Ceasefire deal leaves Biden exposed - as a monster

The truth is Joe Biden had total leverage from day one to stop Israel's genocide. He chose not to use it

With a ceasefire in Gaza due to begin on Sunday - while the Israeli state continues its genocidal onslaught in the interim - it is time to take stock.

Joe Biden, who will go rightly go down in history as a monster, declared: “This is the ceasefire agreement I introduced last spring”.

A caveat here - how sentient this man is, that is open to debate, but what were he and his advisors thinking when it was decided he should say this? Did they think it would reflect well on him, that this would mean he would get some credit? Does he not realise how incriminating this sentence is. Indeed, what has been underlined by the latest developments is that the US, which provides Israel with the overwhelming majority of its weapons, as well as aid, diplomatic support, we could go on - the US has almost total leverage over Israel in these matters.

That Netanyahu signed up to a deal that was on the table last spring is because, let’s say it, Donald Trump used leverage which Biden refused. There’s some heavy caveats there, of course, which we will get to.

According to the Washington Post:

"A diplomat briefed on the ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas credited progress in the talks in part to the influence of President-elect Donald Trump, saying it was 'the first time there has been real pressure on the Israeli side to accept a deal.'"

According to the Times of Israel:

A “tense” weekend meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and incoming Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff led to a breakthrough in the hostage negotiations, with the top aide to US President-elect Donald Trump doing more to sway the premier in a single sit-down than outgoing President Joe Biden did all year, two Arab officials told The Times of Israel on Tuesday.

Trump triumphantly posted on Truth Social:

"WE HAVE A DEAL FOR THE HOSTAGES IN THE MIDDLE EAST. THEY WILL BE RELEASED SHORTLY. THANK YOU!"

Unsurprisingly, Palestinians across Gaza are celebrating: after 468 days of apocalyptic mayhem, any respite is overwhelming.

But let’s offer some necessary context about Joe Biden in all this. The two consistent themes of his policy on Israel and Palestine since 7th October 2023 are the same as they’ve been throughout his entire political career. Let’s refer to an anecdote published last March, in the London Review of Books, penned by Indian essayist and novelist Pankaj Mishra.

It refers back to 1982, when Israel had invaded Lebanon, inflicting terrible atrocities as it did so, led by Menachem Begin, leader of Likud, the party of Benjamin Netanyahu, who was himself a former terrorist leader in the run-up to the establishment of Israel. One of the atrocities was Sabra and Shatila, in which Israel’s allies slaughtered up to 3,500 civilians, mostly Palestinians and Lebanese civilians.

Israel’s behaviour was too much for the then Republican President Ronald Reagan, who - as Beirut was assaulted - rang Begin and ordered him to cease what he described as a “Holocaust”. Begin was angry, but he complied.

With that backdrop explained, here’s the anecdote:

In 1982, shortly before Reagan bluntly ordered Begin to cease his ‘holocaust’ in Lebanon, a young US senator who revered Elie Wiesel as his great teacher met the Israeli prime minister. In Begin’s own stunned account of the meeting, the senator commended the Israeli war effort and boasted that he would have gone further, even if it meant killing women and children. Begin himself was taken aback by the words of the future US president, Joe Biden. ‘No, sir,’ he insisted. ‘According to our values, it is forbidden to hurt women and children, even in war ... This is a yardstick of human civilisation, not to hurt civilians.’

Let’s be very clear. Joe Biden’s long political career, and his strategy since 7th October 2023, all point in one direction: that Joe Biden is an anti-Palestinian racist. He clearly does not believe that Palestinian life has any significant worth. The occasional handwringing you have heard from him has all been for show, to try and defuse growing domestic anger as well as backlash abroad. He has gladly, proudly kept arming ISrael to the teeth as it has butchered Palestinians in this genocidal mayhem, offering a record amount spent on US military aid to Israel.

Now let’s go through the caveats. Israel is bombarding Gaza, and history tells us they will use the period leading up to Sunday’s ceasefire to slaughter as many Palestinians as they can.

Dozens are now reported killed since the ceasefire announcement

At one hospital, Ahli Arab hospital admitted 53 victims who were killed because of Israeli bombing since the announcement of the ceasefire - 18 women, 18 children, 4 men, 3 elderly. If that number of civilians were suddenly slaughtered in Britain, that would be regarded as one of the great tragedies of the post-war era. It would be remembered for decades - and Britain has a population so much bigger than Gaza. Yet these massacres have happened day after day after day, and Western politicians and media outlets have shrugged them off, as though Palestinian life doesn’t matter. But Palestinian life does matter: every one of those lives was a whole universe, extinguished forever.

But what of Donald Trump. Trump is no friend of the Palestinian people and he has nominated pro-Israel anti-Palestinian zealots to his incoming administration.

Back in November, just after Trump’s victory, I posted:

Here's what I think may happen:

“Donald Trump grants Israel annexation of the West Bank in exchange for Israel winding down its full scale onslaught against Gaza (in favour of quieter gradual strangulation) so he can present the latter as a win.”

As Muhammad Shehada, a brilliant Palestinian analyst, put it:

“Trump gave Israel a "gift bag" in return for the Gaza deal. The first item is lifting all sanctions on Israeli extremists, settlers & spyware companies.

“The second expected item is major land thefts in the West Bank.

“Third is allowing Israel to violate the ceasefire all they want.”

As Mike Waltz, Trump’s national security pick, told an Israeli newspaper:

"If the IDF is required to to enter Gaza again, we are with them. Hamas will not continue to serve as a terrorist organization & will not rule Gaza."

On a podcast, he made the same arguments at length.

Now it’s worth emphasising that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken this week declared that, according to US assessments, Hamas had recruited almost as many new militants as they had lost. So what is Waltz talking about here? Given apocalyptic barbarism has been unleashed against Gaza now since October 2023, what on earth is he possibly endorsing that he thinks will achieve a different outcome?

Trump is no peacemaker, don’t be fooled. It’s worth noting that last time he won in 2016 he dramatically escalated air strikes in Afghanistan which meant a surge in civilian deaths, even if he paved the way for the inevitable US acceptance of defeat.

For those who believe the genocide is over, a bitter appointment with a grim reality beckons.

And indeed, what is left of Gaza? It isn’t inhabitable. Most of its infrastructure lies in ruins. Its hospital system is in tatters. Its domestic food production and agriculture ruined. 83% of plant life has been destroyed, as one example.

Whatever happens, there has to be accountability. The Democratic administration - Joe Biden, Antony Blinken and yes Kamala Harris - they need to go to jail. I don’t care how far fetched and utopian that seems now. If we normalise this evil, then we are paving the way for a future of unspeakable barbarism, and thus for the destruction of our own species.

We need accountability for other leaders too. That includes Keir Starmer, the Labour prime minister, who at the beginning of the genocide, declared that Israel had hte right to cut off the basic essentials of life to the civilian population of Gaza. he has issued a statement about the ceasefire. It is absolutely disgusting.

In that statement, he talks of Hamas being brutal terrorists, the “deadliest massacre”, Israelis brutally ripped from their homes, held captive in unimaginable conditions, being murdered. While Palestinians instead have simply lost their lives, no perpetrator identified, as though it was an act of god, or a natural disaster.

There is no evidence, zero evidence, that that man truly believes that Palestinians have equal worth as human beings, and it is very clear to me that he believes Palestinian life is worth a fraction of Israeli life.

Finally, let us think of the Palestinian journalists of Gaza.

They are the lions of the world’s press pack. They have suffered so much. They did everything they could to show the world the horror, the barbarism being inflicted on their own people, all while they suffered biggest slaughter of journalists in history. They were the eyes and the ears of the world in a time of unspeakable evil.

One by one, or sometimes more than one at a time, they were butchered, sometimes alongside their families and their little kids, burned alive, blown to pieces, buried under rubble.

They had one objective above all else. To convince the world that Palestinian life matters. That the worth of a Palestinian is no less than the worth of anyone else. That their suffering matters. That their pain matters. That they deserved the right to live, to flourish, to be happy. Not to be trapped in a killing field and reduced to ash. They were lights in the darkness, the most courageous journalists to ever walk the face of the earth, and we must never, ever forget what they have done.

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