{"id":263201,"date":"2024-06-03T12:01:02","date_gmt":"2024-06-03T11:01:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=263201"},"modified":"2024-05-28T05:15:56","modified_gmt":"2024-05-28T04:15:56","slug":"bidens-rafah-red-line-is-a-green-light-for-death-and-destruction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/06\/bidens-rafah-red-line-is-a-green-light-for-death-and-destruction\/","title":{"rendered":"Biden\u2019s Rafah \u2018Red Line\u2019 Is a Green Light for ‘Death and Destruction’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Photo by Ashraf Amra\/Anadolu via Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

Pretending to oppose a Rafah assault, the White House facilitates a new Israeli massacre at a Gaza tent camp.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

27 May 2024 <\/em>– After months of unrelenting Israeli slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, President Biden and his top aides insisted that they had had enough.<\/p>\n

When it comes to an Israeli assault on Rafah, where more than one million displaced people had fled, that would be a \u201cred line,\u201d Biden said in March. \u201cI\u2019m not supplying the weapons … to deal with that problem,\u201d he promised earlier this month. The White House, Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared in April, \u201ccannot support a major military operation in Rafah.\u201d For the US, \u201cit\u2019s imperative that people are able to get out of the way of any conflict,\u201d and \u201cwe have yet to see a plan.\u201d<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s latest massacre<\/a> in a Rafah tent camp for displaced civilians, in which dozens of people including children were burned and maimed while sheltering near United Nations warehouses, shows that the White House\u2019s \u201cred line\u201d in Rafah was in fact a green light for continued Israeli atrocities. According to the Palestinian Red Crescent, the attack occurred in the Tal as Sultan area of Rafah, where the Israeli military had declared a so-called \u201csafe zone\u201d and encouraged Palestinians to flee to for protection.<\/p>\n

Asked two weeks ago<\/a> \u201cwhat exactly is [Biden\u2019s] red line,\u201d and whether that would entail \u201cwithholding weapons\u201d, Blinken answered tersely: \u201cLook, we don’t talk about red lines when it comes to Israel.\u201d In other words, when Blinken\u2019s boss, Biden, did talk about a \u201cred line\u201d in March, he was simply lying \u2013 just as when he falsely and repeatedly claimed<\/a> to have seen photos of Israeli Oct. 7th<\/sup> victims that do not in fact exist.<\/p>\n

After laying down an invisible \u201cred line,\u201d the White House also ensured that its one concrete use of US leverage was a meaningless gesture. When Biden paused a weapons shipment to Israel for the first time earlier this month, the administration claimed it was a \u201cshot across the bow\u201d intended to underscore US opposition to a Rafah assault. Yet one US official acknowledged that the move would have no impact. \u201cDespite the pause,\u201d the official explained, according to the Washington Post,<\/a> \u201cthe Israeli military has enough weapons supplied by the U.S. and other partners to conduct the Rafah operation if it chooses to cast aside U.S. objections.\u201d To underscore that its objections were meaningless, the White House quickly followed the token pause with a new authorization of $1 billion in arms sales to Israel<\/a>, primarily in tank ammunition.<\/p>\n

To ensure that US weapons shipments could continue uninterrupted, Blinken\u2019s State Department then released a Congressionally mandated report<\/a> that adopted the same double game. The report found that it was \u201creasonable to assess\u201d that US weapons \u201chave been used by Israeli security forces since October 7 in instances inconsistent\u201d with international law in Gaza, yet nonetheless concluded that there was insufficient information to do anything about it.<\/p>\n

The report also found that Israeli \u201caction or inaction \u2026 contributed significantly\u201d to \u201cinsufficient\u201d levels of food and aid inside Gaza, yet ultimately concluded that the US does not \u201ccurrently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance.\u201d The report\u2019s conclusions contradict virtually every aid organization operating in Gaza, as well as the US government\u2019s own experts<\/a>. Rather than demand that Israel end its aid blockade of Gaza, the US has spent over $320 million building a \u201chumanitarian pier\u201d that has only managed to supply a trickle of supplies<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In defending the State Department report\u2019s incoherence, Blinken cited what he called \u201can incredibly complex military environment.\u201d When it comes to Hamas, he added: \u201cYou have an enemy that intentionally embeds itself with civilians. It\u2019s very, very difficult in the heat of war to make a definitive assessment about any individual incident.\u201d By definition, Hamas is \u201cembedded\u201d throughout Gaza because its 2 million inhabitants are trapped inside the same strip of land under a US-backed Israeli siege. The Gaza military environment is therefore the opposite of \u201ccomplex\u201d: it is a defenseless, occupied territory where, according to Israel and the White House, every civilian is fair game.<\/p>\n

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan made this explicit just days ago. When it comes to judging Israel\u2019s operations in Rafah, Sullivan told reporters<\/a>, \u201cthere\u2019s no mathematical formula.\u201d Instead, he explained, \u201cwhat we\u2019re going to be looking at is whether there is a lot of death and destruction from this operation or if it is more precise and proportional.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, rather than unequivocally oppose more Israeli \u201cdeath and destruction\u201d in Rafah and vowing consequences, the US would only acknowledge new atrocities after facilitating them.<\/p>\n

In an additional endorsement of Israel\u2019s Rafah assault, Sullivan claimed that he had been briefed \u201con refinements that Israel has made to its plans to achieve its military objectives while taking account of civilian harm.\u201d The day prior, an unnamed senior administration official had claimed that: \u201cIt\u2019s fair to say that the Israelis have updated their plans. They\u2019ve incorporated many of the concerns that we have expressed.\u201d No detail was provided on what these \u201cupdated\u201d \u201crefinements\u201d entailed.<\/p>\n

A few days before the Rafah tent camp massacre, the State Department also claimed<\/a> that Blinken, in a call with Israeli Minister Benny Gantz, \u201creiterated the President\u2019s position on a major Rafah operation.\u201d Notably, the statement did not bother to specify what \u201cthe President’s position\u201d was. By that point, the White House had made perfectly clear that it would claim to oppose a \u201cmajor Rafah operation,\u201d all while allowing massacres that it would pretend are not \u201cmajor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Blinken\u2019s statement came as the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to comply with the Genocide Convention and \u201cimmediately halt its offensive\u201d in Rafah. It also demanded that Israel immediately allow the \u201cunhindered provision \u2026 of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet the White House \u201cwas conspicuously silent\u201d on the ICJ ruling, the Washington Post noted<\/a>, \u201ca stark contrast to an almost identical ruling by the ICJ in March 2022,\u201d which ordered Russia to \u201cimmediately suspend\u201d military operations in Ukraine. Back then, the State Department lauded the court\u2019s \u201cvital role in the peaceful settlement of disputes under the U.N. Charter.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rather than comment on the ICJ decision, the Post added, the National Security Council directed spokespeople to respond to questions with a single sentence: \u201cWe\u2019ve been clear and consistent on our position on Rafah.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet with its invisible \u201cred line\u201d and procession of mealy mouthed, incoherent statements, the White House has been the opposite of clear. When it comes to Israel\u2019s mass murder campaign in Gaza, Biden and his aides have only been consistent in deceptively fueling death and destruction.<\/p>\n

___________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> <\/em>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":"

27 May 2024 – Pretending to oppose a Rafah assault, the White House facilitates a new Israeli massacre at a Gaza tent camp.<\/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":[1199,87,865,88,715,2571,427,3237,70],"class_list":["post-263201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglo-america","tag-ethnic-cleansing","tag-gaza","tag-genocide","tag-israel","tag-massacre","tag-official-lies-and-narratives","tag-palestine","tag-rafah","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263201","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=263201"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":263203,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263201\/revisions\/263203"}],"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=263201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}