The arrival of Donald Trump at the White House sets off alarms in spaces that demand restraint from the president-elect, but forget the responsibility of President Joe Biden on important issues. Between now and January 20, the day of Trump’s inauguration, it is the Biden-Harris administration that will still have to ask for measures to stop the massacre in Gaza and hinder certain plans of the future American president.
Analysis of the facts shows Washington’s position. The United States continues to send weapons to Israel and maintains its political and diplomatic support, the evident features of which the world was able to observe last week.
Four events in the last 10 days
1.- A week ago, Biden received Israeli President Isaac Herzog at the White House, to whom he conveyed his “strong commitment” to Israel. He did this while there are more than 44,000 dead in Gaza, including at least 17,000 children, and while the campaign of extermination against the north of the Strip continues, with massacres of civilians and the systematic blockade of the entry of aid necessary for survival. , which have been classified as war crimes and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court.
2.- The Biden administration once again vetoed a United Nations Council resolution this week calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and the immediate and unconditional release of the hostages. The result was one vote against and fourteen for. This is the fourth American veto on the possibility of ending the massacres of civilians in the Gaza Strip.
3.- In an attempt to save lives in Gaza — and his party’s image — Democratic Sen. Bernie Sanders pushed a resolution in the Senate to block a new shipment of U.S. weapons to Israel. In his proposal, Sanders also demanded an end to the US government’s complicity in Israeli military actions in Gaza.
Only 19 Democratic senators voted this week to suspend a new arms shipment to Israel.
This week the vote took place: only nineteen Democratic senators supported the initiative. “We are up against AIPAC, the Democratic leadership in the Senate and the Biden administration,” Sanders said, referring to pressure from the White House to ensure the Democratic majority votes against it.
“No one will take what you say seriously. [dirigiéndose al Senado]. “You cannot condemn human rights violations in various places around the world and turn a blind eye to what the US government is funding in Israel,” he added.
The US Democratic Party’s continued active support for Israeli atrocities is public. These nineteen votes in favor of suspending this arms delivery – and of a radical change in American policy in the face of genocide – will be written in the pages of History as an expression of decency in the face of normalization of barbarism.
4.- The US government’s reaction to the arrest warrants announced Thursday by the International Criminal Court against Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant closed the week. Biden called the measure “outrageous,” the White House spokesman denied the court’s jurisdiction, and security spokesman John Kirby rejected the orders and cited “disturbing process errors.” “.
This position of Washington before international courts is not new. The traditional position of the United States is against the intervention of the UN and the Hague courts in the Israeli case. In 2002, the United States approved a law authorizing the use of “any means necessary” to release officials from the United States and allied countries – including Israel – who are accused, detained and tried by the Criminal Court international.
As denounced by the organization Human Rights Watch, the nature of this release can include the use of military force, which is why the law is known by the nickname “The Hague Invasion Law”. Its promulgation caused a public outcry in the Netherlands, the seat of international courts.
US denies court’s jurisdiction over Israel, calls Netanyahu arrest warrant ‘scandalous’
The rule was promoted by the administration of George W. Bush, but also received the support of several Democrats, such as Hillary Clinton or Chusck Schumer, majority leader in the Senate since 2021. This law also envisages the possibility of suspending or refuse American aid to countries that ratify the Statute of the International Court.
The United States also reserves the possibility of sanctioning the criminal court in The Hague if it favors the opening of investigations into American or allied crimes. This happened in 2020, when the Trump administration sanctioned the court’s then-prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, in proceedings regarding crimes committed by the US military in Afghanistan.
Last May, when the court’s current chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, requested arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, Secretary of State Antony Blinken raised the possibility of sanctioning the court in The Hague.
Washington reserves by law “the use of all means” to free allies detained by the International Court
What Biden can and won’t do
In December 2016, Barack Obama took an unusual position in Washington. Four weeks after his departure, the outgoing president decided to abstain – instead of vetoing, as the United States usually does on this subject – during the vote on a resolution of the UN condemning illegal Israeli settlements. He did so with opposition from his team and his vice president, Joe Biden. When the press asked an Obama adviser the reasons for this abstention, he explained that the president had nothing more to lose.
Kamala Harris, then a senator, campaigned against this abstention promoted by the leader of her own party, and co-sponsored a Senate initiative against any United Nations intervention in Israeli issues. He would also later sign a letter against any investigation into Israel by the International Criminal Court.
Like his predecessors, Obama was a pro-Israel president, facilitating the expansion of the illegal occupation and maintaining U.S. military aid to Israel, the largest contribution the United States makes to any country each year. But he made this farewell gesture, allowing us to move forward with the first resolution condemning illegal Israeli settlements in almost forty years.
Biden-Harris Administration Paves the Way for Trump to Increase Growth and Accelerate Israeli Impunity
Biden and Harris could signal to their allies that they would now be prepared not to veto a UN resolution with these characteristics. They could also advocate an arms embargo against Israel, cut off its shipments of military equipment, and suspend its political and diplomatic protection of Tel Aviv. They have time to make it known that this time they would accept an immediate ceasefire for Gaza.
They could even push for the temporary suspension of Israel from membership in the United Nations General Assembly, a measure that was adopted in the past against apartheid South Africa. If they wanted to avoid the perpetuation of Israeli crimes, current American leaders would favor avenues of negotiation and peace. Or they would invest “in the right to housing and not in the genocide in Gaza,” as protesters demanded before Congress a few days ago.
Obviously, none of this will happen, because the US government’s goals lie elsewhere. Biden and his team remain committed to enabling the ongoing genocide in Gaza, the annexation of more territory in the West Bank, the expansion of illegal occupation and apartheid. They leave the way to Trump for new growth and an acceleration of Israeli impunity, at a time when Tel Aviv has also banned the presence of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), an order which will come into force in a few weeks. .
Facilitation of child slaughter wears a respectable suit or tie, votes in the US Congress and Senate, presents itself as the good and civilized side of the planet, and is obscured by a significant portion of the Western narrative that depicts the crimes. if necessary and frees Washington, a key player in this story, from the demands.
The importance of an accurate diagnosis
The United States only uses international norms when it intends to apply them to its adversaries. The Biden government respects legal proceedings concerning Sudan, Darfur or Vladimir Putin but despises and stigmatizes investigations into Israeli crimes. Their position undermines international law and contributes to the construction of a more ruthless world order, in which Europe finds itself in a scenario of greater fragility.
The presentation of war as a necessary and inevitable option marks the global present, also in Ukraine, where the United States for the first time authorized the use of long-range American missiles against Russian soil, increasing the risk of perpetuating the war. conflict or its escalation. Washington also announced that it would send antipersonnel mines to Kyiv. The geographical distance of the United States does not expose it to the risks that Europe faces in this area.
All of this is the legacy of the Democratic administration that is still in the White House. Far from calling to account the facilitators of the genocide against Palestine, part of the Western political and media discourse focuses on all the harm that Trump will do, while hiding the responsibility of the Biden-Harris government in the Israeli massacres and in the obstacles to international law.
If Europe still lacks understanding of what is happening in the United States, it is because an unrealistic discourse persists which presents Washington as the champion of human rights. We must not forget that without an accurate diagnosis, it is not possible to make good decisions.
It is likely that when Trump takes power, criticism of active US complicity with Israeli impunity will arise in sectors that have not criticized Biden for the same thing. This will be a far from honest exercise, as the position of the outgoing Democratic government has already changed the Middle East and the world, further normalizing the path of brutal force and the use of intimidation, which will also have harmful consequences for this interventionist Europe. .
