Transmitted below is a selection of commentaries on the U.S. air drops over Gaza, assembled by IF AMERICANS KNEW/ISRAEL-PALESTINE NEWS.
This pathetic initiative, dropping on Gaza a few American "meals ready to eat" after Israel has dropped on Gaza American bombs with a destructive power significantly exceeding that of the American atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined, may well be "Israel's worst humiliation of USA" ever seen by former American ambassador Robert Ford.
However, I do not agree with those who assert that President Biden is failing to utilize America's "leverage" over Israel or even that Biden could end Israel's genocidal assault against the people of Gaza with a phone call.
I believe that such assertions reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of who is the master and who is the servant in the Israeli/American relationship, of which country gives the orders and which country pays the tribute (https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/05/12/its-not-american-aid-to-israel-its-tribute).
REGARDING THE US AIR DROP OVER GAZA – Reuters reports: Three C-130 U.S. military planes delivered more than 38,000 meals into a territory where the United Nations says at least 576,000 people are one step away from famine conditions.
The White House has said the airdrops would be a sustained effort, and that Israel supports them.
Axios recently reported: U.S. officials admit that aid airdrops will have a limited effect since a military plane can only drop the amount of supplies equivalent to that transported by one or two trucks.
Satellite images show at least 1,000 trucks full of aid waiting at the border.
GLOBAL COMMENTARY ON THE AIR DROP –
- Robert Ford, former US ambassador to Algeria and Syria, writes: “I’ve seen Israel humiliate previous US administrations, but aside from [the] murderous 1967 Israeli airstrike against US navy ship Liberty, now forcing USA to do airdrops of aid to Gaza as if USA is no better than Egypt & Jordan is Israel’s worst humiliation of USA I’ve ever seen. USA supposed to have far greater, closer relations with Israel than the relations between Israel and Jordan or Egypt. yet Washington has no more influence than Cairo or Amman.”
- Mohamad Elmasry of the Doha Institute for Graduate studies calls the US air drops a “PR move” that is “grossly ineffective.” Elmasry says that, if Israel is convicted of genocide, the Biden administration “wants to be able to say: We told Israel not enough aid was going in and we even did these air drops – so we weren’t complicit in this genocide.”
- The Palestinian Foreign Ministry says “The ministry sees no excuse for the behavior of the United States, who is behaving as a marginal, weak state in the face of its ally’s arrogance, tyranny and extremism, especially when it comes to delivering aid to Gaza.”
- Electronic Intifada says, “What is being marketed as benevolent assistance amounts to humanitarian aid theater that does nothing to end the systematic and intentional campaign of starvation Israel and its American and European allies, with the complicity of regional regimes, are waging against Palestinians…The effect – whether intentional or not – is to relieve Israel and its backers of pressure to lift the total siege Tel Aviv has imposed on the coastal enclave with the clear intent of causing maximum suffering and death to as many people as possible.”