{"id":34111,"date":"2024-06-01T11:59:13","date_gmt":"2024-06-01T18:59:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=34111"},"modified":"2024-06-01T21:30:57","modified_gmt":"2024-06-02T04:30:57","slug":"34111","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2024\/06\/01\/34111\/","title":{"rendered":"Biden’s Invisible Red Line in Gaza"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Branko Marcetic\/Jacobin<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Biden'sUS president Joe Biden meets with his military advisers at the White House on May 15, 2024. (photo: Getty)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

31 may 24<\/strong> (RSN.org)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ALSO SEE: <\/strong>Whistleblower Calls Out BBC Coverage of Israel’s Attack on Gaza<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Joe Biden declared an invasion of Rafah a \u201cred line\u201d that Israel could not cross, then allowed Netanyahu to invade anyway. Why is Biden allowing Israel to openly defy the United States and repeatedly commit war crimes with almost no consequences?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Alittle more than a month ago, President Joe Biden very publicly and explicitly identified the point that he would not allow Israel\u2019s war on Gaza to reach: an offensive on the city of Rafah, where 1.4 million Palestinians had been corralled after months of war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is a red line,\u201d he told MSNBC when asked about a potential Israeli invasion of Rafah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though he instantly<\/a> tried to wriggle out of the commitment he had just made, the headlines the statement produced ensured that the public\u2019s main takeaway was that this was where the president was finally putting his foot down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That impression was solidified by further public comments from White House officials in the following weeks, with both National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan<\/a> and Secretary of State Antony Blinken<\/a> calling the invasion a \u201cmistake.\u201d They continued<\/a> to warn<\/a> right into this month that an invasion of Rafah \u201crisks doing terrible harm to civilians\u201d and causing \u201creally significant civilian casualties,\u201d not to mention possibly<\/a> scuttling the prospects of freeing Israeli hostages and signing the Israel-Saudi deal that\u2019s the centerpiece of the administration\u2019s Middle East policy. Biden himself went on CNN this month and said<\/a>, \u201cI made it clear that if they go into Rafah . . . I\u2019m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite all this, in keeping with the pattern throughout this war, Israel has simply ignored Biden\u2019s threats and gone into Rafah anyway. What has the president done, in the face of yet another show of defiance from an Israeli government that is more or less openly rooting for him to lose this November, to enforce a red line he had publicly roped himself into? His administration has simply manufactured<\/a> a series of unbelievable excuses to avoid acting on his threat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere hasn\u2019t been an assault or an attack in terms of a ground operation at this time, so let\u2019s not get ahead of where we are,\u201d national security communications advisor John Kirby said<\/a> earlier this month as Israeli missiles rained down on Rafah, when asked what the definition of an impermissible attack on the city was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Various US officials have claimed<\/a> the Israeli assault on Rafah has been \u201climited\u201d and not a \u201cmajor\u201d one, so that Biden can simply continue to send Israel weapons, including ones specifically meant<\/a> for a ground invasion. \u201cIsrael\u2019s military operations in that area [have] been more targeted and limited,\u201d Sullivan said this past Wednesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is blatantly untrue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere has been nothing limited about the suffering and misery that Israel\u2019s military operation in Rafah has brought to the people of Gaza,\u201d United Nations (UN) emergency relief coordinator Martin Griffiths said<\/a> yesterday. \u201cAs feared, it has been a tragedy beyond words.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are running out of words to describe what is happening in Gaza,\u201d one UNICEF official commented earlier this week. \u201cWe have described it as a catastrophe, a nightmare, as hell on Earth. It is all of these, and worse.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another UNICEF official called the Rafah invasion \u201cpotentially the darkest chapter in this horrendous war that started seven months ago.\u201d UN Security Council members have similarly described<\/a> the offensive as \u201cthe darkest moment in the seven-months nightmare\u201d and beyond catastrophic, with another UN official warning that \u201cthere is no safe way to conduct a military operation in Rafah without killing civilians and causing huge human suffering.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Israeli attack on Rafah has \u201csystematically paralyzed\u201d the already meager distribution of aid in the territory, according to<\/a> the Norwegian Refugee Council. With the Rafah border crossing closed and humanitarian aid impossible to access or hand out due to bullets flying and bombs dropping, there are two thousand trucks<\/a> and eighty-two thousand metric tons of aid, including food and medicine, stranded in Egypt and slowly turning unusable. The absurd \u201cfloating pier\u201d that the Biden administration announced months ago as a solution to what was already a severe humanitarian crisis has not succeeded in delivering an iota of aid<\/a> after finally being completed earlier this month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is while, as a UN humanitarian affairs officer, Yasmina Guerda, said upon recently returning from Gaza, \u201cthere is lack of everything.\u201d \u201cFull-blown famine\u201d in northern Gaza had already been declared<\/a> by World Food Programme director Cindy McCain (the former wife of one of the US Senate\u2019s more implacable Israel allies) earlier this month, and famine has now almost certainly spread to the south, where Rafah is located. It has already displaced<\/a> 800,000 people \u2014 roughly the ninth time Palestinians in Gaza have had to evacuate and relocate \u2014 to \u201csafe zones\u201d in the territory that observers say don\u2019t actually exist. All the while, Israel is continuing<\/a> its unprecedented parade of war crimes, destroying hospitals and other remaining infrastructure, and bombing civilian shelters, killing women, children, and other civilians as it indiscriminately attacks the territory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe most damning: Israeli ground operations in the city, the exact thing Biden and his officials said distinguished an unacceptable attack on Rafah from an acceptable one, started weeks ago<\/a>, at the exact time Biden reiterated that he would cut off weapons if this condition were violated.https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/jFW7yyDoTnU?si=OFIjtCsK1hpZd8fd<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That Biden and his underlings would respond to this blatant flaunting of the president\u2019s own red line by meekly avoiding having to act, and simply pretending that what everyone knows is happening isn\u2019t actually happening, isn\u2019t surprising. The White House\u2019s willingness to allow the United States to be disrespected and humiliated by Israel has been a consistent through line of this war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what explains the lack of media and political outrage over this show of weakness by the president? Typically, there\u2019s no shortage of voices obsessed with US \u201cprestige\u201d and \u201ccredibility,\u201d warning that a failure by the United States to make good on even its implied<\/em> threats could have disastrous consequences by emboldening enemies and undermining the country\u2019s global stature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just look at the last time a president publicly set a red line, then refused to act on it: Barack Obama\u2019s refusal in 2013 to attack Syria following allegations that Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad had used chemical weapons. Former Council on Foreign Relations president Richard Haass called it<\/a> \u201cthe most undisciplined stretch of foreign policy of his presidency.\u201d Then Foreign Affairs<\/em> editor Gideon Rose described it as a \u201ccase study in embarrassingly amateurish improvisation.\u201d A variety of critics (including Cindy McCain\u2019s late husband<\/a>) mockingly attacked Obama for demurring, saying<\/a> his red line had been \u201capparently written in disappearing ink\u201d and that it \u201cconjures up the thought of the uncertain trumpet or the trumpet that provides an uncertain sound.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The press was similarly scathing. The Wall Street Journal<\/em> termed it<\/a> \u201cnot only tragically indecisive and irresponsible but self-absorbed to the point of moral insensateness.\u201d The New York Times<\/em> warned<\/a> it put \u201chis credibility at stake.\u201d It was one of several \u201charried, serial about-faces on Syria,\u201d said Politico<\/em><\/a>, that \u201chave combined to highlight some enduring limitations of Obama\u2019s approach to decision-making\u201d and prompted both \u201canxious friends and chortling enemies\u201d to wonder, \u201cWhat\u2019s wrong with Obama?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even some of Obama\u2019s own allies piled on<\/a>. \u201cOnce the commander in chief draws that red line, then I think the credibility of the commander in chief and this nation is at stake if he doesn\u2019t enforce it,\u201d his own former CIA director and defense secretary told<\/a> the Atlantic<\/em>. \u201cIf you say you\u2019re going to strike, you have to strike. There\u2019s no choice,\u201d his former secretary of state and future Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton reportedly said privately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You will struggle to find anything approaching this level of derision and condemnation for Biden\u2019s own embarrassing failure to enforce the red line he had set. Red lines, credibility, decisiveness, leadership \u2014 it turns out these things only matter when it means the president isn\u2019t allowing something to be bombed. Since, in this case, Biden\u2019s failure of leadership is actually facilitating the bombing and slaughter of an Arab population somewhere in the Middle East, his humiliating retreat is entirely acceptable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Few things better illustrate the warped nature of establishment thinking on foreign policy: the fecklessness both of this administration\u2019s backing of what is now undeniably a genocide, and of a Washington media and political class that can hardly bring itself to care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Source: https:\/\/www.rsn.org\/001\/bidens-invisible-red-line-in-gaza.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Branko Marcetic\/Jacobin US president Joe Biden meets with his military advisers at the White House on May 15, 2024. (photo: Getty) 31 may 24 (RSN.org) ALSO SEE: Whistleblower Calls Out BBC Coverage of Israel’s Attack on Gaza Joe Biden declared an invasion of Rafah a \u201cred line\u201d that Israel could not… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34111"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34111"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34123,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34111\/revisions\/34123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}