The US President and the Democratic party are betting voters are dumb enough to fall for this charade. Please don’t prove them right.
A few observations on President Biden’s building of a “temporary pier” – or what his officials are grandly calling a “port” – to get aid into Gaza:
1. Though no one is mentioning it, Biden is actually violating Israel’s 17-year blockade of Gaza with his plan. Gaza doesn’t have a sea port, or an airport, because Israel, its occupier, has long banned it from having either.
Israel barred anything getting into Gaza that didn’t come through the land crossings it controls. Israel stopped international aid flotillas, often violently, from reaching Gaza to bring in medicine. The blockade also created a captive market for Israel’s own poor-quality goods, like damaged fruit and veg, and allowed Israel to skim off money at the land crossings that should have gone to the Palestinians in fees and duties.
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2. It will take many weeks for the US to build this pier off-shore and get it up and running. Why the delay? Because every western capital, including the United States, has supported the blockade for the past 17 years.
The siege of Gaza caused gradual malnutrition among the enclave’s children, rather the the current rapid starvation. By helping Israel inflict collective punishment on Gaza for all those years, the US and Europe were complicit in a gross and enduring violation of international law, even before the current genocide.
With his pier, Biden isn’t reversing that long-standing collusion in a crime against humanity. He has stressed it will be temporary. In other words, it will be back to business in Gaza as usual afterwards: any children who survive will once again be allowed to starve in slow-motion, at a rate that doesn’t register with the establishment media and put pressure on Washington to be seen to be doing something.
3. Biden could get aid into Gaza much faster than by building a pier, if he wanted to. He could simply insist that Israel let aid trucks through the land crossings, and threaten it with serious repercussions should it fail to comply. He could threaten to withhold the US bombs he is sending to kill more children in Gaza. Or he could threaten to cut off the billions in military aid Washington sends to Israel every year. Or he could threaten to refuse to cast a US veto to protect Israel from diplomatic fallout at the United Nations. He could do any of that and more, but he chooses not to.
4. Even after Biden buys Israel a few more weeks to further aggressively starve Palestinians in Gaza, while we wait for his temporary pier to be completed, nothing may actually change in practice. Israel will still get to carry out the same checks it currently does at the land crossings but instead in Lanarca, Cyprus, where the aid will be loaded on to ships. In other words, Israel will still be able to create the same interminable hold-ups using “security concerns” as the pretext.
5. Biden isn’t changing course – temporarily – because he suddenly cares about the people, or even the children, of Gaza. They have been suffering in their open-air prison, to varying degrees, for decades. If he had cared, he would have done something to end that suffering after he became president. If he had done something then, October 7 might never have happened, and all those lives lost on both sides – lives continuing to be lost on the Palestinian side every few minutes – might have been saved.
And if he really cared, he wouldn’t have helped Israel in its efforts to destroy UNRWA, the UN relief agency for Palestinians and a vital lifeline for Gaza, by freezing its funding, based on unevidenced claims against the agency by Israel.
No, Biden doesn’t care about Palestinian suffering, or about the fact that, while he’s been busy eating ice cream, many, many tens of thousands of children have been murdered, maimed or orphaned – and the rest starved. He cares about the polls. His timetable for helping Palestinians is being strictly dictated by the schedule of the presidential election. He needs to look like Gaza’s saviour when Democrats are deciding who they are voting for.
He and the Democratic party are betting voters are dumb enough to fall for this charade. Please don’t prove them right.
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Comments
11 responses to “Biden’s pier for Gaza is a hollow gesture that will change almost nothing”
Gaza aid is about winning votes not to help Palestinians.
The pier will be a beginning point for exploiting Gaza’s vast “Leviathan” gas fields offshore, one of Israel’s goals for the war.
Good ol’ Joe….and then he’ll ship a dozen Hershey bars to relive the famine…and maybe a box of aspirin.
Coming Soon…exit tweedledumb…enter tweedledumber.
Meanwhile Rambo Z€£en$KKKey takes Moscow singlehanded.
The U.S. is planning to build a temporary “humanitarian” pier attached to a “floating harbour” to supply food to the starving population of Gaza. It will be finished and ready for use after the last Palestinian has died from starvation or disease. The real aim of this criminal charade is to ethnic-cleanse the Palestinians by orchestrating a “voluntary” migration. It is the reason the psychopathic murderous Jews in Israel are not opposing the pier construction.
It might be a ‘hollow gesture’ but…would be VERY profitable for a lot of people.
Agree with Dimitri”s March 11 comment. These gas fields are very valuable and rightfully belong to the Palestinians.
This is for TOM, if anyone knows his email.
https://thecradle.co/articles/on-israel-and-rape
American leaders spew out many narratives and the naive people believe them.
On 9/11 Bush Jr said that 15 Saudi “terrorists” attacked America using box cutters. He then went to Saudi Arabia, not to kill thousands of Saudis but to sword-dance with them.
On the other hand Netanyahu killed thousands of Palestinians after 10/7 claiming that the Palestinian “terrorists” raped Israelis and cut the heads of Israeli babies. Netanyahu didn’t sword-dance with the Palestinians as Bush Jr did with the Saudis after 9/11.
Naive people believe the MSM naratives spewed out by the officials.
Biden is a Zionist and is complacent with the Israelis committing mass murder. The port is a non solution to a none problem. There are miles oF aid trucks lined up outside Gaza, more aid doesn’t need to be shipped from Greece. Hard to imagine how a President expects to be reelected while he is starving children to death in real time on CNN.
So, ole Genocide Joe wants to build a pier; no doubt so he and his good friend Bibi can enjoy a little fishing on R&R. They might even hook into a trillion cubic feet in natural gas reserves lying just off the coast of Gaza…that would be a whale of a catch for these two aging anglers!!!
In order to properly express my feelings with respect to Genocide Joe’s humanitarian aid pier, I must quote the great Roger Waters from the legendary Pink Floyd album (The Wall): “This fills me with the urge to DEFECATE!!!”
The U.S. is planning to build a temporary “humanitarian” pier attached to a “floating harbour” to supply food to the starving population of Gaza. It will be finished and ready for use after the last Palestinian has died from starvation or disease. The real aim of this criminal charade is to ethnic-cleanse the Palestinians by orchestrating a “voluntary” migration. It is the reason the psychopathic murderous Jews in Israel are not opposing the pier but helping its construction. Indeed, a senior U.S. diplomatic source (https://shorturl.at/sET68) The Jerusalem Post on 10 March, that “Netanyahu took the initiative to establish maritime humanitarian aid for the civilian population in the Gaza Strip, in collaboration with the Biden administration,” In other words, “Biden was simply implementing a plan by Netanyahu, not actually initiating anything new”, said the souirce.
According to the source, Netanyahu discussed with President Biden the concept of “delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza via the sea, contingent on an Israeli inspection in Cyprus” on 22 October, just two weeks after the war began.