By Atilio Borón on December 18, 2023
a massacre without limits. Photo credit: Almayadeen.
Growing global criticism of the genocidal military campaign launched by the Israeli government following the interim ceasefire pushed President Joe Biden to take a critical stance on Tel Aviv’s indiscriminate bombardment of Gaza.
Washington observers noted that Biden used “unusually harsh language” shortly before the United Nations General Assembly convened a session to “demand a humanitarian ceasefire, the protection of civilians, the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages, and humanitarian access.”
Biden said that Israel’s security has the unconditional support of the United States, European governments and the European Union itself, but that the continued bombardment of defenseless civilians in Gaza was beginning to erode that support.
Mass demonstrations in major cities around the world against Israeli bombing, demanding an end to the war and the possibility of humanitarian aid to the Palestinian population, seem to be tipping the balance of world public opinion against the racist Israeli regime.
Last Tuesday’s vote in the General Assembly was overwhelmingly in favor of a cease-fire and demonstrated the growing isolation of the U.S. and Israel in what imperialist propaganda often calls the “international community.” Of course, in the mouths of U.S. officials the “international community” includes only U.S. allies and vassals; the rest of the world simply does not exist. Thus, when the “international community” speaks out, as it did in the vote at the United Nations, 153 of its 193 members voted in favor of the cease-fire; that is, against U.S. preference, with 10 countries voting aligned with Washington and against the proposed resolution; and 23 abstaining. Only eight countries – Austria, Czech Republic, Liberia, Micronesia, Nauru, Papua New Guinea and only two Latin American countries: Guatemala and Paraguay – joined the United States and Israel in opposing the resolution.
In this case, support for the cease-fire was much higher than for the Arab-sponsored resolution of October 27, which called for a “humanitarian truce” leading to a cessation of hostilities. On that occasion the vote was 120 in favor, 14 against with 45 abstentions.
So far, the bombing campaign in Gaza has recorded an extraordinary number of casualties: now reaching nearly 20,000 dead according to official reports. But this figure does not include the hundreds of people lying under the rubble of residential buildings, schools, hospitals and refugee camps brutally destroyed by the Israeli attack, most of them children, women and the elderly.
Biden also renewed his warnings that “Israel must not make the same mistakes of overreaction” that the United States made after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. As evidence of this concern, the White House decided to send its top national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, to Israel.
According to U.S. official sources, Sullivan will visit the Jewish State on December 14 and 15. He will meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, some members of his war cabinet and even Israeli President Isaac Herzog.
On Tuesday, Sullivan said he wants to talk to Israeli officials about his postwar plan for the Gaza Strip, where Hamas is the ruling party. Biden’s envoy will have to face Itamar Ben-Gvir, leader of a far-right Israeli party (usually described as National-Zionist, a reference to Hitler’s National Socialist party) and National Security Minister in Netanyahu’s coalition government. Ben-Gvir is a staunch critic of the two-state solution and has called for Israel to reassert its control over the entire West Bank and Gaza in order to achieve the construction of Greater Israel following the expulsion, or even extermination, of the Palestinian population.
A careful assessment of the current situation in Gaza can only conclude that the racist Netanyahu regime will continue its massacres until it takes over the entire Gaza Strip if it proves capable of breaking the resistance of Hamas and the Palestinian people; and capable of turning a deaf ear to the growing criticism and popular protests spreading all over the world and to the calls for negotiations proposed by some governments, mainly China and Brazil.
Obviously, such a plan will make the situation in the Middle East even more unstable and explosive, and although in the short term it may be considered a success for Tel Aviv, in the medium term the vulnerability of “Israel” and the widespread resentment in the Arab world towards a country that committed the horrendous atrocities we are witnessing in Gaza will make its situation in the region untenable, even with the complicity and protection of the United States and its European vassals. The Holocaust suffered by the Palestinian nation will not go unpunished, even if at this moment it sounds like a naive illusion.
Source: Cubadebate, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English