Originally published in Fighting Words.
United States President Joe Biden delivered a live television address on the evening of October 19 to demand that the Congress authorize another $106 billion to expand the wars in Ukraine and Palestine as well as providing funds to counter Chinese influence and enhance security at the southern border.
This speech came just one day after Biden traveled to Tel Aviv to proclaim yet again the White House’s unconditional support to the State of Israel.
While in Israel meeting with the “unified war cabinet” he blamed the Palestinians for the bombing of Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City, saying the explosion was the result of the actions of the “other team.” Using such terminology suggests that the deadly war against Gaza is some type of sports competition.
This bombing had only taken place less than 24 hours before. The Israeli government through its Defense Forces changed its story on the Al-Ahli Hospital bombing after the number of casualties, approximately 500, would be difficult to justify even to an already compliant western media. Even if there were some questions in the minds of the U.S. government and press agencies as to the origins of the bombing, these questions could not be answered in a matter of hours. Moreover, there was no acknowledgement of the fact that numerous civilian targets have been bombed by the IDF since this latest round of intensified airstrikes since October 7.
In fact, the same Al-Ahli Hospital was hit by IDF ordnance just two days before. The IDF has struck apartment buildings, homes, churches, mosques and businesses along with civilian convoys leaving the north of Gaza after being given evacuation orders from Tel Aviv.
Biden is being given a free pass in his dealing with the corporate and government-controlled media in the U.S. and other Western states. In the U.S., the president routinely does not hold press conferences or take questions from reporters, even those assigned to the White House. This fact was written about by the Washington Post in an editorial published in May.
The address broadcast on October 19 where Biden asserted that the allocation of the $106 billion was essential to saving western civilization as we know it today, was not followed up by any critical questioning by the U.S. media. His address was treated as a lead story in the U.S. and in Britain, making it appear as if this was a major development in the foreign policy of Washington.
Nonetheless, there has already been more than $136 billion allocated to the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. The Ukrainian military has lost tens of thousands of its soldiers in the war while many others are suffering from serious wounds as amputations and other injuries.
The $106 billion also includes an allocation of more than $9 billion for “humanitarian assistance” to Israel, Gaza and Ukraine. However, the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is being fueled by the U.S. and the IDF. Not once has the Biden administration called for a ceasefire or the opening of a humanitarian corridor to provide much needed assistance to the Palestinians in Gaza.
On October 20, the United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres visited the North African state of Egypt ostensibly to encourage the opening of the Rafah Crossing where trucks have been lined up for days waiting to deliver food, water, fuel, medicines and other supplies to 2.2 million Palestinians under constant siege by the IDF. Prior to the present siege of Gaza, 450 trucks delivered supplies to Gaza daily. The imperialists are offering to allow 20 trucks to bring essential goods through the Rafah Crossing which is wholly insufficient.
IDF war planes are bombing Gaza, Khan Yunis and the border areas with Egypt making it impossible for aid to be delivered. These facts are ignored by the western media and therefore they are objectively participating in the genocidal war against the Palestinians.
Forced Removal of Palestinians and the Threatened Land Invasion of Gaza by the IDF
The State of Israel was formed 75 years ago, and its founding was based upon the forced removal of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their historical homeland. The United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine put the number at 711,000. In the present period, the U.S. has endorsed the evacuation orders issued by Tel Aviv which has displaced more than a million Palestinians.
An article published by the Palestine Chronicle emphasizes:
“The willingness of the U.S. media to partake in the Israeli disinformation Big Lie is unprecedented in Western democracies. ‘If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.’ This quote was attributed to Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi chief propagandist. Today, Goebbels would envy the Israeli disinformation prowess of employing Western media to willingly market Israeli Big Lies. Claims of ‘decapitated Israeli children’ persistently echoed across CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and other Western media outlets, perpetuating the Big Lie that eventually became a believable story. The U.S. President even went as far as claiming to have seen (non-existing) images of decapitated Israeli children. Additionally, Western media propagated other Israeli falsehoods, including allegations of women being raped during the Hamas raid. Curiously, not a single woman came forward to support these claims. In reality, one woman who did speak on Israeli TV described respectful treatment by Hamas fighters. Her accounts, however, went unnoticed by Western media since it contradicted the Big Lie gambit.”
After two weeks of aerial bombardments by the IDF, they have refrained from a full-scale ground invasion into Gaza. Undoubtedly, the fear of larger casualties among the IDF and the uncertain outcomes of placing IDF troops, many of whom are part-time conscripts, into direct ground battles with the military forces of Hamas and other resistance units, has given pause to the Israeli government and their backers in Washington.
In the meantime, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, over 4,100 Palestinians have been killed and thousands more injured by the IDF in their bombing campaign over the last two weeks. Homes, medical facilities, religious institutions, schools and infrastructure in Gaza have been destroyed in a systematic campaign of carpet bombing by the Israeli forces. These war crimes by Israel include the refusal to allow humanitarian assistance into Gaza in a clear effort to starve the population into submission to Tel Aviv and Washington.
An illustration of this effort was carried out on October 19 when the IDF bombed an Orthodox Christian Church in Gaza City. The attacks on Christian churches and hospitals refutes the attempt by the western media to frame the current phase of the struggle as one between Muslims and Jews, when in fact this is a liberation movement to free Palestine from the historic settler-colonialism imposed by Zionism and Imperialism. Although many Palestinians are Muslims, many others are Christians and they have lived side-by-side in peace for centuries.
The Palestine Chronicle reported that:
“A final death toll is yet to be announced, but many Palestinians have been reportedly killed and wounded in a devastating Israeli attack that destroyed an ancient Greek Orthodox church in Gaza late on Thursday night. The church of St. Porphyrius, the original structure of which is believed to have been built around 425 CE, has been greatly damaged, and many casualties have been rushed to hospitals when Israeli bombs came raining down on Palestinian civilians sheltering inside. Eyewitnesses and survivors told Al-Mayadeen news channel that nearly 400 people were sheltering inside, mostly Christian civilians. The attack on the church came only days after Israel targeted Palestinian civilians sheltering inside Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City, killing nearly 500 and wounding over 300 more, according to estimates by the Gaza Ministry of Health. The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate said that the targeting of the church ‘constitutes a war crime’. It is unclear how Washington will respond to the attack on the church, considering that U.S. President Joe Biden had initially blamed the Resistance for the attack on Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital on Tuesday (Oct. 17).”
Although the ruling class proclaims that the U.S. is a “Christian nation” there has been no condemnation by the Biden administration regarding the targeting of religious institutions in Gaza. The institutional denial of Palestinians to food, medicine, water, fuel and household security reveal clearly that this is a war of genocide aimed advancing the interests of imperialism in West Asia and North Africa.
The Western Media Cannot Whitewash the War Crimes and Economic Distress of the Biden Administration
Biden who is seeking re-election in the upcoming 2024 elections has forfeited any legitimacy to hold office. Although his administration has claimed that everything is fine in the U.S., the entire system of capitalism is slipping deeper into social crisis.
Hundreds of thousands of organized labor union members are engaging in industrial actions across various sectors of the economy. Real wages are falling for working people while enormous profits are increasing for multinational corporations and the banks. These proclamations of societal prosperity by Washington and Wall Street cannot belie the burgeoning contradictions within the U.S.
The quagmire in the House of Representatives where the Republican-dominated legislative branch of government cannot select a Speaker portends much for the Biden administration program to expand the capacity of imperialism to wage war in the Asia-Pacific, West Asia, North Africa and Eastern Europe. Workers and oppressed peoples in the U.S. must build an independent movement aimed at ending the exploitative system of capitalism. Imperialist war waged by the U.S. and its allies cannot win leaving the majority of people no alternative except to build a new society based upon their own social and economic interests.
Abayomi Azikiwe is the Editor of Pan-African News Wire.
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