Tag: perpetual war

How Joe Biden Became America’s Top Israel Hawk

Last month, a reporter asked President Joe Biden about the chances for a ceasefire in Gaza. More than 10,000 people had already been killed there, most of them women and children. Food, water, and medical supplies were scarce. Still, the president did not hesitate in assessing the odds of a ceasefire that he had more power than almost anyone in the world to help bring about.

“None,” Biden replied. “No possibility.” Biden’s unconditional support for Israel as it waged one of the most devastating bombing campaigns in modern history was already at odds with most of the world and significant parts of his own political base. The president showed no sign of backing down.

It would take another month and nearly 8,000 more Palestinian deaths for Biden to criticize Israel in any meaningful way. At a closed-door fundraiser last week, he warned that Israel’s “indiscriminate bombing” was costing the country international support. But Biden’s own support for the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remained largely intact. After saying he favored the eventual creation of a Palestinian state, he reiterated his unwavering backing for the Jewish nation. “We’re not going to do a damn thing other than protect Israel,” Biden said. “Not a single thing.”

Much of Biden’s deference to Israel is deeply personal. As his supporters have put it, he identifies with the nation in his kishkes—his guts. That can be seen in the highly emotional and graphic way in which he has talked about victims of the Hamas attack being massacred, sexually assaulted, and taken hostage.

Both before and after October 7, the empathy Biden is known for has rarely extended to Palestinians. Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University, said such statements are missing “to the degree that I don’t really think he sees the Palestinians at all.” In contrast, Khalidi added, Biden sees Israelis “as they are very carefully presented by their government and their massive information apparatus.”

A former Biden administration official shared a similar perspective with me. “The President does not seem to acknowledge the humanity of all parties affected by this conflict,” this person said. “He has described Israeli suffering in great detail, while Palestinian suffering is left vague if mentioned at all.”

This article is based on conversations with former members of the Obama and Biden administrations, interviews with leading experts on Israel and Palestine, and a review of hundreds of mostly forgotten congressional hearings, speeches, and articles in which the president has explained how he sees the conflict. Together, they reveal instinctive sympathy for Israel contrasted by incuriosity about Palestinians; an increasingly outdated view of the domestic politics on the issue; and a deep commitment to a repeatedly disproven belief that peace will only come from there being “no daylight” between Israel and the United States. (The National Security Council did not make any officials available for an interview for this story.)

The result is that Biden has prioritized providing Israel largely unconditional support and the space to continue fighting in the face of intense international opposition. This approach is predictable in some respects. Israel has gotten almost whatever it wants from the United States for decades, and any American president would have supported Israel in the wake of a Hamas attack that took the lives of 1,200 people. 

Keep reading

Former Pentagon Official Says War in Ukraine is Basically “Over”

A former top Pentagon official says that the war in Ukraine is effectively “over” because Kiev’s counter-offensive has failed and there is no appetite in America to continue funding it.

Maloof, a former senior security policy analyst, told Sputnik that President Volodymyr Zelensky would have to seriously consider some form of negotiated end to the conflict with Russia.

“There’s no stomach right now any longer to fund the Ukrainians,” he said. “Frankly, the people see that the war is over. Basically, the [Ukrainian] counteroffensive failed, and there’s no way that they can pick it back up and turn things around, because they’ve gone into total defensive mode. The so-called counteroffensive just does not exist.”

The US Congress has failed to reach a deal on sending a further $60 billion in aid for Ukraine, a roadblock that could cause the US government to shut down in January, warned Maloof, predicting a “tumultuous” start to 2024.

“The United States has their appropriations hung up. The US government could shut down by January 17 if the administration and Congress can’t negotiate and work out an arrangement for funding Ukraine and Israel, but at the same time to enforce the border,” he said.

Keep reading

The Biden administration once again bypasses Congress on an emergency weapons sale to Israel

For the second time this month the Biden administration is bypassing Congress to approve an emergency weapons sale to Israel as Israel continues to prosecute its war against Hamas in Gaza under increasing international criticism.

The State Department said Friday that Secretary of State Antony Blinken had told Congress that he had made a second emergency determination covering a $147.5 million sale for equipment, including fuses, charges and primers, that is needed to make the 155 mm shells that Israel has already purchased function.

“Given the urgency of Israel’s defensive needs, the secretary notified Congress that he had exercised his delegated authority to determine an emergency existed necessitating the immediate approval of the transfer,” the department said.

“The United States is committed to the security of Israel, and it is vital to U.S. national interests to ensure Israel is able to defend itself against the threats it faces,” it said.

Keep reading

Israel’s Long History of Ethnic Cleansing

Senior Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, are again publicly advocating the ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip. Their proposals are being presented as voluntary emigration schemes, in which Israel is merely playing the role of Good Samaritan, selflessly mediating with foreign governments to find new homes for destitute and desperate Palestinians. But it is ethnic cleansing all the same.

Alarm bells should have started ringing in early November when U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other Western politicians began insisting there could be “no forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza.” Rather than rejecting any mass removal of Palestinians, Blinken and colleagues objected only to optically challenging expulsions at gunpoint. The option of “voluntary” displacement by leaving residents of the Gaza Strip with no choice but departure was pointedly left open.

Ethnic cleansing, or “transfer” as it is known in Israeli parlance, has a long pedigree that goes back to the late-19nth-century beginnings of the Zionist movement. While the early Zionists adopted the slogan, “A Land Without a People for a People Without a Land,” the evidence demonstrates that, from the very outset, their leaders knew better. More to the point, they clearly understood that the Palestinians formed the main obstacle to the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. This is for the simple reason that, to them, a “Jewish state” denotes one in which its Jewish population acquires and maintains unchallenged demographic, territorial, and political supremacy.

Keep reading

For the Safety of Jews and Palestinians, Stop Weaponizing Antisemitism

For eighteen years I had the great privilege of working as Executive Director of Harvard Hillel.

As a leader of Jewish communities on campus, in New England, and around the nation, I have helped cultivate a new generation of Jewish leaders and citizens. I navigated moments of tension and war: the tumultuous 1990s, as the Oslo Accords began to crumble; the Second Intifada; 9/11 and its fallout; the Iraq War; Israel’s Second Lebanon War and its war on Gaza in late 2008.

During my long career as a Jewish educator and leader — including thirteen years living in Jerusalem — I have seen and lived through my community’s struggles. Now, as an elder leader, with the benefit of hindsight, I feel compelled to speak to what I see as a disturbing trend gripping our campus, and many others: The cynical weaponization of antisemitism by powerful forces who seek to intimidate and ultimately silence legitimate criticism of Israel and of American policy on Israel.

In most cases, it takes the form of bullying pro-Palestine organizers. In others, these campaigns persecute anyone who simply doesn’t show due deference to the bullies.

The recent effort to smear our new University President, Claudine Gay, is a case in point. I applaud the decision by the Harvard Corporation to stand by Dr. Gay amid the ludicrous charges that she somehow supports genocide against Jews, and I hope Harvard will continue to take a clear and strong stance against any further efforts by these powerful parties to meddle in university affairs, especially over personnel decisions.

The toppling of the president of the University of Pennsylvania is a sobering example of what can happen when we empower these unscrupulous forces to dictate our path as university leaders. The stakes are as high as they’ve ever been. Our vigilance must be up to the task.

As a leader in the Jewish community, I am particularly alarmed by today’s McCarthyist tactic of manufacturing an antisemitism scare, which, in effect, turns the very real issue of Jewish safety into a pawn in a cynical political game to cover for Israel’s deeply unpopular policies with regard to Palestine. (A recent poll found that 66 percent of all U.S. voters and 80 percent of Democratic voters desire an end to Israel’s current war, for instance.)

What makes this trend particularly disturbing is the power differential: Billionaire donors and the politically-connected, non-Jews and Jews alike on one side, targeting disproportionately people of vulnerable populations on the other, including students, untenured faculty, persons of color, Muslims, and, especially, Palestinian activists.

Keep reading

US Announces $250 Million Arms Package for Ukraine

The Biden administration announced a new $250 million weapons package for Ukraine that the White House said will be the last until Congress approves new spending for the proxy war.

The arms package uses the Presidential Drawdown Authority, which allows the US to ship weapons straight from US military stockpiles. The Pentagon still has over $4.1 billion in PDA funds for Ukraine but lacks the funds to replenish the arms as US stockpiles have been significantly depleted.

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said last week that once the new arms package was announced, “We will have no more replenishment authority available to us, and we’re going to need Congress to act without delay.”

Keep reading

Secrecy shrouds British military actions in Lebanon

On 8 October, veteran British reporter Robert Peston published a remarkable post on the social media platform X. Citing insider information from “government and intelligence sources,” Peston asserted that the Palestinian resistance operation Al-Aqsa Flood would inevitably evolve into a full-blown regional war, one that will be “as destabilizing to global security as Putin’s attack on Ukraine.” The journalist forewarned:

“We are in the early stages of a conflict with ramifications for much of the world.”

What makes this revelation even more astonishing is the speed at which British intelligence gained certainty about imminent upheaval in West Asia, just over 24 hours after the unprecedented strike by Palestinian freedom fighters on Israel. 

The urgency to prepare western audiences for the impending crisis hints at a deeper narrative — that London may have had a hand in igniting conflict across the region, a macabre plan that has been unfolding ever since.

Keep reading

Biden Tells Congress He Launched Airstrikes in Iraq to ‘Deter’ Future Attacks

In a letter to Congress, President Biden said he launched Christmas Day airstrikes in Iraq to deter future attacks on US troops in Iraq and Syria, but the attacks have continued since then.

The Pentagon said the airstrikes targeted three facilities used by Kataib Hezbollah, one of the main Iran-aligned militias in Iraq, and came in response to an attack on a US base in Erbil that wounded three US troops. The Iraqi government slammed the US for carrying out the airstrikes, saying the bombings killed one serviceman and wounded 18 people, including civilians.

“On the night of December 25, 2023, at my direction, United States forces conducted discrete strikes against three facilities in Iraq used by Iran-affiliated groups for training, logistics support, and other purposes,” Biden said in his letter to Congress. “The strikes were taken to deter future attacks and were conducted in a manner designed to limit the risk of escalation and minimize civilian casualties.”

Al Mayadeen reported that since the US airstrikes were launched, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of Shia militias, has claimed five more attacks on US forces in Iraq and Syria. An attack on Wednesday again targeted US troops based in Erbil, Iraq.

Biden said the approximately 2,500 US troops based in Iraq are there under the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force, which was passed in the wake of 9/11. On paper, US troops are stationed in Iraq to assist the Iraqi government in its fight against ISIS, a group that did not exist when the 2001 AUMF became law. Biden also claimed that he could bomb Iraq using authorities granted to him by the Constitution.

Keep reading

Over 100 Journalists Killed in Less Than Three Months

Nearly 100 journalists have been killed in less than three months in Palestine. And that’s not by accident. They aren’t collateral damage. They weren’t human shields. Most were targeted deliberately. Their offense: exposing the deceit behind the propaganda flushed out by the Israeli government, and our own government, our president, and the mainstream media, many of whom don’t function as journalists. Instead, they act like stenographers for the state, for the military-industrial complex. Which is profiting massively off of this slaughter, banking on people being uninformed and indifferent to it.

Well, real journalists are preventing that, because the real journalists are standing in defiance of power, standing in the face of the war machine, and are bravely documenting its crimes. Documenting the daily horror raining down on millions of civilians trapped on a small slice of land.

So the powerful want these journalists silenced, by any means necessary, because they are proving to be very powerful themselves. I’ve gone to many rallies for Palestine over the years, and I’ve never seen the groundswell like we are witnessing now.

Keep reading

US Is Shifting Strategy on Ukraine

The US and its European allies are quietly shifting their strategy in Ukraine from supporting Kyiv’s unrealistic goal of driving Russian forces out to encouraging a defensive posture with future negotiations in mind, POLITICO reported on Wednesday, citing US and European officials.

The US and its close allies have discouraged peace talks throughout the conflict, including in March and April of 2022, when a peace deal was on the table that would have left Ukraine territorially intact in exchange for the country’s neutrality, something that was recently confirmed by Ukraine’s lead negotiator.

Instead of pushing for peace, then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told Ukraine to keep fighting, and the US declared one of its war goals was to “weaken” Russia. Now, Moscow has made it clear any future peace deal must recognize the territory it has annexed as Russian, and Russia has the upper hand and time on its side.

The POLITICO report said that US and European officials are discussing deploying Ukrainian forces in a defensive posture instead of continuing the failed counteroffensive. The New York Times reported earlier this month that the US was suggesting Ukraine should dig in to protect the territory it still has.

The shift in strategy comes as both the US and Europe are struggling to come up with more funding for the proxy war. Part of the Biden administration’s long-term strategy is to help build up Ukraine’s own military-industrial complex so the country is not so reliant on foreign aid.

The Biden administration has not publicly outlined its shift in strategy, but there are signs that the US is thinking about winding down the proxy war. A mantra commonly repeated by US and NATO officials was that they would support Ukraine against Russia for “as long as it takes.” But when President Biden met with Ukrainian President VOlodomyr Zelensky earlier this month, he said the US would continue supplying Ukraine with weapons for “as long as we can.”

Keep reading