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Former Biden official justifies the murder of Palestinian children

Former United States secretary and Biden advisor, Jacob Lew, has stumbled into a series of embarrassing admissions in an interview with The New Yorker. Veteran journalist Isaac Chotiner had questions for Lew about the Biden administration’s handling of Israel in the early days of the genocide. Chotiner pressed Lew on America’s relationship to Israel’s internal demands for ethnic cleansing:

This is a war that a former defense minister to Netanyahu has referred to as ethnic cleansing. Whether you agree with this characterization or not, there is a certain point at which the U.S. could choose to stop helping Israel.

Lew describes how the US government at the time advised on not only Israel’s humanitarian obligations as the occupying power, but on their conduct:

We were engaging not just on humanitarian assistance; we were engaging on the conduct of the war. I’m not saying that everything went the way we would’ve advised, and I’m not saying we didn’t call them in the middle of the night many times saying, What on earth happened just now?
So, which is it? Did the US exert its influence over Israel over its conduct on war, or not?

Biden’s abandonment of Palestinians

When asked what was the content of those late night calls, Lew describes:

The general pattern was that in-the-moment stories were inaccurate, and that the Israeli military and government establishment were not in a position to fully explain yet. We could almost never get answers that explained what happened before the story was fully framed in international media, and then when the facts were fully developed, it turned out that the casualties were much lower, the number of civilians was much lower, and, in many cases, the children were children of Hamas fighters, not children taking cover in places.
Here, Lew appears to not realise what he has just said. Namely, that he considers it acceptable for children to be killed if they are “children of Hamas fighters.” Chotiner immediately pulls him up on it:
Sorry, what did you just say?
In many cases, the original number of casualties—
No, I meant the thing about who the children were.
They were often the children of the fighters themselves.
And therefore what follows from that?
What follows is that whether or not it was a legitimate military target flows from the population that’s there.
Hold on, Mr. Secretary. That’s not, in fact, correct, right? Whether it’s a legitimate target has to do with all kinds of things like proportionality. It doesn’t matter if the kids are the kids of—
Lew, remarkably, doubles down:
If you’re the commander of a Hamas unit and you bring your family to a military site, that’s different. I’m not saying everything fits into that, and I’m not saying it’s not a tragedy.
So, according to Biden’s former advisor, it’s not ideal that children are killed. But, it is certainly understandable if they’re the children of Hamas members. Chotiner, again, points out that it doesn’t make a difference who the children are when it comes to international law. However, Lew is adamant that this is the reality of the situation.
That one interaction reveals much about the strategic decisions America takes in its undying support of Israel. There is no situation in which America will oppose Israeli interests. It’s been made heartbreakingly irrelevant by this point, but international law technically forbids the killing and maiming of children during any conflict. Apparently, the exception to that if US strategists believe it’s justified.

‘Blood-soaked demon’

Online commenters saw Lew’s characterisation for what it was:

Writer Pete Forester showed just how cruel and asinine Lew’s remarks were:

And, writer Tariq Kenney-Shawa pointed out that just because Israel claim someone is in Hamas doesn’t mean they are:

Israel have routinely claimed everyone from children, aid seekers, and basically anyone they want to (or have) bombed are Hamas. That includes the “Hamas camera” which apparently was the reason they bombed a hospital just days ago. When combined with the fact that Israel’s own data reveals that a sickening 83% of the people they’ve killed are civilians, Israel’s assertions that Hamas is everywhere is as compelling as international law.

Denial of manufactured famine

Chotiner begins the interview by referencing an article Lew wrote along with former US ambassador to Turkey, David Satterfield. In the piece, the two argue that the Biden administration effectively held off famine in Gaza. Instead, it laid the blame for the current famine squarely at Trump’s feet. Chotiner pushes Lew to elaborate on what the Biden administration did differently to the Trump administration in relation to American consultancy with Israel on humanitarian requirements.

Lew responds:

And every time there were reports of famine that were not accurate, it made it harder to do the job of getting more aid in. We were trying to make the critique in a balanced way to keep pressure on Hamas—and to not abandon Israel’s just effort to defeat an enemy that attacked it on October 7th, killing twelve hundred people—while still saying that you have an obligation every day, even if it’s at some risk, to keep the aid crossings open to Gaza. It was arduous work.
The risk of strengthening Hamas, if Hamas got hold of the fuel or the food, was a serious question. It wasn’t a made-up concern
Again, the spectre of Hamas rears its head as a boogeyman and scapegoat for the moral failings of the US and Israel. Lew’s remarks suggest that the possibility of Hamas potentially gaining access to aid made the very real threat of starvation an acceptable outcome for civilians.
Chotiner pushes Lew to admit that the Biden administration’s policy was to support Israel in allowing enough trickles of aid through so as to avoid all-out famine, but no more. Lew states:
I think the reports of famine were premature and exaggerated.
Chotiner points out that people were still starving to death in 2024. And, Lew’s remarks are even more galling in light of Lew’s dismissal of reports of famine given that, as journalist Brian Tashman alleges, Lew:
threatened the group that issued the famine alert last year until they withdrew their famine alert.
Chotiner pushes Lew on the assertion that the US government directed its efforts towards allowing Benjamin Netanyahu remain in power. Their next exchange reads:
So when you say that, “Allowing Netanyahu to cite a need to satisfy U.S. demands was crucial then—and remains crucial today,” what do you mean? Netanyahu doesn’t want to piss off the super far-right ministers in his government by having it seem that Israel is delivering aid. So you’re saying that allowing Netanyahu to cite the need to satisfy U.S. demands is crucial to him remaining in power, correct?
You’re putting words in my mouth. I’m not going to let that happen. What I’m saying is in order to get a decision through his Cabinet, he needed to be armed with positions that he was able and willing to use. And what we would say is, “We need you to do this, and if that is a strategic concern then you do what we need.” I understand that you can see that as political cover, but it’s political cover to get a policy enacted, not to preserve a coalition. Our goal was to get aid in, and we were trying to help drive the decision-making process in a constructive way. I think that’s very different from taking political sides in a domestic context in another country.
It appears to be lost on Lew that his description of a US consideration of Netanyahu’s position amongst his far-right cabinets is “political cover” to preserve an Israeli government propped up by the US itself.

Israeli interests above all

Lew’s quibbling of which administration is responsible for the Israeli manufactured genocide in Gaza, once again, reveals much about America’s relationship with Israel. Lew’s account of his role as a high level advisor to Biden confirms what we have known for some time about America’s role in Israel’s genocide in Palestine. Rather than urging Israel to follow its humanitarian obligations, or to stop the relentless bombing and increasing list of war crimes, they leveraged their considerable sway over Israel not to save Palestinian lives, but to preserve Israel’s global standing and obliteration of Palestine.
America have been, and continue to be the shield that protects Israel as they terrorise Palestine. As much as Lew may wish to pretend otherwise, there is no significant break in policy or position when it comes to Israel between the Biden and Trump administrations.
Featured image via the Canary

By Maryam Jameela

This post was originally published on Canary.