Joe Biden's lethal trap: His embrace of Israel has become support for war crimes

For the past three weeks, President Biden has played a key role in backing Israel’s worsening war crimes while touting himself as a compassionate advocate of restraint. “We need an immediate ceasefire,” Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., wrote in an email Saturday evening, “but the White House and Congress continue to unconditionally support the Israeli government’s genocidal actions.” That unconditional support makes Biden and the vast majority of Congress directly complicit in mass murder and, at least arguably, also in genocide, which is defined as “the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.” That definition would seem to fit the words and deeds of Israel’s leaders to this point. People this morning saying, ‘We’ve been digging children out of the rubble with our bare hands because we can’t call for help.’” While residents of Gaza “are under some of the most intense bombardment we’ve ever seen,” Molana-Allen added, they have no safe place to go: “Even though they’re still being told to move to the south, in fact most people can’t get to the south because they have no fuel for their cars, they can’t travel and even in the south bombardment continues.” Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? After he spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week, the White House issued a statement without the slightest expression of concern about the carnage and destruction that Israel’s bombing campaign was inflicting on civilians in Gaza. Instead, the statement simply said that the president had “reiterated that Israel has every right and responsibility to defend its citizens from terrorism and to do so in a manner consistent with international humanitarian law.” Biden’s support for the relentless assault on Gaza is largely echoed in Congress.