The Joe Biden administration has been making a desperate effort to deny the U.S. government’s responsibility for the Israeli genocide against the people of Gaza. So far, this effort has failed, and with obvious reason: Washington arms Tel Aviv.
Philadelphia, December 2023. (Photo: Joe Piette)
We should appreciate that the most powerful corporate media machine in world history has tried to push this denial. This media monster has also repeated every Israeli and U.S. lie ad nauseam and magnified those lies. But the “Big Lie” mechanism has failed to stop solidarity with Palestine from growing, even in the central countries of world imperialism, including in the United States.
Let’s examine why.
The facts: Long before Oct. 7, the Israeli settler state had been killing, blockading and imprisoning Palestinians for decades. Many were imprisoned without trial — the original hostage taking.
Starting Oct. 8, the Israeli Occupation Force (to use a more accurate name than IDF) has been bombing civilian housing, hospitals, schools, mosques, churches and markets in Gaza, and destroying homes for much of the population. All of this while Israel denies Gazans access to basic necessities of electricity, food and water. .
U.S. imperialism (another accurate name), led by the Biden administration, supplied the bombs, shells and military intelligence from the beginning. Billions of dollars in weapons and ammunition are still coming.
The Pentagon even sent two aircraft carrier groups to the West Asia region near Israel to demonstrate support for Israel’s action in Gaza and to threaten massive bombing of Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Iran. The warships are still there.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited the Israeli war criminals early on and then carried out what can only be understood as U.S.-Israeli foreign policy. Blinken met with Arab leaders in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. When Biden went to the region, Arab government leaders — fearing their own populations, who understand very well the U.S.-Israeli connections — cancelled their meeting with him in Amman, Jordan.
Despite Biden’s early attempt to claim the U.S. opposed Israel’s wanton slaughter of civilians, the U.S. vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for a cease-fire. U.S. officials are experienced war criminals on a global scale and have continued to supply the Israeli war criminals with the means to carry out genocide.
As a consequence of U.S.-Israeli criminal actions, even more than during earlier crises in the region, the world now grasps that both states are genocidal warmongers, dangerous for humanity. Millions have risen up in demonstrations and have named Washington as the accomplice, enabler, arms supplier of Tel Aviv, or even as the main and central enemy of humanity.
The latest visit, as of Dec. 18, is that of War Secretary Lloyd Austin (officially Defense Secretary, but the original title is more accurate). Gen. Austin is supposed to be arguing that the Israelis should limit their genocidal war to several weeks, instead of the several months that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he needs.
Some may expect Gen. Austin to share with Netanyahu his experience that 20 years of U.S. occupation of Afghanistan, eight years of Iraq, with a similar callousness toward civilian casualties, got U.S. imperialism nowhere.
So far, it all seems like mere public relations. To stop Israeli genocide, the U.S. government need only stop arming the IOF. Or pull back the aircraft carrier groups. Or both.
But to the U.S. rulers and their main imperialist allies in Europe, Israel is a vital beachhead, dependent on the U.S., to be used against any liberation movements in that oil-rich part of the world. Washington refuses to give up that beachhead, which is why the U.S. continues to supply Tel Aviv, despite the problems that this causes for its own diplomacy.
May this symbiotic relation between the two oppressive states soon collapse under the weight of mass revolt and the courage of the Palestinians and their regional allies, especially the Iraqi resistance, Hezbollah and the Yemeni Armed Forces.
To urge that collapse along, and to stop the slaughter in Gaza, we must join those who are in the streets condemning U.S.-Israeli genocide in Gaza and help win support for the liberation of Palestine. It is urgent that we reinforce the growing conviction that both Biden and Netanyahu are war criminals.