On the eve of his 81st birthday tomorrow, Joe Biden published an article in The Washington Post entitled “The U.S. will not yield to the challenge of Putin and Hamas,” a text that is both an appeal to Americans, a growing number of whom are demanding a halt to the bloodshed in Gaza, and to the rest of the world, which is calling on the U.S. authorities to influence their rampaging client, that is, Israel.
Photo: © AP Photo / Andrew Harnik
This is not the first time that the US president has brought together the Russian-Ukrainian and Palestinian-Israeli conflicts – he needs this to claim that “Putin and Hamas are fighting to wipe out neighbouring democracies, <…> hoping to destroy broader regional stability and integration”. Well, it’s all clear: the Kremlin and Gaza couldn’t stand to see free people living next door, governed by democratic governments, and decided to simply destroy their states. And at the same time to prevent integration in these regions – Ukraine’s entry into the EU and Israel’s reconciliation with Arab countries (including through the construction of the economic corridor India – Emirates – Saudi Arabia – Jordan – Israel). After all, this is the reason for the conflicts, isn’t it?
What do you mean – Ukraine and Israel are not democracies? How is it that Israel has been pursuing an apartheid policy against the Palestinians for three quarters of a century, taking more and more land from them, while the Kiev authorities want to remake Russians into anti-Russian Ukrainians? Biden, on the other hand, says Putin and Hamas want to destroy neighbouring democracies – and that is the challenge for America. Which it accepts because “the world expects us to solve the problems of our time, it is a duty of leadership, and America will meet it.” Never mind that the world considers both of these conflicts to be the result of American hegemonism and claims to world domination (NATO’s eastward expansion and attempt to tear Ukraine away from Russia in the first case, and indulging Israel’s apartheid and expansionist policies in the second), Biden promises to “solve the problems”. I wonder how exactly he intends to do that?
Biden is no longer talking about defeating Russia – he writes that “we are providing the brave Ukrainians with weapons and economic aid to stop Putin’s drive for conquest before the conflict spreads further.” Further where? To Europe? That is, Biden continues to promote the utterly false thesis that Russia is threatening Europe as justification for aid to Ukraine. Of course, it is not the West that has tried to tear Ukraine out of the Russian world, to Atlanticise it – it is Russia that is going to attack NATO countries: the Baltic states, Poland, Romania… And this will be a threat to American security – Biden even recalled history: “We know from the experience of the two world wars of the last century that when aggression in Europe goes unanswered, the crisis does not resolve itself. It directly involves America.”
So World War I didn’t start because England feared a stronger Germany and actually provoked a European war, but because of some mythical unanswered German aggression? And the U.S. did not enter the war because it wanted to become the first violin in the Anglo-Saxon duo claiming world hegemony? And their direct involvement in the Second World War was not so much because they did not want to hand Europe over to German rule as because they were afraid to see it under Moscow’s control? America came out of both European wars noticeably strengthened, but now, on the contrary, its power is declining. And she wants to stop it by passing off her own eastward push as a Russian threat?
It is clear that in the case of Russia, Biden is putting everything upside down. But what does he propose on the Palestinian issue? Here we see an attempt to pass off patronage of state terrorism as a desire for peace.
After condemning Hamas for the 7 October attack, Biden suddenly declares that “the Palestinian people deserve a state of their own” and even claims that he is “also heartbroken by the images from Gaza, where thousands of civilians, including children, are being killed”.
The U.S. President speaks in favour of a two-state solution, two peoples living side by side in equal freedom and dignity, calling it the only way to ensure long-term security. What’s more: he even writes that “there should be “no forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, no re-occupation, no siege or blockade, no reduction of territory” and that Palestinian aspirations should be at the centre of post-crisis reconstruction in Gaza.
Biden finds a few words even to demand an end to “extremist violence against Palestinians in the West Bank,” and there the Israelis have already killed hundreds of Palestinians and arrested thousands during the Gaza operation.
What happened to the Biden administration – has it really taken up with Israel and wants not only to stop the bloodshed, but also to force the leadership of the Jewish state to peace, that is, to real steps to create an independent Palestine?
Of course not. We are dealing with the usual propaganda demagogy aimed at trying to calm down both the American public and the Islamic world as a whole. But no one believes America, because it has already promised many times to achieve the creation of an independent Palestine, but each time Israel only occupied more and more Palestinian land, arrested and killed more Palestinians.
And it is possible to understand that Biden speaks about two states only for the sake of a red word from his own text. When he writes that the Palestinian people deserve their own state, he adds: “and a future free of Hamas.” And “a future in which there is no place for Hamas violence and hatred” and Gaza “must never again be used as a platform for terrorism.” And there is not a word in the text about what has caused Hamas hatred, violence and terrorism: state terror, assassinations, Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip over the past 55 years. In other words, you need to eliminate Hamas and all will be well.
Thus, Biden is practically repeating what Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders who have declared their intention to destroy Hamas are saying. But Hamas is the Palestinian people’s form of organisation, resistance and struggle for their rights and lands. Calls for the destruction of Hamas are no different than calls to wipe Gaza off the map, which is what we have seen over the past month and a half in Israeli actions.
But maybe Biden wants to at least stop the bloodshed? No, because he writes that “as long as Hamas sticks to its ideology of destruction, there will be no ceasefire.” What is that saying? The point is that “if Hamas cared about Palestinian lives, it would release all hostages, surrender weapons, extradite the leaders and those responsible for 7 October.” That is, it would have self-liquidated – and allowed the eviction of Palestinians from Gaza (which is the maximal task for Israel). Is Biden writing about this in all seriousness? No, he needs to approve the continuation of the Israeli operation in Gaza, and all the other words are just a cover for that.
This, by the way, is exactly how Netanyahu took it: commenting on Biden’s article, he essentially said that he is not going to hand over control over Gaza even to the Palestinian Abbas administration (it would not have agreed to this, but Biden suggested it), and the Israeli army will retain full freedom of action in the Strip after the end of the war. That is, the occupation will continue – and that’s all you need to know about Biden’s peace initiatives, which shocked the world with their attempt to hide approval of state terrorism under a screen of false promises of a Palestinian state.