Less than one day after President Biden warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that his planned military offensive against Hamas in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where 1.5 million Palestinian refugees have sought safety, would deepen the humanitarian crisis for innocent civilians there, the defiant Israeli leader restated his intention to proceed with an attack on the overcrowded city. As Israel’s war in Gaza entered its sixth month, more than 31,600 Palestinian residents of Gaza have been killed, including some 13,450 children, following the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack that killed 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped 240 hostages.
Earlier, in a March 9 interview on MSNBC, President Biden warned the Israeli government that an assault on Rafah would cross a red line, but then immediately backed off an implicit threat to cut off supplies of U.S. offensive weapons deliveries. Talks on a proposed 6-week Gaza truce and hostage release between Israel and Hamas have resumed after a months-long deadlock.
Meanwhile, officials of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification global initiative, or IPC, project that famine is “imminent” for 300,000 Palestinian civilians in northern Gaza by the end of May. And by mid-July, as many as 1.1 million people in Gaza could face severe levels of starvation, death, destitution and acute malnutrition. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Jack Mirkinson, a senior editor at The Nation magazine, who talks about President Biden’s contradictory and deadly Gaza policies which have prioritized rhetoric over action.
JACK MIRKINSON: What we’ve been getting with increasing fervor, I would say, especially over the past month or so, is a ramping up of the rhetoric from the Biden administration claiming to be concerned, claiming to be unhappy with the way that the Israeli government is indiscriminately massacring people in Gaza. So Biden’s giving an interview saying Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is hurting Israel and they’re supposedly laying down this warning about Israel potentially invading Rafah, which is the city in the south of Gaza where about a million and a half people have sort of been trapped as the last imposed safe haven in Gaza.
And so you’re getting an increase in this kind of public presentation, along with the continuation of a steady stream of very clearly sort of leaked media reports saying that behind the scenes there’s increasing frustration or anger or ire or whatever you want to call it, that is being sort of put forward to the American public and the global public, really.
But at the same time, there continue to be essentially no red lines, really, that the Biden administration is drawing for Israel. And what I wrote about in my piece was that was this really, really striking dichotomy that happened in the same week. And in the same week, Biden gave his State of the Union address in which he said Israel has to protect civilians in Gaza, which was clearly meant to be this sort of ramping up of pressure on the Israeli government, etc., etc.
And in that same week, the Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post published reports saying that the US has approved more than 100 arms sales to Israel since Oct. 7, constituting tens of thousands of weapons in total, and that the vast majority of these arms sales have been sort of off the books because if they sell Israel a certain amount of arms, then they have to notify Congress.
But if they transfer weapons, the value of which fall under a specific amount, then they don’t have to notify Congress. So, you know, it’s like if a bomb costs $10, they’re making sure that they send it to Israel for $9.99 and then they don’t have to tell Congress. So not only have they been flooding this war zone with weapons and weapons that are essential for Israel’s continuation of this assault, they’re also doing it in a way that’s clearly designed to evade public scrutiny and legislative oversight.
And so, the spectacle of this sort of increasingly dramatic performative criticism of Israel on the one hand and the deaths of the financial military, diplomatic assistance that the Biden administration has been giving Israel on the other hand, really came together for me in these two different situations.
And so, you know, watching that and seeing the United States go around and pretending really to talk tough about Israel and vowing to build this pier in Gaza to get aid in because it’s so committed to having aid in, you know, and knowing at the same time that this aid and this pier is necessary because the state that it is backing diplomatically, financially and militarily —— that that’s the reason that this humanitarian crisis that it claims to be responding to is happening.
And it’s responding to a crisis that has been caused in large part by its own weapons that it is sending to Israel to use against the people in Gaza.
And so when you really start to think about that, as I say, the absurdity of that, the farcical nature, almost of that, it really it makes you feel a little crazy because we’re watching a government, you know, have all these different workarounds and play all these different rhetorical games about a crisis that is being fueled by that very same government.
It’s really sort of beyond belief in a lot of ways.
Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with Jack Mirkinson (28:31). More articles and opinion pieces are found in the Related Links section of this page.
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