What the U.S. Stands For in Gaza

Voting more aid for this government is another endorsement of the atrocious campaign that has devastated Gaza over the last six months.

The president uses some absurd rhetoric about the new military aid bill:

Congress has passed my legislation to strengthen our national security and send a message to the world about the power of American leadership: we stand resolutely for democracy and freedom, and against tyranny and oppression [bold mine-DL].

This will come as news to the more than two million people in Gaza being deliberately starved by a U.S.-armed client. The U.S. has stood resolutely on the side of an occupier as it commits countless war crimes against the civilian population of a territory under its control. In Gaza, the U.S. has stood for man-made famine and the slaughter of the innocent. Voting more aid for this government is another endorsement of the atrocious campaign that has devastated Gaza over the last six months, and it signals to Netanyahu once again that the U.S. will do nothing to halt the war. Congress and the president are sending the world a message about American leadership, and the message is that the U.S. will aid and abet mass starvation and genocide instead of demanding that its client agree to a ceasefire.

Just this week, another Israeli airstrike in Rafah killed 17 children. According to Euro-Med Monitor, more than 15,000 children have been killed by Israeli forces in this war. Their latest count puts the death toll at more than 42,000. That doesn’t include the thousands estimated to be buried in the rubble of destroyed buildings. An assault on Rafah all but guarantees that the death toll will skyrocket as a result of indiscriminate attacks, worsening famine, and the spread of disease. If the U.S. does nothing to prevent the expected attack, our government will share significant responsibility for the ensuing nightmare and massive loss of life. The famine created by the Israeli government is already claiming more innocent lives, and unless there is an immediate, lasting ceasefire and a massive relief effort tens of thousands more will die preventable deaths from hunger and disease in the coming months.

The story that the president wants to tell is the predictable one favored by believers in America as the “indispensable nation,” but in the most important respects the story isn’t true. The U.S. routinely sides with many oppressive governments against their own people and it sometimes sides with occupiers against the people that they illegally rule over. The U.S. has often armed and propped up tyrants and despots because it was deemed expedient to do so, and the U.S. continues heavily arming tyrants and despots right now. As we speak, the administration is making a big push to bribe one of those despots to establish normal relations with the government that is occupying and destroying Gaza.

It isn’t surprising that Biden would want to gloss over all of this and engage in a lot of happy talk about democracy, but no one should fall for it. The war in Gaza exposes the rot at the heart of our foreign policy. It shows the world what the U.S. really stands for.