A U.S. soldier secures a load of 500-pound bombs in this undated photo. (Photo: U.S. Army)
Since October, the U.S. has sent Israel more than 20,000 heavy bombs, which have been used in some of the deadliest massacres in Gaza.
The Biden administration has ended a two-month pause on the shipment of 500-pound bombs to Israel despite the frequent use of U.S.-supplied weapons by Israeli forces to commit alleged war crimes and genocide in Gaza.
Citing an unnamed Biden administration official, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that the bombs “are in the process of being shipped” to Israel and should arrive in the coming weeks.
In May, the Biden administration suspended transfers of 500- and 2,000-pound bombs manufactured by aerospace giant Boeing over fears the devastating munitions would be used in airstrikes on Rafah, the southern Gaza city where more than a million Palestinians had sought refuge.
By that time, Israel had already dropped hundreds of 2,000-pound bombs—which the U.S. military avoids using in civilian areas because they can destroy entire city blocks—on Gaza, including in an October 31 attack on the densely populated Jabalia refugee camp that killed more than 120 civilians.
“This is what U.S. funding and weapons do.”
Last month, the United Nations Human Rights Office said Israel’s use of 2,000-pound bombs and other U.S.-supplied weapons likely violated international law by deliberately targeting civilians in disproportionate attacks. Israeli military commanders have also been criticized for using artificial intelligence-based target selection to approve bombings they know will cause high civilian casualties.
The Biden official told the Journal that the pause on 2,000-pound bomb shipments will remain in effect.
“Our main concern had been and remains the potential use of 2,000-pound bombs in Rafah and elsewhere in Gaza,” they said. “Because our concern was not about the 500-pound bombs, those are moving forward as part of the usual process.”
But Israeli forces have killed many civilians with smaller bombs too. The New York Times reported Wednesday that multiple weapons experts including a a former U.S. Army explosive ordnance disposal technician identified a fragment from a Boeing-made GBU-39 250-pound bomb used in Tuesday’s attack on a refugee tent encampment outside the al-Awda school in southern Gaza that killed and wounded scores of civilians, including many women and children.
Palestinian and international agencies say Israel’s 278-day Gaza assault and siege have left at least 137,500 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing. Israel’s conduct in the war is the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case. International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan is also seeking to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders for crimes including extermination.
Despite overwhelming evidence of Israeli war crimes, the Biden administration remains Israel’s most steadfast supporter, providing billions of dollars in military aid, approving more than 100 arms shipments, and offering diplomatic cover in the form of United Nations Security Council vetoes and what critics call genocide denial.
Reuters reported last month that since October the U.S. has sent Israel 14,000 2,000-pound bombs, 6,500 500-pound bombs, 3,000 Hellfire missiles, 1,000 bunker-buster bombs, 2,600 air-dropped small-diameter bombs, and other munitions.
Citing the al-Awda massacre, Jewish Voice for Peace Action said Wednesday that “this is what U.S. funding and weapons do.”
Children receive malnourishment treatment at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on May 30, 2024, amid Israel’s ongoing assault on the besieged enclave. (Photo: Bashar Taleb/AFP via Getty Images)
“The international community must apply relentless pressure to achieve a cease-fire and ensure sustained humanitarian access now,” said one advocate.
More than 1 in 5 people in the Gaza Strip are “facing catastrophic levels of food insecurity” amid Israel’s relentless assault and siege against the Palestinian territory, according to a draft report set to be published Tuesday by the United Nations’ hunger monitoring system.
The latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) Acute Food Insecurity Special Snapshot—which was previewed by various news agencies—says that more than 495,000 Gazans—who already face “an extreme lack of food, starvation, and exhaustion”—are expected to suffer the highest level of starvation over the coming months.
The draft report states that while a sharp increase in food aid in northern Gaza in March and April can be credited with “likely averting a famine,” the situation is “deteriorating again following renewed hostilities.”
“A high risk of famine persists across the whole of the Gaza Strip as long as conflict continues and humanitarian access is restricted,” IPC noted.
The IPC draft report also says more than half of all Gaza households had to sell or swap clothing in order to obtain food, and that the majority of Gazan families often “do not have any food to eat in the house, and over 20% go entire days and nights without eating.”
“The population cannot endure these hardships any longer.”
Kate Phillips-Barrasso, vice president of global policy and advocacy at Mercy Corps, an Oregon-based humanitarian NGO, told The Guardian that “people are enduring subhuman conditions resorting to desperate measures like boiling weeds, eating animal feed, and exchanging clothes for money to stave off hunger and keep their children alive.”
“The humanitarian situation is deteriorating rapidly, and the specter of famine continues to hang over Gaza,” she added. “The international community must apply relentless pressure to achieve a cease-fire and ensure sustained humanitarian access now. The population cannot endure these hardships any longer.”
Although the IPC stopped short of the rare step of declaring a famine in Gaza, it warned that “the recent trajectory is negative and highly unstable.”
“Should this continue, the improvements seen in April could be rapidly reversed,” the agency added.
The IPC’s famine review panel previously said there is not enough data to make a determination on whether there is a famine in Gaza since research was being blocked by “conflict and humanitarian access constraints.”
The Geneva-based group Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said Monday that “the Famine Review Committee’s inability to declare the current food situation in the Gaza Strip to be a famine does not negate the existence of famine in the strip, as pockets of famine are forming and spreading among different age groups, particularly children, and there is a noticeable increase in deaths from hunger, malnutrition, and related diseases.”
“The committee’s failure to declare the existence of a famine is solely related to its inability to provide certain technical information because of illegal Israeli restrictions and policies that aim to conceal evidence related to the crimes it commits and prevent criminal investigations into them by independent U.N. and international committees, particularly by preventing these committees from entering the strip,” the group added.
U.N. World Food Program Executive Director Cindy McCain said last month that “full-blown famine” had taken hold in Gaza and was spreading south. According to Gaza officials, at least 40 people—mostly children—have died from malnutrition and dehydration during the 262-day Israeli onslaught. Almost all of the victims are from northern Gaza.
A very useful – but thoroughly depressing – article on the effects of hunger and how measurements/assessments are made during conflicts regarding food insecurity. Hopefully the new IPC analysis on Gaza (expected tomorrow) shows some improvement.https://t.co/whbxePArya
Israel began bombing, and later invaded, Gaza after Hamas-led attacks left more than 1,100 Israelis and others dead and over 240 others kidnapped on October 7. At least some of the victims were killed by Israeli forces in so-called “friendly fire” incidents, according to Israeli and international media reports.
Since then, Israeli forces have killed at least 37,626 Palestinians—most of them women and children—in Gaza, while wounding over 86,000 others, according to Palestinian and international agencies. At least 11,000 people, including over 4,000 children, are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed-out homes and other buildings.
Michael Fakhri, the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to food and a law professor at the University of Oregon, said in late February that Israel is committing genocide by intentionally starving Gazans. Israel’s siege—and Israeli attacks on humanitarian aid shipments, workers, and recipients—are being reviewed by the International Court of Justice as part of a South Africa-led genocide case backed by over 30 countries and regional blocs.
Palestinian children sit at the edge of a crater after an Israeli airstrike in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, June 21, 2024
‘By sending weapons, parts, components and ammunition to Israeli forces,’ the above risk being ‘complicit in serious violations of international human rights laws,’ UN experts warn
STATES and companies must end arms sales to Israel immediately or risk responsibility for human rights violations, UN experts have warned.
The transfer of weapons and ammunition to Israel may “constitute serious violations of international humanitarian laws and risk complicity in international crimes, possibly including genocide,” UN Special Rapporteurs for the Human Rights Council said in a statement on Thursday night.
The experts also called on BAE Systems, Boeing, Caterpillar, Lockheed Martin, Rolls-Royce Power Systems, and many other arms firms to end sales to Israel even if they have been granted licences to do so.
“These companies, by sending weapons, parts, components and ammunition to Israeli forces, risk being complicit in serious violations of international human rights and international humanitarian laws,” the experts said.
“This risk is heightened by the recent decision from the International Court of Justice ordering Israel to immediately halt its military offensive in Rafah, having recognised genocide as a plausible risk, as well as the request filed by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court seeking arrest warrants for Israeli leaders on allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity,” the statement said.
“In this context, continuing arms transfers to Israel may be seen as knowingly providing assistance for operations that contravene international human rights and international humanitarian laws and may result in profit from such assistance.”
The experts also warned that financial institutions investing in arms companies could also be held accountable, and called on Bank of America, BlackRock, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and many others to take urgent action.
dizzy: It’s difficult to argue that they are not Fascists when they commit the very crimes created immediately after WWII to address Fascism, to ensure “never again” and quote Fascist Adolf Hitler. It’s difficult to see that supporting countries are not aiding and abetting and complicit in genocide and war crimes when such blatant calls for such crimes are and have been made.
Israeli far-right Zehout (identity) political party chairman Moshe Feiglin gives a joint press statement with Prime Minister and Likud Chairman Benjamin Netanyahu (unseen) in Ramat Gan, near the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv on August 29, 2019. (Photo: Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images)
“In what kind of society can one openly advocate policies modeled on Hitler’s conduct? In a society that feels complete impunity due to America’s protection,” one foreign policy expert said.
Former Israeli Knesset member Moshe Feiglin quoted Adolf Hitler as he called for Israel to resettle the Gaza Strip and create a “Hebrew Gaza.”
Feiglin, who quit Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party to found the right-wing Zehut Party and plans to challenge Likud in Israel’s next elections, made the comments during a panel discussion on Israel’s Channel 12 that was shared on social media on Sunday, as Middle East Eye reported.
“We are not guests in our country, this is our country, all of it…” Feiglin said, adding, “As Hitler said, ‘I cannot live if one Jew is left.’ We can’t live here if one ‘Islamo-Nazi’ remains in Gaza.”
On @N12News Israel's most watched news show, former Likud MP Moshe Feiglin invokes ***Hitler*** to justify Gaza resettlement:
"As Hitler said, 'I cannot live if one Jew is left,' we can't live here if one 'Islamo-nazi' remains in Gaza."
Feiglin’s remarks earned widespread condemnation on social media.
“In what kind of society can one openly advocate policies modeled on Hitler’s conduct?” asked Trita Parsi, the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. “In a society that feels complete impunity due to America’s protection.”
Former Greek Finance Minister and leader of the pan-European leftist political party DiEM25 Yanis Varoufakiswrote that “the evidence of genocidal intentions is mounting” and asked, “When will the ICC [International Criminal Court] act?”
Israel has killed at least 37,337 people and injured 85,299 in its war on Gaza since October 7, when Hamas carried out a lethal attack against southern Israel, killing around 1,100 people and taking more than 240 hostage. Prior to the attack, Israel had maintained a 16-year blockade of the narrow enclave.
South Africa brought a case before the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza, citing the vast destruction of its bombing campaign as well as statements made by high-level Israeli politicians, including Netanyahu, that portray all Gazans as complicit in the October 7 attacks. Several human rights experts and scholars have also concluded that Israel is committing genocide.
This is not the first time that Feiglin, who served in the Knesset from 2013 to 2015, has called for the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza.
“We need a different prime minister who is willing to stick his neck out to win. Zehut will provide, whenever elections happen, such a candidate,” he told supporters in January, according to Middle East Eye. “For us, the war in Gaza is not merely a defensive war. It’s a war of liberation, the liberation of the land from its occupiers.”
In an October 2023 interview with Al Jazeera, he also advocated for the “complete destruction of Gaza, before invading it… Destruction like Dresden and Hiroshima, without a nuclear weapon.”
Zehut’s 2019 platform included the cancellation of the Oslo Accords with the Palestinians, according to Haaretz.
“Don’t talk to me about international law, because there is not such a thing. You know, the minute you use the word ‘Palestinian,’ you stop saying the truth. Because there is no Palestinian nation, and they know it,” Feiglin said that same year.
Other currently governing Israeli politicians have also called for the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza.
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said in January that the Israeli government should “encourage the migration” of Palestinians out of Gaza.
Later the same month, Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attended a right-wing conference calling for the “resettlement” of Gaza.
As the world watched on social media and responded in outrage, US corporate media, once again, provided cover for the perpetrators of Israel’s genocide.
CounterPunch (5/31/24): “When the Israeli bombs strafed the safe zone, the plastic tents caught fire, sending flames leaping two meters high, before the melting, blazing structures collapsed on the people inside, many of them children who’d just been tucked in for the evening.”
Over the Memorial Day weekend, Israel bombed starving Gazan refugees crowded in tents in Rafah, where Israel had told them to go. As Jeffrey St. Clair (CounterPunch, 5/31/24) wrote, leaflets dropped in Rafah a few days before told them to go to “Tel al-Sultan through Beach Road,” an area set up by the UNRWA refugee agency and designated a UN humanitarian safe zone. The leaflet added, “Don’t blame us after we warned you.”
Nevertheless, without warning, Israel hit the camp with at least eight missiles spreading fire though the encampment of plastic tents (Quds News, 5/26/24). Some refugees burned to death, mostly women and children, leaving them dismembered and charred.
The world saw the terror of the massacre on international and social media. Images showed the area of the strike engulfed in flames as Palestinians screamed, cried, ran for safety and sought to help the injured. “They told people to move there then killed them,” Richard Medhurst (5/28/24) posted.
A boy cries in horror and fear as he watches his father’s tent burn with him inside. A man holds up the body of his charred, now-headless baby, wandering around, not knowing what to do or where to go. An injured, starving child convulses in pain as a medic struggles to find a vein for an IV in her emaciated arm (Al Jazeera, 5/27/24).
Al Jazeera (cited by Quds News, 5/26/24) quoted a Civil Defense source: “We believe that the occupation army used internationally prohibited weapons to target the displaced in Rafah, judging by the size of the fires that erupted at the targeted site.”
US news media reported the tent massacre, some more truthfully than others. But most establishment media repeated Israel’s false claims that it was an accident, weaving disinformation messaging into toned-down descriptions of the scene. With confused syntax, they omitted words like “genocide,” “massacre” and “starvation.” Most left out the language of international law that is best able to explain the unprecedented crimes against humanity that Israel is committing. Corporate reporting left the tent massacre devoid of context and empathy, ignored actions that need to be taken, and ultimately facilitated the ongoing Israeli genocide of Palestinians.
Embedded with an illegal invasion
By being embedded with Israeli forces, NBC (5/28/24) presented news literally from the IDF point of view.
When NBC News (5/28/24) reported from Gaza that “Israeli tanks reached the city center for the first time, according to NBC News‘ crew on the ground,” it failed to say that the NBC crew was embedded with Israel’s invading force.
The same sentence continued that Israel was “defying international pressure to halt an offensive that has sent nearly 1 million people fleeing Rafah.” But Israel was not just “defying…pressure”; it was in violation of a direct order from the International Court of Justice ICJ to halt its attack on Rafah. Yet NBC reporters rode into Rafah with an army that was ignoring international law to commit further genocide in Gaza.
Compare NBC’s words to those used by Ramy Abdu (5/26/24), chair of Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, who posted: “In the deadliest response to the International Court of Justice’s decision, the Israeli army targeted a group of displaced persons’ tents in Rafah, killing approximately 60 innocent civilians so far.”
In a post, Francesca Albanese (5/26/24), UN special rapporteur for human rights in Palestine, included International actions that needed to be implemented:
The #GazaGenocide will not easily end without external pressure: Israel must face sanctions, justice, suspension of agreements, trade, partnership and investments, as well as participation in int’l forums.
Such sanctions are rarely discussed in establishment media, but are becoming more urgent, given the New York Times report (5/29/24) that Israel intends to extend the genocide through the remainder of 2024. Though the Times reported on the global outrage and demonstrations against the Rafah massacre, the words “genocide” and “massacre” were not used, nor was there any mention of the possibility of sanctions against Israel.
Instead of sourcing the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice or any humanitarian actors in the region, NBC (5/28/24) quoted a UN Security Council spokesperson:
Israel has a right to go after Hamas, and we understand this strike killed two senior Hamas terrorists who are responsible for attacks against Israeli civilians…. But as we’ve been clear, Israel must take every precaution possible to protect civilians.
Israel’s claim that it killed two Hamas leaders became the rationale for the strike, which was repeated extensively on corporate media. Over NBC‘s images of burning tents and killing scenes, the header read, “Dozens killed in Gaza tent camp in an airstrike targeting two Hamas commanders.”
The dead were connected to Hamas whenever possible. At the bottom of the video, the subtitles listed numbers of dead, followed with, “according to the emergency services in Hamas-run Gaza.”
Human rights attorney and Rutgers academic Noura Erakat (5/27/24) exposed the attempt to link murdered children to Hamas. Over the picture of a burned baby, she posted these harsh words:
Have you ever seen a burnt baby? Can you imagine her final, gaping screams? And all Israel had to tell you was “Hamas,” so you look at her and shrug. Your willful ignorance is genocidal.
CounterPunch (5/31/24) quoted Jeremy Konyndyk, former head of disaster relief for US Agency for International Development, saying, “Bombing a tent camp full of displaced people is a clear-cut, full-on war crime” who added, “Even if Hamas troops were present, that does not absolve the IDF of the obligation to protect civilians. It does not turn a tent camp into a free fire zone.”
‘A tragic incident’
Al Jazeera+ media critic Sana Saeed (X, 5/27/24) called the writers of such headlines “propagandists for genocide masquerading as journalists.”
On NBC (5/28/24), under the footage of the burning horrors of Rafah, the chyron read, “Netanyahu: Deadly Strike a Tragic Incident.”
In response to Israel’s “accident” claim, journalists, activists and social media users, including Rep. Rashida Tlaib, reacted with incredulity and withering criticism of those who asserted it. That was the reaction Axios reporter and CNN analyst Barak Ravid (5/27/24) received when he posted, “Breaking: Netanyahu says the airstrike in Rafah on Sunday was ‘a tragic mistake,’ and adds that it will be investigated.” Katie Halper (5/27/24) replied to Ravid with, “Nice to see you using your position as a journalist to do comms for the Israeli government.”
This was intentional. You don’t accidentally kill massive amounts of children and their families over and over again and get to say, “It was a mistake.” Genocidal maniac Netanyahu told us he wants to ethnically cleanse Palestinians.
She ended with the question, “When are you going to believe him?”
Sana Saeed (5/27/24), media critic for Al Jazeera+, posted the front pages of four print publications that repeated Netanyahu’s accident claim. The New York Times used “Tragic Accident,” while “Tragic Mistake” was preferred by Time magazine, Forbes and the AP. Over the headlines, she called them “propagandists for genocide masquerading as journalists.”
‘What Israel shared with us’
The second paragraph of CNN‘s report (5/28/24) featured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim: “Despite our best effort not to harm those not involved, unfortunately a tragic error happened last night.”
But CNN (5/28/24) seemed to be vying for Most Valuable Propagandists by elaborating on the unlikely details offered by the IDF to describe the official Israeli version of what happened. It began with Netanyahu speaking to the Knesset: “Despite our best effort not to harm those not involved, unfortunately a tragic error happened last night. We are investigating the case.”
After four paragraphs of details of the massacre—“burned bodies, including those of children, could be seen being pulled by rescuers from the wreckage”—CNN returned to the justifications. The long, breathless chain of details began:
A US official told CNN Monday that Israel had told the Biden administration it used a precision munition to hit a target in Rafah, but that the explosion from the strike ignited a fuel tank nearby and started a fire that engulfed a camp for displaced Palestinians and led to dozens of deaths.
But the claims could not be confirmed; “It’s what Israel shared with us,” the official said.
But the attack on Rafah was in no way a single “precision” “hit,” as numerous sources reported that multiple bombs hit the camp. And Al Jazeera (5/27/24) reported that Israeli drone strikes also hit the Kuwaiti Hospital, the only functioning hospital in the area, killing two medics. It also pointed out that no notice to evacuate came before the strike.
Ever-changing disinformation
In an X post (5/27/24), Intercept co-founder Jeremy Scahill noted the shifting narrative coming from Israel:
Netanyahu now admits Israel carried out the horrifying bombings that incinerated human beings in Rafah last night and turned a refugee camp into hellfire. I assume all the people who claimed it was actually a failed Hamas rocket attack will now rush to correct themselves.
As we observed after the flour massacre (FAIR.org, 3/22/24), Israel’s string of differing false statements immediately following a massacre is an IDF propaganda strategy designed to confuse and delay. Focusing on changing falsities distracts from the massacre and turns the cameras away from the horrible images of US-supplied weapons slaughter. In this way, massacres become normalized.
Repeating and discussing the ever-changing Israeli disinformation of denial, discussing weapons and official statements, also allows US corporate media to avoid easily observed patterns of Israel’s ongoing massacres, in addition to drawing public attention away from the suffering. But on social media, the raw footage and cries of outrage by users indicate that the manufactured emotional distance collapses online.
Some users expressed extreme distress after prolonged viewing of such imagery. One Palestinian organizer (5/27/24) said:
I’m shaking uncontrollably since last night. I can’t get the beheaded baby that was burned alive. The woman’s screaming out of my head. The decomposed bodies of babies out of my head. The girl whose body was stuck to a wall. Hind’s final message to PRCS…. And now. How do you watch all this and not feel your soul dead?
The daughter of Palestinian refugees posted (5/27/24):
The flour massacre, the tents massacre, the hospital massacre, the refugee camp massacre, the “safe corridor” massacre, the endless massacres, in homes, on the streets, in tents, on foot— eight months of massacre after massacre after massacre.
Another user (5/27/24) asked, “Why do so many Israeli mistakes involve launching multiple missiles at people they’ve assured are in safe zones?”
‘Willful media blackout’
It was the Israeli newspaper Haaretz (2/29/24) that exposed US corporate media reporting as repeated propaganda in a piece titled, “In Netanyahu’s Israel, the Rafah Horror Was Neither ‘a Mishap’ nor Exceptional.” The editorial scoffed at the use of “tragic mishap” to describe the “horrific incident.” It observed that “it took Netanyahu 20 hours to produce the disgraceful statement, which, as usual, lacked any shred of regret over the death of ‘noncombatants.’”
Haaretz derided the “willful media blackout regarding the scope of death and destruction over the last eight months.” Skeptical about the assertion that “it was not expected to cause damage to noncombatant civilians,” the paper observed that, if true, “this involves an ongoing failure at the strategic level.”
LA Progressive (6/7/24): “In response to this massacre…the best US spokespeople could muster was to urge Israel to be ‘transparent’ about the assault.”
By May 29, US corporate media began to report extensively that the Israeli bombs dropped on Rafah that burned Palestinian refugees alive were made in the US. A munitions fragment was filmed by Palestinian journalist Alam Sadeq, and was posted on X (5/27/24) by former US Army explosive expert Trevor Ball two days earlier. Much was made of the fact that the ordinance was smaller than the usual 2,000-pound bombs used to destroy Gaza, and were the preferred bombs the Biden administration had sent to Israel.
As the New York Times (5/29/24) put it, “US officials have been pushing Israel to use more of this type of bomb, which they say can reduce civilian casualties.” The lengthy report included a drawing of the bomb, the details of its manufacture, and assertions that its use by Israel indicated they tried to kill fewer civilians. Gone were any mention of the “tragic mistake,” and the “exploded fuel tank,” forgotten as yesterday’s fake news.
But a lengthy back-and-forth about how the fire could have started failed to point out the obvious, which comes only at the very end when a retired US Air Force sergeant observes, “When you use a weapon that’s intended as precision and low–collateral damage in an area where civilians are saturated, it really negates that intended use.”
As Israel’s atrocities continue to mount in Gaza, the LA Progressive (6/7/24) wrote that though Biden claimed to care about the loss of civilian life in Gaza, and that an Israeli attacked on Rafah would be a “red line,” “events of the past weeks have demonstrated that none of these claims are in fact true.” It added that a month ago, Hamas agreed to an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire agreement “that looked a lot like the ceasefire agreement now being promoted by the Biden administration,” but Israel responded by rejecting that agreement as well.
In addition, Israel closed off the border area between Israel and Egypt, cutting off any aid or supplies from coming into famine-ravaged Gaza. The authors concluded, “What has transpired is a horrifying series of massacres against civilians, which the Biden administration continues to try to downplay, excuse and explain away.”
Over the last eight months, US establishment media have helped Biden “explain away” such atrocities. They have not stopped repeating Israel’s propaganda, and have acted as willing conduits for Israeli disinformation. It is past time they stopped doing so, and started reporting on what is actually happening on the ground in Gaza, not through the eyes of the IDF.
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