XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.slack, soc.culture.israel   
   XPost: alt.christnet.christianlife   
   From: void@invalid.noy   
      
   by JACK MIRKINSON   
      
   Since Israel’s campaign of death began, President Joe Biden has   
   perfected the art of cognitive dissonance, planting story after story   
   about his ever-increasing “frustration” with Israeli Prime Minister   
   Benjamin Netanyahu while continuing to send Israel the bombs it is   
   using against the people of Gaza. But the past seven days have taken   
   this absurdity to new levels. That’s because this was the week when we   
   saw both Biden’s most dramatic attempts to appear to be radically   
   shifting his approach and the most dramatic evidence of just how   
   deeply the United States is helping to perpetuate this war.   
      
   First, the attempts to telegraph that change is happening: Biden used   
   his State of the Union address to announce that the United States   
   would be building a pier off the Gaza coast so that it could deliver   
   aid to the millions of people who are either being massacred or left   
   to starve to death due to Israel’s unceasing bombardment and total   
   siege of the region. He was then filmed telling Senator Michael Bennet   
   that he was going to have a “come to Jesus meeting” with Netanyahu,   
   though he immediately undercut the seemingly accidental nature of the   
   broadcast by adding, “I’m on a hot mic here. Good.”   
      
   On Saturday, Biden went further, telling MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart   
   that Netanyahu was “hurting Israel more than helping Israel” and that   
   an Israeli invasion of the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where 1.4   
   million Palestinians are trapped, would be a “red line.” All of this   
   was enough to prompt some of the White House’s more sycophantic   
   chroniclers, such as Axios reporter Barak Ravid, to proclaim that   
   Biden was “breaking” with Netanyahu.   
      
   And it’s true that these moves could seem like an encouraging signal   
   about his willingness to put some kind of pressure on Israel.   
      
   But wait, what’s that sound? That would be the other shoe dropping.   
   The most important news about the American handling of the war in the   
   past week could be found not in any of the aforementioned, highly   
   choreographed moments, but in a pair of reports on Tuesday in The   
   Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, in which the outlets   
   revealed that not only has the United States been transferring vast   
   amounts of weapons to Israel, but that it has been doing so in a way   
   deliberately designed to evade public scrutiny.   
      
   According to the reports, the US has approved more than 100 arms sales   
   to Israel since October 7, constituting what the Journal called “tens   
   of thousands” of weapons. But the Biden administration has revealed   
   only two of those deals to Congress. The rest have been masked by one   
   of the oldest shady financial tricks in the books, as the Post   
   explained:   
      
   [Th]e weapons transfers were processed without any public debate   
   because each fell under a specific dollar amount that requires the   
   executive branch to individually notify Congress, according to U.S.   
   officials and lawmakers who, like others, spoke on the condition of   
   anonymity to discuss a sensitive military matter.   
      
   […] “That’s an extraordinary number of sales over the course of a   
   pretty short amount of time, which really strongly suggests that the   
   Israeli campaign would not be sustainable without this level of U.S.   
   support,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, a former senior Biden administration   
   official and current president of Refugees International.   
      
   So let’s recap. Biden is publicly lamenting the scale of death in   
   Gaza, going after Netanyahu, and pledging to build a maritime aid   
   corridor to get around Israel’s siege. But Netanyahu’s ability to   
   carry out that level of carnage, and impose such an inhumane siege, is   
   dependent on the continued flow of weapons to Israel from the   
   government headed by… Biden. Or, to put it more succinctly: The US   
   government is now making elaborate plans to ameliorate a humanitarian   
   catastrophe that would not exist without its own bombs.   
      
   When you add the fact that Biden’s government is not only sending   
   Israel weapons but is so eager to do so that it is purposefully   
   skirting congressional oversight and public accountability, it all   
   gets even more ludicrous. We’re no longer in a simple “this makes no   
   sense” situation. Instead, we’ve arrived at a Twilight Zone “if I try   
   to rationalize this, it will tear a hole in the fabric of space and   
   time” situation. It’s as if you kept secretly handing an arsonist   
   gasoline and matches, then showed up five minutes later with the   
   firefighters, read out a statement about how unconscionable arson is,   
   and announced that you were taking major steps to help the survivors.   
      
   Things get more maddening when you look at the nature of the American   
   aid effort. That pier Biden announced? The Pentagon says it could take   
   up to two months to build. There is a famine happening right now in   
   Gaza, not two months from now. And the US won’t even give assurances   
   that Israel will be prevented from firing on Palestinians trying to   
   retrieve American aid. There are other agencies on the ground, but the   
   US is in the way there too. It has cut off funding to UNWRA, the main   
   relief organization in Gaza, on dubious evidence that the UN now   
   claims was based in part on evidence obtained through torture.   
      
   These loopholes and contradictions have become so glaring that people   
   you might normally expect to overlook them are unable to. A recent   
   report in The New York Times, for instance, delicately noted that “the   
   United States finds itself on both sides of the war in a way, arming   
   the Israelis while trying to care for those hurt as a result.” And   
   Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen told The New Yorker, “I really   
   haven’t heard a good response to the question of why we should not   
   apply existing U.S. law…to insure that U.S. military assistance is   
   used in accordance with our values.”   
      
   Nobody has heard a good response—and that’s because there isn’t one!   
   It’s shameless hypocrisy from Biden all the way down.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)