Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – President Biden granted the Spanish-language cable television channel Univision an interview that aired on Tuesday evening. Biden ranged widely, condemning his rival Donald J. Trump as a would-be dictator and praising Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador as a straight shooter. The mention of AMLO led interviewer Enrique Acevedo to ask Biden about Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu:
- EA: Now that we’re talking about world leaders. In the past few days, we’ve seen increasing protests in Israel calling for the removal of Prime Minister Netanyahu and international condemnation after the death of World Central Kitchen aid workers during an Israeli airstrike. Do you think at this point, Prime Minister Netanyahu is more concerned about his political survival than he is in the national interest of his people?
JB: Well, I will tell you, I think what he’s doing is a mistake. I don’t agree with his approach. I think it’s outrageous that those four, three vehicles were hit by drones and taken out on a highway where it wasn’t like it was along the shore, it wasn’t like there was a convoy moving there, etc… So I what I’m calling for is for the Israelis to just call for a ceasefire, allow for the next six, eight weeks total access to all food and medicine going into the country. I’ve spoken with everyone from the Saudis to the Jordanians to the Egyptians. They’re prepared to move in. They’re prepared to move this food in. And I think there’s no excuse to not provide for the medical and the food needs of those people. It should be done now.
Univision Noticias Video: “Exclusive interview with Joe Biden on Univision”
President Biden spent six months defending Netanyahu’s brutal total war on Gaza. He said he saw pictures of beheaded babies when he did no such thing because there weren’t any, sparking a hysteria against Palestinians, Muslims and Arabs in the U.S. and helping justify the Israeli assault on ordinary people. Informed of the unconscionable numbers of dead among civilians in Gaza, Biden replied, “What they say to me is I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed. I’m sure innocents have been killed, and it’s the price of waging a war. (The) Israelis should be incredibly careful to be sure that they’re focusing on going after the folks that (are) propagating this war against Israel. And it’s against their interest when that doesn’t happen.”
We now know thanks to Yuval Abraham and +972 Mag that the Israelis set Artificial Intelligence programs to kill some 37,000 persons suspected of being members of the Hamas paramilitary, and programmed in a tolerance of up to 20 civilians dead for each alleged militant. The targets were tracked by GPS and hit when they got home in the evenings, ensuring that family members were also blown away. I have pointed out that if the program functioned within these parameters, transmitting kill instructions to Israeli pilots and drone operators, they could kill as many as 740,000 Palestinians in Gaza, 99.5% of them innocent civilians (and actually much more because few of the 37,000 in the paramilitary deserved to be summarily blown away any more than their baby girls did). That is roughly a third of the entire population, which shows genocidal intent.
So Netanyahu made a fool out of Biden, telling him that the innocents killed were just “the price of waging a war” and that the Israelis were being incredibly careful that they were only killing those Qassam Brigades and al-Jihad al-Islami militants who struck Israel on October 7. Biden swallowed this Big Lie hook, line and sinker and then broadcast it to all Americans and to the world.
Biden vetoed three ceasefire resolutions at the U.N. To this day his spokesmen decline to admit that Israel has violated the international laws of war and they keep saying they haven’t seen evidence of genocide. Either they don’t know what genocide is or they haven’t been watching the Israeli total war on Gaza.
So Biden’s Univision interview is weak tea indeed, even if it is the strongest condemnation he has issued of the fascist government of Netanyahu, who brought the Israeli equivalent of neo-Nazis into his government.
What does he really say?
1. Netanyahu’s total war on Gaza is a “mistake.” Not an atrocity, or a war crime, or a genocide. Just a “mistake.” Taking the wrong exit off the freeway is a mistake. What Netanyahu has done to the Palestinians is not just an error of judgment.
2. Biden found it outrageous that Israeli fighter jet pilots repeatedly hit the vehicles of the World Central Kitchen volunteers, given that there was no reason to have thought that they were an enemy convoy. (North Gaza had been declared clear of Hamas fighters and was a supposed safe zone by then). But Biden has never shown as much outrage or grief about any of the 14,000 Palestinian children killed in equally brutal ways. The children still seem to be the price of waging a war, though only if you wage a genocidal war with bloodthirsty murderbots.
3. Biden wants a pause in fighting of six to eight weeks. Not a permanent ceasefire, mind you. Just a decent interval so that food and medicine can be gotten in to the noncombatant population. Presumably he is all right with Netanyahu relaunching the war after a couple of months.
Given where we are in the most vicious military action of the twenty-first century, responsible for more deaths of children than any other in this era, “mistake,” “killing 7 white people,” and a 6 to 8 week pause in fighting are woefully inadequate responses.
Biden and his foreign policy team still just don’t get it. There is widespread revulsion at their stance in the general public. It isn’t something that can be fixed with a band aid and a few words of empathy. The US public is increasingly seeing Netanyahu and his mob as the war criminals they are, and unless Biden finds a way to distance himself from Bezalel Smotrich, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bibi Netanyahu, they will continue to be an albatross around his neck.
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