WHETHER he’s trying to crack a joke or pretending to be serious, Joe Biden’s octogenarian visage is permanently contorted into a grimace. That may have something to do with all the lies he has felt obliged to spout since Oct 7; from the nonsense about having seen pictures of beheaded babies to the recent assurance that the Israeli prime minister does not reject every variant of a two-state solution.
Benjamin Netanyahu has clearly telegraphed the opposite, knowing full well that the deviation from the official narrative of his neo-fascist state’s Western supporters will not interrupt the steady supply of lethal weaponry and blood money. The US has lately sought to give the impression that it is advising restraint, but that alleged advice goes unheeded.
Biden has stood out as an unequivocal pro-Zionist since he entered the US Congress more than 50 years ago, and serving as an accessory to genocide won’t shift his dial. It’s equally clear that this stance is steadily diminishing his chances of re-election in November. Donald Trump, arguably an even bigger fan of Israel, holds a personal grudge against Netanyahu. He may not get many votes from disenchanted Democrats, but his opponents may well opt for third-party candidates.
The liberal American intelligentsia deems a second Trump presidency to be detrimental to the prospects of the American empire. Since the Korean War in the 1950s and Vietnam in the next decade, the US has stood out as what Martin Luther King described as the paramount perpetrator of violence in the world.
The US is disinclined to halt the deadly Zionist project.
That verdict is reflected in Gaza, where the extermination campaign would be virtually impossible for Israel to continue without the steady supply of US weaponry and largesse. America could halt the genocide at a stroke. But neither the White House nor much of the Congress seems to have any interest in pushing for peace.
The mealy-mouthed rhetoric from the US and its acolytes about a two-state solution conveys a whiff of absurdity after decades of sponsoring Zionist designs on Palestinian territories. The ‘antisemitism’ slogan that greets any suggestion that anyone other than a Zionist is also a human being worthy of the same rights and protections is beginning to lose its sting.
This phenomenon stretches back decades, and it should have been laughed out of existence when the Israeli embassy and its devotees successfully strove to demolish the socialist leadership of the British Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn. His wretched successor, likely to be the next prime minister of Britain, hasn’t uttered a word that could conceivably be construed as critical of Israel.
The relentless destruction of Gaza and the mass murder of its inhabitants has expanded to the Red Sea and beyond. Biden says the attacks on Yemen will carry on, even though they aren’t deterring Houthi efforts to halt Israeli-aligned shipping in solidarity with Gaza. Iran, meanwhile, has lashed out militarily at targets in Iraq, Syria and Pakistan, ostensibly to demonstrate its challenged regional clout.
Disinclined to hold back, Israel has carried out assassinations against Hamas and Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, and murdered a bunch of Iranian Revolutionary Guard advisers in Damascus. Iran has vowed to retaliate against the outrage in Syria, but is disinclined to directly take on Israel or the US — there have been reports of back-channel contacts with the latter.
Hopefully, the de-escalation following the Balochistan stoush will avert future belligerence. Tehran purportedly attacked a ‘takfiri’ outfit that had claimed credit for terrorist activity in Iran; Islamabad hit back. But even a limited exchange of fire serves as an unfortunate distraction from the genocide unfolding in real time in the Gaza Strip, announced in advance by the Israeli leadership and telegraphed by the victims, which is being resisted in international forums by South Africa, Chile and Mexico rather than any Arab or Muslim states.
Israel can be guaranteed to ignore any interim advice on a cessation of its brutality from the International Court of Justice, and it could take years for the ICJ to pronounce a verdict on Johannesburg’s charge.
There have been other genocides since the UN convention against them was established in 1948, the same year that Israel came into existence and apartheid was formalised in South Africa. But perhaps the worse aspect of the current outrage is the blind refusal of the perpetrators to recognise that, for more than 70 years, they have sought to recreate for the Palestinians, in superficially different ways, the experience of the European Jews in the 1930s-40; from the ubermensch mentality to lebensraum. The pattern of humanity’s reluctance to acknowledge remains rich in barely challenged reprobates.
Published in Dawn, January 24th, 2024
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