On Israel, student courage exposes elite cowardice

The White House and Republican allies respond to student protests over Gaza with deceit and censorship.

(Photo by Probal Rashid/LightRocket via Getty Images)

As he marked the enactment of his long-sought $95 billion “foreign aid” package last month, President Biden hailed what he called “a good day for world peace.” The Congressional “uniparty” had in fact handed Biden more taxpayer dollars to foment war, conflict, and carnage in Ukraine, Israel-Palestine, and the Pacific region. While it may have been a great day for the weapons industry, the bill’s prime beneficiary, it was an ominous one for anyone around the world interested in peace, particularly Gaza civilians living under US-backed Israeli bombardment.

Despite the obvious incongruity in Biden’s remarks, no one in the political and media establishment raised a peep. The resounding message is that the United States is committed to perpetual war, no matter how dangerous for the planet or how transparently false the means to advance it.

Enabled to literally assert that war is peace, the White House continues its long-running deception of pretending to oppose Israel’s assault on Gaza while enabling it at every turn. This week, Biden sent shockwaves by announcing, for the first time, the use of US leverage in cutting off weapons to Israel. One pending US shipment of 2,000-pound and 500-pound bombs was already paused last week, the administration disclosed. And if Israel went ahead with its plans to invade Rafah, where over one million people have fled, “I’m not supplying the weapons,” Biden told CNN.

Yet from the start, each vocal declaration of Biden’s supposed pressure on Israel has been quietly undermined by his actions. True to form, administration officials informed the Washington Post that the paused weapons “could still be delivered depending on the White House’s discretion.” As one official stressed: “We have not made a final determination on how to proceed.”

And whereas Biden informed CNN that “we’re not going to supply the weapons and artillery shells... that have been used” against dense population centers like Rafah, his aides also admitted that Israel has already received the weapons it would need. “Despite the pause, the Israeli military has enough weapons supplied by the U.S. and other partners to conduct the Rafah operation if it chooses to cast aside U.S. objections,” the Post reported, citing a US official.

By already giving Israel enough weapons to attack Rafah, Biden virtually guaranteed that Israel can cast his objections aside. Which it already has. As Israel’s war cabinet voted unanimously to attack Rafah, one Israeli official admitted that the government was so committed to an invasion that its hostages were of secondary concern. “Israel will under no circumstances agree to end the war in a deal to release the hostages,” the Israeli official told Haaretz.

Understanding that Biden’s threats are toothless, top Israeli leaders also have no problem mocking him with contempt. In response to Biden telling CNN that he could pause more weapons, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir tweeted out the comment: “Hamas [loves] Biden,” using a heart emoji.

Ben Gvir likely understands that not even open ridicule, just like dwindling poll numbers, will alter Biden’s devotion to backing Israel. Indeed, one day after Biden’s CNN interview, the White House walked back his comments. “Everybody keeps talking about pausing weapons shipments,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters. “Weapons shipments are still going to Israel. And they're still getting the vast, vast majority of everything that they need to defend themselves.”

To ensure continued US arming of Israel, the White House took care of a potential obstacle. Wednesday was the deadline for the State Department to issue a report determining whether Israel is complying with international law. If Israel were found to be in violation, that could trigger a cut-off of US weaponry. But when the deadline arrived, the Biden administration quietly informed Congress that the report was not ready, without specifying why.

While unable to meet a deadline, Biden did find the time to smear college students protesting his unfettered support for Israel. At a Holocaust Remembrance Day speech in Washington, Biden drew a direct line between the nationwide Gaza solidarity encampments, anti-Semitism, violence, and even Holocaust denial. “On college campuses, Jewish students [have been] blocked, harassed, attacked, while walking to class,” Biden declared. “Antisemitism, antisemitic posters, slogans calling for the annihilation of Israel, the world’s only Jewish state. Too many people denying, downplaying, rationalizing, ignoring the horrors of the Holocaust and Oct. 7... It is absolutely despicable, and it must stop.”

With the exception of some property damage at Columbia’s Hamilton Hall, the college protests have in fact between overwhelmingly peaceful. The violence and harassment has come from pro-Israel hooligans, such as those who shot fireworks into the UCLA encampment and beat students with batons, as well as police, who have fired rubber bullets into crowds.

Biden was joined by Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, who decided to take the Nazi Holocaust analogy further. “The very campuses that were once the envy of the international economy have succumbed to an antisemitic virus,” Johnson said. “...If you close your eyes in the quiet of your own heart, you can hear the glass of Jewish storefronts shattered by stormtroopers.… You can hear screams coming from the gas chambers.”

In their zeal to support Israel as it annihilates a defenseless population, Biden and his Republican allies have in fact closed themselves off to the screams of those in Gaza maimed by US bombs and buried under rubble. It is no wonder then that selfless college students who slept in tents and braved violent attacks in solidarity with Gaza so unnerved the political leaders abetting the besieged enclave’s destruction.

To ensure that their echo chamber remains hermetically sealed, Israel’s Beltway supporters are seeking to codify their smear tactics – and exploitation of Jewish suffering -- into law. The House recently approved the bipartisan “Antisemitism Awareness Act,” which would criminalize criticism of Israel and threaten the funding of colleges that allow it. This followed Biden’s enactment of another bipartisan censorship measure imposing a federal ban on the popular social platform Tik Tok.

In a joint appearance with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Republican Senator and former presidential candidate Mitt Romney acknowledged that the Tik Tok ban was also aimed at stifling dissenting views on Israel. “Some wonder why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down potentially TikTok or other entities of that nature,” Romney said. “If you look at the postings on TikTok and the number of mentions of Palestinians relative to other social media sites—it’s overwhelmingly so among TikTok broadcasts.”

Romney’s admission came shortly after he complained that Israel’s “PR [has] been so awful … Typically the Israelis are good at PR.” In response, Blinken pointed to “a social media ecosystem environment in which context, history, facts get lost, and the emotion—the impact of images—dominates.” In other words, Tik Tok was outside of the establishment’s narrative control, and instead allowed young people to see visual evidence of the atrocities committed in their name.

Biden and his Republican allies have made their priorities clear. Whether it means war-mongering in the name of “world peace,” pretending to pressure Israel, smearing courageous young people, exploiting the memory of Nazi victims, and censoring dissent, the bipartisan message is that when it comes to complicity with Israel, the US government’s mendacity, just like its weaponry, is unlimited.