served as the minister of religious affairs in the Palestinian Authority. Jeries Sayegh belonged to the Greek Orthodox minority; decades ago he had worked as a bank accountant in Israel. He died, according to the Times, from an undiagnosed health crisis after the fighting prevented him from reaching a hospital.
Farajallah Tarazi was also a member of the Greek Orthodox minority, and had “studied aviation engineering in Egypt and worked for airlines in Libya and Uganda before returning to Gaza and managing an aid program for the United Nations. He lived near the sea and swam often when the weather was warm. He sheltered with other Christians in a church during the war and died after clashes prevented him from reaching a hospital after his gallbladder ruptured.”Sayel Al-Hinnawi, 22, was a law student who initiated a campaign with the slogan “We want to live,” aimed against the Hamas regime in Gaza. Osama Al-Haddad raised pigeons and goats. Belal Abu Samaan was a gym teacher at the American International School in Gaza. Faida Al-Krunz had 15 grandchildren and was about to leave Gaza for the first time in her life for a visit to Turkey. She had already packed her suitcase and had tucked olive oil and za’atar into it.
Mahmoud Elian was Lubna’s father. He had bought his 14-year-old daughter a violin. She studied at a
Dr. Abdallah Shehada was a surgeon and had directed the Abu Yousef Al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah until his retirement. Ahmed Abu Shaeera, 39, was a garage mechanic. He had left Gaza only once, for the World Cup in Qatar. Salah Abo Harbed was photographed in an amazing parkour stunt on the Gaza seashore, and had taught circus arts to children at the Free Gaza Circus Center. Hedaya Hamad was a mental health nurse.
Yousef Abu Moussa was a 7-year-old with a mop of curls, whose mother called him “medallion” and whose father dreamt he would be a doctor like himself. Farah Alkhatib was 12 years old; her twin sister Marah survived the bombardment. Her baby sister, who was born during the war, was named after her. Youmna Shaqalih was four months old. Her mother was killed in another bombardment. Nada Abdulhadi was 10 when she died. Her 8-year-old sister Leen was found dead, trapped among the ruins, four days later.
Siwar and Selena al-Raiss were 3 years old and 21 months old, respectively. The elder sister loved Kinder chocolates, the younger loved to play with a toy Jeep with a picture of a duck on it. In their photo, the girls are seen playing with what appear to be Duplo blocks.

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