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Biden Makes Bullshit Promise While the U.S. Enables the Starvation of Palestinian Children Before Our Very Eyes

HOW LONG?!?!!

In his State of the Union Address, “Genocide Joe” Biden claimed he was making a big humanitarian move by directing the U.S. military to lead an emergency mission to set up a "temporary pier" on the Gaza coast to receive ships carrying food, water, medicine, and temporary shelters. A British newspaper described this as “an olive branch” (a concession and a peace offering) from Biden to Democratic voters outraged by U.S. support for Israel’s slaughter of more than 30,000 Palestinian people in Gaza. 

This is no “olive branch.” This is an attempt to bamboozle, confuse, and defuse righteous outrage and protest against Israel’s genocide and U.S. backing for that while the genocide escalates. Even if Biden’s temporary pier for aid gets set up and becomes operational in some form in Gaza, U.S. officials say that would take two months. But children in Gaza are already dying of starvation right now.

Let’s make it plain: what Biden is doing is the equivalent of Hitler sending a few sandwiches to the Nazi death camp, Auschwitz. 

graphic bloody-jawed genocide joe

 

Complete and Utter Bullshit

Biden’s whole “deal” is based on complete bullshit: the premise that there are no physical pathways for aid to get into Gaza now and that a channel by sea into Gaza is the solution. The problem is not because there are not enough trucks, or no high-volume ground transit points between Israel and Gaza. 

Before October 7, Israel “allowed” more than 500 trucks a day containing food and other aid to go into Gaza. Today, Israel has cut that to about 100 trucks a day in order to starve the Palestinian people in Gaza. And the U.S. is backing this by supplying Israel with billions of dollars of bombs, drones, tanks, missiles, and guns. 

In Devastated, Bombed-Out Gaza, Children and Babies Are Starving to Death NOW

On March 7, Gaza’s Health Ministry reported that at least 16 children died of malnutrition and dehydration during the previous week. 

Some had underlying health conditions, like 10-year-old Yazan Al-Kafarneh. Yazan had been dependent on a special diet that included blended fruit and milk. A relative told Al Jazeera that the family had been forced to move many times, seeking shelter. Yazan’s father described not being able to find food for Yazan at any price anywhere in Gaza. 

Yazan Al-Kafarna, 10 years old

 

Yazan Al-Kafarna    Photo: Image shared by father of Yazan Al-Kafarna before his illness.

A 10-year-old Palestinian boy, Yazan al-Kafarna, in hospital bed in Rafah, died due to what his doctor said was extreme muscle wastage caused primarily by a lack of food.

 

Yazan al-Kafarna died due to what his doctor said was extreme muscle wastage caused primarily by a lack of food.    Photo: AP

Yazan’s family brought him from north Gaza to Rafah in the far south in search of medical care. But they found nothing. Speaking to the world, a relative called out: “the barbaric war and the oppressive actions of the Israeli occupation against the children of Gaza” were responsible and “must be stopped.” And he called out to “the free people of the world, what are you waiting for?... we have reached famine and complete catastrophe.” 

Right now, six infants are being treated for malnutrition at Kamal Adwan hospital in the Gaza town of Beit Lahia. Pause now. Stop and feel the heartbreak, the pain that will never go away, the fury, of a parent, sibling, or loved one who must watch their child waste away and die for lack of fruit and milk. All the while, in this world of tremendous food resources, access to food, a basic element of human survival is strangled by a system of exploitation and oppression. And that same system maintains its rule by starving children as a weapon of war.

About 576,000 people—more than a quarter of Gaza’s population—are on the brink of famine according to United Nations officials. One in six infants younger than two years in northern Gaza suffers from malnutrition. The UN issued a warning that the Gaza Strip is likely to suffer widespread famine if urgent action is not taken. That famine could begin as early as next week. And the UN warned that once a famine has been declared, it is typically already too late to help many of the affected.

And if Israel goes ahead with its declared plan to invade the city of Rafah, where more than a million people driven from their homes elsewhere in Gaza are camping in flimsy tents on sand, the humanitarian disaster in Gaza will reach unimaginably greater proportions. 

Palestinians line up desperate for food, Rafah, Gaza Strip, January 9, 2024.

 

Palestinians line up desperate for food, Rafah, Gaza Strip, January 9, 2024.    Photo: AP

Biden's "Floating Pier," a Sadistic Hustle

So, back to Biden’s temporary pier in Gaza. Biden claimed that the U.S. military will use a commercial seaport in the city of Larnaca, on the island nation of Cyprus, to ship food and other aid to Gaza—more than 200 miles away by sea. And build a temporary, floating pier in Gaza where aid can be unloaded.

Two months from now, when this sea channel is promised, famine will be out of control. Beyond that, huge gaps in the “plan” make it almost impossible to take seriously. The Pentagon claims that non-U.S. personnel, who it will not identify, will take responsibility for the critical step of unloading aid, and packing it in trucks for distribution. In Gaza?! Where people in a crowd gathered to receive food were gunned down, thousands injured, more than 100 murdered, by Israeli troops on February 29? Where Israel bombs people in places it designated as “safe zones” with U.S.-supplied bombs?  Where on-the-scene aid workers are fired on by Israeli tanks when they travel on routes assigned by Israel?

Avril Benoît, executive director for Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), insisted, "This is not a logistics problem; it is a political problem." And he said, "Rather than look to the US military to build a work-around, the US should insist on immediate humanitarian access using the roads and entry points that already exist." 

Israel Is Starving People in Gaza to Death, and the U.S. Is Enabling That

The problem is not, as Biden implied in his State of the Union Address, that for Israel, humanitarian aid is a “secondary consideration or a bargaining chip.” The problem is that Israel is starving the people of Gaza to death, on purpose. And the U.S. has enabled this all the way.

Israel has systematically targeted Gaza’s food production, bombing bakeries, killing fishermen, and destroying farms. It has systematically targeted food distribution channels, repeatedly bombing aid convoys. Israel has enabled small numbers of genocidal so-called “protesters” to cripple aid going into Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing.

Right now, Israeli “inspections” deny much essential aid from getting into Gaza, banning—to take just one example—sanitary pads for women on their period. The “plan” for the shipping channel includes allowing Israeli inspectors at the export site in Cyprus to block anything they want to, which is already a deadly choke point for aid.

Biden, his vice president, Harris, and all the rest of the U.S. government and military are perfectly aware of all this. And they have not just allowed Israel to go on, but the U.S. has backed all this with billions of dollars’ worth of bombs, drones, rifles, and tanks. And by vetoing three cease-fire resolutions at the UN that might have provided at least a chance for aid agencies to operate in Gaza. 

To dig into why, start with the social media post REVOLUTION Number Seven from Bob Avakian (BA), revolutionary leader, author of the new communism. BA gets to the bottom of “Why is Biden, and basically the entire government and ruling class of the U.S., supporting Israel in carrying out genocide against the Palestinian people, before the whole world?”

Nobody who cares about humanity should take up Biden’s “olive branch”—his fake-ass offering—in any way shape or form. Instead, do the right thing: intensify the struggle to STOP the genocide in Gaza NOW and urgently work to overthrow the system behind this genocide and so many other horrors on this planet.

REVOLUTION Number Seven
Follow, Listen and Share: @BobAvakianOfficial

From @BobAvakianOfficial Revolution Number Seven:

“Why the U.S. is supporting Israel’s genocidal slaughter of Palestinian people”

Why is Biden, and basically the entire government and ruling class of the U.S., supporting Israel in carrying out genocide against the Palestinian people, before the whole world? Here is the answer to that crucial question:

This is not because of “the power of the Jewish lobby”—or because of some ignorant, ridiculous and outrageous notion that “Jews are controlling everything.” It is because Israel plays a “special role” as a heavily armed bastion of support for U.S. imperialism in a strategically important part of the world (the “Middle East”). And Israel has been a key force in the commission of atrocities which have helped to maintain the oppressive rule of U.S. imperialism in many other parts of the world.

(That is from my statement Some Basic Truths About the U.S.-Supported Israeli War Against Palestine, which is posted at revcom.us.)

It’s the system! The system of capitalism-imperialism that Biden serves. The system he has to serve—the system that anybody and everybody has to serve if they want to hold office, and especially “high office,” like president, within this system. That is why Biden is doing what he’s doing—what all these politicians are doing—above and beyond their more narrow personal interests.

It’s the system! This system of capitalism-imperialism that embodies and enforces white supremacy, patriarchal male supremacy and other brutal oppression—this system resting on ruthless life-stealing exploitation of masses of people in this country and literally billions of people worldwide, including more than 150 million children—all enforced with massive violence and destruction, of people and the environment, posing a very real threat to the future and the existence of humanity.

This system that needs to be overthrown at the soonest possible time, through an actual revolution.

We are at a turning point in history. The capitalist-imperialist system is a horror for billions of people here and around the world and threatening the very fabric of life on earth. Now the election of fascist Trump poses even more extreme dangers for humanity—and underscores the total illegitimacy of this system, and the urgent need for a radically different system.

The website Revcom.us follows the revolutionary leadership of Bob Avakian (BA), the author of the new communism. Bob Avakian has scientifically analyzed that we are in a rare time when an actual revolution has become more possible in the U.S. He’s charted a strategy for making that revolution, and laid out a sweeping vision and concrete blueprint for “what comes next” in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America.

Revcom.us projects BA’s voice, leadership, and vision throughout society. It posts his timely leadership for the revcoms (revolutionary communists) and the whole movement for revolution, including his social media posts, and curates his whole body of work. 

Our website applies the scientific approach BA has developed to analyze major events in society and the world—why they are happening, how they relate to each other, how all this relates to the system we live under, where people's interests lie, how revolution is in fact the solution to all this, and what the goals of that revolution are.

Revcom.us acts as a guiding and connecting hub for the revcom movement nationwide: showing what’s being done, digging into what’s right and what’s wrong, and rapidly learning—and recruiting new people into what has to be a rapidly growing force. As part of this, revcom.us feature and promotes the weekly The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less!—Show on YouTube.com. 

Put it this way: there will be no revolution unless this website not only “keeps going” but rises to a whole different level!

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