{"id":256865,"date":"2024-03-11T12:00:37","date_gmt":"2024-03-11T12:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=256865"},"modified":"2024-03-09T06:23:28","modified_gmt":"2024-03-09T06:23:28","slug":"the-biden-doctrine-in-gaza-bomb-starve-deceive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/03\/the-biden-doctrine-in-gaza-bomb-starve-deceive\/","title":{"rendered":"The Biden Doctrine in Gaza: Bomb, Starve, Deceive"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

(Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS \/ AFP via Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

The White House unveils a new PR stunt for Gaza aid while hiding US arms transfers to Israel. <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

8 Mar 2024<\/em> – At his State of the Union address yesterday, President Biden announced that the US military will install a temporary pier off the coast of Gaza to deliver emergency aid to the besieged enclave, where more than 2.2 million Palestinians face a humanitarian crisis, including starvation. The pier, which will take weeks if not months to complete, will be built by US soldiers.<\/p>\n

The US, Biden claimed, \u201chas been leading international efforts to get more humanitarian assistance into Gaza\u201d and believes that \u201cprotecting and saving innocent lives has to be a priority.\u201d<\/p>\n

In reality, the emergency project underscores Biden\u2019s real priority: to prolong Israel\u2019s rampage in Gaza, the US is even willing to deploy its own military for face-saving public relations stunts.<\/p>\n

With criticism of Biden\u2019s Gaza complicity increasing inside the Democratic Party, and threatening him at the ballot box, the pier is the latest in a series of token gestures aimed at feigning concern for Gazans while providing unfettered support to the Israeli government that is indiscriminately attacking them.<\/p>\n

The White House has carried out air drops over Gaza that amount to a few trucks\u2019 worth of aid \u2013 compared to the thousands of trucks that Israel is blocking with US support. \u201cThe food, water, and medical supplies so desperately needed by people in Gaza are sitting just across the border,\u201d Doctors Without Border said Friday. \u201cIsrael needs to facilitate rather than block the flow of supplies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even those trucks that can enter Gaza have been unable to make safe deliveries after Israel attacked their Hamas police escorts and crowds of desperate civilians lining up to receive aid. One air drop has even killed five Palestinian civilians and wounded others when a parachute failed to open.<\/p>\n

The US military pier, Biden claimed, \u201cwill enable a massive increase in the amount of humanitarian assistance getting into Gaza every day.\u201d His own aides acknowledge that this is a ruse. According to the Washington Post<\/a>, administration officials quietly concede that \u201conly by securing the opening of additional land crossings would there be enough aid to prevent famine.\u201d And given that the pier will take at minimum 30 days to complete, that \u201c[raises] questions about how famine in Gaza will be staved off in the critical days ahead,\u201d the New York Times notes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The White House has given the answer: rather than compel Israel to open those land crossings and prevent famine, it is instead adopting the Israeli position that the land crossings can be used as a tool of leverage against Hamas \u2014 and that Israel can control everything that gets in. In ceasefire talks, Israel has demanded that Hamas release hostages in exchange for, at best, a six-week pause to the massacre.<\/p>\n

As one US official told the Post, such a deal would allow for a \u201csignificant surge\u201d in aid delivery. The choice of words is striking: for months, US officials have been promising to \u201csurge<\/a>\u201d aid into Gaza. The fact that such a \u201csurge\u201d is now explicitly conditional underscores that those prior vows were a lie, and a cynical cover for the actual policy of helping Israel block aid to the people of Gaza.<\/p>\n

In a Selma, Alabama speech that was widely mischaracterized as a call for a ceasefire, Vice President Kamala Harris explained the White House stance. \u201cGiven the immense scale of suffering in Gaza, there must be an immediate ceasefire,\u201d Harris told a crowd, drawing effusive applause. But after a pause, she added the qualifier: \u201c– for at least the next six weeks, which is what is currently on the table.\u201d The onus, she added, is entirely on Hamas, which \u201cneeds to agree to that deal.\u201d If they do, then the agreement \u201cwill get the hostages out and get a significant amount of aid in.\u201d<\/p>\n

The very fact that the delivery of \u201ca significant amount\u201d of aid is conditional on Hamas accepting Israeli demands underscores that Israel, with US backing, is using that aid as a tool of coercion. This directly contradicts Biden\u2019s claim, in his State of the Union address, that such assistance cannot be \u201ca bargaining chip.\u201d<\/p>\n

While backing Israel\u2019s blockade, the White House continues to expedite weapons transfers to Israel while hiding them from the public footing the bill.<\/p>\n

According to the Washington Post<\/a>, the US has made more than 100 sales of weaponry to Israel since Oct. 7th<\/sup>. Only two of those transfers were made public \u2013 and in both of those cases, the White House invoked emergency powers to bypass Congressional review.<\/p>\n

To avoid standard disclosures, the administration sent the weapons \u201cin smaller batches that fall below a dollar threshold that requires the administration to notify Congress,\u201d the Wall Street Journal reports<\/a>, a method that comes as part of \u201ca broader pattern in which the Biden administration has sought to avoid scrutiny from Congress.\u201d And there are far more sales to come: according to the Journal, the US has \u201c600 active cases of potential military transfer or sales worth more than $23 billion between the U.S. and Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s nothing that Israel can say that it has not gotten,\u201d an Israeli military official noted. \u201cIsrael got basically what it needed.\u201d And Biden is committed to meeting Israel\u2019s needs. Asked about his critics on Gaza, Biden told the New Yorker: \u201cI think they have to give this just a little bit of time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Biden is devoted to ensuring more \u201ctime\u201d for Israeli mass murder even though it directly threatens his re-election chances, as illustrated by the more than 140,000 \u201cuncommitted\u201d votes in the Michigan and Minnesota primaries.<\/p>\n

In a bid to save his chances in Michigan, the White House deployed top aides to meet with Arab-American voters ahead of the vote. According to a recording of one such meeting<\/a>, \u00a0Deputy National Security Jon Finer relayed his regrets as follows: \u201cWe have left a very damaging impression based on what has been a wholly inadequate public accounting for how much the president, the administration and the country values the lives of Palestinians.\u201d Therefore, according to the White House, the problem is not that Biden is helping Israel exterminate Palestinian lives, the problem is that voters are unaware how much he secretly \u201cvalues\u201d the people he\u2019s helping to exterminate.<\/p>\n

Finer went on to demonstrate the limitations on that valuation. Yes, he acknowledged, Israeli leaders have compared \u201cresidents of Gaza to animals.\u201d But rather than condemn this genocidal rhetoric and stop arming the government spouting it, the White House had no choice but to continue arming them. \u201cOut of a desire to sort of focus on solving the problem and not engaging in a rhetorical back-and-forth with people who, in many cases, I think we all find somewhat abhorrent,\u201d Finer explained, \u201cwe did not sufficiently indicate that we totally rejected and disagreed with those sorts of sentiments.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, it would be incongruent for the Biden administrating to publicly rebuke the Israeli government while privately rushing it weapons to help exterminate the Gazan \u201canimals.\u201d<\/p>\n

Which explains why, five months into Israel\u2019s genocidal campaign, the White House\u2019s empty gestures have extended beyond mere empty words to costly, empty stunts by sea and air.<\/p>\n

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___________________________________________<\/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<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Join the<\/b><\/i><\/span><\/span> <\/b><\/i>BDS-BOYCOTT, DIVESTMENT, SANCTIONS <\/b><\/i><\/span><\/span>campaign<\/b><\/i><\/span><\/span> to protest the Israeli barbaric siege of Gaza, illegal occupation of the Palestine nation\u2019s territory, the apartheid wall, its inhuman and degrading treatment of the Palestinian people, and the more than 7,000 Palestinian men, women, elderly and children arbitrarily locked up in Israeli prisons.<\/span><\/p>\n

DON’T BUY<\/b><\/span><\/span> PRODUCTS WHOSE<\/b><\/span><\/span> BARCODE<\/b><\/span><\/span> STARTS WITH<\/b><\/span><\/span> 729<\/b><\/span><\/span>, which indicates that it is produced in Israel. <\/span>DO YOUR PART! MAKE A DIFFERENCE!<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

7 2 9: BOYCOTT FOR JUSTICE!<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

8 Mar 2024 – At his State of the Union yesterday, Pres. Biden announced that the US military will install a pier in Gaza to deliver emergency aid to the enclave. In reality, the emergency project underscores Biden\u2019s real priority: to prolong Israel\u2019s rampage in Gaza, the US is even willing to deploy its own military for face-saving public relations stunts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":251975,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[532,1854,1199,87,865,1643,1029,1644,88,2416,715,427,124,70,965,1025],"class_list":["post-256865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglo-america","tag-colonialism","tag-crimes-against-humanity","tag-ethnic-cleansing","tag-gaza","tag-genocide","tag-genocide-convention","tag-hamas","tag-international-court-of-justice-icj","tag-israel","tag-israeli-occupation","tag-massacre","tag-palestine","tag-united-nations","tag-usa","tag-war-crimes","tag-west-bank"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256865","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=256865"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256865\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":256867,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256865\/revisions\/256867"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}