In an interview with NBC News on Sunday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was asked about President Joe Biden’s recent threat to strip Israel of its offensive weapons in the event of an all-out assault on the southern city of Rafah. Gaza Strip where more than 1.4 Palestinians are accommodated.
When asked by the interviewer what exactly Biden’s “red line” was and “what would make him say, ‘I’m holding back the guns now,'” Blinken responded: “Look, we’re not talking no red lines when it comes to Israel. .”
It was a curious statement to say the least, since Biden himself has spoken of red lines when it comes to Israel. In an interview with CNN last week, the president laid out the latest red line with characteristic eloquence: “I said clearly that if they (the Israelis) go to Rafah – they haven’t gone to Rafah yet – if they went to Rafah I am not providing the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the towns – which are facing this problem.”
Clearly, indeed.
It turns out that clarity was also an ostensible goal of Blinken’s NBC talk — and, after announcing “Let me be clear,” the secretary went on to explain that “what the president said, it The point is that if Israel embarks on a major military operation, in Rafah, in this case, there are certain systems that we will not provide to Israel that could contribute to that effort. »
In other words, maybe a red line.
But while it appears that even the U.S. government doesn’t know what the U.S. government’s line is on Rafah, officials seem pretty uniformly determined to ignore the fact that Israel has long been carrying out a “major military operation.” in the city – just as it always has been. what has been happening in the rest of the Gaza Strip since October 7.
After all, there is no such thing as selective genocide. And the idea that Rafah has somehow been spared more than seven months of continuous US-backed massacres is patently ridiculous.
Officially, the Israeli war has killed more than 35,000 Palestinians, although the real death toll is undoubtedly much higher given the number of corpses buried under rubble or missing. The sudden US concern for Rafah civilians – many of whom were forced to flee to the city from other parts of Gaza – raises the obvious question of why Palestinian civilians were not a red line from the start. departure.
Recall that the US Congress approved $26 billion in additional war aid to Israel last month, more than six months after the start of the genocide. Of course, this money was authorized in addition to the billions of dollars the United States already sends home each year.
When US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin confirmed on May 8 that the Biden administration had suspended sending 3,500 bombs to Israel due to concerns about an offensive on Rafah, he was careful to clarify that this pause would not affect the $26 billion in any way. And a recent State Department report paved the way for continued arms transfers to Israel, even though it is likely that the weapons supplied by the United States were used in a manner “incompatible” with the international law.
So much for the red lines – or the idea that Biden is somehow being tough on Israel.
For his part, the American ambassador to Israel, Jack Lew, pointed out that only one shipment of “one set of munitions” had been suspended and that “everything else continues to arrive” – an indication, he said. – he says, that nothing has “fundamentally changed”. in the relationship” between the United States and Israel.
Furthermore, the ambassador noted, the Israeli military has not yet begun to engage in the type of behavior that would be necessary in Rafah to trigger opposition from the United States – which continues to insist that the The Israeli operation in and around the city is “limited” in nature despite everything. way of bloody proof to the contrary. The Times of Israel quotes Lew remarking that the Rafah operation has so far not “penetrated the zone where our disagreements lie.” I hope we don’t end up with any real disagreements.
But if you agree that genocide in general is fundamentally acceptable, what else is there still to disagree about? Now if only U.S. officials could agree on official policy.
In honor of the current spectacle in Washington, the news site Axios has compiled, predictably, a brief “history of US presidents drawing red lines with Israel”, which lists exactly three heads of state Americans apart from Biden. One of them was Ronald Reagan, who in 1981 delayed two deliveries of F-16 fighter jets to the Israelis – and whose own administration would become increasingly divided over its policy toward Israel.
The following year, after apparently interpreting mixed signals from the United States as a green light, Israel invaded Lebanon with the help of American-made weapons, massacring tens of thousands of Lebanese and Palestinians. For just three days in September 1982, the Israeli army oversaw the Sabra and Shatila massacre that cost several thousand civilians and refugees outside the Lebanese capital, Beirut.
What about “drawing red lines”?
More than four decades later, the US-Israeli relationship remains as special as ever – even as conflicting narratives continue to spring forth from the US political establishment. Ultimately, all the confusion over whether or not there was a red line at Rafah serves to distract from the reality that the United States remains fully on board with the genocide, despite intermittent noises on controlling Israeli excesses.
Meanwhile, the illusion that there has been some sort of significant falling out between the United States and its Israeli partner in crime is reinforced by suggestions from the right in both countries that Biden and Hamas are hopelessly in love l ‘ from each other – which only does it a disservice to Biden & Co to appear slightly less genocidal.
And while the contradictory discussions continue in Washington, Israel continues to kill.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Tel Aviv Tribune.