{"id":250350,"date":"2023-12-18T12:00:08","date_gmt":"2023-12-18T12:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=250350"},"modified":"2023-12-12T05:25:11","modified_gmt":"2023-12-12T05:25:11","slug":"israels-genocide-in-gaza-has-bidens-green-light","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/12\/israels-genocide-in-gaza-has-bidens-green-light\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel’s Genocide in Gaza Has Biden’s Green Light"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken leaves Israel on 1 Dec 2023. @vmsalama on Twitter<\/p><\/div>\n

Ignoring US laws and its own token promises, the Biden administration protects Israel’s extermination campaign in Gaza. <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

11 Dec 2023<\/em> – As Israeli warplanes resumed bombing Gaza on December 1st, putting an end to a seven-day pause, Secretary of State Antony Blinken\u2019s motorcade \u201csped out of his hotel in Israel on its way to the Tel Aviv airport,\u201d the Washington Post reported.<\/p>\n

Before exiting Israel, Blinken claimed that he had pressed its government to prioritize \u201cminimizing harm to innocent civilians.\u201d But according to Axios<\/a>, \u201cBlinken didn’t ask Israel to stop the operation but\u2026 said the longer the high-intensity military campaign goes on, the more international pressure will build on both the U.S. and Israel to stop it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Additionally, Blinken asked Israel to \u201cmake sure that a military operation in southern Gaza doesn’t lead to an even higher amount of civilian casualties.\u201d To Blinken, \u201cminimizing harm\u201d to the people of Gaza apparently means murdering slightly fewer of them.<\/p>\n

After more than one week of relentless Israeli attacks on civilian targets, Blinken has been forced to acknowledge that even his token requests were ignored. When it comes to Israel\u2019s assault, Blinken said Thursday, \u201cthere does remain a gap between exactly what I said when I was there \u2014 the intent to protect civilians \u2014 and the actual results that we\u2019re seeing on the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is not merely a gap between what Blinken and his colleagues say out loud and the reality on the ground, but an endless chasm.<\/p>\n

One month ago, the Biden administration claimed that it was pressuring Israel to use smaller bombs against the densely populated Gaza Strip. \u201cIf the United States can get those smaller munitions to Israel, American officials hope Israel will use them to mitigate the risk to civilians,\u201d the New York Times reported<\/a> on Nov. 4th. That talking point is long forgotten. \u201cIn the first month and a half, Israel dropped more than 22,000 guided and unguided bombs on Gaza that were supplied by Washington,\u201d according to US intelligence figures obtained by the Washington Post. During this same period, the US has given Israel at least 15,000\u00a0<\/strong>bombs, including\u00a02,000-pound bunker busters. So much for \u201csmaller bombs.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Wall Street Journal characterizes the current US approach as \u201curging its top ally in the region to consider preventing large-scale civilian casualties while supplying many of the munitions deployed.\u201d The US position is therefore akin to an accomplice continuing to re-arm a school shooter\u2019s assault rifle while asking him to consider slaughtering fewer students. The Biden administration is so committed to fueling the carnage in Gaza that it has even invoked rare emergency powers for transferring tank ammunition without Congressional review. \u201cThe arms shipment has been put on an expedited track, and Congress has no power to stop it,\u201d the New York Times reports<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The White House\u2019s circumvention of Congressional review is consistent with its refusal to follow US law, which bars weapons transfers to countries that commit serious human rights abuses. The Biden administration has evaded this requirement by simply pretending that it is a helpless bystander, rather than willing accomplice.<\/p>\n

As the first phase of Israel\u2019s military campaign expanded to multiple hospitals in mid-November, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted to CNN that his military \u201cis doing an exemplary job trying to minimize civilian casualties,\u201d and \u201cfighting according to international law.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an appearance on the same network moments later, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan declined to endorse Netanyahu\u2019s self-assessment. Asked if Israel is operating according to the rules of war, Sullivan replied: \u201cI’m not going to sit here and play judge or jury on that question.\u201d Sullivan\u2019s non-response was a tacit admission that he does in fact know the answer: if he believed that was Israel was adhering to international (and US) law, he surely would have said so.<\/p>\n

The US decision to not play \u201cjudge and jury\u201d continues to this day. According to the Washington Post, administration officials now \u201cacknowledge the United States is\u00a0<\/strong>not conducting real-time assessments of Israel\u2019s adherence to the laws of war.\u201d The reason is obvious: if the White House were to conduct such assessments, it would be forced to stop supplying Israel with weapons.<\/p>\n

The White House commitment to Israel is so devout that it cannot even ensure the paltry levels of humanitarian aid that it has promised. Since the Israeli assault resumed on Dec. 1st<\/sup>, aid \u201clevels have slowed to a less than half of what Israel permitted to enter Gaza from Egypt\u201d during the seven-day truce, the Washington Post reports. Accordingly, the United Nations\u2019 top aid official in Gaza now protests that \u201cwe do not have a humanitarian operation in southern Gaza that can be called by that name anymore.\u201d According<\/a> to the World Food Program\u2019s Carl Skau, \u201chalf of the population are starving,\u201d with \u201cnine out of 10 are not eating every day.\u201d With Israel blocking aid and attacking supplies, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor<\/a> says its policy \u201ccan only be described as a war of starvation against civilians in the Gaza Strip.\u201d<\/p>\n

To continue the war, the US is also fulfilling its decades-old role of vetoing UN Security Council measures that would constrain Israeli aggression. The latest such vote came Friday, when the US stood alone to block a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire. A ceasefire, US deputy ambassador Robert Wood explained, \u201cwould only plant the seeds for the next war.\u201d Given that the current \u201cwar\u201d is an outright slaughter of a defenseless Gazan civilian population, the US is therefore arguing that Israel needs to continue exterminating the people of Gaza until there is no one left to resist.<\/p>\n

Israel recognizes the US effort on its behalf. \u201cAll of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it\u2019s all from the U.S.,\u201d retired IDF Maj. General Yitzhak Brick recently explained. \u201cThe minute they turn off the tap, you can\u2019t keep fighting. You have no capability. \u2026 Everyone understands that we can\u2019t fight this war without the United States. Period.\u201d The US \u201ctap\u201d is being put to unprecedented use. According to US military historian Robert Pape<\/a>, \u201cGaza will also go down as a place name denoting one of history\u2019s heaviest conventional bombing campaigns,\u201d comparable to the carpet bombing of German cities in World War II.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need three things from the US: munitions, munitions, and munitions,\u201d Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a group of officials, according to Israel Hayom. \u201cThere are huge demonstrations in western capitals,\u201d he noted, and \u201cwe need to apply counter-pressure\u201d to ensure that US support continues.<\/p>\n

Netanyahu is perhaps mistaken on the latter point. As its refusal to put a single limit on US military assistance exemplifies, the Biden administration is under no pressure to stop the mass murder.<\/p>\n

The fact that Blinken\u2019s visit to Israel coincided with the death of a predecessor, Henry Kissinger, carries historic resonance.<\/p>\n

At a meeting in Jakarta on December 6, 1976 \u2013 forty-seven years ago this month \u2013 Kissinger and President Gerald Ford gave President Suharto of Indonesia a green light to launch his genocidal invasion of East Timor, which killed an estimated 200,000 people.<\/p>\n

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According to records of the meeting, Kissinger strategized on how to justify the use of US weaponry, which depended \u201con how we construe it; whether it is in self-defense or is a foreign operation.\u201d He added: \u201cIt is important that whatever you do succeeds quickly. We would be able to influence the reaction in America if whatever happens happens after we return.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indonesia invaded East Timor the following day, just as Kissinger and Ford returned home. Today, Blinken and the Biden administration are providing Israel with similar military support and rhetorical-diplomatic cover, with one difference. This time, the US is so committed to a client state\u2019s genocidal campaign that it even allowed the carnage to proceed while its green-lighting top diplomat was still on the ground.<\/p>\n

___________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Aaron Mat\u00e9 is a journalist with<\/em> The Grayzone, where he hosts<\/em> \u201cPushback.\u201d He is also a contributor to<\/em> Real Clear Investigations and the temporary co-host of<\/em> \u201cUseful Idiots.\u201d In 2019, Mat\u00e9 won the\u00a0Izzy Award for outstanding achievement in independent media for Russiagate coverage in<\/em> The Nation.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 aaronmate.net<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

11 Dec 2023 – As Israeli warplanes resumed bombing Gaza on 1 Dec, Secretary of State Antony Blinken\u2019s motorcade \u201csped out of his hotel on its way to the Tel Aviv airport,\u201d the Washington Post reported. Ignoring US laws and its own token promises, the Biden administration protects Israel’s extermination campaign in Gaza. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":250351,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[1854,87,88,715,427,124,1888,70,965,481],"class_list":["post-250350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglo-america","tag-crimes-against-humanity","tag-gaza","tag-israel","tag-massacre","tag-palestine","tag-united-nations","tag-unsc","tag-usa","tag-war-crimes","tag-warfare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250350"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":250354,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250350\/revisions\/250354"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}