US PRESIDENT Joe Biden has green-lit Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon of war. He continues to bankroll the Israeli regime while feigning concern for the Palestinians, offering performative gestures such as announcing the building of an Israeli-controlled temporary port for aid, rather than forcing Israel to open the land crossings that would deliver immediate relief to the starving Palestinians trapped in Rafah.
It doesn’t matter that US law bans assistance to countries that prohibit or restrict the delivery of US-provided humanitarian aid, as Israel is doing in Gaza, because Biden flouts US law just as he flouts international law.
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Since the January International Court of Justice ruling ordering Israel to take all measures to prevent genocide, not only has the killing continued but aid has been halved and funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, Gaza’s largest aid provider, suspended.
Here’s the question: why is the US facilitating this genocide?
It’s not, as it claims, to protect democracy and Israel’s right to self-defence. Relying on 2000-pound bombs, starvation and disease isn’t an exercise in defence.
America’s real motivation is to cling on to its global leadership position, which was built on the material exploitation of nations and peoples in the global south and maintained through regime change, economic sanctions and military force.
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The US is terrified of losing access to Middle East oil, which for decades has been secured through weapons sales to corrupt Gulf monarchies. America has showered Israel with military aid and money so that the Zionist state can act as its bulwark in the region.
And the Western power elites that control the money, the media and the politicians make sure that the governments they fund back Israel to the hilt even as it commits genocide in front of the whole world.
A case in point. The Zionist American Anti-Defamation League has complained that the social media platform TikTok, which is popular with Gen Z (ages 18-24), is promoting anti-Israel and anti-Zionist views to young Americans. 70% of voters aged 18-34 disapprove of Biden’s handling of the conflict and half believe that Israel is committing genocide.
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Last week, the US House of Representatives passed a bill that would ban TikTok in the US unless it is sold to a non-Chinese company. The bill now moves to the Senate, where it is expected to pass.
Any who dare to resist US hegemony are called terrorists – the Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iraqi and Syrian resistance fighters, and Hamas, democratically elected in 2006 to lead the Palestinian Legislative Council.
It’s only a matter of time before the US-dominated world order, supported by its nodding European lapdogs, collapses under the weight of its moral decay and corruption.
Leah Gunn Barrett
Edinburgh
WEST Dunbartonshire has 32 primary schools attended by 6914 children. As of March 14 Israel had killed 12,300 children in Gaza. So the entire primary-school population of West Dunbartonshire and a large chunk of the Glasgow school population has gone.
Dumbarton and Clydebank have a population of 42,730. Israel has killed 31,341with more than 8000 still missing.
And people are still saying it's not a genocide!
B McKenna
Dumbarton
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