For God’s Sake Joe, What the Hell Are You Doing?

It's three in the morning and I can’t sleep again. Those of us concerned about Gaza and the West Bank are spending sleepless nights and busy days trying desperately to pressure the Biden administration to stop its complicity in the relentless Israeli genocide in Gaza; to halt the provision of weapons and money to Israel; and to demand an end to the carnage.

This is our demand: Cease-Fire Now!

We awakened to the news that the U.S. has attacked Syria, Iraq, and Yemen in retaliation for militants firing missiles into U.S. troop areas in Syria and Jordan and Houthis targeting Red Sea cargo vessels. Why have there been attacks on U.S. troops and interests?

The answer is simple. Because the U.S. is providing military weapons and international protection to Israel in its genocidal military operations in Gaza.

It seems obvious to everyone but you, that for our national security, the U.S. must stop its irrational protection of Israeli war crimes and demand that Israel stop its massacre of Palestinians in Gaza.

Scenes of another day of Israeli bombing of Gaza with tens of thousands of buildings destroyed, Israeli commandos storming a hospital and assassinating three young men as they slept in their hospital beds, heavy rains pouring into makeshift tents for the million Palestinians now crammed into the area around Rafah, the daily and nightly raids of Israeli military into the West Bank cities and villages destroying roads, homes, cultural centers, Israeli occupation forces stripping men and boys of their clothes, forcing them to kneel for hours in humiliating positions and beating them for days in detention camps, finding 30 bodies in a mass grave in a schoolyard, Palestinians who were shot to death with their hands tied behind them by Israeli forces.

Going to the Heartless U.S. Congress

Every day we go to the offices of U.S. congresspersons and plead for them to back a ceasefire and to pressure the Biden administration to refuse to provide more weapons and money to the Israeli military. After 118 days of Israeli pounding of Gaza, most Senators and Representatives are still repeating some version of this: “No to a cease-fire. Israel has a right to self-defense. Israel has the right to destroy Gaza and kill as many Palestinians as is necessary to kill the last Hamas militant.”

At least 10 Senators and Representatives have Israeli flags alongside the U.S. flag in front of their offices which brings into question where their loyalties lie. Rep. Brian Mast (R-Mich.) wore his Israel military uniform into the U.S. Congress in October and is one of the most hate-filled members of Congress, treating the deaths of Gaza children as just fine.

Meanwhile, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), the only Palestinian-American member of Congress, continues to receive death threats. Those who speak out to stop the genocide in Gaza are targeted by the American Israeli Public Affairs Council (AIPAC) with incitement to violence messaging and their associated Super PAC running candidates to replace them in Congress.

Protests in Washington against the genocide in Gaza and the massacres in the West Bank occur daily. A 9-day encampment in the narrow public land on each side of the two-lane road in front of Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s home on Chain Bridge Road has brought Palestinian supporters from Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia who make sure Blinken know that he has blood on his hands for green-lighting the genocide in Gaza.

Biden and Powers Interrupted in Public Talks

President Biden was interrupted repeatedly with “Genocide Joe” in his public speaking engagement, first at a church in South Carolina and last week in Manassas, Virginia when he gave a speech on reproductive rights. U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) chief Samantha Power was interrupted in her speech in Washington, D.C. last week by persons who have worked for USAID. In her Pulitzer Prize-winning book “A Problem From Hell,” Power documents America’s repeated failure to stop genocides around the world. Now she is complicit in the Biden administration for refusing to recognize genocide in Gaza and do nothing to oppose it.

As the promo for her book states: “Power, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and the former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, used exclusive interviews with Washington's top policymakers, thousands of declassified documents, and her own reporting from modern killing fields to provide the answer. "A Problem from Hell" shows how decent Americans inside and outside government refused to get involved despite chilling warnings, and tells the stories of the courageous Americans who risked their careers and lives in an effort to get the United States to act.”

Power needs to re-read her own book.

Protests in the Streets and Dissent by Government Officials

Millions of people around the world have taken to the streets in protests. Thousands in the U.S. have been arrested for blocking streets, highways, and bridges as well as for disrupting Congressional hearings, sitting down and singing in congressional buildings, and for chaining themselves to the fence at the White House.

Scores of government employees continue to publish statements calling into question the silence of their governments on the genocide of Gaza.

On February 2, 800+ government employees from the U.S. and 12 nations and E.U. organizations published a letter protesting Israeli policies and stating that the leaders of their countries and organizations could be complicit in war crimes in Gaza.

The letter states: “Our governments’ current policies weaken their moral standing and undermine their ability to stand up for freedom, justice and human rights globally…there is a plausible risk that our governments’ policies are contributing to grave violations of international humanitarian law, war crimes and even ethnic cleansing or genocide.”

Approximately 80 of the signers are from American agencies, with the biggest group being from the State Department. National-level officials from nine member nations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, as well as Sweden and Switzerland, signed the letter.

In November, more than 500 employees from about 40 U.S. government agencies sent a letter to President Biden criticizing his policies on the continuous Israeli attack on Gaza. In that letter, the officials also did not reveal their names due to the probability of retaliation by the agencies.

More than 1,000 USAID employees released an open letter with the same concerns. Dozens of State Department officials have sent at least three internal dissent cables to Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken.

According to the New York Times, hundreds of officials in the European Union have signed at least two separate letters of dissent to the bloc’s leadership.

Robert Ford, a former U.S. ambassador to Algeria and Syria who resigned in 2014 over the Obama administration’s Syria policy is quoted in the Times article, stating that he had never seen a cross-border dissent letter like this new one in three decades of working at the State Department.

Ford added that some diplomats had learned a lesson from the run-up to the Iraq War begun by President George W. Bush: that keeping quiet about objections to misguided policies or not going public with them when the stakes are high could contribute to a disastrous outcome.

As one of three U.S. diplomats who resigned from the U.S. government on the decision in 2003 of the Bush administration to wage war on Iraq, I appeal for others in the U.S. government to continue to sign letters and to consider resignation as Josh Paul has done from the State Department and Tariq Habash has done from the Department of Education.

Biden Wants More Billions For Israel to Continue its Genocide of Gaza

Despite all of our efforts, it is likely that on Wednesday, February 7, 2024, the U.S. Senate will pass a national security supplemental to provide Israel with another 14 billion dollars, three times what the U.S. provides annually to Israel. Israel is already the largest recipient of U.S. military financing and the added $10 billion will blow up the foreign affairs budget.

ICJ and World Public Opinion Will Hold Biden and the U.S. Government Accountable

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has warned countries assisting with weapons used in a genocide that leaders are complicit and can be held liable.

President Biden, in case your advisors have not mentioned this, both you and they are definitely up to your eyeballs in genocide and we and the world will hold you accountable.