{"id":1398240,"date":"2023-12-18T07:08:36","date_gmt":"2023-12-18T07:08:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/?p=308023"},"modified":"2023-12-18T07:08:36","modified_gmt":"2023-12-18T07:08:36","slug":"janus-faced-biden-administration-cant-hide-its-complicity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2023\/12\/18\/janus-faced-biden-administration-cant-hide-its-complicity\/","title":{"rendered":"Janus-Faced Biden Administration Can\u2019t Hide Its Complicity"},"content":{"rendered":"\"\"<\/a>\n
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Photograph Source: lienyuan lee – CC BY 3.0<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains committed to using overwhelming and indiscriminate military force to vanquish the Palestinian community in Gaza.\u00a0 For the past two decades, Netanyahu has engaged in the total humiliation of the Palestinian people.\u00a0 At the same time, he is humiliating and embarrassing the only nation that provides Israel with political, military, and diplomatic cover\u2014the United States.\u00a0 The fact that Netanyahu is bombarding Gaza with U.S.-supplied weaponry makes the United States complicit with regard to Israeli ethnic cleansing, particularly the killing and maiming of children.<\/p>\n

The Biden administration has been critical of the so-called \u201cbunker buster\u201d bombs that weigh 2,000 pounds and are capable of penetrating concrete shelters where Palestinians are hiding; the United States supplies these weapons.\u00a0 One of these bombs was dropped on the Jabalia refugee camp, killing 100 people.\u00a0 The Biden administration has been critical of Israel\u2019s use of Mk82 unguided or \u201cdumb bombs\u201d; the United States has provided 5,000 of these weapons since the start of the war.\u00a0 These bombs are airlifted on C-17 military cargo planes directly from the United States to Israel.<\/p>\n

Department of State spokesman Matt Miller, when asked about the use of \u201cdumb bombs,\u201d said that he wasn\u2019t in a position to provide \u201cjudgment\u201d on the matter.\u00a0 He added that \u201cthere are different ways you can use any number of munitions.\u201d\u00a0 Israel has the most technologically advanced weapons in the world, and has no excuse in relying on bombs that are so inaccurate.<\/p>\n

President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin have publicly called on Israel to avoid civilian casualties, but have demonstrated no interest in enforcing their pleas.\u00a0 Biden has been critical of Israel\u2019s \u201cindiscriminate\u201d bombing of Gaza, but he asked the Congress to remove key restrictions on Israel\u2019s ability to gain access to U.S. weapons stockpiles.\u00a0 Biden told Netanyahu that the war wouldn\u2019t end until a two-state solution was reached.\u00a0 But Netanyahu has never accepted the idea of a two-state solution, and has been caught on tape taking credit for \u201cstopping the Oslo accords.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last week, Blinken invoked a rarely used \u201cemergency authority\u201d to deliver 14,000 tank munition cartridges to Israel without honoring the standard 15-day period for congressional review.\u00a0 These deliveries conflict with President Biden\u2019s policies on civilian protection and human rights.\u00a0 Blinken\u2019s Department of State has ignored its own Civilian Harm Incident Response Guidance, which was designed to investigate reports of civilian harm by governments using U.S. weaponry.\u00a0 [On many policy matters, the Department of State under Blinken\u2019s tutelage has been mostly moribund, which I will address in a future column.]<\/p>\n

Secretary of Defense Austin has warned Israel that it risks \u201cstrategic defeat\u201d if it fails to heed warnings about the mounting civilian death toll.\u00a0 Meanwhile, his Pentagon is expediting weapons exports to Israel by deploying a so-called Tiger Team to facilitate transfers of weaponry.\u00a0 The transfer of arms to Ukraine is an open process; the transfer to Israel is relatively covert. \u00a0 Austin, moreover, has been on record as stating that the United States will do \u201ceverything we can\u201d to support Israel.<\/p>\n

National Security Adviser Sullivan was in Israel last week to urge Israel to adopt a more precise strategy in its war against Hamas that would mean using smaller elite forces to rescue hostages, kill Hamas leaders and destroy tunnels.\u00a0 But Sullivan provided no timetable for Israel to reduce its tactics and, before leaving Israel, he played down any differences with Israeli tactics and acknowledged that the Israeli offensive\u00a0 would continue for \u201cmonths.\u201d\u00a0 President Biden has given the Israelis until the end of the year to change its operational regime, but this is a particularly feckless gesture.\u00a0 Netanyahu was dismissive of both the president, and the national security adviser, who ultimately sided with the Israeli prime minister and dismissed any suggest of differences with Israel as a \u201cmisunderstanding.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to dismissing the advice of U.S. leaders, Netanyahu and his \u201cwar cabinet\u201d blocked Mossad chief David Barnea\u2019s efforts to return to Qatar with CIA director William Burns to restart negotiations on a further hostage deal.\u00a0 According to Israeli news media, the war cabinet decided that Israel would not propose an outline for a deal or enter talks because the war would make it difficult for the Hamas leaders in Qatar to contact their counterparts in Gaza.\u00a0 Presumably Netanyahu is disdainful of the ability of Barnea and CIA director Burns to successfully arrange the release of hostages in return for a cease fire, and resents the favorable press coverage that their efforts have engendered.\u00a0 The Israeli press acknowledges that Biden demonstrates much more empathy toward the plight of the hostages than does Netanyahu.<\/p>\n

Biden is no stranger to Netanyahu\u2019s efforts to manipulate the United States.\u00a0 Netanyahu has always opposed the so-called peace process and took credit for destroying the Oslo process.\u00a0 He has embarrassed recent U.S. administrations, typically timing the announcement of new settlements on the West Bank when U.S. leaders, including Vice President Biden and Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, were in Israel on official visits.\u00a0 The low point of Netanyahu\u2019s deviousness occurred in 2015, when Netanyahu accepted an invitation to address a joint session of Congress in an effort to embarrass President Barack Obama and to block the signing of the Iran nuclear accord.\u00a0 Netanyahu should have paid a political price for that stunt, but instead he received the most generous offer of military aid the United States has ever extended to Israel.<\/p>\n

Netanyahu and his war cabinet are making the key U.S. leaders, including Biden, Blinken, and Sullivan, look particularly weak as they make a public case for temporizing the military campaign against Hamas while Netanyahu and his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, emphasize that the heavy bombardment will continue for months.\u00a0 As long as the Biden administration does Israel\u2019s bidding by blocking any attempt at a cease fire and by rushing delivery of military aid, there is no reason for Netanyahu to temper his policies.<\/p>\n

As a result, the violence continues in both Gaza and the West Bank.\u00a0 More Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank during the past year than in any year since the Second Intifada of the early 2000s.\u00a0 There will not be an answer to the savagery of Hamas and Israel, let alone Israeli policies of apartheid and occupation, as long as the United States ignores the humanitarian crisis that is worsening with each and every day.<\/p>\n

The post Janus-Faced Biden Administration Can’t Hide Its Complicity<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

lsraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains committed to using overwhelming and indiscriminate military force to vanquish the Palestinian community in Gaza.\u00a0 For the past two decades, Netanyahu has engaged in the total humiliation of the Palestinian people.\u00a0 At the same time, he is humiliating and embarrassing the only nation that provides Israel with political, military, and diplomatic cover\u2014the United States.\u00a0 The fact that Netanyahu is bombarding Gaza with U.S.-supplied weaponry makes the United States complicit with regard to Israeli ethnic cleansing, particularly the killing and maiming of children. More<\/a><\/p>\n

The post Janus-Faced Biden Administration Can\u2019t Hide Its Complicity<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":200,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,266],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1398240"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/200"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1398240"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1398240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1400275,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1398240\/revisions\/1400275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1398240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1398240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1398240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}