This past Saturday, President Joe Biden addressed the violence in Israel in a speech that was laden with hypocrisy. Throughout his three-minute speech to the nation, he only mentioned the word “Palestinian” once and it was in reference to the Palestinian Authority rather than the Palestinian people. He consistently affirmed Israel’s “right to defend itself” but refused to do the same for Palestinians. There was no mention of the 16-year-long blockade of Gaza, the fact that the Israeli military has murdered far more Palestinians than any Palestinian organization has killed Israelis or the continuing expansion of settlements by the current fascist government of Israel.
This phenomenon of completely ignoring the plight of the Palestinian people is not novel or isolated to Biden. Nearly all Western nations followed the same pattern when condemning the attacks that started over the weekend. Countries from across Europe, Oceania, and Canada sent their full support to Israel without a mention of the devastating airstrikes on Gaza.
What is unprecedented is the utter scale of destruction that has transpired since Saturday. The recent violence in Israel and Gaza is at a larger scale than any conflict in recent history with the deaths over the weekend being nearly five times higher than the total deaths of the 2021 crisis, which happened in a two-week period. The media has given hours of free press to the State Department and Israeli officials following the assaults. This has led to a total distortion of any context regarding the attacks or the condition of the Palestinian people. Because of the scale of death on the Israeli side, individuals view this attack within a vacuum; contextualization seems as though there is sympathy for organizations such as Hamas. However, context is necessary to understand what is going on.
The fact that Israel has enforced an apartheid system through segregation, discrimination, and seizing land from the Palestinians since the moment of its inception and continues to enforce this system through its illegal settlements in the West Bank and blockade of Gaza is essential to form any opinion on what is going on. While the violence from these policies is not reported in the media they are not any less real. Depriving people of their homes, of clean water, and of nutrition is cruel and violent, especially in regions of the World where the median ages are lower than 22 (18 in Gaza and 21.2 in the West Bank). The blockade of Gaza specifically has had brutal implications with 97% of the water being deemed unsafe to drink, incredibly high unemployment rates, and a lack of economic prospects. The economic hardship is coupled with the airstrikes Israel launches on Gaza which they know are bound to kill civilians and specifically children due to the demographics of the region and how densely populated it is. This is justified by Israel as a defense of Israelis from the terrorism of Hamas but the blockade itself is a form of collective terrorism on Gazans, a form of collective punishment which is a war crime.
The narrative that the Israeli government and media have pushed and are pushing is causing many in the West to deny empathy to the Palestinians in Gaza. Israeli Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, stated in an address to the world that Israel will completely deny fuel, food, and electricity to Gaza describing those inside as “human animals.” This clear rejection of the humanity of the citizens of Gaza has led to the dehumanization of Palestinians, which allows Israel to commit horrendous acts of violence including bombing hospitals/ambulances. These hospitals/ambulances are not associated with Hamas.
This is compounded by the media leaving out the context of how Hamas was elected to power in Gaza, leading to many Israelis and Westerners criticizing the Palestinians for electing them and coming to the conclusion that the Palestinians deserve what they get for electing Hamas into power. This narrative completely ignores the historical context of Israel and the United States murdering PLO members and funding Hamas to fight the PLO. Israeli Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev admitted to Israel funding Hamas in the 1970s and 80s to fight the secular left ideologies of the PLO. Former leader of the PLO Yasser Arafat described Hamas as “a creature of Israel.” This narrative also negates the fact that Palestinians have not actually had elections since 2007, so Hamas is not a government that has any democratic legitimacy toward Palestinians. However, despite all the evidence of Israel eliminating Palestinian authorities that called for peace and a secular government as well as propping up Islamic fundamentalist movements, the media does not discuss this and instead lays the blame on Palestinian citizens.
Hamas’s brutality has to also be recognized especially in regard to the recent devastating attacks on Israeli civilians and the holding of over one hundred civilians as hostage. Their brutality towards residents of Gaza should also be recognized with the treatment of women and queer people being completely unjustifiable. Even so, there can not be an equivalence of the violence, as Israel is an apartheid state that has the backing of the world’s superpower. It is a double standard that those who stand for Palestinian liberation who oppose Hamas are always asked to apologize for the actions of Hamas when the same is never done for the supporters of Israel despite far higher civilian casualties committed against Palestinians.
In a speech on October 9th, Joe Biden stated, “We also discussed how democracies like Israel and the United States are stronger and more secure when we act according to the rule of law. Terrorists purposefully target civilians, kill them. We uphold the laws of war — the law of war. It matters. There’s a difference.” Biden condemns Hamas for their brutal acts of terrorism and war crimes and yet, tries to paint a distinction between the various war crimes the United States has committed in the Middle East and the war crimes Israel is currently committing. Essentially, saying that whenever Israel and the US kill civilians it’s just by mistake. This distinction is not recognized by international law, which treats intentional targeting of civilians equally regardless of what group commits it. It is hard to say Israel is not intentionally targeting civilians when they knowingly commit strikes on residential buildings, media buildings, and in some cases hospitals. Many times, these attacks are defended by Israel as saying that despite the outside innocuous looks of these buildings, they are hideouts for Hamas. Even if one were to buy this reasoning, these strikes would act as a form of collective punishment against Palestinians which Israel is quite fond of doing, whether that be airstrikes on Gaza or the current total blockade which is harming all Gazans due to the actions of Hamas.
According to Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, collective punishment is considered a devious offense to the rights of man. There has been very limited pushback to this in the West with a few EU officials expressing a concern of the fact that Gazans are being subject to a collective punishment but there has been no official condemnation. The United Nations has reported that multiple UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) buildings housing civilians and foreign nationals have been struck by Israel. These attacks have significantly reduced the capacity of the UNRWA to provide aid to Gazans. 80% of Gazans rely on services from the UNRWA. Yet this blatant disregard for human rights and international law is not ever challenged by the US, neither domestically, nor on the international stage. When Biden says Israel has an unequivocal right to defend itself in the manner it currently is, he is defending the right for them to starve out Palestinians in Gaza.
There is a vital role that the US could potentially play in trying to reign in settler colonialism of Israel such as making Israeli aid dependent on a commitment to respecting international law or allowing Gaza to have an actual path forward economically. But the opposite of this has been done due to delusions that Israel being a “democratic” state means they are not to be held accountable for their war crimes.
It makes sense that conservative leaders would allow the reactionary Israeli government to pillage Palestinians but liberals are barely different. From Biden to Obama: instead of trying to check the Israeli project which has been growing more fascistic, liberal leaders have continued to give copious amounts of military aid to this apartheid state and uncritically support it.
Earlier this year, it seemed Biden had the potential to buck this trend with him publicly cautioning against Netanyahu’s judicial reforms which has been one of the first times in recent history that a US president has criticized Israeli policy on anything. Unfortunately, with his recent statements, it seems Biden is going to continue to feign insincere concerns about terrorists while arming the most far-right terroristic government in Israeli history that has expressed an intent to completely wipe out the Palestinian people. The Biden administration, rather than recognizing the carnage being committed by Israel whether by airstrikes or through the other mechanisms of apartheid, has discounted it by saying that Israel is abiding by the laws of war and simply defending themselves from attacks from Hamas. The administration’s reluctance to condemn the total blockade on Gaza, a form of collective punishment, on Gazans is appalling. Instead of engaging in talks to dismantle the apartheid regime of Israel, which ultimately is the root of the violence in the region, Biden has completely greenlit the fascist Israeli government to continue ethnically cleansing Palestinians in Gaza. In the coming days as Israel potentially acts to invade Gaza (which has been all but confirmed with the Israeli government impossibly calling for over a million Gazans to evacuate northern Gaza in 24 hours), the US and all those who have stated their support for Israel without reservation will be complicit in the atrocities that will be committed.
Resources to Help
Palestinian American Medical Association: https://palestinian-ama.org/campaign/show/13/crisis-fund
Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund: https://www.pcrf.net/
Islamic Relief:https://irusa.org/middle-east/palestine/
This article was powererd by WV Can’t Wait