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antony blinken
Cease-Fire in Gaza: A Tale of Trump's Illusion and Biden's Failure
Biden and his team will not be remembered for brokering peace but for enabling and facilitating policies that allowed Israel’s genocide to continue unabated.
Jan 18, 2025
President Joe Biden, flanked by his Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Vice President Kamala Harris, announced the cease-fire in Gaza earlier this week with an air of accomplishment, framing it as a crowning achievement of his administration’s diplomatic efforts. However, this assertion is profoundly misleading. While the cease-fire was presented as a diplomatic victory, the truth reveals a far darker reality. For many, the Biden administration will not be remembered for brokering peace but for enabling and facilitating policies that allowed Israel’s genocide to continue unabated.
Far from a legacy of peace, the Biden administration, through its supply of the tool of genocide and to shield Israeli war crimes from international accountability, bears direct responsibility in the Israeli carnage. In announcing the cease-fire deal, President Biden claimed it was the result of eight months of diligent diplomatic efforts by his administration. In fact, it was eighth months of normalizing Israeli war crimes as self-defense. Under the leadership of America’s most Israel-first Secretary of State, the cease-fire is a symbolic gesture that conceals the deeper moral and political failings of an administration that has proven servile to Israel.
This failure is also an emblematic of a broader issue within U.S. foreign policy: prioritizing parochial or political expediency over moral and ethical imperatives. By allowing Benjamin Netanyahu to act with impunity, President Biden not only compromised America’s standing in the world but also perpetuated, unchecked, Israeli genocide in Gaza. In doing so, the administration became a complicit partner in war crimes, further undermining the United States supposed standing as a defender of human rights and international law.
Far from a legacy of peace, the Biden administration, through its supply of the tool of genocide and to shield Israeli war crimes from international accountability, bears direct responsibility in the Israeli carnage.
Biden and Blinken's legacy will be marked not by a cease-fire but by their role in providing and enabling Israel to drop 85,000 tons of bombs on Gaza—an amount that surpasses the combined bombings of Dresden, Hamburg, and London during World War II. Their tenure will be remembered for presiding over murdering or injuring 10% of Gaza’s population and the destruction of 86% of all building structures.
When students in Gaza eventually return to school after 15 months of devastation, they will face the grim effect of what the American-made bombs have wrought: 123 universities and schools reduced to rubble, murdering 750 academics, and the loss of 130 scholars and university professors who once inspired hope and knowledge.
As aid trucks will be allowed to slowly roll into Gaza, the people will not forget the 300 humanitarian workers deliberately killed by Israel, nor the 160 journalists and media workers who risked—and lost—their lives attempting to broadcast the cries of a besieged population, only to have their voices fall on deaf ears and a world of dead conscious.
Amid the ruins of over 654 healthcare facilities, the memory of 1,000 selfless healthcare workers and some of Palestine’s finest medical doctors who perished in their efforts to save lives will remain seared into the collective consciousness. For the people of Gaza, this is not just a story of destruction but a testament to the world’s indifference and complicity in the face of a humanitarian catastrophe of unimaginable scale.
The current cease-fire agreement could have been secured months earlier. In May, President Biden proposed a similar framework that the Palestinians accepted. However, Netanyahu rejected it as a “nonstarter,” prioritizing his political survival over ending genocide. Instead of holding Israel accountable or insisting on compliance with international humanitarian law, the Biden administration—led by the genocide facilitator, Secretary of State Blinken—chose to appease and embolden Netanyahu in his crimes.
Meanwhile, and not to be buoyed by false optimism, it’s not far-fetched to suspect that a future collapse or backtracking of the cease-fire deal could be part of a typical Netanyahu strategy. A last-minute attempt to exert pressure, either to undermine the agreement or 'wordsmith' language to change terms, such as the names of prisoners to be released, or to resume the war once he gets what he wants from the exchange. This would not be unprecedented for Netanyahu, as he counts on the docile support from Washington’s genocide enablers.
This was made all the more apparent when, on the same day Netanyahu agreed to the terms of the cease-fire, his army escalated air raids, murdering 81 civilians in eight separate massacres, capping its crimes under Biden’s granted “self-defense” genocide license
Nonetheless, ending Israel’s war of genocide offers a fleeting sense of relief after 15 months of suffering. This, however, is less of a triumph to American diplomacy and more an indictment of systemic failures in the Biden’s foreign policy. Nor should it be seen as the success Donald Trump wants to project, but a reality more rooted in the abject weakness and failure of Biden, the self-proclaimed Zionist.
In this context, Trump’s allies have opportunistically seized the moment to frame the cease-fire as a vindication of his so-called strength in foreign affairs. However, such a claim could not be farther from the truth. The cease-fire was not the result of decisive U.S. intervention or diplomatic maneuvers but rather an Israeli failure to subdue the steadfast resistance of the Palestinian people, despite giving Netanyahu a carte blanche for over 15 months to achieve his elusive "victory."
To this end, the ceasefire is a stark acknowledgment of Israel’s inability to impose its will, even with the unlimited U.S. military aid and diplomatic cover. Instead of securing the domination, the resistance from Gaza underscored the resilience and determination of the Palestinian people in the face of overwhelming odds. This outcome serves as a reminder that no amount of force or repression can extinguish the fight for justice and self-determination.
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'How Does It Feel to Have Your Legacy Be Genocide?' Asks Journalist Thrown Out of Blinken's Briefing
"Physically dragging out a reporter from the State Department briefing room while preaching press freedom to the rest of the world is the perfect example of the Biden administration's love affair with double standards and duplicity," said one foreign policy observer.
Jan 16, 2025
Two journalists were removed from Secretary of State Antony Blinken's final news conference on Thursday after interrupting Blinken's remarks to heckle him about the United States' policy toward Gaza, a day after a cease-fire deal between Hamas and Israel was announced. One of the reporters, independent journalist Sam Husseini, was physically carried out of the briefing room by security.
Less than two minutes into Blinken's remarks, as he was thanking the reporters in the attendance for "asking tough questions," Max Blumenthal, the editor in chief of The Grayzone—an independent news—addressed Blinken, saying loudly in reference to the cease-fire deal:"300 reporters in Gaza were on the receiving end of your bombs. Why did you keep the bombs flowing when we had a deal in May?" On Wednesday, President Biden announced the breakthrough, saying that “this is the ceasefire agreement I introduced last spring."
"Why did you sacrifice the rules-based order on the mantle of your commitment to Zionism," Blumenthal continued, before being led to the door. "How does it feel to have your legacy be genocide?" he yelled.
Blumenthal also called out State Department Spokesman Matt Miller, who is briefly visible in a video filmed by the journalist, who charged that Miller "smirked through a genocide."
Not long after, Husseini also interrupted Blinken.
"I am asking questions after being told by Matt Miller that he will not answer my questions," said Husseini, who also referenced the findings of Amnesty International, which concluded in December that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. "You pontificate about a free press... Criminal! Why aren't you in the Hague." The Hague is where the International Criminal Court is located.
Blinken can be heard saying "respect the process" in response to Husseini's outburst.
Trita Parsi, the executive vice president of the non-interventionist "action tank" the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, remarked that "physically dragging out a reporter from the State Department briefing room while preaching press freedom to the rest of the world is the perfect example of the Biden administration's love affair with double standards and duplicity..."
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Report Says Biden's 'Empty Threats' on Gaza Fed Israeli Impunity
One Middle East expert said that it's "hard to avoid the conclusion" that the U.S. administration's ultimatums to Israel "have all just been a smokescreen."
Jan 15, 2025
New reporting published Wednesday details the impotence and insincerity of President Joe Biden's "multiple threats, warnings, and admonishments" to Israel as it annihilated the Gaza Strip, killing tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians while receiving tens of billions of dollars in U.S. arms and unwavering diplomatic support.
Writing for ProPublica, Brett Murphy showed how multiple "red lines" issued by Biden administration officials were ignored by Israel with impunity. Murphy highlighted Secretary of State Antony Blinken's October 2024 demand that Israel take "urgent and sustained actions" to improve humanitarian conditions in Gaza—mainly by allowing far more aid into the embattled strip—within 30 days or face a military aid cutoff.
"Netanyahu's conclusion was that Biden doesn't have enough oomph to make him pay a price."
Thirty days came and went without significant improvement or letup in Israel's onslaught. Yet the Biden administration insisted it found no indication that Israel was using U.S.-supplied weapons illegally. The arms flow continued.
As Murphy reported:
That choice was immediately called into question. On November 14, a U.N. committee said that Israel's methods in Gaza, including its use of starvation as a weapon, was "consistent with genocide." Amnesty International went further and concluded a genocide was underway. The International Criminal Court also issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister for the war crime of deliberately starving civilians, among other allegations.
"Government officials worry Biden's record of empty threats have given the Israelis a sense of impunity," wrote Murphy.
This reporting is so utterly damning. www.propublica.org/article/bide...
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— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes.bsky.social) January 15, 2025 at 1:55 PM
Ghaith al-Omari, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute, told Murphy that "Netanyahu's conclusion was that Biden doesn't have enough oomph to make him pay a price, so he was willing to ignore him."
"Part of it is that Netanyahu learned there is no cost to saying 'no' to the current president," al-Omari added.
Conversely, Murphy noted: "On Wednesday, after months of negotiations, Israel and Hamas reached a cease-fire deal. While it will become clear over the next days and months exactly what the contours of the agreement are, why it happened now, and who deserves the most credit, it's plausible that [U.S. President-elect Donald] Trump's imminent ascension to the White House was its own form of a red line."
"Early reports suggest the deal looks similar to what has been on the table for months," he added, "raising the possibility that if the Biden administration had followed through on its tough words, a deal could have been reached earlier, saving lives."
As Stephen Walt, a professor of international affairs at Harvard Kennedy School, told Murphy, "It's hard to avoid the conclusion that [Biden's] red lines have all just been a smokescreen."
"The Biden administration decided to be all-in and merely pretended that it was trying to do something," Walt added, as Israel kept killing Palestinians with U.S.-supplied weapons and continued a "complete siege" blamed for widespread starvation and sickness in the Gaza Strip.
Murphy wrote that Trump "will inherit a demoralized State Department" in which many officials who haven't already resignedhave "become disenchanted with the lofty ideas they thought they represented."
As one senior department official told Murphy, Gaza "is the human rights atrocity of our time."
"I work for the department that's responsible for this policy. I signed up for this," the official added. "I don't deserve sympathy for it."
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