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juan cole
Failed US Military Pier Offered 'Humanitarian Gloss' as Israel Starved Gaza
"The entire operation was a failed exercise in public relations by the Biden administration," said one observer.
Jul 12, 2024
After failing to re-anchor its "humanitarian pier" in Gaza, the Pentagon said Thursday that the much-ballyhooed project—which critics dismissed as a "public relations ploy" that did next to nothing to stop the deadly starvation spreading in the besieged Palestinian enclave—would shut down indefinitely.
Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder said U.S. troops had failed to reconnect the floating Trident Pier to Gaza's shore due to "technical and weather-related issues," according toThe Washington Post.
The $320 million project—which consists of a floating offshore barge and 1,800-foot causeway to the shore—was touted as eventually being able to accommodate up to 150 aid trucks per day. Instead, it facilitated the shipment of the equivalent of about a single day's worth of prewar food deliveries while operating for a total of less than three weeks.
"As a pier, it's shutting down. As a metaphor, it will live forever," said Tom Philpott, a senior researcher at Johns Hopkins University's Center for a Livable Future.
Stephen Semler, co-founder of the Security Policy Reform Institute, welcomed the project's demise.
"The U.S. pier was never supposed to work. It was designed to give a humanitarian gloss to [U.S. President Joe] Biden's pro-genocide policy in Gaza," he said on social media. "Good riddance to this failed PR stunt."
However, during a Thursday press conference, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan defended the pier, arguing that it "has made a difference in trying to deal with the heartbreaking humanitarian situation in Gaza."
"I see any result that produces more food, more humanitarian goods getting to the people of Gaza, as a success," he asserted. "It is additive. It is something additional that otherwise would not have gotten there when it got there. And that is a good thing."
Even if the pier had achieved its expected capacity, it would still have been far fewer than the prewar daily mean of more than 500 truckloads that U.S. and United Nations officials said are required to meet the needs of a population facing critical shortages of food, water, medicine, and other lifesaving supplies.
The pier was in operation for only about 20 days in May before it broke apart during stormy conditions. The structure was subsequently repaired, but then was dismantled just a week after reopening in June due to more rough seas.
It is also likely that the pier was used for military purposes during the June raid by Israel Defense Forces troops, who killed or wounded hundreds of Palestinians—including many women and children—during the rescue of four Israelis kidnapped by Hamas militants on October 7.
"It seems clear that the entire operation was a failed exercise in public relations by the Biden administration, which has sat on its hands while the extremist Netanyahu cabinet, full of the Israeli equivalent of neo-Nazis, has half-starved or in some instances whole-starved the Palestinians of Gaza," Middle East expert Juan Cole wrote Friday, referring to the far-right government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
At least dozens of Palestinians, mostly children, have died in Gaza due to a lack of food, water, and medical treatment. Palestinian and international agencies say that Israel's 280-day war on Gaza has left at least 137,500 people dead, maimed, or missing; around 90% of the embattled strip's population forcibly displaced; and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians starving.
"A U.S. administration has to have an answer when reporters ask it why it is allowing Palestinian children to become emaciated, and the pier was an attempted answer," Cole added. "The other possibility was for the Biden administration to man up and just tell Netanyahu and his rogues' gallery cabinet that they cannot starve innocent civilians as part of their campaign against Hamas, and that if they do not cut it out there will be hell to pay. But Biden is in the tank for the Israeli government."
U.N. experts and others have called Israel's forced starvation of Palestinians in Gaza "a form of genocidal violence and has resulted in famine."
The International Court of Justice—which is weighing whether Israel is committing genocide in Gaza—has ordered Israel to prevent genocidal acts in the embattled enclave, to "immediately halt" its offensive in Rafah, and to stop blocking humanitarian aid from entering Gaza in the face of worsening "famine and starvation." Israel is accused of flouting all three ICJ orders.
Meanwhile, International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan accused top Israeli officials of using "starvation as a weapon of war" and "extermination" in his May application for arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Khan is also seeking to arrest three Hamas leaders for alleged crimes including extermination and rape.
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Netanyahu Accused of 'Genocidal Intentions' in Gaza After 'Holy Mission' Speech
"The biblical reference to Amalek is genocidal," noted one theologian after the prime minister invoked an ancient enemy. "The Bible commands to wipe out Amalek, including women, babies, children, and animals."
Oct 30, 2023
Human rights defenders on Monday accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of an "explicit call to genocide" after he delivered a televised address calling Israel's imminent invasion of Gaza a "holy mission" and invoked an ancient mythical foe whom the God of the Hebrew Bible commanded the Israelites to exterminate.
Declaring the start of a "second stage" of Israel's war on Gaza—which he described as a "holy mission"—Netanyahu said that "you must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible."
According to the Hebrew Bible, the nation of Amalek was an ancient archenemy of the Israelites whose extermination was commanded by God to Saul via the prophet Samuel.
"The biblical reference to Amalek is genocidal... Why are Western politicians silent?"
"Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass," states the Old Testament in 1 Samuel 15:3.
The holy text further states that Saul infuriates God by sparing some of the Amalekites and their livestock.
"If it was not obvious from the carpet bombing, use of white phosphorus, and indiscriminate killing that the Zionist government of Israel [has] clear genocidal intentions, then the... reference to Palestinians as Amalek in Netanyahu's speech describing his plans for Gaza should be enough to convince you," British religious scholar Hamza Andreas Tzortzis wrote on social media Monday.
"The biblical reference to Amalek is genocidal. The Bible commands to wipe out Amalek, including women, babies, children, and animals," Tzortzis added. "Why are Western politicians silent? Stop the genocide now!"
As
Truthout's Aidan Orly noted last week:
For centuries, Christian leaders have used Amalekite language to justify genocide, including against Native Americans and against Tutsis in Rwanda. Right-wing Jewish groups have also employed the Amalek trope. Baruch Goldstein massacred 29 Palestinian worshippers in the Tomb of the Patriarchs in 1994, likely influenced by Amalekite language employed by the far-right Kahane movement of which he was a part.
Orly added that "Israel's current minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, is also associated with this movement, which has largely dissipated but is still technically outlawed in Israel as a terrorist group."
U.S. academic and Informed Comment publisher Juan Cole accused Netanyahu of declaring "a holy war of annihilation of civilians of Gaza."
"Netanyahu may have gestured to, and defiled, the Bible by excusing his genocide against the civilians of Gaza with reference to 1 Samuel. But his real bible is Revisionist Zionism with its fascist and explicitly colonial ideology," Cole wrote Sunday on Informed Comment, referring to a form of Zionism—the movement for a Jewish homeland in Palestine—that seeks to conquer not only all of Palestine but also Jordan and parts of Lebanon and Syria.
"The Iron Wall is now advancing into Gaza, doing to small children and pregnant women what the authors of 1 Samuel in prosaic Babylon probably only dreamed of doing to the mythical Amalekites," Cole added.
Netanyahu isn't the only Israeli leader who has made what critics have called genocidal statement in recent weeks. Israeli President Isaac Herzog
asserted earlier this month that there are no innocent civilians in Gaza, while Defense Minister Yoav Gallant vowed to "eliminate everything" there.
Ariel Kallner, a member of parliament from Netanyahu's Likud party,
urged a "Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of '48," a reference to the forced expulsion and ethnic cleansing of over 750,000 Arabs from Palestine during the founding of the modern state of Israel in 1947-48.
Tally Gotliv, another Likud lawmaker, demanded "not flattening a neighborhood," but "crushing and flattening Gaza without mercy."
Some U.S. Republicans have
echoed Israeli leaders' statements, while President Joe Biden and members of his administration have been accused of denial of—and complicity in—genocide for casting aspersions upon official Palestinian casualty reports and providing diplomatic cover and billions of dollars in military aid for Israel's government.
The backlash against Netanyahu's comments came as Israel Defense Forces (IDF) tanks and troops advanced on Gaza City as the relentless Israeli aerial and artillery bombardment continued.
According to the Gaza Health Ministry, Israeli forces have killed 8,306 people in Gaza—including 2,136 women and 3,457 children—with more than 21,000 others injured, nearly half of all homes destroyed or damaged, and over 1.4 million people forced to flee for their lives. Israel has killed more children in the past three weeks than the combined number of children killed in all of the world's armed conflict zones since 2019, according to the charity Save the Children.
In the illegally occupied West Bank, at least 121 people have been
killed and more than 2,000 others have been wounded since October 7, when Hamas-led fighters infiltrated southern Israel and killed over 1,400 Israeli civilians and soldiers, while taking more than 200 hostages.
More than 800 international lawyers, jurists, and legal scholars have signed an open letter stating that "we are compelled to sound the alarm about the possibility of the crime of genocide being perpetrated by Israeli forces against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip."
Raz Segal, a leading Israeli Holocaust scholar, has called his country's assault on Gaza "a textbook case of genocide."
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Biden Accused of 'Genocide Denial' After Casting Doubt On Civilian Death Toll in Gaza
Palestinian officials, U.N. experts, and even Israeli media say nearly 7,000 men, women, and children have been killed by Israel's indiscriminate airstrikes and shelling.
Oct 26, 2023
The largest Muslim American civil rights group on Wednesday led condemnation of U.S. President Joe Biden for saying he had "no confidence" in Palestinian health officials' Gaza casualty reports—figures deemed reliable by United Nations agencies, human rights groups, international and Israeli mainstream media, and even the U.S. State Department.
Speaking at a Wednesday afternoon White House press conference, Biden—who earlier this month declared his "rock-solid and unwavering" commitment to Israel following a Hamas-led attack that killed more than 1,400 Israelis—said that "I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed."
"Everyone uses the figures from the Gaza Health Ministry because those are generally proven to be reliable."
"I'm sure innocents have been killed, and it's the price of waging a war," the president continued. "But I have no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using."
Responding to Biden's remarks, Palestinian American poet, author, and activist Remi Kanazi said: "Genocide denial has a long sordid history. Israel and Joe Biden know exactly what they are doing when they play down the death toll in Gaza."
The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) demanded Biden apologize for his "shocking and dehumanizing" comments.
"The Israeli government has openly admitted that it is targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure," CAIR executive director Nihad Awad said in a statement. "Journalists have confirmed the high number of casualties, and countless videos coming out of Gaza every day show mangled bodies of Palestinian women, and children—and entire city blocks leveled to the ground."
"President Biden should watch some of these videos and ask himself if the crushed children being dragged out of the ruins of their family homes are a fabrication or an acceptable price of war," said Awad. "They are neither. Biden should apologize for his comments, condemn the Israeli government for deliberately targeting civilians, and demand a cease-fire before more innocent people die."
After former U.S. Congressman Justin Amash (R-Mich.), who is Palestinian American, said that "several" of his relatives including an infant cousin were among at least 18 people killed in last week's Israeli airstrike on the Saint Porphyrius Greek Orthodox Church, journalist Briahna Joy Gray asked Wednesday if Biden thinks he's lying.
While it is nearly impossible to immediately verify Gaza casualties because Israel does not allow foreign journalists into the besieged strip, many experts say figures provided by Palestinian health officials—including branches of the Palestinian Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank—are accurate. They say not only do U.N. agencies, international media, and Israeli news outlets rely upon them, but that the Israeli government and military have rarely if ever challenged the figures following the numerous wars Israel has waged against Gaza in recent decades.
"Everyone uses the figures from the Gaza Health Ministry because those are generally proven to be reliable," Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, toldThe Washington Post on Tuesday. "In the times in which we have done our own verification of numbers for particular strikes, I'm not aware of any time which there's been some major discrepancy."
"Unfortunately, when reality is too difficult to stomach, Israel and so many of its allies prefer to deny it or bury their head in the sand," Shakir said in a separate interview with The Guardian. "As long as they can create a fog of war and misinformation about what's taking place, it provides cover for this to continue. To continue to have 100-plus Palestinian children killed every day."
Mohammed El-Kurd, The Nation's Palestine correspondent, wrote that Biden's denial "isn't just racism. He's preemptively minimizing the scale of death the Israeli regime has planned for Gaza."
Calls to "flatten Gaza" began immediately—in both Israel and the United States—after Hamas' horrific mass murder and abduction of Israeli and foreign citizens on October 7.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed a "mighty vengeance" for the attacks, while far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich declared that it is "time to be cruel."
Tally Gotliv, a member of parliament from Netanyahu's Likud party, posted on social media: "It's time to kiss doomsday. Shooting powerful missiles without limit. Not flattening a neighborhood. Crushing and flattening Gaza... Without mercy! Without mercy!"
Dehumanization of Palestinians flourished, with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant calling Gazans "human animals" and Israeli President Isaac Herzog asserting that there are "no innocent civilians in Gaza."
Meanwhile, some Israelis—especially young people—took to TikTok and other social media to post racist videos mocking Palestinians and gaslighting victims of Israel's attacks on Gaza by claiming grieving mothers were lying about their children being killed.
Perhaps most ominously of all, Ariel Kallner, another Likud lawmaker, called for a "Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of '48," a reference to the forced expulsion and ethnic cleansing of over 750,000 Arabs from Palestine during the founding of the modern state of Israel in 1947-49.
In a likely war crime—one of many, according to Amnesty International—compared with Nakba massacres like Deir Yassin and the Lydda Death March, Israeli officials ordered 1.1 million residents of northern Gaza to flee for their lives ahead of an expected ground invasion and possible territorial conquest. Israeli forces then attacked the fleeing Gazans anyway. Around 70 people, mostly women and children, were killed in an October 13 strike on a fleeing convoy.
Nowhere is safe. Al Jazeera Gaza bureau chief Wael Al-Dahdouh lost his wife, son, daughter, and 18-month-old grandson in an October 25 Israeli airstrike on a shelter in an area meant to be out of harm's way. They were killed after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken—who has also cast doubt on the Gaza death toll—reportedly asked the Qatari government, which funds Al Jazeera, to "tone down" its coverage of Israel's Gaza slaughter.
As of Thursday, Israel's relentless bombardment of Gaza has killed at least 6,850 people, including nearly 3,000 children, according to Palestinian health officials in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza. More than 17,000 others have been wounded, nearly half the homes in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, and over 1.4 million people have been displaced.
Hundreds of international legal scholars, and one of Israel's leading Holocaust scholars, have accused Israel of committing "genocide" in Gaza.
In the illegally occupied West Bank, Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed more than 100 Palestinians and wounded nearly 2,000 others since October 7.
Scores of journalists and health workers have also been killed by Israeli strikes on Gaza. The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees said earlier this week that 35 of its humanitarian workers—many of them teachers—died in Israeli attacks.
Some observers noted Israel's long history of denying atrocities or blaming victims for their own deaths. Recent examples include lying about killing civilians, using banned white phosphorus weapons in urban areas, and the deliberate killing of Palestinian American Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh.
Israeli leaders have also targeted prominent international figures who, like U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, dare point out that Hamas terrorism "did not happen in a vacuum" and were the result of generations of illegal occupation, settler colonization, economic strangulation, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid.
"Regardless of how many noncombatants Israel has blown to smithereens, for Netanyahu to deny them water is a war crime," U.S. Middle East expert and Informed Comment publisher Juan Cole noted Thursday.
"The ongoing genocide against the civilian population of Gaza, perpetrated by the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu, is an embarrassment for the United States," he added, "which fully supports this reckless disregard for the lives of innocent noncombatants—men, women, and children."
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