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'Certainly Crossed': Israel Pummels Rafah as Dems Aim to Hold Biden to 'Red Line'
Biden "was worried about tanks going into the city, that has already happened," Rep. Pramila Jayapal said. "He was worried about strikes on dense areas, that has already happened."
May 31, 2024
Israeli forces moved into central Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip by Friday as Democrats urged U.S. President Joe Biden to uphold his promise to halt some weapons shipments to Israel if it invaded the city.
Israeli commandos, backed by tanks and artillery, occupied central Rafah after taking control of the Philadelphi Corridor, an 8-mile border zone between Gaza and Egypt. Satellite imagery showed that Israeli tanks and military vehicles could be seen in central and western Rafah, The New York Timesreported.
The Israeli entry into central Rafah follows a week of airstrikes in the area that have killed many dozens of Palestinian civilians, prompting international outcry. It's also led to a dire shortage of food and medical supplies as humanitarian corridors close and relief groups leave the city, which had been a refuge for displaced Palestinians throughout much of the war.
Progressives responded by declaring that Biden's "red line" on Rafah has been definitively crossed and demanding an end to military support for Israel.
"It absolutely has crossed the red line, perhaps even before this," Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, toldThe Hill on Friday. "I am frustrated by the reluctance to hold Netanyahu accountable... And I see this as dragging the United States into Netanyahu's war."
"[Biden] was worried about people being displaced; that has already happened, a million people have already been displaced," Jayapal added. "He was worried about tanks going into the city, that has already happened. He was worried about strikes on dense areas, that [has] already happened."
"So I really don't know what the red line is anymore because it feels fairly clear that this has certainly crossed the red line, and anything more than this would be a complete devastation of people, and at that point, it's too late," she added.
Other progressives, including members of the left-wing "Squad" in the U.S. House of Representatives, took similarly strong positions this week as news from the massacres in Rafah came in.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) wrote on social media on Monday that the Israel's tent massacre the previous night already represented "open defiance" of Biden's red line.
"How many children have to die?," Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) wrote on social media Tuesday. "We're past the red line. It's time to stop sending military aid to Israel. Not one more dime."
Members of the Squad were not the only Democrats to voice their frustration.
"All the things that President Biden was worried about have come to pass," Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said Wednesday in an interview with CNN. "The United States needs to get a full and clear commitment from the Netanyahu government on their plans going forward before we continue to shovel more offensive military assistance to the Netanyahu government."
"The United States can no longer just be a blank check for the Netanyahu government," Van Hollen added.
“The United States can no longer just be a blank cheque for the Netanyahu government”. With the Biden administration facing mounting criticism over its support for Israel’s war in Gaza, Senator @ChrisVanHollen tells me why he believes its time to change tack pic.twitter.com/xsmvpc5bDR
— Christiane Amanpour (@amanpour) May 29, 2024
By invoking the "red line," Democrats refer to a May 9 interview in which Biden vowed to halt shipments of offensive weapons to Israel if its military undertook a major invasion of heavily populated areas of Rafah.
"I made it clear that if they go into Rafah—they haven't gone in Rafah yet—if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities—that deal with that problem," Biden toldCNN in the interview.
The Biden administration maintains that the red line hasn't yet been crossed because Israel has not engaged in a "major ground operation" in Rafah, as a spokesperson explained on Tuesday.
That assessment angered humanitarian groups, as it followed two massacres of Palestinian civilians in the Rafah area within 48 hours. On Sunday night, an Israeli strike on a humanitarian safe zone killed at least 45, mostly women and children. U.S.-made bombs were used in the attack, later analysis revealed. On Tuesday, a strike on a refugee camp killed 21, mostly women. The Israeli strikes have led to an international outcry, with demonstrators throughout the world calling for an end to the Rafah invasion.
The invasion has also caused aid groups such as the World Central Kitchen to pause operations in Rafah, furthering the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Nicolas de Riviere, France's ambassador to the U.N., said his country was "extremely concerned" and called for an end to the Rafah invasion and a clear humanitarian corridor.
"We want a ceasefire," he toldAl Jazeera. "We want no operation in Rafah. We want full humanitarian access to the Gaza Strip. It’s not the case now."
The death count in Gaza continues to mount. In the last 24 hours, 60 Palestinians have died, and more than 36,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war began in October, mostly women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
Israel's latest military activity in the Gaza Strip has not been limited to the south. Israeli forces announced Friday that they'd ended a three-week campaign in the city of Jabalia in northern Gaza, site of a major refugee camp. They left "a trail of devastation and destruction," according toAl Jazeera, as they did following an October campaign in Jabalia.
A Jabalia resident who returned home following this most recent Israeli campaign said he could not even locate his house."I did not know where my house was or where its borders were," Abdul Hadi Rayan, 42, toldThe Washington Post. "The area has no house suitable for living at all."
"Even if I decide to return to the camp and live in a tent, all the infrastructure, all the streets and water lines are destroyed," he added. "There is absolutely no place for life here now."
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) on Friday said it had "horrific reports" from Jabalia, including tents full of people being set on fire at a school where they were sheltering. UNRWA, whose commissioner called on Thursday for an end to Israeli violence against the agency in a guest essay in The New York Times, has been a lifesaving force in Gaza during the war but has been cited as a terrorist organization by Israel; the Knesset is considering a formal designation of UNRWA as such.
The last weeks we've received horrific reports from @UNRWA facilities in Jabalia north #Gaza
Displaced people- incl. children- reportedly killed & injured sheltering in our school, besieged by IDF tanks
Tents of people sheltering at our school reportedly set on fire by IDF. 1/2 pic.twitter.com/cHRcgVa9O1
— UNRWA (@UNRWA) May 31, 2024
A photo of a Palestine Red Crescent ambulance in Jabalia, northern Gaza Strip, following the withdrawal of occupation forces yesterday.#NotATarget ❌#Gaza pic.twitter.com/bcUbZedU7j
— PRCS (@PalestineRCS) May 31, 2024
Progressives argued that U.S. complicity in Israeli's military actions would come at great cost.
"We have to recognize that if we continue down this course of supporting Netanyahu with zero conditions, and despite the fact that he's doing things that we have said we won't tolerate, we lose not only credibility with the international community, but we're just continuing to lose credibility here at home about what values we actually stand for," Jayapal told The Hill.
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Biden’s Gaza Aid Pier Is a Predictable SNAFU
The U.S. donates $4 billion a year of your tax dollars to Israel, not to mention billions more in sweetheart deals, and we get for that money an insistence that we put naval personnel in danger at a rickety pier?
May 27, 2024
The U.S. military has given us many acronyms. Most are forgettable alphabet salads only beloved by bureaucrats. But SNAFU is one of the greats, allegedly originating during WW II. The polite phrase is “situation normal, all fouled up.” But we know that the GIs actually used the F word. Quite a lot, in my experience.
The Biden administration’s pitiful attempt at theatrics in an attempt to cover for the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza was its $360 million boondoggle, a Gaza aid pier, which I described as a Potemkin Village because of its lack of substantial substance.
On Saturday, three small navy support vessels for the pier were swept away by high seas, and two of them were driven onto shore, becoming beached. That’s the kind of thing that gets a captain busted down to the ranks. A third ship was also washed away, but it was attached to a section of the pier and so they both went spinning off. The pier section seems to be heading for the Israeli port of Ashdod. I don’t know where the third ship is, to which it had been attached. No naval personnel are said to have been injured, except for their pride.
Although CENTCOM maintains that what remains of the pier is still functional, I don’t know if that is really true. If this kind of thing happened within a week of its inauguration, can you really call that functional?
Speaking of Ashdod, that port city already has a harbor and the U.S. could have delivered aid there to be trucked down to Gaza much more efficiently. But let me guess.
The Israelis won’t let us? The Israelis won’t let us.
The U.S. donates $4 billion a year of your tax dollars to Israel, not to mention billions more in sweetheart deals, and we get for that money an insistence that we put naval personnel in danger at a rickety pier?
Palestinian-American activist Huwaida Arraf at “X,” quoted retired U.S. Army Colonel Ann Wright: “Having been in the U.S. military for 29 years, we’ve seen some pretty stupid things happen and this is one of the stupidest.”
It is no fault of the military personnel. U.S. President Joe Biden was warned that high seas made his aid pier impractical, and with the arrogance of Washington, he ignored the warnings. He was trying to do a favor for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for whom an arrest warrant has been requested by the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor. Netanyahu’s government will fall if the Israeli equivalent of neo-Nazis in the cabinet withdraw, and they say they will withdraw unless Netanyahu starves all the people of Gaza to death. Of course, 2.2 million emaciated dead bodies would be rather an embarrassment, as well, putting Netanyahu in striking distance of Cambodian genocidaire Pol Pot’s record. So Biden is trying to get the aid in by sea and to have the U.S. take the blame for there still being any Palestinians.
Although CENTCOM maintains that what remains of the pier is still functional, I don’t know if that is really true. If this kind of thing happened within a week of its inauguration, can you really call that functional?
The pier is mainly a PR stunt. It is an incredibly expensive and risky way to get food and medicine on the ground in Gaza. And the U.S. isn’t distributing that aid. It is handing it over to NGOs on the ground like the World Central Kitchen, seven of whose workers Netanyahu’s troops murdered. For WCK aid workers to have to get that food and medicine from the pier to the population centers is very dangerous and inefficient.
In the week the pier has been operational, CENTCOM says that the World Central Kitchen has only taken possession of 96 aid trucks. Gaza required 500 trucks a day, not the 13 a day that the Biden administration apparently has managed. I guess there were no deliveries Saturday, and who knows when there will be more? Nor do we know if WCK has actually been able to get the aid to people who need it, as Israel has expelled 900,000 refugees again during its aggressive invasion of Rafah, the former supposed safe zone.
SNAFU.
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Israel's Deadly Bombing of World Central Kitchen Convoy Was No Anomaly: Report
A new analysis from Human Right Watch argues that numerous attacks on humanitarian relief operations by Israeli forces prove the April 1 bombing that killed 7 people was "far from being an isolated 'mistake.'"
May 14, 2024
A deadly attack on a convoy of World Central Kitchen aid workers which killed 7 people last month was not a one-off occurrence, Human Rights Watch said Tuesday, but rather representative of a documented pattern in which Israel military forces have targeted relief personnel and infrastructure despite being informed of the exact locations of those operations.
"Even though aid groups had provided their coordinates to the Israeli authorities to ensure their protection," an analysis by HRW found that eight such attacks on such operations, including the April 1 bombing of the WCK in Deir al-Balah, have been carried out by Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) over the last seven months.
According to the group's report, "Israeli authorities did not issue advance warnings to any of the aid organizations before the strikes, which killed or injured at least 31 aid workers and those with them."
"Israel's allies need to recognize that these attacks that have killed aid workers have happened over and over again, and they need to stop." —Belkis Willi, HRW
Details of the various attacks, said HRW, show that the WCK bombing was "far from being an isolated 'mistake,'" as the Israeli government has claimed.
Citing figures from the United Nations, HRW notes that over 250 aid workers have been killed in Gaza by Israel since the Hamas-led attack on October 7 of last year.
"Israel's killing of seven World Central Kitchen aid workers was shocking and should never have happened under international law," said Belkis Wille, associate crisis, conflict, and arms director at Human Rights Watch. "Israel's allies need to recognize that these attacks that have killed aid workers have happened over and over again, and they need to stop."
The other seven attacks documented in the report are:
- Attack on a Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF or Doctors without Borders) convoy, November 18, 2023
- Attack on a guest house of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), December 9, 2023
- Attack on an MSF shelter, January 8, 2024
- Attack on an International Rescue Committee (IRC) and Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) guest house, January 18, 2024
- Attack on an UNRWA convoy, February 5, 2024
- Attack on an MSF guest house, February 20, 2024
- Attack on a home sheltering an American Near East Refugee Aid Organization (Anera) employee, March 8, 2024
Human Rights Watch sent a letter to Israeli authorities requesting more information about these documented incidents, but said it received no response.
"Israel should make public the findings of investigations into attacks that have killed and injured aid workers, and into all other attacks that caused civilian casualties," the group said on Tuesday. "The Israeli military's long track record of failing to credibly investigate alleged war crimes underscores the importance of the International Criminal Court's (ICC) inquiry into serious crimes committed by all parties to the conflict."
In addition to military targeting of relief operations, the Israeli military has been accused of various crimes, including indiscriminate bombing of civilian populations, forced displacement, and the targeting of medical facilities.
Also on Tuesday, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF/Doctors Without Borders) released a report documenting Israel's pattern of attacking its facilities, including hospitals, clinics, and ambulance services in Gaza during the current campaign.
"In view of this extensive timeline of reprehensible actions, MSF once again calls on all parties to respect and protect healthcare facilities, healthcare workers and patients in Gaza and the West Bank," the group said Tuesday. "An immediate and sustained ceasefire must be implemented in Gaza now to put an end to the suffering of people and the destruction of Gaza. We demand an immediate and unfettered flow of aid into the entirety of the Gaza Strip. We demand accountability for our colleagues and their family members who have been killed and wounded, and for patients."
In early May, following a month pause of Gaza operations following the deadly attack, WCK announced it was resuming its relief efforts in the area. It has also started construction on a new kitchen facility to elevate and support its mission to feed the people of Gaza as Israel's assault not only continues but intensifies.
"We have spent the past few weeks honoring the lives of Saif, Zomi, Damian, Jacob, James, John, and Jim. We are restarting our operation with the same energy, dignity, and focus on feeding people as these seven heroes brought to their work every single day," the groups said on May 5. "As our work in Gaza resumes, our demand for an impartial and international investigation into the April 1 attack remains."
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