{"id":251972,"date":"2024-01-08T12:00:07","date_gmt":"2024-01-08T12:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=251972"},"modified":"2024-01-06T05:48:00","modified_gmt":"2024-01-06T05:48:00","slug":"in-gaza-genocide-us-defends-israels-aura-of-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/01\/in-gaza-genocide-us-defends-israels-aura-of-power\/","title":{"rendered":"In Gaza Genocide, US Defends Israel\u2019s \u2018Aura of Power\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As South Africa accuses Israel of genocide in The Hague, the Biden administration endorses Israel’s bid to sow “fear” in Gaza\u2019s defenseless civilians. <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

5 Jan 2024<\/em> – Days after South Africa filed a motion to the International Court of Justice<\/a> accusing Israel of genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza, the Biden administration responded with indignation. The allegation, White House spokesperson John Kirby declared, is \u201cmeritless, counterproductive, and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever.\u201d<\/p>\n

South Africa\u2019s 84-page submission is in fact exhaustive in its documentation of Israel\u2019s mass murder campaign in Gaza and Israeli leaders\u2019 open intention to carry it out. By contrast to this detailed intervention, Israel\u2019s chief sponsor in Washington openly admits that it still refuses even minimal scrutiny of the extermination campaign that it is funding, arming, and shielding from a UN Security Council veto.<\/p>\n

Nearly three months into an Israeli assault that has relied on billions of dollars in US weaponry, the Biden administration has still \u201cconducted no formal assessment of whether Israel is violating international humanitarian law,\u201d Politico reports<\/a>. While going out of its way to avoid this assessment, the Biden administration has gone around Congressional review to transfer $147.5 million in artillery shells and other gear to Israel \u2013 the second time it has invoked emergency powers to do so.<\/p>\n

A senior administration official insists to Politico that there is nothing to worry about: \u201cIf you just look at what Israel is doing, they aren\u2019t systematically targeting civilians.\u201d Even if that were true, which it clearly is not, what is indisputable is that Israel is systematically killing<\/em> civilians. As even President Biden blurted out last month, Israel is carrying out \u201cindiscriminate bombing,\u201d an unambiguous war crime. For this reason, the New York Times reports<\/a>, when Biden offered that \u201cnot… scripted comment,\u201d his blunder \u201csent aides scrambling to explain.\u201d<\/p>\n

How the White House is now scrambling to explain its view that Israel is not committing genocide or even violations of humanitarian law is even more revealing. According to Politico: \u201cThe U.S. came to that conclusion in part after looking at press reports and conversations with Israeli officials about their military operations.\u201d Absent from the Biden administration\u2019s list of source material is its own intelligence, which recently found\u00a0<\/a>that almost half of the munitions that Israel has dropped on Gaza have been indiscriminate \u201cdumb\u201d bombs that have predictably murdered countless civilians in their homes and shelters.<\/p>\n

Instead, the US is only relying on \u201cpress reports\u201d \u2013 but clearly not those documented in South Africa\u2019s ICJ submission, which collects Israeli leaders\u2019 genocidal rhetoric in nine pages of chilling detail (p. 59-67). That leaves \u201cconversations with Israeli officials\u201d \u2013 who, unsurprisingly, are not keen to admit that they are the 21st<\/sup> century\u2019s worst war criminals.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s bombing campaign is accompanied by an unprecedented blockade that deprives Gaza of vital aid. According to Arif Husain<\/a>, the chief economist at the United Nations World Food Program, “80% of the people [globally], or four out of five people, in famine or a catastrophic type of hunger are in Gaza right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the White House podium, Kirby said that he is \u201cnot aware of any kind of formal assessment being done by the United States government to analyze the compliance with international law by our partner Israel.\u201d And given that Kirby has previously stated that the White House has \u201cno red lines\u201d when it comes to Israel\u2019s conduct, that will remain the case. \u201cWe have not seen anything that would convince us that we need to take a different approach in terms of trying to help Israel defend itself,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

But just as the US is fully aware that its partner Israel is committing genocide, the US is also aware that Israel\u2019s professed \u201cright to self-defense\u201d against occupied territory has nothing to do with self-defense. Biden administration officials have admitted as much to one of their most reliable media mouthpiece since Oct. 7th, the New York Times. \u201cThe Americans say Israel\u2019s forceful response… reflects the importance that it places on re-establishing deterrence against attacks from adversaries in the region,\u201d the Times reported<\/a> in November. \u201cThe Israeli military\u2019s aura of power was shaken by the Oct. 7 attack, the officials say.\u201d<\/p>\n

To restore Israel\u2019s shaken \u201caura of power,\u201d therefore, the empathetic Americans have given Israel a free pass to slaughter more than 22,000 defenseless civilians, all while pushing the two million survivors into famine and desperation.<\/p>\n

This imperative of \u201cdeterrence\u201d \u2013 establishing a monopoly on violence against occupied Palestinians and regional neighbors \u2013 has guided Israeli strategy since its inception.<\/p>\n

As a divisional military commander in 1967, future Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon voiced concern that Israel was losing its \u201cdeterrence capability,\u201d which he defined as \u201cour main weapon \u2013 the fear of us.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1988, one month into the first Intifada, Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin boasted that his policy of brutalizing demonstrating Palestinians was successfully employing Israel\u2019s main weapon of fear. \u201cThe use of force, including beatings, undoubtedly has brought about the impact we wanted\u2014strengthening the population\u2019s fear of the Israel Defense Forces,\u201d Rabin said<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When Israel launched Operation Cast Lead in December 2008, a three-week long assault that killed 1,400 Palestinians, including more than 300 children, in the Gaza Strip, Israel wielded the same weapon. According the New York Times<\/a>, Israeli officials were guided by a \u201clarger concern\u201d: that their \u201cenemies are less afraid of it than they once were or should be.\u201d Therefore, the Times reported, \u201cIsraeli leaders are calculating that a display of power in Gaza could fix that,\u201d using slain Palestinians civilians to \u201cre-establish Israeli deterrence.\u201d<\/p>\n

The same imperative applies to Israel\u2019s current extermination campaign in Gaza. In calling for \u201ca war of unprecedented magnitude\u201d on Gaza, former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett explained in October that \u201cIsrael\u2019s future depends not on pity from the world, but on fear in the hearts of our enemies.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a new account of the Biden administration\u2019s dealings with Israel, the New York Times<\/a> again confirms that Israel seeks to preserve its monopoly on state terror. In Gaza, the Times explains, \u201cstrategically, Israel does not mind too much if the rest of the world thinks it is willing to go overboard with overwhelming force.\u201d After all, Israel has spent more than a \u201chalf century… fostering the image of invincibility, an image shattered on Oct. 7. Israeli leaders want to reestablish the deterrence that was lost.\u201d<\/p>\n

Israel indeed need not mind that the world opposes its genocidal campaign when the world\u2019s top superpower gives it free rein to \u201cgo overboard with overwhelming force\u201d \u2013 the Times\u2019 artful euphemism for state terror.<\/p>\n

The White House continues to make this endorsement clear, even as it occasionally feigns concern about the civilian toll. According to the Times, \u201cthere is no serious discussion within the Biden administration about cutting Israel off or putting conditions on security aid.\u201d The only \u201creal debate\u201d concerns \u201cthe language to use and how hard to push,\u201d on marginal tactical issues. But no matter how many more civilians die, \u201cno one inside is really pressing for a dramatic policy shift like suspending weapons supplies to Israel \u2014 if for no other reason than they understand the president is not willing to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n

Israel undoubtedly appreciates Biden\u2019s unwillingness to stop the genocide. As Israel\u2019s former US ambassador Michael Oren explains, Israel was \u201cdependent on the United States,\u201d after Oct. 7th<\/sup>. \u201cAnd that meant they have a say in things.\u201d The White House\u2019s main contribution, Oren adds, is that \u201cBiden has not used the two most obvious tools available to him to force Israel\u2019s hand, namely the flow of U.S. arms to Israel and the U.S. veto at the U.N. Security Council that protects Israel from international sanctions.\u201d According to White House insiders, while Biden and Netanyahu \u201care not truly friends,\u201d both \u201cunderstand each other\u2019s politics and their mutual dependence at this point.\u201d<\/p>\n

Biden and Netanyahu\u2019s mutual dependence only means that Israel must occasionally temper its savagery to meet US public relations needs. According to Times, Netanyahu \u201cagreed to let humanitarian aid into Gaza as a condition for Mr. Biden visiting\u201d Israel after Oct. 7th<\/sup>. In other words, Netanyahu let a trickle of humanitarian aid into the besieged Gaza death camp solely for the political benefit that a Biden visit could offer him. The Times offers this revelation in passing without further comment. In the view of the Times and its Biden administration sources, it is perfectly reasonable for Israel to block vital supplies to Gaza just to extract a gesture of US political support for its extermination campaign there.<\/p>\n

In a recent opinion article for The Wall Street Journal<\/a>, Netanyahu described his \u201cthree prerequisites for peace between Israel and its Palestinian neighbors in Gaza\u201d as follows: \u201cHamas must be destroyed, Gaza must be demilitarized, and Palestinian society must be deradicalized.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Netanyahu\u2019s vision of \u201cpeace\u201d is predicated on exterminating his Palestinian neighbors in Gaza. Along with its bombing campaign and starvation siege, Israeli officials have openly called for ethnic cleansing. \u201cWhat needs to be done in the Gaza Strip is to encourage emigration,\u201d Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich recently told Israeli Army Radio. \u201cIf there are 100,000 or 200,000 Arabs in Gaza and not 2 million Arabs, the entire discussion on the day after will be totally different.\u201d According to\u00a0The Times of Israel<\/a>, Netanyahu has informed cabinet members that: \u201cOur problem is [finding] countries that are willing to absorb Gazans, and we are working on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Any serious \u201cprerequisite for peace\u201d therefore requires the inverse of Netanyahu\u2019s strategy: the Israeli government must be demilitarized and Israeli society must be deradicalized. The same applies for the Biden administration, which is so radicalized that it openly flaunts its support for what South Africa calls \u201cthe physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza,\u201d all to help defend Israel\u2019s \u201caura of power.\u201d<\/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

 <\/p>\n

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

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