NefeshBarYochai
2024-03-29 00:44:36 UTC
by JACK MIRKINSON
Since Israels campaign of death began, President Joe Biden has
perfected the art of cognitive dissonance, planting story after story
about his ever-increasing frustration with Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu while continuing to send Israel the bombs it is
using against the people of Gaza. But the past seven days have taken
this absurdity to new levels. Thats because this was the week when we
saw both Bidens most dramatic attempts to appear to be radically
shifting his approach and the most dramatic evidence of just how
deeply the United States is helping to perpetuate this war.
First, the attempts to telegraph that change is happening: Biden used
his State of the Union address to announce that the United States
would be building a pier off the Gaza coast so that it could deliver
aid to the millions of people who are either being massacred or left
to starve to death due to Israels unceasing bombardment and total
siege of the region. He was then filmed telling Senator Michael Bennet
that he was going to have a come to Jesus meeting with Netanyahu,
though he immediately undercut the seemingly accidental nature of the
broadcast by adding, Im on a hot mic here. Good.
On Saturday, Biden went further, telling MSNBCs Jonathan Capehart
that Netanyahu was hurting Israel more than helping Israel and that
an Israeli invasion of the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where 1.4
million Palestinians are trapped, would be a red line. All of this
was enough to prompt some of the White Houses more sycophantic
chroniclers, such as Axios reporter Barak Ravid, to proclaim that
Biden was breaking with Netanyahu.
And its true that these moves could seem like an encouraging signal
about his willingness to put some kind of pressure on Israel.
But wait, whats that sound? That would be the other shoe dropping.
The most important news about the American handling of the war in the
past week could be found not in any of the aforementioned, highly
choreographed moments, but in a pair of reports on Tuesday in The
Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, in which the outlets
revealed that not only has the United States been transferring vast
amounts of weapons to Israel, but that it has been doing so in a way
deliberately designed to evade public scrutiny.
According to the reports, the US has approved more than 100 arms sales
to Israel since October 7, constituting what the Journal called tens
of thousands of weapons. But the Biden administration has revealed
only two of those deals to Congress. The rest have been masked by one
of the oldest shady financial tricks in the books, as the Post
explained:
[Th]e weapons transfers were processed without any public debate
because each fell under a specific dollar amount that requires the
executive branch to individually notify Congress, according to U.S.
officials and lawmakers who, like others, spoke on the condition of
anonymity to discuss a sensitive military matter.
[ ] Thats an extraordinary number of sales over the course of a
pretty short amount of time, which really strongly suggests that the
Israeli campaign would not be sustainable without this level of U.S.
support, said Jeremy Konyndyk, a former senior Biden administration
official and current president of Refugees International.
So lets recap. Biden is publicly lamenting the scale of death in
Gaza, going after Netanyahu, and pledging to build a maritime aid
corridor to get around Israels siege. But Netanyahus ability to
carry out that level of carnage, and impose such an inhumane siege, is
dependent on the continued flow of weapons to Israel from the
government headed by Biden. Or, to put it more succinctly: The US
government is now making elaborate plans to ameliorate a humanitarian
catastrophe that would not exist without its own bombs.
When you add the fact that Bidens government is not only sending
Israel weapons but is so eager to do so that it is purposefully
skirting congressional oversight and public accountability, it all
gets even more ludicrous. Were no longer in a simple this makes no
sense situation. Instead, weve arrived at a Twilight Zone if I try
to rationalize this, it will tear a hole in the fabric of space and
time situation. Its as if you kept secretly handing an arsonist
gasoline and matches, then showed up five minutes later with the
firefighters, read out a statement about how unconscionable arson is,
and announced that you were taking major steps to help the survivors.
Things get more maddening when you look at the nature of the American
aid effort. That pier Biden announced? The Pentagon says it could take
up to two months to build. There is a famine happening right now in
Gaza, not two months from now. And the US wont even give assurances
that Israel will be prevented from firing on Palestinians trying to
retrieve American aid. There are other agencies on the ground, but the
US is in the way there too. It has cut off funding to UNWRA, the main
relief organization in Gaza, on dubious evidence that the UN now
claims was based in part on evidence obtained through torture.
These loopholes and contradictions have become so glaring that people
you might normally expect to overlook them are unable to. A recent
report in The New York Times, for instance, delicately noted that the
United States finds itself on both sides of the war in a way, arming
the Israelis while trying to care for those hurt as a result. And
Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen told The New Yorker, I really
havent heard a good response to the question of why we should not
apply existing U.S. law to insure that U.S. military assistance is
used in accordance with our values.
Nobody has heard a good responseand thats because there isnt one!
Its shameless hypocrisy from Biden all the way down.
Since Israels campaign of death began, President Joe Biden has
perfected the art of cognitive dissonance, planting story after story
about his ever-increasing frustration with Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu while continuing to send Israel the bombs it is
using against the people of Gaza. But the past seven days have taken
this absurdity to new levels. Thats because this was the week when we
saw both Bidens most dramatic attempts to appear to be radically
shifting his approach and the most dramatic evidence of just how
deeply the United States is helping to perpetuate this war.
First, the attempts to telegraph that change is happening: Biden used
his State of the Union address to announce that the United States
would be building a pier off the Gaza coast so that it could deliver
aid to the millions of people who are either being massacred or left
to starve to death due to Israels unceasing bombardment and total
siege of the region. He was then filmed telling Senator Michael Bennet
that he was going to have a come to Jesus meeting with Netanyahu,
though he immediately undercut the seemingly accidental nature of the
broadcast by adding, Im on a hot mic here. Good.
On Saturday, Biden went further, telling MSNBCs Jonathan Capehart
that Netanyahu was hurting Israel more than helping Israel and that
an Israeli invasion of the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where 1.4
million Palestinians are trapped, would be a red line. All of this
was enough to prompt some of the White Houses more sycophantic
chroniclers, such as Axios reporter Barak Ravid, to proclaim that
Biden was breaking with Netanyahu.
And its true that these moves could seem like an encouraging signal
about his willingness to put some kind of pressure on Israel.
But wait, whats that sound? That would be the other shoe dropping.
The most important news about the American handling of the war in the
past week could be found not in any of the aforementioned, highly
choreographed moments, but in a pair of reports on Tuesday in The
Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, in which the outlets
revealed that not only has the United States been transferring vast
amounts of weapons to Israel, but that it has been doing so in a way
deliberately designed to evade public scrutiny.
According to the reports, the US has approved more than 100 arms sales
to Israel since October 7, constituting what the Journal called tens
of thousands of weapons. But the Biden administration has revealed
only two of those deals to Congress. The rest have been masked by one
of the oldest shady financial tricks in the books, as the Post
explained:
[Th]e weapons transfers were processed without any public debate
because each fell under a specific dollar amount that requires the
executive branch to individually notify Congress, according to U.S.
officials and lawmakers who, like others, spoke on the condition of
anonymity to discuss a sensitive military matter.
[ ] Thats an extraordinary number of sales over the course of a
pretty short amount of time, which really strongly suggests that the
Israeli campaign would not be sustainable without this level of U.S.
support, said Jeremy Konyndyk, a former senior Biden administration
official and current president of Refugees International.
So lets recap. Biden is publicly lamenting the scale of death in
Gaza, going after Netanyahu, and pledging to build a maritime aid
corridor to get around Israels siege. But Netanyahus ability to
carry out that level of carnage, and impose such an inhumane siege, is
dependent on the continued flow of weapons to Israel from the
government headed by Biden. Or, to put it more succinctly: The US
government is now making elaborate plans to ameliorate a humanitarian
catastrophe that would not exist without its own bombs.
When you add the fact that Bidens government is not only sending
Israel weapons but is so eager to do so that it is purposefully
skirting congressional oversight and public accountability, it all
gets even more ludicrous. Were no longer in a simple this makes no
sense situation. Instead, weve arrived at a Twilight Zone if I try
to rationalize this, it will tear a hole in the fabric of space and
time situation. Its as if you kept secretly handing an arsonist
gasoline and matches, then showed up five minutes later with the
firefighters, read out a statement about how unconscionable arson is,
and announced that you were taking major steps to help the survivors.
Things get more maddening when you look at the nature of the American
aid effort. That pier Biden announced? The Pentagon says it could take
up to two months to build. There is a famine happening right now in
Gaza, not two months from now. And the US wont even give assurances
that Israel will be prevented from firing on Palestinians trying to
retrieve American aid. There are other agencies on the ground, but the
US is in the way there too. It has cut off funding to UNWRA, the main
relief organization in Gaza, on dubious evidence that the UN now
claims was based in part on evidence obtained through torture.
These loopholes and contradictions have become so glaring that people
you might normally expect to overlook them are unable to. A recent
report in The New York Times, for instance, delicately noted that the
United States finds itself on both sides of the war in a way, arming
the Israelis while trying to care for those hurt as a result. And
Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen told The New Yorker, I really
havent heard a good response to the question of why we should not
apply existing U.S. law to insure that U.S. military assistance is
used in accordance with our values.
Nobody has heard a good responseand thats because there isnt one!
Its shameless hypocrisy from Biden all the way down.