Biden in Distress: the Gaza Albatross – Tikun Olam תיקון עולם إصلاح العالم
Everywhere Joe Biden turns he faces political landmines. They all are marked “Made in Gaza.” 100,000 Michigan voters rejected him in the state’s primary, in response to Listen to Michigan‘s protest campaign. This alliance of Arab-American and progressive activists sent an anti-war message to a president who has been a booster of Israel’s war in Gaza.
The success in Michigan has ignited similar campaigns in other primary states:
Now activists are pushing for similar protest votes in states including Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Washington as they seek to hdial up pressure on Biden to heed their calls or risk losing their votes.
“What is clear is that our president has a choice before him,” Dearborn, Mich., Mayor Abdullah Hammoud said Wednesday in a press conference for the “uncommitted” push. “He has the choice to continue supporting and aligning himself with [Israel] or…to heed the concerns…not only in the state of Michigan, but across this country, from coast to coast.”
Organizers for Listen to Michigan, the campaign behind the “uncommitted” vote this week, said they have heard of similar efforts in other state looking to send a message of warning to the president that he could lose their votes in November if he doesn’t change his position on the Gaza conflict.
“We are going to be talking to other states that are looking for a unifying vehicle to send the same message to Joe Biden,” Layla Elabed, campaign manager for Listen to Michigan, said…“This issue of Gaza is not just a Michigan issue, it is an issue across the United States. So our plan is to work with other coalitions like Listen to Michigan.
Washington State, where I live, is next. Washington Uncommitted is the new campaign to give Joe Biden a kick in the pants. We’re going to make him hurt. We’re going to send a message. He won’t like it. He’ll try to ignore it. He’ll try to finesse it. But he can’t. He doesn’t know that yet. Doesn’t admit that yet. If he doesn’t, then he may get a ride awakening and be going home to Delaware next January 20th.
Biden’s way of showing he cares is to send Vice President Kamala Harris to talk with Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defense minister. Because? I don’t know. Why would you send an errand-person to talk to a guy who’s running a genocide machine? You wouldn’t do it because it would change anything. But you’d do it if you thought pretending you were doing something, would make everyone else believe you actually were. Which you aren’t.
Another way of showing he cares: fly a few C-130 transports over Gaza and drop 38,000 “non-pork” meals (why does the media even have to say that the US isn’t dropping pork meals onto Muslims?) 38,000. That’s 1.5% of the meals needed to feed 2.5-million Gazans a single meal. They’d need to drop another 2.45-million meals to feed all of Gaza a single meal.
How will Biden guarantee the safety of the Gazans who run to the pallets, desperate to feed their children? How will he guarantee they won’t be massacred like the thousands who clamored for the food brought by the aid convoy a few days ago? Why should anyone trust a word this president says?
Biden said the slaughter “complicated” the process of negotiating a ceasefire. The murder of 115 people and wounding of 750 is a complication. His response? Not to force Israel to admit aid in the only effective, efficient way via the crossings from Egypt and Israel. Instead, to drop parachutes. What is this? A policy? A strategy? Or a shame masquerading as something it’s not.
Warsaw-Gaza
German soldiers eradicating partisan resistance as the ghetto burns380,000 Jews lived in Warsaw before the Holocaust. As the war proceeded, the Nazis liquidated Polish villages of Jews and shipped them to the city, which raised the population to 450,000. When it became obvious what their fate was to be, they rose up against the Nazis. The latter responded by flushing out the partisans. Starving them out. Then they exterminated everyone left, except for the few who escaped through the sewers to safety.
What did the world do? How did it respond? Nothing. It stood by and let the Jews die.
In Gaza, the numbers are even larger. 2.5-million starving Gazans. Under siege like the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto. Eating grass. Eating cattle feed. Babies are dying from malnutrition and dehydration. Israel is doing to Gaza what the Nazis did to the Warsaw ghetto. What are we doing? Are we forcing Israel to admit humanitarian aid? Are we gathering a multi national coalition to save Gaza? Or are we doing what they did during the Holocaust?
Biden’s hardened heart
When Moses demanded from Pharaoh that he let the Children of Israel go from Egyptian slavery God, according to the Biblical narrative, hardened his heart. As a result, He inflicted ten plagues on the Egyptians, leading to the final one, the Angel of Death killing of first-born babies. Then finally Pharaoh relented.
Netanyahu and Biden are the Pharaohs in this analogy. Gazans are the Israelites. Biden has hardened his heart to the suffering of their children and the slaughter of civilians. Remember the punishment God inflicts. For Pharaoh, it was the plagues. For Biden, it could be his electoral defeat.
Biden’s Gaza charade
Israel is our supposed ally. And we have no more leverage over it than a flea has over an elephant. We beg. We cajole. We tell the world lies about how “concerned” we are. We tell the world we’re telling Israel of our concern. As if Israel cares. But we know Israel doesn’t care. We know this is a charade. That these statements are meaningless. We’re not concerned enough to do a goddamn thing. Except dropping a few dozen pallets of food on starving human beings.
When a reporter asks the National Security Council spokesperson (video above) whether he will “condemn” Israel for killing 20,000 women and children, he not only refuses to use the word, he blames Hamas for killing them. Twice as many American-made bombs and Israeli missiles have fallen on Gaza’s women and children than on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. And Matt Miller has the gall to say Hamas did it.
Yoav Gallant isn’t the address. Airlifts aren’t an answer. They’re substitutes for an answer. The real answer, the only answer, is to drop an anvil on Netanyahu. Tell him what he must do and give him a deadline by which you expect him to do it. If he doesn’t, you make him suffer consequences. Biden knows that. He knows what is required. He even knows how to do it. But he won’t. God only knows why. The result may be losing the election.
If he does, this won’t be the only reason. He’s a weak candidate. Too old. Too infirm. Too confused. Too predictable. Too conventional. Too Old School. His moral obtuseness is a symptom of a deeper malaise.
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