Genocide Blog 42 – Mass Mobilization Against Biden Begins to Have Effect
08.05.2024
Listen to what President Biden’s Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is quoted in The Independent earlier this week as saying, under the heading, “Blinken blames TikTok and Social Media for disrupting Israel’s Narrative for War in Gaza”. Blinken says, “Why has Hamas disappeared in terms of public perception? An offer is on the table for a ceasefire and yet the world is screaming about Israel.”
At least Blinken realizes “the world” is screaming about Israel. At long last.
But, what he means is that the genocide against the people of Palestine is all the fault of big bad Hamas, and the “screaming” world is blaming poor little Israel, eternal victim, even as Israel perpetrates a plausible genocide, according to the ICJ. Banning TikTok will, Blinken believes, help prevent people from blaming Israel for the genocide it is perpetrating! But blaming Hamas is a bit threadbare, too, as arguments go. Hamas has hand-made munitions, no tanks, no airplanes, no army, no airforce, no guided missiles. Israel has, it itself brags, the most sophisticated army in the world, armed to the teeth by the USA to the tune of billions of dollars a year and surveillance so powerful that it is “impregnable”.
And then, by the time I read the article, literally hours after publication, Hamas had accepted the offer on the table made via the intermediaries from Qatar and Egypt in the presence of the USA’s spy chief and head of the CIA William Burns.
So, then what is the USA’s excuse, Mr. Blinken? Can’t blame Hamas now, can you? For not accepting an offer on the table?
Israel and the USA both began to scramble.
Blaming Hamas is no longer an option for the USA. It never was. But now Blinken knows that everyone knows it no longer is.
Yet, he persists with the genocide? Him and his President Biden? And still no UN Security Council Resolution? Still no immediate cut in all US military and other aid? Still no sanctions? Still no embargo on Israel? Still chummy-chummy with the genocide? Still arresting American students who oppose the genocide? To the tune of over 2,000 arrests? Still getting his police officers to throw old ladies to the ground, for no more than trying to protect their students who protest against a genocide they want no complicity with?
The USA’s puppet regime, Israel, a puppet that pretends to be independent like some kind of uncontrollable “Frankenstein”, then comes up with a lame excuse about how Hamas has given a “response” and has not “accepted” the deal on the table. Israel, reduced to playing with words in order to cover up its crimes, has now gone ahead and taken over the Rafah Crossing, itself, stopped all trucks that go through it, and begun to bomb Rafah so that no food and no fuel to purify water can get through into Gaza. Since Sunday no trucks have been in. Since the day before yesterday, 6 May, there has been an evacuation order: Israel forces 100,000 Palestinians in Gaza to move from the very place Israel had already forced them to move into. Israel persists in corralling people as though they were cattle. The sadistic Israeli State and its increasingly sadistic soldiers forcibly make refugees become refugees, again and again.
Three-quarters of all Palestinian housing in Gaza has been destroyed. Two-thirds of all schools have been destroyed. All 12 Universities have been destroyed. There were at least 435 attacks on health facilities or health workers in Gaza in six months of conflict between 7 October 2023 and early April, the WHO says. Only three remain of the 36 hospitals, and they offer only partial services. All these are war crimes, and indicators of genocide.
This constant moving of populations as a whole is, itself, a sign of genocide.
The huge-scale mass graves in the Hospital grounds of Nasser and Al Shifa are yet another sign of war crimes, and proof of genocide. Some of those buried – three metres under the ground, when mass graves are supposed to be superficial so that identification of corpses and, where possible, genuine rites can be carried out – had their hands zip-tied behind their backs and had been shot at close range. Others were still intubated, indicating they were hospital patients. Some are believed to have been buried alive.
Extrapolating from UNICEF figures until January, some 2,000 children have lost one or more limbs. That kind of intentional harm constitutes genocide by the occupying forces, Israel. Israel, as an occupying force, has a legal duty of care over the people it occupies.
And now the Israelis are imposing mass starvation in earnest. Palestinian children, already wan, are now to be exposed to more intentional starvation.
At long last TODAY, the USA is beginning to react. Reuters and Associated Press announce leaks of first a “delay” then “a pause” in shipment of USA bombs and other munitions to Israel. If true, at long last. But only “a pause”.
Here is how Al Jazeera, the only mainstream outlet that is reliable, summarizes the leaks:
“The AFP, Associated Press and Reuters news agencies on Tuesday reported unnamed United States officials saying that the US began to ‘carefully review proposed transfers of particular weapons to Israel that might be used in Rafah’ in April when it seemed Israel appeared close to making a decision on the assault. As a result of that review, we have paused one shipment of weapons last week. It consists of 1,800 2,000-lb (900kg) bombs and 1,700 500-lb (225kg) bombs,’ the official said.
“ ‘We are especially focused on the end-use of the 2,000-lb bombs and the impact they could have in dense urban settings as we have seen in other parts of Gaza. We have not made a final determination on how to proceed with this shipment,’ the official was quoted as saying. The news agencies said he spoke on condition of anonymity given the issue’s sensitivity.
“Reuters reported that four sources said the shipments, which have been delayed for at least two weeks, involved Boeing-made Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs), which place precision guidance systems onto bombs, as well as Small Diameter Bombs.
“Citing unnamed officials, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier on Tuesday that the US had delayed the shipment of some 6,500 JDAMs.”
Clearly the combination of the opposition of the Governments of the entire world outside the Western NATO alliance and military allies, the reports the Secretary of State gets from US ambassadors world-wide on shrinking support and growing disapproval of Israel’s actions, the judgment of the International Court of Justice that Israel is committing “plausible” genocide, the opinion of two-thirds of Americans that according to polls do not agree with Biden’s handling of Israel and Gaza, and the increasing student protests on over 200 US campuses, and with the awakening of the American Labour Movement, a giant in terms of potential power, President Biden cannot continue to arm, fund and give political cover to the genocide. This shows how every bit of pressure counts, and as a whole, it can begin to work. The stronger pressure, the better.
And remember, there is pressure from the other side. There is world-wide big business lobby, including the arms lobby, and related industries. The lobby of AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) is the main foreign “electoral interferer” in the USA. Christian Zionists, often anti-semitic as well as Zionist, are a big electoral block. And now 12 US Senators have written a letter on Senate letterhead threatening the International Criminal Court against any arrests of Netanyahu or his acolytes. (See our Documents Section for copy of the unbelievable letter in PDF format. It is just one page, and well worth a read. It was published by Zeteo, the new news site run by renowned debater and broadcaster, Mehdi Hasan.)
Lindsey Collen, for LALIT
