FEATURED
Cracks in Biden’s Zionist Wall: Warren, Powers admit “Genocide, Famine” in
Gaza as Israeli Atrocities Continue
JUAN COLE
04/13/2024
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Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Cracks are showing in the Iron Wall of the
Biden administration knee-jerk support for the far-right, extremist Israeli
government’s total war on Gaza. US AID Administrator Samantha Power
admitted that Israel’s campaign in Gaza has produced a famine. And Senator
Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) admitted that Israel is committing a genocide there.
Sen. Warren spoke at the Islamic Center of Boston in Wayland,
Massachusetts, and a video of one of her exchanges was posted to X by
WGBH reporter Tori Bedford (@Tori_Bedford).
A member of the congregation asked her if Israel was committing genocide
in Gaza, an allegation that has been made in international forums.
She replied:
WARREN: “So, I think what’s happening now is going to be a long and
involved debate over what constitutes genocide when you ask a legal
question. For me it is far more important to say that what Israel is doing is
wrong — and it is wrong. It is wrong to starve children, women, a civilian
population, in order to try to bend them to your will. It is wrong to drop
2,000-pound bombs in densely-populated civilian areas. I think I can make a
more effective argument by describing the behavior that is happening and
whether I believe it is right or wrong and look people in the eyes if you want
to tell people you think it is right and it should be the policy of the United
States of America to support those actions. So that’s how I analyze this –”
Audience member: “You didn’t answer the question.”
WARREN: “No, I did answer the question. I said –”
Audience member: “It was a yes or no.”
Audience member: “It was a yes or no. The second question was a yes or no
question, to clarify.”
WARREN: “So if you want to do it as an application of law, I believe they [the
International Court of Justice] will find it is genocide, and they have ample
evidence to do so. What I’m also trying to tell you is that I’m trying to get
people past a labels argument, which seems to throw up a screen, and get
them to look at the behavior on the ground, get them to look at the children;
to get them to look at the moms and the old people and the people who have
been displaced and the people who are living outside and the people who are
drinking dirty water. And talk about what the role of the United States is in
connection with supporting the Netanyahu government, which put the
people of Gaza in that position.”
I think the subtext of this exchange is that it is easier for a member of the
Senate to decry particular military tactics of the Israeli government than to
utter the word “genocide,” because admitting that Israel is committing
genocide would require that the US cease transferring arms and perhaps
even money to Tel Aviv. Even elements of the Israel lobbies must be feeling
pretty conflicted about the horror story in Gaza by now, and might be willing
to tolerate severe criticism of it. But “genocide” is a step too far for most of
them. Most Jewish Americans, of course, know the score, and young Jews
are done out with Netanyahu and increasingly with Israel; I’m talking about
the AIPAC establishment.
It is important to underline that we got this admission from Warren, who has
a Rutgers law degree, that under International Humanitarian Law, Israel’s
conduct in Gaza meets the legal definition of genocide, only because Muslim
Americans held her feet to the fire.
Israel in the halls of Congress is now the king with no clothes, and Warren
has worked herself toward admitting it in public. Many of the Progressive
Caucus among Democrats in the House have been saying these things for
some time. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), for instance, used the term
genocide on the House floor two weeks ago, and so paved the way for this
admission by the more circumspect Warren (who began her political career
as a Republican).
Then, Power testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on
Wednesday. Rep. Jaoquin Castro (D-TX) questioned her about the situation
the Israeli government has created in Gaza (“House Foreign Affairs
Committee Holds Hearing on USAID’s Foreign Policy and International
Development Priorities”) (emphasis added):
“JOAQUIN CASTRO:… Administrator Power, thank you for joining us today.
And of course, I’d normally ask you about locally led development and some
of your great work there at USAID. But I want to ask you obviously, about the
very urgent situation, humanitarian situation in Gaza. In your testimony, you
said that the entire population of Gaza is living under the threat of famine.
News reports came out recently that certain USAID officials sent a cable to
the National Security Council warning that famine is already likely occurring
in parts of the Gaza Strip. According to the report, quote, ‘famine conditions
are most severe and widespread in northern Gaza, which is under Israeli
control.’ Do you think that it’s plausible or likely that parts of Gaza, and
particularly northern Gaza, are already experiencing famine?
SAMANTHA POWER: Well, the methodology that the IPC [Integrated food
security Phase Classification] used, is one that we had our experts scrub, it’s
one that’s relied upon in other settings, and that is their assessment. And we
believe that assessment is credible.
JOAQUIN CASTRO: So there’s — famine is already occurring there.
SAMANTHA POWER: That is — yes.
JOAQUIN CASTRO: Yeah. OK. And more than half of the population of Gaza
is under the age of 18, as you know, and are seriously affected by the lack of
access to food and nutrition. And various organizations, including the United
Nations, have warned that hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children may
die, if they don’t get necessary food and nutrition assistance in just the next
two to three weeks.
Has USAID made such an assessment itself? And do you have a sense of
how many such children might be at risk of dying if they don’t get access to
food and nutrition that’s currently unavailable?
SAMANTHA POWER: I do not have those assessments on hand. but I will say
that the — in northern Gaza, the rate of malnutrition, prior to October 7th,
was almost zero. And it is now one in three kids. But extrapolating out is hard.
And I will say, just with some humility, because it is so hard to move around in
Gaza, because the access challenges that give rise, in part, to the
malnutrition are so severe, it is also you know, hard to do the kind of scaled
assessments that we would wish to do. But in terms of, you know, actual
severe acute malnutrition for under fives, that rate was 16 percent in January,
and became 30 percent in February.
And we’re awaiting the — the March numbers. But we expect it to continue —
JOAQUIN CASTRO: So it got markedly worse.
SAMANTHA POWER: Yeah, markedly worse . . .
President Joe Biden apparently lives in a world where it is unthinkable that
Israel is committing a genocide or deliberately starving the civilian population
to, as Sen. Warren put it, “to try to bend them to” its will. But the people
around him are not blind or stupid, and they know the score. They haven’t
been able to get through to him in any significant way. He finally admitted
that 30,000 are dead in Gaza and said “it cannot become 60,000.” He is not
doing anything practical to forestall that result, however, and the likelihood is
indeed that 60,000 will be murdered if not more.
Power declines to resign, even though she helped propel the Obama
administration into a war in Libya to try to prevent the killing of 25,000
protesters by Gaddafi in 2011. If she were consistent she would be calling for
a US war on Israel to make it withdraw from Gaza.
Warren, meanwhile, continues to vote to give ever more arms and money to
Israel, so she appears merely to regret the genocide but prefers to be
senator than to try to do anything practical to stop it.
Despite these frank admissions, which come far too late, the reek of rank
hypocrisy in the Democratic Party concerning the impunity of Netanyahu and
his fascist henchmen continues to lie like a thick layer of fog over our nation’s
capital.
As for the truly unhinged Republican Party, which may be to the right of
Netanyahu, its bright idea is to condemn Biden for being too hard on the
Likud. Some Democrats say they will go along, for all the world like politicians
of the Hutu Power faction denouncing Rwandans who were too soft on the
Tutsi minority.
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