Tell us again, Mr. President, about U.S. influence on the Israeli government.
You warned Prime Minister Netanyahu against moving a sizable military force into the heart of Rafah until he had a reasonable plan for the relocation of more than a million already displaced Palestinians into an adequate humanitarian zone.
Bibi gave you the finger, of course, the Israel Defense Forces are now into the city's center, the body count exceeded 100 in only three days, hundreds have been wounded while Gaza's hospitals have been bombed into disuse, and the U.N. agency aiding Palestinians says those caring zones you demanded are severely overcrowded and absent the "minimal conditions to provide emergency humanitarian assistance in a safe and dignified manner."
But Bibi's happy. Last week you informed Congress that you intend to ship another $1 billion of new arms to Israel.
Israel's Rafah invasion began 6 May as the military insisted it was only a limited operation. Now the IDF says its troops are "continuing operational activity in specific areas of Rafah." Translated, dead center. Such is the little game we play with Israel's casually genocidal war cabinet. They swear to Yahweh they're telling the truth, we act as though we believe them, and then they break their word every. goddamn. time.
Mr. Biden, are you not yet sore from Bibi's prison shower routine?
Still, you — and we — are not the ones taking it day after day and twice on Sunday. $1 billion, $10 billion or 50 is nothing to a superpower, so-called, and we can always generate more. What's non-regenerative are the dead. There's currently a dispute over an accurate account, but Al Jazeera claims nearly 36,000 Palestinians are no more, 80,000 wounded. I'll take Al Jazeera's reporting over any claim by Israel, which, as noted, has real trouble with the truth.
What has all the Palestinian slaughter accomplished? Netanyahu always has another offensive and more deaths in mind. This time it's Rafah. He has relentlessly argued the city is essential to wiping out the bad guys. Military analysts have noted the opposite, indeed a child could have noted the same — that most of Hamas is by now long gone. They weren't about to stick around in the face of overwhelming force.
And so the IDF will be back, having accomplished pretty much nothing, just as it did in central and northern Gaza. The Israeli military leveled those territories and killed innocents by the thousands. It has now returned to both, because Hamas returned.
Which encapsulates Netanyahu's ideal war — the never-ending kind.