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On Gaza Biden Has To Climb Down More Than He Already Has
Shortly after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7 the Biden administration argued for the complete ethnic cleansing of Gaza:
US 'actively working' to establish safe corridor for Gaza civilians: White House – Yeni Safak – Oct 12, 2023
The US is in active talks with Israel and Egypt to establish "safe passage" corridors for civilians in Gaza to flee ongoing Israeli airstrikes, the White House said Wednesday amid an expected ground offensive in the besieged enclave.
"We're actively discussing this with our Israeli and our Egyptian counterparts, we support safe passions for civilians. Civilians are not to blame for what Hamas has done. They didn't do anything wrong," National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters at the White House.
"We are actively working on this with Egyptian and our Israeli counterparts. Civilians are protected under the laws of armed conflict, and they should be given every opportunity to avoid the fighting," he added.
By October 29 Biden was forced to call off those plans.
President Biden @POTUS – 21:23 UTC · Oct 29, 2023
I also spoke with President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi to share my appreciation for Egypt facilitating the delivery of humanitarian assistance to Gaza.
We reaffirmed our commitment to work together and discussed the importance of protecting civilian lives, respect for international humanitarian law, and ensuring that Palestinians in Gaza are not displaced to Egypt or any other nation.
The U.S. president then started to call for a 'pause' in the fighting. This was seen a rejection of a longer term ceasefire as was demanded by other authorities.
There are now signs that he had to give in to pressure to dump that line too:
Joe Biden @JoeBiden – 22:00 UTC · Nov 28, 2023
Hamas unleashed a terrorist attack because they fear nothing more than Israelis and Palestinians living side by side in peace.
To continue down the path of terror, violence, killing, and war is to give Hamas what they seek.
We can’t do that.
There are two reasons for this retreat. The first is that Hamas has, arguably, won the war:
Elijah J. Magnier 🇪🇺 @ejmalrai – 5:45 UTC · Nov 29, 2023
This is how I read it: @Netanyahu is in trouble and can't achieve his objectives. The army is incapable of controlling Gaza without thousands of body bags on both sides.
Biden is bringing the ladder. End of Gaza MILITARY war. Reconstruction war starts.
It is time for Netanyahoo to climb down just as Biden himself has already done.
The second reason for Biden's turn around is the outrage within the Democratic party about his one sided take on the issue:
Just weeks after the start of the Israel-Hamas war, Mr. Biden had invited a small group of prominent Muslim Americans to the White House to discuss Islamophobia in America. The participants were blunt with him, according to four people who were in attendance.
They told him that his embrace of Israel after the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks was seen by many as permission for Israel’s bombing in Gaza. They said the president’s statement casting doubt on the death toll among Palestinians was insulting. And they said the fatal stabbing of a 6-year-old Muslim boy outside Chicago was just one devastating result of the dehumanization of their community.
…
Keith Ellison, Minnesota’s attorney general, who was also at the meeting, said the war had increased risks for Americans, as well.
“Muslim community leaders told President Biden that the suffering of innocent Gazans trying to survive in extremely difficult circumstances has actually increased the likelihood of Islamophobic attacks in the United States,” he said.
Biden was clearly advised that his stand could cost him the presidency:
As Mr. Biden looks toward the 2024 presidential election, his stance on the war could be significant in a contest that may hinge on swing states such as Georgia and Michigan, whose Muslim and Arab American voters turned out for him three years ago.
Democrats in Congress are, for the very first time, attaching conditions to aid for Israel:
“We want the president to secure express assurances from the Netanyahu government regarding a plan to reduce the unacceptable level of civilian casualties, and we want the Netanyahu coalition to commit to full cooperation with our efforts to provide humanitarian assistance to civilians in Gaza,” said Senator Chris Van Hollen, the Maryland Democrat leading the effort, referring to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. “The bottom line is we need those express assurances. How we achieve that is something that we are discussing right now.”
Mr. Van Hollen spearheaded a letter this month to President Biden that was signed by half of the Democratic caucus and raised concerns about whether the weapons provided by the United States would be used in keeping with international law.
Biden's problem now is that Natanyahoo is likely to ignore pressure from the U.S. because he fears for his own political survival:
Some analysts say Israeli domestic pressures will probably prompt Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to revive the invasion sooner rather than later. Delaying it would put Mr. Netanyahu on a collision course with far-right government ministers who grudgingly supported the cease-fire because they were assured that the invasion would continue after only a short truce.
There are of course some measures the U.S. could take to kick Netanyahoo out. As soon as military supplies from the U.S. to Israel stop it will have to end all fighting. In consequence Natanyahoo would be finally kicked out.
But I do not see signs yet that Biden is willing to take that step.
@ c1ue | Nov 29 2023 12:07 utc | 4
Your expectations seem apocalyptic, but I cannot dispute them. The main point is what the Israeli public thinks now, not just what Netanyahu and his government think. I am sure the Israelis themselves are not only nonplussed but a bit confused. Nevertheless, the example of the French colons in Algeria is clear: The settlers must double down on their nationalist fanaticism. So, indeed, the Israeli public may be thinking in terms of a “final solution.” From their reported mouthings, it sure sounds like it.
However, that will still be very difficult for them to implement. In 1948, they drove out around 750,000 people. This time, for a complete ethnic cleansing of everybody, including the Palestinian citizens of Israel inside the Green Line, they would have to drive out about ten times as many. It would also involve breaking a lot of things.
Anyway, the more Israel gets its way militarily, the more it loses in world public opinion, and that will not be without consequences. This is one thing that has held them back from engaging in total physical extermination of the Palestinians and to prefer, always, expulsion, only killing as many as they can get away with, “pour encourager les autres.” Were they to kill all the Gazans, it would no longer be referred to as a mere genocide but would certainly be renamed the Palestinian Holocaust, taking away from the Zionists their monopoly on the use of that term.
Likewise, the terms “antisemitism,” and even “Jew-hatred,” are likely to be contested in new ways. On the one hand, redefining antisemitism as any anti-Zionism or even any mild criticism of Israel weakens the bite of the term. But it has another weakness, which is that Zionism itself is inherently and fundamentally antisemitic, hateful of Judaism and the Jewish tradition which it repudiates in order to join the gentiles as a mere nationality among nationalities. This might come out if Zionism is denounced for what it really is, and the growing number of anti-Zionist Jews in particular may have an effect on this terminology. It is the Zionist who are the self-hating Jews and not their opponents. Zionist alignment with fascism and even to some extent with Naziism is documented in the books of Lenni Brenner.
The consequences of a total ethnic cleansing of Palestine of its Palestinians, coupled with a complete collapse of any possible defense of Zionism on any basis except “might makes right,” need to be carefully considered. I find it hard to imagine what exactly they might be, and there are many possibilities.
For example, @ Peter AU1 | Nov 29 2023 13:08 utc | 15, says, “First step is isolating Israel from the US. There is external pressure for this and also some internal pressure in the US. If fighting resumes, there is likely to be more internal pressure for the US.” Yes, Peter, the really big deal is what is going to happen in the US. First, the US faces external pressure, which may build up to various kinds of retaliation and economic boycott that are already threatening it because of finance imperialism and the backlash against that. It is not in the interests of the US to support Israel and never has been. Israel has never been an asset to the US, just as it was never an asset to the UK either. It has been supported because of the fanatical and widely-penetrating ethnonationalism of Zionism. The Gazan uprising brings this to the attention of the world, including, somewhat, the US public, and some of them don’t like it, obviously. This is similar to how the Algerian War of Independence brought the settler colony to the attention of the French public, where the French left of the day played a significant role in opposing and delegitimating the settlement, and there are signs of that now in the revolt of the left of the Democratic Party and of persons disgusted with both parties in the US. This of course does not mean the pro-Zionist policy will be overthrown, let alone the imperialism, but it does turn it into a conflict.
One question in the US is whether that ill-defined mass of commoners who went out to support Trump, not so much because of Trump himself but because of their desire to say “Eff you” to the establishment, could also turn anti-Zionist. After all, since US nationalism is necessarily, at root, different from and therefore opposed to Zionism, US nationalists ought to resent it, and that would include a lot on the right, including military and police people. Should the word “traitors” start justly to be lodged against supporters of an alien nationalism, the conflict would come out more into the open and become heated.
The other question is whether the establishment itself will be forced by circumstances to turn against Israel. That, however, because of the entrenchedness of Zionist support would nearly require a civil war. I would think most US citizens would not be up for that, because they all have stuff and are justly afraid of losing their stuff.
And then Israel is also armed with nuclear weapons. How would the Algerian War of Independence have turned out if the colons had nuclear weapons? It is not at all impossible for me to imagine a future nuclear confrontation between Israel and the US, since Israel is in effect the enemy of the US, the only foreign power right now that has the possibility of effecting civil strife and disruption in the US itself. The Zionist side is likely to seek to implement totalitarian measures inside the US: Will they get away with it?
Posted by: Cabe | Nov 29 2023 15:50 utc | 56
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