A letter from the Biden administration to Israel this week threatening to possibly withhold weapons raised hopes among some, but the delivery of a missile defense system and deployment of U.S. soldiers sent the real message.
The announcement on Thursday that Hamas leader Yahiya Sinwar was killed in an Israeli attack on Gaza has spurred some to speculate that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu might “take the win” and finally negotiate a prisoner exchange and ceasefire deal for the Gaza Strip. That belief bolsters the hope raised for some by a letter released earlier this week from Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant asking Israel to ease its ban on food and other life-sustaining materials from entering Northern Gaza, lest there be “implications” for the rapid pipeline of massive armaments from the United States to Israel.
Those who have raised such hopes have apparently not been paying attention for the past year.
From the beginning of Israel’s genocide project in Gaza, there have been massive violations of international law and human rights abuses as ugly as any in history. These have been documented with a clarity that is unprecedented during a genocide, largely due to the fact that Israel has made no secret of them and their soldiers have been consistently and proudly broadcasting their crimes.
That has not impeded the flow of arms to Israel in the slightest. Even when the United Kingdom cut just a few military contracts or when France’s president called for an end to offensive arms shipments to Israel, the weapons from Washington (and Germany as well) continued to flow. Joe Biden’s administration has repeatedly broken U.S. law, including having Blinken mislead Congress about Israel’s facilitation of aid transfers to the people of Gaza, and may well have doomed its own political party to defeat with its insistence on sustaining the worst genocide of the 21st century.
More requests without consequences for refusal
This letter from Lloyd and Blinken is nothing more than political theater. It is meant to communicate to the voters who may not vote for Democrats in November that they are doing something to address the worst of Israel’s crimes in Gaza. In fact, it does nothing of the kind.
Blinken and Austin wrote a letter that, as usual, poses little threat of consequences. They do take a baby step forward, stating that Israel’s failure to comply with the terms of the letter “may have implications for U.S. policy under NSM-20 (this is the National Security Memorandum that Biden issued in March requiring reporting on recipients of military aid’s compliance with U.S. and international humanitarian law) and relevant U.S. law.”
By saying it “may have implications,” there is a clear inference: failure to comply may not have any effect at all on the tidal wave of weapons for Israel. Given the history of not only American, but specifically Biden’s relationship with Israel, it is far more likely that there will be no consequences.
This is reinforced by the fact that the letter gives Israel 30 days to comply with its conditions. There is nothing in the letter that requires that much time to implement. But, given that the letter is in response to an Israeli threat to starve the people of Northern Gaza into submission, 30 days is enough time for maximal harm to be done.
Blinken and Austin’s letter lays out an extensive list of specific requirements for Israel to meet in order to pass the standard they are setting. With any other entity, such a list would demand that each condition be met or that entity provide an explanation of why efforts fell short.
With Israel, though, what this list provides is a way for propagandists like State Department Spokespeople Matthew Miller and Vedant Patel and White House mouthpieces Karine Jean-Pierre and John Kirby to claim that Israel is trying to “meet their obligations under very difficult circumstances,” or some such double talk.
Indeed, on Wednesday, Israel allowed 50 trucks of humanitarian aid into Northern Gaza, after weeks of allowing absolutely nothing (and compared to the 500 trucks a day that were entering Gaza before October 7, 2023, which still wasn’t enough). Miller pointed to this as progress and took pains to point out that Israel had opened some of the crossings into Gaza and taken steps toward some of the other conditions laid out in the Secretaries’ letter.
Why was the letter sent?
When it comes to wartime propaganda a credulous media always helps. The Associated Press, reporting on the letter from the Secretaries, headlined their article, “US warns Israel to boost humanitarian aid into Gaza or risk losing weapons funding.” But, of course, the U.S. did no such thing.
This is not to say that the Biden administration did not want something from Israel. This letter is a very clear reaction to the so-called “General’s Plan,” masterminded by former Israeli general, Giora Eiland. This plan called for starving out the people of Northern Gaza, forcing them south and declaring that anyone who remains would be considered a “terrorist” and a legitimate target.
This letter is a very clear reaction to the so-called “General’s Plan,” masterminded by former Israeli general, Giora Eiland. The blatancy of the ethnic cleansing here was more than even the United States could stomach.
The blatancy of the ethnic cleansing here was more than even the United States could stomach. Biden clearly feared that enacting the plan (which was already well underway, with the north of Gaza completely closed off) would stir up more controversy than he wanted so close to the election. Israel started backing off before the letter was even received.
The fact that Eiland’s plan became such a public talking point before it was fully accomplished is telling. Israel likely hoped they could move ahead with it, given not only the Americans’ but also the Europeans’ and the leaders of the Arab Gulf States’ indifference to the horrors unleashed in Gaza. But they must have known that there was a good chance that there would be more pushback than they wanted.
The convenient thing about the plan for Israel is that even if it does back off of it, that just means going back to the slightly slower genocide that is already well underway. Israel allows some trucks in and opens some crossings, but the bombing and shooting continue unabated, so all the problems of getting aid to people remain. UNRWA is on the brink of financial and structural collapse in Gaza. And, of course, so much of Northern Gaza is already decimated, so the conditions for people there are conducive to disease and all the other perils of a destroyed infrastructure, even more so than in the south.
The really meaningful message to Israel did not come this week from Antony Blinken and Lloyd Austin. It came on a ship, the one that carried the THAAD missile defense system. And it came accompanied by some one hundred American soldiers.
The really meaningful message to Israel did not come this week from Antony Blinken and Lloyd Austin. It came on a ship, the one that carried the THAAD missile defense system. And it came accompanied by some one hundred American soldiers.
The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) is a highly sophisticated system that has proven highly effective at shooting down short—and medium-range missiles as they descend toward their targets. The U.S. previously deployed a THAAD battery to Israel in 2019 for a training exercise, but this is the first time one has been stationed in Israel with so many American troops to operate it as part of a defense system.
The deployment of the THAAD will give Israel an added layer of impunity in its efforts to provoke a regional war with Iran. The presence of U.S. troops enhances the chances that Israel can draw Washington into such a conflict.
With the deployment of the THAAD, the killing of Sinwar, and an attack on Yemen by the United States on Wednesday, one can understand why some might think Israel was ready to finally agree on a prisoner exchange and a ceasefire in Gaza. After all, it now has the potential to engage more heavily with Iran, it is getting bogged down in another genocidal campaign in Lebanon, and Gaza is hardly more than rubble already.
Opposition leader Benny Gantz was quick to disabuse the naiveté of that notion. After the confirmation of Sinwar’s death on Thursday, Gantz tweeted, “The elimination today of arch-terrorist Sinwar isn’t only a matter of justice. It sends a very clear message to our enemies: Israel will not rest until those who harm us pay for their crimes. The IDF will have to continue operating in Gaza for years, but this moment must be seized and leveraged to bring the hostages home and topple the Hamas regime.”
Kamala Harris made it clear that she is playing the game right along with her boss. “This moment gives us an opportunity to finally end the war in Gaza. And it must end such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends and the Palestinian people can realize their right to freedom, security, dignity and self-determination. It is time for the day-after to begin without Hamas in power,” Harris stated.
Other Biden officials echoed similar sentiments, ignoring the very same reality that Biden has ignored for a year: that Netanyahu and the bulk of Israel’s government has no interest in ending the war on Gaza. Even the leader of the opposition, the so-called “moderate” Gantz makes it clear that there is no prospect for this.
Yet the endless catastrophic theater continues. The killing in Gaza will continue, ebbing and flowing according to nothing other than Israel’s tactical needs of the moment. Harris reminds us that there is no hope that this election, whoever wins, holds any hope for improvement, and may only make matters worse.
