US Spokesman John Kirby Speaks in the Grammar of Genocide
27.10.2023
President Biden’s National Security Advisor John Kirby said to the Press earlier this week on 24 October that, and here is the direct quote:
“as I think you’ve heard us say, a ceasefire right now will really only benefit Hamas.”
Let us unpick this hideous statement. We will start with the last part: “a ceasefire right now will really only benefit Hamas”. As Palestinian children are killed with every passing hour, this spokesman for the United States of America says to us that a ceasefire will “only benefit Hamas”. “Only”. The grammar of that phrase is that there are no other beneficiaries from a ceasefire but Hamas. Is he mad? Has he got a neurological speech disorder? Or is it US policy to see the people of Gaza, even the children, as not really existing? The truth is that, in order for Kirby to be in favour of continuing killing the children, and in order for him to summon up the chilling cruelty to stand in public and say so, he has to convince himself the children do not exist. One way or another. So, it gets into the grammar he uses. What he is telling us, word for grammatical word, is that a ceasefire does not benefit the children of Gaza. He knows very well that the children, if they are not intentionally starved to death by the Israeli military, might even survive if a ceasefire was called. It would certainly benefit them and their parents. Yet he says if the bombing stops, but it would “Only benefit Hamas.”
And then, to cushion his genocidal statement, the poor man has tagged on a little prelude, “as I think you’ve heard us say”. Now “us” is introduced. It is not just “me”, John Kirby. And because the whole sentence is so grotesque, he adds “I think” to the assertion that “we” have said it before. It may or may not be true that anyone else around Biden has said it before. It is as if he has been forced by Biden to utter this abominable sentence. It is so abominable he can hardly get it out of his own mouth. I hope he has members of his family and friends around him that point out that he is justifying the unjustifiable: genocide. I hope they tell him to stop doing it.
You will have noticed our drafting when we said that US spokesmen each have “to convince himself the children do not exist. One way or another.” Biden’s own “way” this week was different. He has chosen to question the exact number of children killed. Maybe none? Anyway, to him, it is not enough, he concludes. He said on 25 October that he has “no confidence in the numbers that the Palestinians are using” for the death toll in Gaza, where the Health Ministry says more than 6,500 people have been killed under Israeli bombing of Gaza, including nearly 2,500 children. The figures, Biden says, do not inspire confidence. Therefore, go on killing the children, he is in fact saying. Is he also off his head? Mr. Empathy, himself, saying that?
Already Biden’s representative at the United Nations, sitting there looking sick to her stomach, was the only one to raise her hand to block the initial UN Security Council resolution for a ceasefire. Suffer, her raised hand said, the little children to be killed by fire and brimstone.
The second time round, the UK was, as is the pattern since Iraq, brought in, just so as to limit the total isolation of the poor woman representative. This time she got her assistant to put his miserable hand up, to avoid her the weight of responsibility for the genocide. These actions speak even louder than the hideous words of John Kirby: “Go on bombing, starving, and re-bombing” the people of Gaza,” the USA and UK representatives say to Israel. May their family and friends, too, point out to them what they are doing when they raise their hands in this way at the UN.
Lindsey Collen
for LALIT
