It’s a genocide the U.S. is directly funding and for which it is providing diplomatic, political and military cover, writes Caitlin Johnstone.
The White House. (U.S. National Park Service)
In a bizarre new article titled “White House frustrated by Israel’s onslaught but sees few options,” The Washington Post reports that the Biden administration believes Israel has gone too far and is killing too many civilians in its assault on Gaza, but are powerless to do anything about it.
The Post’s Yasmeen Abutaleb writes the following, citing anonymous U.S. officials:
“As Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza escalates, the Biden administration finds itself in a precarious position: Administration officials say Israel’s counterattack against Hamas has been too severe, too costly in civilian casualties, and lacking a coherent endgame, but they are unable to exert significant influence on America’s closest ally in the Middle East to change its course.
U.S. efforts to get Israel to scale back its counterattack in response to the Oct. 7 killings by Hamas that left at least 1,400 Israelis dead have failed or fallen short. The Biden administration urged Israel against a ground invasion, privately asked it to consider proportionality in its attacks, advocated a higher priority on avoiding civilian deaths, and called for a humanitarian pause — only for Israeli officials to dismiss or reject all those suggestions. …
In recent days, they said, the administration has become deeply uncomfortable with some of Israel’s tactics. Last week, Israel bombed the densely packed Jabalya refugee camp two days in a row, an attack that Israel said killed a Hamas leader but that also killed dozens of civilians. On Friday, an Israeli airstrike hit near the entrance of Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, a strike the Israeli military said was aimed at an ambulance ‘being used by a Hamas terrorist cell.’ And Israeli authorities recently expelled thousands of Palestinians who had been in Israel for work, sending them back into Gaza even as it continues to bomb the enclave.”
All this helpless hand-wringing is exposed for the load of ridiculous bullshit that it plainly is a few paragraphs down in the very same article:
“Washington is Israel’s largest military backer, and the White House has asked Congress for an additional $14 billion in aid for Israel in the wake of the Hamas attacks. But administration officials and advisers say the levers the United States theoretically has over Israel, such as conditioning military aid on making the military campaign more targeted, are nonstarters, partly because they would be so politically unpopular in any administration and partly because, aides say, Biden himself has a personal attachment to Israel.”
So the Biden administration does in fact have tons of leverage it can use to stop the genocidal massacre in Gaza, it just doesn’t want to because it would be “politically unpopular” and because “Biden himself has a personal attachment to Israel.”
The U.S. president does indeed have a personal attachment to Israel. Biden has proudly described himself as a Zionist, and has gone on record to say that if Israel didn’t exist the United States would have to invent an Israel to advance its interests in the middle east.
In summary, this Washington Post article is telling us that Biden is powerless to stop the genocidal massacre in Gaza because he really likes the people doing the genocide and doesn’t want to stop them from doing it.
We’ve been asked to believe a lot of very stupid things since this onslaught began last month, but the idea that the Biden administration is powerless to stop a genocide that it is directly arming and supplying has got to be the absolute stupidest.
Of course the U.S. can stop this. Of course it can. The U.S. is currently pouring weapons into Israel on an almost daily basis, is pouring billions of dollars into Israel and is preparing to pour in billions more, and is currently physically assisting Israeli operations in Gaza with drones and special operations forceswhile U.S. warships swarm the eastern Mediterranean.
All of this can easily be pulled away if Israel refuses to stop murdering children by the thousands in an indiscriminate bombing campaign that reportedly isn’t even doing any meaningful damage to Hamas.
What’s that? You didn’t know this murderous bombing campaign is doing no meaningful damage to Hamas? Well let’s clear that up then.
A new report by The New York Times cites an anonymous U.S. military official saying that Israel “has not come close” to destroying Hamas leadership or even its mid-level command.
“One senior U.S. defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details, said the operations so far have not come close to destroying Hamas’s senior and middle leadership ranks,” The New York Times reports.
This revelation is devastating to the Israeli narrative about what it has actually been doing in Gaza. Israel said on Thursday that it had bombed some 12,000 targets in Gaza since October 7, and that number would be even higher by now, especially with unprecedented levels of strikes now being reported by people on the ground.
There are reportedly only some 20–25,000 members of Hamas in total, which means the number of airstrikes is fast approaching the total number of Hamas members in existence, yet going from this New York Times report no meaningful damage has been done to Hamas itself.
This despite the fact that we are being told Hamas makes prevalent use of “human shields”, hiding their units in clusters of civilians for protection. How has Israel managed to kill some ten thousand Palestinians in Gaza without managing to do any real damage to Hamas if Hamas fighters are hiding amongst all those civilians? You’d think by sheer law of averages they’d have taken out some significant leaders with all that civilian-massacring?
Maybe Hamas is using really high-level human shields, the kind that don’t even have any Hamas fighters hidden behind them. It’s all 100 percent human shield with zero percent combatant — the most secure type of human shield there is!
The Washington Post report about Biden’s imaginary powerlessness to stop this massacre makes a bit more sense when you look at an NBC News article which came out a few days earlier, which reports that White House leadership are concerned about an emerging “narrative” that Biden supports the killing in Gaza.
NBC News reports the following:
“Biden and his top aides have in the past week adjusted the administration’s public message to emphasize concern for Palestinian civilians and U.S. efforts to get them humanitarian relief. The shift follows growing criticism at home and abroad of Biden’s decision to swiftly and staunchly back Israel’s military response to Hamas while initially speaking less forcefully about protecting Palestinians; meanwhile, images of civilian casualties in Gaza continue to ricochet around the world.
“‘If this really goes bad, we want to be able to point to our past statements,’ a senior U.S. official said. The official said the administration is particularly worried about a narrative taking hold that Biden supports all Israeli military actions and that U.S.-provided weapons have been used to kill Palestinian civilians, many of them women and children. The Defense Department has said the U.S. is not putting any limits or restrictions on the weapons it’s providing Israel.”
So it’s probably a safe bet that the anonymous U.S. officials who spoke to The Washington Post about how “frustrated” the White House is with Israel’s unbridaled murderousness are White House officials who are trying to manage the public narrative about Biden. They’re trying to let the Biden White House wash its hands of this genocidal massacre like Pontius Pilate, even as it backs that very massacre to the hilt.
I have said it before and I’ll say it again: the U.S. is every bit as culpable for the murder of all these civilians as Israel. Don’t let the empire’s narrative managers try to tell you different.
Caitlin Johnstone’s work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following her on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud, YouTube, or throwing some money into her tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy her books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff she publishes is to subscribe to the mailing list at her website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything she publishes. For more info on who she is, where she stands and what she’s trying to do with her platform, click here. All works are co-authored with her American husband Tim Foley.
This article is from CaitlinJohnstone.com.au and re-published with permission.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
It is somewhat true that in the past Hamas had used school as bases to launch rockets, etc. though, back then, those strategies were employed to make it difficult for Israel to target terrorists without killing innocents; it was a brutal strategy by terrorists also aiming at drawing international condemnation.
Today, however, is a different story; it does not seems that many rockets have been launched from hospitals, churches, residential houses; there is no more meaningful reason to do that, as Israel has already draw enough international condemnation for its bestiality. Moreover, Hamas soldiers are sure not trying to hide or escape; especially now, that they have been able to draw IDF soldiers where they wanted them to be – in their territory.
I think we overstate the capacity of our mind to be/remain rational; madness in humans comes much easier than we think, human’s Achilles heel, our mind.
The more a human become powerful and accountable the more it is difficult for him/her to accept failure; and, the greater the power, the more ordinary human lives become meaningless in front of the “grand plan” that every leader has, or better say “grand escape” from failure and lack of understanding of, sympathy for the diverse human nature.
Netanyahu has invoked the ‘Amalek’, a nation in the Hebrew Bible that the Israelites were ordered to wipe out in an act of revenge to justify the genocide in Gaza. When leaders use religious elements, symbols, mystical figures, event, etc. we know we are in front of people who potentially have lost reasoning or want to drag the masses into their madness. Even Biden used to mention God quite often at the beginning of the war in Ukraine, then stopped, probably because PRs told him to.
If religious/mystical speeches are red flags, dehumanizing the enemy really does not leave much room to misinterpretation, to deny that human madness is unfolding; forget Gallant, “we are fighting human animals”, his support for the starvation of an entire population, take what the Heritage Minister Amihai Eliyahu said, that in Gaza there are no civilians, and that a nuclear attack could be a viable option. The mentioning of Nuclear device could means two things: fear and profound hatred. Israel is afraid and hatred is the result, one reinforces the other.
Madness could even be more subtle; there was an article of a Italian military expert Mr. Gilli I believe, who recently said that for IDF forces inside Gaza is risky, “every children could potentially carry an explosive device…” Statistically, children used for terrorist attack are limited; but the reason why the expert highlighted children as a potential threat, it could be that consciously/unconsciously he tried to downplay the murder of thousands of children by IDF
The western culture is sick and needs help,
Thanks again, Caitlin!
I think you missed an “important” effort by the us “diplomats” in that they have reportedly asked Israel to drop smaller bombs?! (sic)
I can’t think of any more dysfunctional state than Israel – a state which takes it upon itself to liquidate/imprison/murder its inhabitants – en masse. The skills and aptitudes of the indigenous inhabitants would seem to be beneficial, but apparently the ideological quasi-religious fixation on racial purity and godliness stands in the way.
The Republic of South Africa during the Apartheid period also stood in the way of growth and development, and was confronted with a similar structure but finally woke up to the political/social reality. Segregation in the US also followed in the march to freedom and then decline. But apparently Israel somehow thinks that it can buck the trend. Deary me – when will it ever learn? The quasi-religious structure can not and will not endure, it will simply follow all the other. In passing it is also to take note of western Europe’s decline. Particularly Germany, who had abased itself before its Lord and Master the United States. As Martin Luther said before his Master. Here, I stand I can do no other, God Help Me.
Resolution to the UN regarding Palestine and Gaza 05/11/2023
250 words A
1; In order to protest against the genocidal policies that the current administration in Tel Aviv are carrying out against the Palestinian People in Gaza, this resolution calls for the immediate diplomatic isolation of Israel, via closure of all of the statelets’ embassies of the Zionists, until this war crime against the Palestinian People in Gaza is stopped and also until such a time arrives that a 2-state solution, as defined by the UN is realized.
2; Also call for, if possible, the simultaneous opening of Palestinian embassies in all countries that support this resolution to close the Israeli embassies with the latter remaining closed until the 2-state solution, as defined by the UN, is realised.
3; Therefore, this resolution calls for the immediate closure of all the Israeli embassies in the world or in countries that support this resolution for the reasons given above.
4; In addition, this resolution calls therefore, for the immediate opening of Palestinian embassies in all of the countries of the world or in all countries that support this resolution and also if at this present time, countries are unable or unwilling to support this resolution calling for the immediate diplomatic isolation of Israel, via closure of the Zionist embassy in their own particular country, then in the event of such a scenario occurring, this resolution still calls for the immediate opening of a Palestinian embassy should such a scenario present itself.
The U.S. is a rouge nation. It doesn’t follow rules. Consider Syria and Iraq whose countries have both requested that the Americans leave. If that be the case, Mr. Bidden can say to Bibi, “I’m going to give you an offer you can’t refuse.” The bombing would stop immediately. But, that’s the bombing. It will not release the Palestinians from their concentration camp.
But the world was powerless to stop the US from killing millions of people throughout multiple countries over the last 25, or even 70 years. Why does anyone expect any differently now? I mean, what is the end game? The end game is total control over as large a population of the world as we can manage to direct, and if US citizens have to sit in their own homes and drone bomb civilians to death in other countries (if we’re lucky and desperate of reason), well that’s just Annie Oakley telling you the direction in which to shoot. You can’t mess with the narrative, and when the narrative is gone, so will be those who dared to offer a counter-narrative. Israel is just an outlier of that same narrative, with a little sacredness and a little Armageddon thrown in. Humans do not matter in this narrative. That’s the lesson we are being told to learn. And not just by Israel. Imagine being so weak that you need the United States of America to fulfill your goals and objectives. Being called a client state would be a backwards compliment. Meanwhile, Biden is too stupid to realize that it isn’t 1990 something anymore, and the graft won’t keep sticking to the branch you’ve been paid to attach it to. The bloom is definitely off the rose.
Israel: murdering Palestinians since 1948—–and they are still murdering. WHY, America?
By saying it is powerless, the US betrays two negative things – it’s apparent weakness, and its obvious complicity. Neither of which, in isolation, does it want to be seen as. It’s painted itself into a corner, and is afraid to back out.
Another nail (or 2 or 3 or 4) in its coffin, I think.
Best protest sign last week in SF: “No More Dough for Genocide Joe.”
The truth is that the USA cannot criticize Israel because Israel is doing nothing that the USA would not do and has not done in the same situation. Did you miss the war on terror.
The US administration knows full well that nothing they say, ask, plead with Israel will make a tiny difference. Israel knows they can “get away with murder”.
The same nation that told Israel the UK and France in 1956 to stop their invasion of Egypt….and they did.
excellent point!
Biden and his top aides have in the past week adjusted the administration’s public message to emphasize concern for Palestinian civilians and U.S. efforts to get them humanitarian relief.
Biden can look good ‘pleading’ with Netanyahu for a humanitarian pause, knowing well and good that Netanyahu isn’t about to stop. So, yes, it appears to be true that down deep Biden and his fellow neo-cons don’t care at all
omg, the administration has been deeply uncomfortable… (blood, guts and limbs everywhere). this will surely comfort the mothers of the children that will die today and tomorrow and the day after, and the day…
When Trump said that he could end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours, anyone who has the slightest inkling of how this country really operates would have no trouble conjuring up an image of how that would work. It is the image of tearing up all those checks for armaments going to our proxy in Eastern Europe, just as American taxpayers are currently subsidizing the ethnic cleansing going on in Gaza with out proxy government in Jerusalem. The only possible credulous audience for the nonsense we churn out consists of Americans who, in the land of “freedom,” are fed lies like geese are stuffed for foie gras. The rulers of this country are not only mendacious, they are cowardly, knowing full well that asking U.S. young people to put on uniforms and die fighting our battles, would result in the same king of mass protests we saw during the war in Vietnam. It would be well to remember while recalling that war that, as we shed tears for innocent victims of the retaliation of oppressed groups driven to psychotic extremes by their treatment, few tears were shed for the tens of thousands who died as B52s carpet bombed defenseless villages in Southeast Asia.
“Administration officials say Israel’s counterattack against Hamas has been too severe, too costly in civilian casualties, and lacking a coherent endgame…”
No, there is a very clear, coherent end game. It is to clear the land of all Palestinians so that ultimately, the Zionists will own all of Palestine.
exactly!
It’s like this, foundational underpinnings and all that. This of course, long before the discovery of the enormous southeast Mediterranean gas field, a significant proportion of which is inclusive to Gaza’s territorial waters. (And leaving out the Israeli theft of the West Bank’s and Golan Heights’ discovered and developed oil and gas—which is ongoing.) The U.S.-Israeli board of directors constitutes a pattern of U.S. pols having their noses in the trough—Democrat and Republican along with ex-mil and intel vampires of other peoples’ miseries. Parallels can and are drawn to how the U.S. vampire class ‘did’ the barely breathing husk of the USSR, and of course, Ukraine. A template for opportunists was long ago established.
To which I’ll add the (imo) vast sums of black budget money flowing from the U.S.-occupied Syrian oil and gas reserves. The crude honesty of which Donald Trump spoke and which most simply ignored. Let’s throw in the destination of the ISIS-pilfered oil that the US military could not seem to stop in its many miles-long trains of oil tankers running across much-beleaguered Syria for the better part of a year (iirc) until the Russians stepped up to the plate and knocked them out of the park. That oil was shipped via Erdogan’s sons’ tanker fleet to Haifa—at a substantial discount, I will add, with every thing running smoothly, humming right along…in broad daylight if only world media had bothered to report on it. (But we know the truth of that matter, eh wot, readers and publishers here at CN.)
At any rate, back to “foundational underpinnings and ‘all that'”—as part of the historical context of this latest, if not epochal place at which we’ve arrived thanks to the Zionist Israelis. It all depends on your perspective, and the Israelis certainly have their own. Personally, I’ve had my fill.
Israel’s Late Foundational Colonial Underpinnings
“The Palestinians are like crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more.” Ehud Barak, Prime Minister of Israel at the time – August 28, 2000. Reported in the Jerusalem Post August 30, 2000.
“Every time we do something you tell me America will do this and will do that . . . I want to tell you something very clear: Don’t worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it.” Ariel Sharon, October 3, 2001, to Shimon Peres, as reported on Kol Yisrael radio.
“Everybody has to move, run and grab as many hilltops as they can to enlarge the settlements because everything we take now will stay ours… Everything we don’t grab will go to them.” Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of militants from the extreme right-wing Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, November 15, 1998.
“We did not know what to do with them [surrendered Egyptian POWs in 1956]. There was no choice but to kill them. This is not such a big deal if you take into consideration that I slept well after having escaped the crematories of Auschwitz.” Retired Israeli brigadier general Arieh Biro, The New York Times, August 21, 1995.
“We have to kill all the Palestinians unless they are resigned to live here as slaves.” Chairman Heilbrun of the Committee for the Re-election of General Shlomo Lahat, the mayor of Tel Aviv, October 1983.
“We declare openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on even one centimetre of Eretz Israel… Force is all they do or ever will understand. We shall use the ultimate force until the Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours.” Rafael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defence Forces – Gad Becker, Yediot Ahronot 13 April 1983, New York Times 14 April 1983.
“When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle.” Raphael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defence Forces, New York Times, 14 April 1983.
“The Palestinians are beasts walking on two legs.” Menahim Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, “Begin and the Beasts”. New Statesman, 25 June 1982.
“Spirit the penniless population across the frontier by denying it employment… Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.” Theodore Herzl, founder of the World Zionist Organization, speaking of the Arabs of Palestine, Complete Diaries, June 12, 1895 entry.
“Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves…politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves… The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country.” Speech by David Ben-Gurion, 1938, quoted in Zionism and the Palestinians by Simha Flapan, 1979.
“A partial Jewish State is not the end, but only the beginning. I am certain that we can not be prevented from settling in the other parts of the country and the region.” David Ben Gurion, in a letter to his son, 1937.
your analysis is sooooo dead on…
They say they are “unable to exert significant influence” while in truth they are “unwilling”. As usual Caitlin is spot on!
Anyone with a pulse knows the US could stop this massacre in Gaza in a heartbeat. But since Biden, beyond his cognitive impairment, has not a drop of compassion nor conscience in him, it will continue, especially with the ruthless, depraved neo-Cons calling the shots. We have reached a new low as a country, and its hard to see that changing.
Bravo! again.
There is no desire at the top (big top circus) to disarm israel.
Keep writing.
Blatant BS from Wapo.
Our misleaders are knowingly complicit in murder and ethnic cleansing!
I’m complicit as it’s our tax dollars that gift weapons of death to the apartheid regime.
Disgusting.
Keep them coming Caitlin!!! I so appreciate your truthful articles!