The U.S. secretary of state ignored evidence of siege warfare against civilians in Gaza because he knew he would face no consequences, writes Caitlin Johnstone.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken at a warehouse with humanitarian aid bound for Gaza, at the Jordanian Hashemite Charity Organization in Amman, Jordan, on April 30. (State Department/Chuck Kennedy)
By Caitlin Johnstone
CaitlinJohnstone.com.au
Listen to Tim Foley reading this article.
As Israel butchers hundreds of civilians in its latest attacks on Lebanon, leaked documents have surfaced revealing that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken knowingly lied to Congress about Israel’s siege warfare against civilians in Gaza.
ProPublica’s Brett Murphy, who has been covering aspects of this story for months, has a new article out titled “Israel Deliberately Blocked Humanitarian Aid to Gaza, Two Government Bodies Concluded. Antony Blinken Rejected Them.”
In it we learn that both USAID and the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration produced separate reports this past spring concluding that Israel was deliberately blocking much-needed humanitarian aid from Palestinian civilians in Gaza, which under U.S. law should have led to the suspension of U.S. weapons supplies.
Protesters form “the people’s red line” around the White House to demand end of Gaza genocide on June 12. (Diane Krauthamer, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Blinken dismissed these findings, as did the rest of the headless cohort known as the Biden administration.
Days after receiving these reports, Blinken delivered a statement to Congress that he knew to be false, saying,
“We do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance.”
This was a lie. Blinken’s own people were telling him Israel was obstructing aid, but he lied to Congress about it in order to ensure that Israel would keep receiving the weapons it needs to keep killing Palestinian and Lebanese civilians.
Blinken needs to resign. There need to be calls from Dem senators demanding it. https://t.co/61X6KyIZ14 pic.twitter.com/dhsSlsyNAg
— austerity is theft ?? (@wideofthepost) September 24, 2024
This is what happens when you don’t prosecute your war criminals. Blinken lied to Congress that Israel wasn’t assessed to have been blocking aid when both USAID and the State Department’s refugees bureau had indeed assessed that the Israeli government is doing precisely that, because he knew he’d never be jailed for lying in facilitation of horrific war crimes.
USAID Administrator Samantha Power on Feb. 25 touring a World Food Program warehouse in Amman, Jordan, used to consolidate and prepare humanitarian assistance supplies for onward shipment to Gaza. (USAID, Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0)
Blinken has watched George W. Bush’s entire cabinet not only walk free but continue to have high-profile careers in government, punditry, think tanks and the military-industrial complex, when they all should have been caged for two decades now.
He watched C.I.A. officials like Michael Hayden lie to Congress about the agency’s torture program without ever facing any consequences.
[See: The Madness of Antony Blinken.]
He watched Director of National Intelligence James Clapper lie to Congress about the NSA’s surveillance program without ever facing any consequences. He knew he could lie to Congress about some of the worst atrocities his nation has ever participated in because he knew there would never be any consequences for this.
Clapper speaking at an event on national security on Sept. 22, 2016. (LBJ Library, Flickr, Jay Godwin)
None of the world’s worst people are in prison, but if you ever did anything to try to bring them to justice yourself you’d spend the rest of your life behind bars, or be executed. The law doesn’t exist to protect ordinary people from the worst of our society, it exists to protect the worst of our society from ordinary people.
Unchecked massacres in Lebanon. A continuing genocide in Palestine. The state just murdered an innocent man.
Y’all know that a democratic administration is in power right now? Just wanted to point that out… pic.twitter.com/Dan5iMXLyl
— Greg J Stoker (@gregjstoker) September 24, 2024
It’s worth noting here that while powerful people in Washington break the law and lie in facilitation of mass atrocities, the U.S. is executing Black men without evidence of their guilt.
The state of Missouri just executed a man named Marcellus Williams despite objections from prosecutors, jurors, and the victim’s own family due to a lack of solid evidence that he actually committed the murder for which he was convicted.
Days earlier, Khalil Divine Black Sun Allah was executed in North Carolina despite the key witness in his case recanting his testimony against him.
Both men were Black, and both men were Muslim. As men with white skin lie with impunity to help butcher brown-skinned civilians in the Middle East, I personally find this noteworthy.
This has been going on a long time. In 1902, the renowned attorney Clarence Darrow said the following in a speech to inmates at the Cook County Jail in Chicago:
“Those men who own the earth make the laws to protect what they have. They fix up a sort of fence or pen around what they have, and they fix the law so the fellow on the outside cannot get in. The laws are really organized for the protection of the men who rule the world. They were never organized or enforced to do justice. We have no system for doing justice, not the slightest in the world.”
It’s just as true in 2024 as it was in 1902.
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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.
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My question is: did he lie to himself first, or to congress.?
(Because he obviously lied to himself at some point.)
I think our American pols used to complain about all the lies and injustices under the old Soviet system instituted by the Bolsheviks because they were jealous not because their sensibilities or morality were offended. To the contrary, they’ve tried like hell to emulate the worst of that tyrannical system–as well as several other infamous venues lovingly shaped by Herr Hitler, Comrade Mao and sundry other human detritus based in backwaters like Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia.
Can you imagine George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, both Clintons, Barack Obama, Joe Biden or Donald Trump running around free in a real democracy actually seeking truth, justice and some fiction called the “American way” after all the lies, international theft, ordered extra-judicial murders and millions of innocents slaughtered in extra-constitutional wars of their personal creation? And, topping it all off by claiming that it was all done in the name of “freedom” and “democracy?” “Liberty, Fraternity and Equality” must be some sarcastic punch line to all the never-ending lies, cruelties and injustices that dominate our real world, even the great American paradise which must be worshiped above all else… or else!