Better Late than Never? Not for the 45,000 or More Killed by Israel's Destruction of Gaza
The Biden administration has finally threatened a withholding of military aid to Israel if it doesn't allow Gaza aid and open access to the captive territory but didn't mention IDF bombing
Israel’s murderous one-sided and genocidal war on Gaza, which has killed at least 42,000 Palestinians, mostly civilian women and children, has passed the one-year mark and only now has the Biden administration finally at least threatened Israel for the first time with a cutoff of military aid if it doesn’t end its blockade of aid and the harassment and killing of aid workers.
One would like to be able to say “better late than never,” but how can anybody say that to the innocent Palestinians trapped in the prison camp ghetto of Gaza by Israel who have been killed by Israeli bombs, shells and murderous shootings by Israeli Defense Force troops. How can anybody say that to the relatives — parents, grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles and friends of the dead and of the hundreds of thousand gravely wounded and traumatized?
Such a thing is impossible!
So why is Biden who has been who has been unstinting in his support for Israel’s brutal war for a year suddenly having his ‘Defense’ Secretary and Secretary of State publicy send the warning letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders now after a year of slaughter?
And since the aid— food, water, medicine, equipment to replace what thas been destroyed in all the hospitals leveled by Israeli bombs, etc. — all of which is being blocked from entry and distribution by Israeli military action, is known to to help desperate civilians, who have been driven from their homes to supposedly “safe zones” only to have those alleged “safe zones” then targeted, why has the Biden administration not included an end to Israel’s war on Gaza in its threat to withhold military aid?
And where is Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris on this urgent issue? After preventing a Palestinian from speaking about the Gaza war at the Democratic Convention, she has yet to call for a cut-off in military aid to Israel. As Biden’s vice president, she has supported the $18 billion in arms funding that has been provided to Israel to conduct its genocidal war on Gaza (that’s in addition to the annual $3.8 billion in military aid Congress gives Israel every year). Sure she always, on the campaign trail, says how “heart-breaking” the civilian deaths are, and says the Biden-Harris administration is “trying to get Israel to stop killing so many Palestinians,” but when asked why she hasn’t been calling for a cut-off in military aid if Israel won’t agree to a ceasefire, she always says she “supports Israel’s right to defend itself,” recalling the hundreds of Israelis killed in an attack by Hamas fighters a year ago on October 7, 2023.
“Heart-breaking” is not the emotion she needs to feel. It should be fury at the Israeli government’s intransigence. And slaughtering tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians is not “defending” Israel any more than Nazi slaughtering of Jews or flattening the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw was “defending” Germany.
It is American-provided weapons, ammunition and delivery systems that are killing Palestinians, and that are being used to prevent aid deliveries. The US controls the aid pipeline and has the ability to shut it off at will.
Until Biden or Harris shuts of the military aid, the slaughter will continue.
Oddly, Harris, by her obstinate refusal to call for a military aid cutoff to Israel is likely sinking her presidential campaign. Michigan is one of the three must-win states Harris needs to to win to become president in a tight election contest like this one. The state’s population includes nearly 250,000 Muslims, nearly all of whom are outraged at what is happening in Gaza. In 2016, Trump won Michigan by 10,000 votes. Biden in 2020 won the state, defeating Trump by juwt over 154,000. With Harris currently polling only one or two percent better than Trump there at best, should even half the eligible voting-age Palestinians in that state decide or have already decided to sit out or vote against Harris because of her refusal to demand a halt to Israel’s war, she loses the presidency.
If she fears straying from Biden’s position on Israel’s war, or is afraid to change her position and be accused of “flip-flopping,” or if she fears the wrath of the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), she’s making a huge mistake. Anyhow, this is a moral issue. The world, and most Americans know that Israel’s war on the prison camp of Gaza is genocide. She needs to do the right thing and to call for its end now, and if Biden won’t act to make that happen, needs to promise now to end it if she becomes president by cutting off all aid to Israel.
For Biden, his warning letter to Netanyahu is too little too late. For Harris, though, given that a vice president is basically as useful as an appendix and has no real power to do anything, maybe there’s still time for her to salvage her soul and adhieve greatness as the first woman president. How? Biden’s willingness to threaten a cut-off of weapons to stop Netanyahu’s criminal attacks on aid providers should free her to call for much more, and to do much more if elected: A weapons cut-off to Israel that would end current the slaughter in Gaza, the West Bank and and Lebanon and vould force Israel to accept the creation of a viable Palestinian state.
I know, I know; Pie in the sky thinking. But bold ideas and bold action are the only things that will get Harris elected at this point. There’w nothing to lose really. making such a shift now would not give the Israel Lobby time to organize a counter attack, the public in the US is sick of wars and would respond well, and the arms industry would have to suck it up.
Oh, I know: there’s the CIA,. But JFK, RFK and MLK didn’t carry a glock. Harris does.