The US Steps Up Its Defense of Israeli Genocide
At Security Council, in the halls of Congress, and in the international legal system, the Biden administration pulls out the stops to ensure Israel can continue its mass killing
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In the space of a day, Joe Biden’s administration displayed every despicable characteristic that has cast it as an opponent of peace, justice, the rule of law, and humanity.
It began with yet another veto of a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. It continued with Biden’s massive effort to stop Democrats from supporting Bernie Sanders’ joint resolution of disapproval of the sale of some offensive weapons to Israel. And it culminated with the Biden administration openly giving the middle finger to the very concept of the rule of law by denouncing arrest warrants issued for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant by the International Criminal Court.
Another veto
Once again, the United States used its veto to stop the Security Council from demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. The excuse this time was that the resolution called for an unconditional ceasefire, which the United States decided meant the release of Israeli hostages was separated form the ceasefire.
This obviously phony excuse ignores the fact that the resolution explicitly calls for the unconditional release of all hostages. This demand is made in an operative paragraph and carries just as much weight as the demand for a ceasefire.
In reality, of course, the release of the Israeli hostages—an issue we do well to remember has been effectively severed from the issue of the more than 3,000 Palestinians being held without charge on administrative detention, among more than 11,000 Palestinians in Israeli custody—has nothing to do with the American veto.
That action was taken simply to protect Israel’s genocide from UNSC condemnation, which would increase pressure on other countries to act against Israel for its crimes.
It was the fourth time in the past year the United States has exercised its veto power against a Gaza ceasefire resolution. Before, there might have been some who argued that political concerns motivated the veto. With Trump having won the election, and Biden’s bloody pro-Israel zealotry certainly having won Democrats no gains, that excuse has evaporated.
The idea that the Israeli hostages have any value to either Israel or the United States, beyond their utility as a propaganda tool has become a tragic joke. A ceasefire that would have released all the hostages has been on the table for most of 2024. Israel isn’t interested and the United States, if it wants such a deal at all, is not willing to put any pressure on Israel to agree to it.
Disapproving the Resolution of Disapproval
On Wednesday, a series of resolutions were brought to a vote by Senator Bernie Sanders which would have put the Senate on record as disapproving of multiple sales of offensive weapons to Israel.
Sanders made the obvious case that such sales were in violation of U.S. law, which prohibits the provision of American arms to countries and military units that systematically violate international humanitarian law and human rights norms. That Israel has done this is indisputable.
The Biden administration lobbied Democrats hard to oppose them although there was never any possibility that these resolutions would pass. No Republican was going to vote for them, which meant that all that was needed was two Democratic votes to defeat them. There was never any doubt that those votes would come.
But Biden was concerned that the vote would do exactly what it did: demonstrate that Democratic opposition to the Gaza genocide was growing and that criticism of Israel, and opposition to the sale of weapons to it, is becoming more politically feasible and popular.
In the end, 17 Democrats and two Independents voted for all or some of Sanders’ resolutions. That’s a remarkable number when it comes to the sale of military equipment to Israel.
But it shouldn’t be. We should be able to expect that the United States Senate would vote overwhelmingly to obey U.S. law. We should be able to expect that even cynical, self-interested politicians would respond to the desires of their constituents—including their Jewish constituents—and vote for a bill that specifically targeted only offensive weapons and supplies, not anything Israel could use for legitimate self-defense.
Yet here we are, and it’s important that we recognize this progress. Those 19 votes didn’t only appear in the face of pro-Israel lobbying, but also in defiance of the lobbying efforts of the President of the United States. Such an outcome would have been unthinkable mere months ago and it speaks volumes to the level of criminality and inhumanity that Israel has engaged in that this happened.
Yet it speaks even more loudly that, confronted with the most horrifying genocide of the 21st century, this was not only the best we could do, but more than most would have thought reasonable to hope for.
Spitting in the face of the rule of law
On Thursday, after months of anticipation, the International Criminal Court (ICC) finally fulfilled Prosecutor Karim Khan’s request for arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
Israeli officials and spokespeople, like clockwork, immediately screamed antisemitism, an obscene claim.
This needs to be made unequivocally clear. Netanyahu’s office comparing these warrants to the infamous case of Alfred Dreyfus—whose conviction on false accusations of treason in 1894 in France sparked a massive wave of violent antisemitism and is one of the most historically notorious cases of Jews being blamed, both individually and en masse, for a society’s troubles—and for the charge of antisemitism to be used as a defense against charges of this magnitude is an insult to every Jew who ever suffered from violent antisemitism in history.
The modern international legal system was set up in response to the atrocities against Jews, Roma, Communists and other political activists, LGBTQIA folks, the disabled and other marginalized communities in the Shoah, the Holocaust. The suffering of the Jewish people in that genocide, in those unholy factories of death and torture the Nazis set up across Europe told the world that a legal system must exist that tries to bring such criminals to justice.
But the international legal system has acted quite selectively in its history. Most of those who have faced prosecution for war crimes have been from the Global South, and the exceptions—such as the prosecution of Slobodan Milosevic and the arrest warrant issued in 2022 for Vladimir Putin—have been figures the United States views as enemies.
Netanyahu and Gallant are the first American allies to face an arrest warrant from the ICC. That makes this a groundbreaking moment, and a major victory for an international legal system that has heretofore been widely viewed as a tool of the imperial west.
Most of the European Union, all of whose members are state parties to the ICC, have agreed—some reluctantly—that they would enforce the ICC ruling. EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell stated that the ICC’s findings were binding.
While some European countries were vague about their commitment to enforce the ICC ruling and arrest Netanyahu or Gallant if they came to their countries, all agreed that they would “respect” the court’s decision. Even UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, as weak a leader and as flimsy in his commitment to principles as Joe Biden, agreed that he would respect the decision, even while clearly signaling his support for Israel and its genocide.
The only European country that has been explicit in its defiance of the ICC warrants is Hungary, led by far-right, antisemitic, xenophobic, authoritarian President Viktor Orban. That’s the company Joe Biden and the overwhelming majority of Congress members from both parties have chosen to keep.
Biden called the ICC warrants “outrageous.” Senator Tom Cotton implied a threat to use military force against The Hague—which is in the Netherlands, a European ally. Both Republican Lindsey Graham and outgoing Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called for sanctions against the ICC. Far-right Democrat John Fetterman, displaying his customary intellectual rigor, said “Fuck that.”
Many Democrats and Republicans made similar statements.
Israel has always placed itself above the law, and it can do so with impunity because the United States shares both its contempt for law and its sense of supremacy, of being privileged above others.
But if we want to see a world that is safer, more just, more secure and peaceful, we are the ones who need to demand it be different. As the Dreyfus Affair, the Shoah, the history of antisemitism, white supremacy, and violent racism should teach us, “Never Again” must apply to everyone both in the sense of never letting it happen to anyone and never letting it any group—regardless of any claim to historical victimhood—do it to others.
Supporting the ICC is a step toward an international legal system that is based on principle and that can be enforced equally. That vision is a long way from reality, but it is something humanity desperately needs.
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