As you read this, Israel, backed by the U.S., with U.S.-supplied weapons, is carrying out—in the words of its own powerful finance minister—the “annihilation” of the city of Rafah and the almost million and a half desperate people driven there by seven months of genocidal slaughter. Doing it NOW.

Look up annihilation. It means: Obliteration. Extinction. Extermination. 

As Israel’s strangulation of Rafah, as its bombing, missile and tank attacks intensified over the past few days, Biden “threatened” to block some weapons going into Israel “IF” Israel invaded Rafah. The “threat” from Biden had zero substantial impact on Israel’s ability to annihilate Rafah. (We will get back to this threat later in this article.) 

But the Israeli invasion of Rafah IS happening. And getting worse by the hour.

May 5 and 6: Israel Chokes Off Desperately Needed Aid

On May 5, Israel closed the Kerem Shalom border crossing from Israel into Gaza. Kerem Shalom was already crippled by chronic shutdowns by handfuls of Israeli “protesters” who are allowed to block aid shipments by the Israeli military. But it is the only high-capacity truck route into Gaza. 

Israel blamed shutting down the border crossing on a Hamas rocket attack that reportedly killed four on-duty Israeli soldiers on the Israel-Gaza border. They were not in the vicinity of the border crossing. Closing Kerem Shalom had no military impact on Hamas, but it radically cut down on aid getting in to desperate, starving people in Gaza. Despite claims by Israel that the crossing has been re-opened, the UN relief agency for Gaza reports that “humanitarian aid like food and medicines has not been allowed through the crossing.”

The next day, Israel bombarded the neighborhood near the Rafah crossing from Egypt. And sent tanks to seize the border crossing itself. The Rafah crossing has remained shut ever since.

With both crossings essentially shut down, there has been no meaningful food, water or fuel aid getting into Gaza for days! Starving people will die. People fleeing for their lives have no fuel. Hospitals, those that had remained functional to treat emergencies, have been forced to shut down.

Destroying Rafah’s Hospitals in Preparation for a Genocidal Invasion

Over a million people from throughout Gaza had fled to Rafah by late April. Driven from their homes by Israeli bombs, tanks, and assassins. Heading on foot, by bike, piled into cars or in donkey carts seeking the one city in Gaza with the least amount of destruction, and the closest thing to a functional medical care system.

In April, as Israel repeatedly declared it would soon invade Rafah, the Israeli military targeted all medical facilities in Rafah in preparation for massacring people. A downloadable report from Doctors Without Borders documented that Israel destroyed all medical facilities in Rafah through military attacks on healthcare facilities, denial of fuel and medical supplies, and blocking humanitarian aid.

How is that anything but methodical preparation to qualitatively ramp up what is already a straight-up genocide?

Turning a City of Refugees into a Death Camp

On May 4, Israel gave 110,000 people in the east side of Rafah hours to flee for their lives, warning if they did not, they would be in an area hit with “extreme force.” Only hours later, Israel launched a massive wave of missile attacks. 

With thick smoke filling the sky at times, loud booms of exploding bombs and missiles, even people not in the “warning zone” began fleeing. Others stayed put, because they had no resources to move, no transportation and nowhere to go. Or, as an act of defiance—that if they were going to die, they were not going to flee to where they were going to be killed out of sight.

Then on May 11, Israel ordered Palestinians in more areas of Rafah to evacuate and head to what is a non-existent “expanded humanitarian area.” Khitam Al-Khatib, who had at least 10 of her relatives killed by an Israeli airstrike on a family house earlier that day, told the Reuters news agency, “They threw fliers on Rafah and said, from Rafah to al-Zawayda is safe, people should evacuate there, and they did, and what has become of them? Dismembered bodies? There is no safe place in Gaza." 

Al-Zawayda is a small town in central Gaza, already packed with refugees. It is a 13-mile walk from Rafah, impossible for people weakened, starving, sick, dragging their belongings.

By May 10, news agencies were reporting dozens of Israeli bomb attacks throughout Gaza, and that Israeli tanks captured the main road dividing Rafah's eastern and western sections, effectively encircling the eastern side of the city.

Israeli bombardments and ground assaults have caused vast destruction to apartments, hospitals, schools and refugee centers across several cities outside of Rafah over the past few days. In the midst of chaos, panic, isolation, destruction, and death, the death toll in Rafah and throughout Gaza is certainly rising by the hour. And the Israeli government insists this is only the beginning of the long-threatened invasion of Rafah! By May 12, the New York Times reported 300,000 people had fled Rafah.

Genocide Joe “Threatens” Israel “IF” It Invades Rafah!

On May 8, the U.S. State Department said it had paused some shipments of American weapons to Israel. The next day, in a rare interview on CNN, Biden threatened to cut off weapons shipments to Israel… if (!) Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (Netan-nazi) orders a major invasion of the city of Rafah.

First, the claim, and Biden’s “threat,” are basically bullshit. The pause only applied to shipment of an additional 1,800 of the 2,000-pound bombs that have left Gaza’s cities in ruins, and have been consistently used by Israel to destroy residential districts. These bombs, central to Israel’s genocidal slaughter that destroyed Gaza City and Khan Younis, kill people within a thousand feet of where they land. Plus, Biden’s order reportedly “pauses” sending a smaller number of smaller bombs. 

But arms have continued to flow into Israel from the U.S. On May 10, U.S. officials told NBC News that the Biden administration continued to send military assistance to Israel since halting a shipment of bombs. 

And focus on this: Biden claimed in his interview that “I made it clear that if they [Israel] 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.” This was after Israel had destroyed Rafah’s healthcare capacity in preparation for an invasion. It was after a hundred thousand people were fleeing Israel’s initial bombing of Rafah. And no sooner had the words left Biden’s lying, babbling lips than Israel’s invasion of Rafah began escalating day by day.

All military experts say that Israel currently has enough U.S.-supplied bombs, missiles, tanks and tank shells, and guns to massacre the people of Rafah many times over. And the terror resulting from Israel’s bombing has already driven more than 300,000 people out of the city.

At a May 9 press conference, a reporter persistently asked State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller why every time the Biden administration talks about an invasion of Rafah they use the word if an invasion takes place, as if that is “something that hasn’t happened yet.” 

Miller replied, with sick, genocidal cynicism, “I wouldn’t say every time.”

Biden, and the U.S.: Stuck with, and Sticking by, Israel’s Genocidal Slaughter 

We promised to get back to what is behind Biden’s threats to hit pause on some military aid to Israel. At most, this will put a crimp in Israel’s tactics in invading Rafah. Israel has already caused death, destruction, terror, and driven out a large section of the civilian population without using 2,000-pound bombs.

But the conflict between Israel and Biden is real. Biden’s threats, symbolic though they are, carry weight in significant sections of Israeli society that are getting alienated from the war, and the lack of any priority being put on freeing Israeli hostages held by Hamas. And the words of a U.S. president carry weight with sections of Israel’s rulers. And as such, were taken as a provocation by Israel’s powerful and openly genocidal National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. Ben-Gvir lashed back, posting on social media, “Hamas [heart] Biden.” 

Biden’s insistence that Israel carry out an invasion of Rafah that avoids bombing the entire city to rubble is aimed not just at the Israeli government. It is an attempt to put some distance between the U.S. and Israel in public opinion here in the U.S., and around the world. With this phony gesture on the one hand and his speech essentially accusing campus anti-war protesters of anti-Semitism on the other, Biden is both trying to defuse those protests while also isolating a movement which threatens to break the allegiance of key sections of people to this system and could spread.

And Biden is speaking to a global audience, trying to put some distance between the U.S. and Israel’s most egregious crimes. Outrage at Israel’s genocidal massacre in Gaza throws a wrench into getting U.S. allies like Saudi Arabia to commit more openly and publicly to a regional anti-Iran alliance with Israel. As Israel, and with it the U.S., is more openly exposed for what it is—a genocidal apartheid regime—cracks and conflict have the potential to open up with countries the U.S. dominates. Colombia, the closest U.S. ally in South America, broke diplomatic relations with Israel. Turkey, the closest U.S. ally among majority Muslim countries, momentarily banned commerce with Israel. 

But where else is the U.S. going to turn for a reliable, highly armed, and loyal enforcer in a region that is a crossroads for global commerce and the most important source of oil that literally makes imperialism run? Along with its nuclear weapons and highly militarized society, Israel remains the only country in the region where most people do not hate the United States. 

In his social media messages, revolutionary leader, author of the new communism Bob Avakian zeroes in on the question at the heart of understanding the actual relationship between the U.S. and Israel: 

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.

And BA goes on to conclude that social media post with this:

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.

Alan Goodman reports for revcom.us and has a long history of activism and writing. exposing and opposing the role that Israel plays within the system of capitalism-imperialism.