Finian Cunningham
The Biden administration's purported concern to stop a regional war is another cynical ruse, Finian Cunningham writes.
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In the Western media, we are told the Israeli regime is giving short shrift to calls from the Biden administration for "humanitarian pauses" in its "war on Hamas" - which in reality is not a war but a mass slaughter of Palestinians.
The U.S. and Western media report that American President Joe Biden is "concerned" about the mounting civilian death toll after more than four weeks of Israel's siege and non-stop aerial bombardment of the Gaza Strip, a coastal enclave equivalent to the area of Detroit.
Biden sent his top diplomat Antony Blinken on a tour of the Middle East apparently in a bid to persuade Israel to allow "humanitarian pauses" in its offensive against a largely civilian population. Israel's premier Benjamin Netanyahu is having none of that as his military forces proceed with a ground invasion.
The charade being presented here by the Western media is that Washington is somehow acting as a restraining influence. And not a very successful one. A sort of well-meaning hapless foreign power trying to help an ally but also apprehensive about humanitarian suffering.
That's just utter claptrap. First off, Israel is conducting a genocide against a population of 2.3 million people, in which resides a militant group, Hamas, that comprises 1 per cent of that population. This is like blowing up a lake to kill the fish.
Hamas's murderous attacks on October 7 against Israel which resulted in 1,400 dead Israelis (many of whom were apparently killed by Israeli security forces using excessive force) are no justification whatsoever for the subsequent annihilation of more than 10,000 Palestinians in Gaza, as well as over 130 Palestinians in the West Bank. Nearly 70 per cent of the casualties are women and children.
This is not a right to self-defense as the Biden administration and other Western governments keep repeating and thereby affording Israel a semblance of political cover. It is a license for mass murder.
This is genocide.
The notion that the United States is somehow concerned about the civilian deaths of Palestinians and is acting to restrain Israel is belied by the following:
The Biden administration has signed off on the supply of $320 million worth of precision-guided bombs for Israel. This is in addition to the bigger military aid package of $14 billion that the U.S. Congress is currently voting on.
But more than this green light largesse is the nuclear-powered military support that the United States has rushed to assemble in the region. The positioning of this fearsome power parked only a few miles away from the coastal area where Israel is carrying out a murderous blitzkrieg speaks volumes. Only the Western media are distorting the obvious monstrous criminality of what's really going on.
U.S. Central Command which covers the Middle East region has announced the arrival of a nuclear-powered submarine. The vessel will join two nuclear-capable aircraft carrier battle groups already dispatched to the East Mediterranean.
The Pentagon also published a photo of nuclear-capable B-1 Lancer bombers newly deployed to the Middle East.
The very public announcements of these "strategic weapons" by the United States - usually locations of such assets are not disclosed - are viewed as delivering a calculated, provocative and dire threat to Iran and other Middle Eastern parties, such as Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Lloyd Austin, the U.S. Secretary of Defense, voiced the threat in a phone call with Israeli counterpart Yoav "Palestinians-are-human-animals" Gallant at the weekend. Austin "reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to deter any state or non-state actor seeking to escalate this conflict."
CIA director William Burns is also visiting Israel this week issuing the same message of support for Tel Aviv and warning other states and parties to back off from any idea of intervening to stop the murderous offensive in Gaza.
Antony Blinken, the U.S. Secretary of State, issued a similarly stark warning to Iran and others during his latest Mideast tour while allegedly seeking "humanitarian pauses". Blinken said, "Don't even think about" attacking American forces in the region or otherwise face overwhelming retaliation.
When Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah gave a much-anticipated speech last week, he surprised many observers by refraining from declaring open war against Israel in support of the Palestinians. It seems Nasrallah is taking heed of the threats assembled by Israel and its U.S. patron. (And who could blame him!)
Israel's Netanyahu warned Hezbollah that any widening of war would result in a military response that "could not be imagined". That formulation of words can only mean a threat to use nuclear weapons.
Such crazed talk about using nuclear weapons was openly articulated by one of Netanyahu's cabinet ministers, Amichai Eliyahu, at the weekend during a radio interview. Netanyahu later reprimanded his minister but the rebuke seemed to be for public relations show, nothing else.
The drastic positioning of U.S. nuclear weapons in the East Mediterranean and the issuing of unprecedented threats to Iran, Hezbollah and others has nothing to do with American concern to prevent escalation of war in the region. That's how the Biden administration and the Western media are portraying it.
How preposterous to even consider that notion. No, the blunt truth is that the U.S. is weaponizing the Israeli fascist regime to carry out its genocide against Palestinians with as little opposition as possible. The threats - including the use of nuclear weapons - are to ensure that the genocide is not impeded in any way by nations and parties that might legally assist the Palestinians.
Like the rhetoric about self-defense, humanitarian pauses, and so on, the Biden administration's purported concern to stop a regional war is another cynical ruse. It's not about stopping a wider conflict. It's a grotesque verbal cover for nuclear-powered genocide.