Genocide Blog 6 – Biden Sleepwalks Deeper into Genocide
17.11.2023
In response to a CBS journalist’s question, President Joe Biden twice admitted the genocide Netanyahu is carrying out against Palestinians. He said, referring to Israeli troops storming the Al Shifa Hospital, “this is a different story than I believe was occurring before, an indiscriminate bombing.” What is important in this phrase is the admission that there was “indiscriminate bombing” “occurring”, including presumably on hospitals, “before”.
“Indiscriminate bombing”, as it happens, Mr. Biden, is a war crime. You now admit to it. As if we needed more proof. “This is not the [note the article “the”] carpet bombing. This is a different thing. They’re going through these tunnels; they’re going in the hospital.”
Students already carry pancartes calling him “Genocide Joe”, demonstrators chant “Genocide Joe”, a name that will stick like the ubiquitous chant in the days of the Vietnam War, “Hey! Hey! LBJ! How many kids did you kill today?” stuck. The truth just cries out.
Before this, Biden had also made another admission of genocide in his reply to the CBS journalist.
He said, “Here’s the situation: You have a circumstance where the first war crime is being committed by Hamas by having their headquarters, their military hidden under a hospital. And that’s a fact. That’s what’s happened.” To begin with, Biden says “the first war crime is being committed by Hamas”. The word “first”, in ordinary English grammar, means that there are subsequent war crimes. Or at least one subsequent one. So, it is an admission of war crimes by Israel.
Secondly, let us study this more closely. What he is saying is that he, Biden, believes that, if Hamas commits a “first” war crime, this is somehow a defense for Netanyahu and Biden to commit any other level of war crimes of any proportion, maybe even genocide. It is ludicrous. And, in any case, Hamas is a mere political party elected to power and trying to run a “non-state” that has been under siege by an occupying colonial power for 17 years. So, Hamas somehow commits the “first” war crime? Really? What about the Israeli siege? What about its occupation? What about Palestinians being hounded off their land? There have been 75 years of “first” war crimes against the Palestinian people. And Biden then thinks that the Hamas-led raid of 7 October that breached the Israeli impregnable wall in 24 places, and did a knock-out of Israel’s electronic defenses, terrorized the civilian population for two days, killed civilians, took 240 prisoners-of-war, somehow justifies – not an enquiry into war crimes – but that an armed State, Israel – armed as it happens by the USA – committing genocide against the whole of the people of Gaza? He thinks the Hamas raid justifies taking out Palestinians’ hospitals one-by-one so that Gaza will not be habitable after the “subsequent war crimes” are over and the millions of people Israel has displaced from their homes by bombing them, want to return. Talk about admission of criminally disproportionate action.
Third in this bit, Biden says that Hamas had “their headquarters, their military hidden under a hospital”. He adds. “And that’s a fact.” He offers no proof of this “fact”. What Biden says is fact. Anyway, it is as if, as a Palestinian comedian put it in his dark humour, if there was a terrorist hiding under the Empire State Building, it would be an excuse to bomb it. The IDF had by then produced nothing more than a laughable collection of hand-guns. Even now, the IDF is saying there is an entrance to the tunnels “near the hospital”. One would be challenged to find any place in Gaza that is not “near” an entrance to the tunnels. The IDF says it has found the body of one hostage at the hospital – as if these miserable bits of evidence or anything else imaginable, would justify bombing and raiding all those hospitals?
Biden also says, about the raid on the hospital that has lasted over two days now, “Israel did not go in with a large number of troops, did not raid, did not rush everything down. They’ve gone in and they’ve gone in with their soldiers carrying weapons or guns. They were told — told — let me be precise. [Interesting where he has to watch his words!] We’ve discussed the need for them to be incredibly careful. You have a circumstance where you know there is a fair number of Hamas terrorists.” What is he blathering on about? Mr. Biden, we have seen the IDF’s own footage of soldiers stalking around bed-ridden patients, patients reduced to being bed-ridden in hospital corridors. Imagine your grandchild was lying there in the hospital, Mr. Biden, injured on a trolley in a corridor, when her house was bombed and she was brought to a hospital, that is now raided by an occupying army. What does that feel like for terrorism, Mr. Empathy? Yours is nothing but a colonial mentality personified. You empathize only with the colonizing power. As if you are the colonizing power, which, to all intents and purposes, you are. The Palestinian people are not people to you, Mr. Biden. Your reaction to the suffering of the Palestinian people is racist. That is a fact. You do not care about even their new-born babies. Nor even worry about where the poor mothers even are.
Mr. Biden then said something so chilling it makes you shudder.
For days, every thinking person on the planet followed hour-by-excruciating-hour how the Al Shifa hospital’s incubators for the premature new-born babies, lay there empty. They are perfectly good incubators. They cannot operate because there is no fuel to run the generators for the electricity required for them. Nor is there oxygen any longer to help the little ones breathe in incubators, after the Israeli military bombed the hospital unit that produces oxygen. Here is what Joe Biden says: the Israeli army is “also bringing in incubators”. The IDF is “bringing in incubators”.
But there are already incubators there, Joe. Dead incubators, Joe.
This President of the USA just stands there and confabulates that the IDF is “also bringing in incubators”. That is how much he cares about Palestinian babies and their poor mothers. He just tells lies, and tells them glibly, off the cuff.
He just goes on supplying the arms and the money for the war crimes and the genocide.
Lindsey Collen
for LALIT
NOTE: Excerpt from White House transcript of 16 November headed “Remarks by President Biden in a Press Conference, Woodside, CA” [California].
A CBS journalist asked a question “about the IDF raid on the Al-Shifa Hospital, as it tries to contain and take out the Hamas operative that is there. This week, you [Mr. President] also said that we must protect hospitals. So, when you weigh the target against the number of civilians inside the hospital, is the operation underway justified?” Here is Biden’s reply in toto:
“THE PRESIDENT: Well, look, we did discuss this, by the way. We can’t let it get out of control. Here’s the situation: You have a circumstance where the first war crime is being committed by Hamas by having their headquarters, their military hidden under a hospital. And that’s a fact. That’s what’s happened.
“Israel did not go in with a large number of troops, did not raid, did not rush everything down. They’ve gone in and they’ve gone in with their soldiers carrying weapons or guns. They were told — told — let me be precise. We’ve discussed the need for them to be incredibly careful. You have a circumstance where you know there is a fair number of Hamas terrorists. Hamas has already said publicly that they plan on attacking Israel again like they did before, to where they were cutting babies’ heads off to burn — burning women and children alive.
“And so, the idea that they’re going to just stop and not do anything is not realistic. This is not the carpet bombing. This is a different thing. They’re going through these tunnels; they’re going in the hospital.
“And if you notice, I — I was mildly preoccupied today. I apologize, I didn’t see everything. But what I did see, whether — I haven’t had it confirmed yet — I have asked my team to answer the question. But what happened is they’re also bringing in incubators. They’re bringing in other — other means to help the people in the hospital, and they’ve given the doctors and — I’m told — the doctors and nurses and personnel an opportunity to get out of harm’s way. So, this is a different s tory than I believe was occurring before, an indiscriminate bombing.”
