Biden thinks you’re stupid

Michael F. Brown Power Suits 5 April 2024

Joe Biden at a microphone with three lights above him

President Joe Biden’s complicity in Israel’s devastation of Gaza is undermining his support among Democratic voters.

Bonnie Cash Pool via CNP

If you’re a Democratic voter, Genocide Joe thinks you’re stupid.

He’s using a few words of concern about Israel’s “indiscriminate bombing” and “over-the-top” response in Gaza to give the appearance of sympathy for Palestinian civilian suffering.

But at the same time, he is sending still more weapons to Israel to continue the carnage.

His 30-minute phone call Thursday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doesn’t change the underlying reality of his staunch support for Israel in the midst of its onslaught against Palestinians in Gaza.

During the call, according to the White House summary, Biden “made clear the need for Israel to announce and implement a series of specific, concrete, and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering, and the safety of aid workers.”

He also called for an “immediate ceasefire.”

Earlier in the week, in a statement after the Israeli military killed seven members of World Central Kitchen, Biden said, “I am outraged and heartbroken by the deaths of seven humanitarian workers from World Central Kitchen, including one American, in Gaza.”

He added, “Israel has pledged to conduct a thorough investigation into why the aid workers’ vehicles were hit by airstrikes. That investigation must be swift, it must bring accountability, and its findings must be made public.”

The president went on to note “this is not a stand-alone incident. This conflict has been one of the worst in recent memory in terms of how many aid workers have been killed.”

Over 196 aid workers – 176 of them with UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees – have been killed in Gaza since October according to the US-funded Aid Worker Security Database.

Yet The Washington Post reported late last week that the Biden administration continues to “quietly” authorize the transfer of fighter jets and bombs to Israel totaling billions of dollars.

“The new arms packages include more than 1,800 MK84 2,000-pound bombs and 500 MK82 500-pound bombs, according to Pentagon and State Department officials familiar with the matter. The 2,000-pound bombs have been linked to previous mass-casualty events throughout Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.”

The US State Department has also authorized transferring 25 F-35A fighter jets and engines valued at approximately $2.5 billion.

Biden, consequently, is deeply enmeshed in the war crimes Israel is committing in Gaza.

On Thursday, however, there was an enhanced warning from the Biden administration that US policy could change. In other words, the administration seems to be saying that this time they’re really serious.

Yet Secretary of State Antony Blinken only pointed to unspecified policy changes if Israel doesn’t change its ways.

Answering media questions on Thursday, White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said that such weapons transfers had been in the works for years – very much as Israel does with settlements. The administration could suspend these weapons, but has not. Kirby stonewalled rather than frankly answer questions on conditioning military aid.

The refusal to suspend military aid could enable Israel to go through with a final assault on Gaza and Rafah with newly transferred American weapons. Netanyahu continues to drive policy and will remain the protagonist until Biden stands up to him and rejects further arms to Israel – a step he continues to be unwilling to take despite the enormous harm it is doing him with key Democratic constituencies.

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee noted that “the transfer, intentionally done without public disclosure, further entrenches US complicity in Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.”

ADC National Executive Director Abed Ayoub said in a statement, “It is crystal clear that the shift in tone from the federal government means absolutely nothing. This attempt to clandestinely send billions in taxpayer-funded weapons to wipe out Palestinians in Gaza using years old congressional approvals is a deliberate choice to avoid accountability. Shamefully, the US continues to be an active participant in genocide and shows no signs of slowing down.”

As even David Sanger with The New York Times told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Wednesday following the Israeli military’s World Central Kitchen massacre, “The president did not say that he was going to do anything differently. In other words, he could put conditions on the sale of those 2,000-pound bombs and say, ‘You cannot use them in Gaza.’”

Sanger then noted, “We’ve heard much stronger words [of late] from the president, but so far we haven’t seen much stronger action.”

Those stronger words only followed the deaths of foreign aid workers, while thousands of Palestinian children have been killed all along, with repeated warnings from Palestinians and human rights groups that Israeli attacks were indiscriminate and constituted war crimes and genocide. Biden’s increased anger is a signal of which lives matter most to him.

The Biden administration also plans a sale of as many as 50 F-15 fighter jets to Israel valued at $18 billion. Congress would then have 30 days to reject the deal or further accede to Biden’s complicity in Israel’s Gaza genocide.

In addition, the Biden administration may also sell to Israel 30 AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missiles as well as Joint Direct Attack Munition kits to turn dumb bombs into precision-guided weapons.

Courtesy of Biden’s ongoing support, the fascists in Netanyahu’s coalition government such as Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich are winning.

They are getting the “voluntary” migration/ethnic cleansing they have sought as Palestinians seek to flee the devastation caused by Israel’s use of overwhelming American firepower.

Palestinians are paying exorbitant amounts to leave Gaza with no certainty as to whether Israel will permanently seize a corridor between Gaza and Egypt to keep them permanently exiled. Crowdfunding campaigns are skyrocketing.

Palestinian parents are seeing schools, universities and other institutions decimated and coming to the grim conclusion that staying in Gaza will close off the future for their children. These are people who weeks ago would have thought it inconceivable they would ever be forced out as their grandparents were in the ethnic cleansing of 1948.

And who is to say now which option – flight or staying put during a genocide with the distinct risk of death or famine – will better secure a Palestinian future of rights and freedom? It’s an impossible choice exacerbated by the repeated failures and complicity of American lawmakers.

Donors and people of goodwill are becoming entangled in Palestinian flight that may become permanent ethnic cleansing because western governments are failing to protect a largely refugee population from an apartheid state engaged in what the International Court of Justice regards as a plausibly genocidal campaign in Gaza.

Keeping Palestinians alive where governments will not has become a priority, even as it is nauseating that these departures are what racists like Smotrich and Ben-Gvir seek.

Kirby’s rhetoric

Biden isn’t the only one in the administration who thinks Democrats are stupid. White House national security communications advisor John Kirby also operates from this perspective, along with an arrogance that surely undermines him with concerned Democratic voters.

Kirby argued on Tuesday that Israel is “still under the viable threat of Hamas.”

He added, “We’re still gonna make sure that they can defend themselves and that the 7th of October doesn’t happen again. That doesn’t mean that it’s a free pass, that we look the other way when something like this [World Central Kitchen] happens, or that we aren’t and haven’t since the beginning of the conflict urge[d] the Israelis to be more precise, to be more careful.”

But looking the other way is precisely what the US has been doing, denying that Israel is violating international humanitarian law as Palestinian civilians are slaughtered and go hungry.

American support slips

The decimating of life in Gaza is contributing to a sharp polling decline among Americans for Israel’s actions in Gaza.

A Gallup poll taken between March 1-20, prior to Israel’s killing of seven workers with the World Central Kitchen, found that 55 percent of American respondents now disapprove of Israel’s actions in Gaza. Only 36 percent approve despite widespread favorable corporate media propaganda for Israel’s actions.

In November, a Gallup poll indicated 50 percent American approval and only 45 percent disapproval.

Democratic and independent support has dropped by 18 percent and Republican respondent support has declined by seven percent. Only 18 percent of respondent Democrats support Israel’s actions in Gaza while 75 percent disapprove.

Nevertheless, Biden’s overall approval remains at 40 percent, a slight improvement from 37 percent in November. This may be a consequence of an improved economic outlook.

But whether at 37 or 40 percent, his reelection prospects are in jeopardy.

Democratic voters in key electoral college states continue to exhibit dismay with Biden’s stance on Gaza.

Close to 50,000 Democratic voters in Wisconsin this week voted “uninstructed” to signal their anger over the Biden administration’s actions regarding Gaza.

Wisconsin was decided by under 23,000 votes for Donald Trump in 2016 and by just over 20,000 votes in 2020 for Biden.

As the Biden administration reiterates its support for Israel – an apartheid state carrying out a genocide in Gaza – progressive Democratic voters continue to insist to an unheeding party that a presidential candidate closely tied to genocide is a step too far.

Biden may pay a heavy price for regarding these voters as stupid.

Americans are saddled with a dreadful choice when the three leading presidential candidates – Biden, Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – support Israel’s actions.

Trump has received attention in recent days for allegedly not being fully on board with Israel’s policies in Gaza.

This is a misreading of his position. He’s not for protecting Palestinians, but for faster genocide.

Trump spoke to The Hugh Hewitt Show on Thursday to explain his earlier remarks. “What I said very plainly is get it over with, and let’s get back to peace and stop killing people.”

Israeli apartheid, however, isn’t “peace” any more than the “order” and “negative peace” of Jim Crow was a just arrangement in the American South, as Martin Luther King Jr. noted in his letter from the Birmingham Jail.

“Get it over with, and get it over with fast,” the former president added. “They are losing the PR war and they are losing it big.”

This is true, the public relations for Israel are rightly awful as people correctly judge it on the basis of the war crimes and famine it is responsible for in Gaza.

But the remedy is not, as Trump indicates, to kill Palestinians faster so we can “get on with life.”

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dennis hanna replied on

"If you’re a Democratic voter, Genocide Joe thinks you’re stupid."
No!, "If you’re a Democratic voter, (or a voter) Genocide Joe" knows you're stupid.
Why?
Because whether you're a Democrat voter, a Republican voter or just a voter, your vote means nothing.
"Genocide Joe" knows it is money that counts, that wins elections, not votes.
Yes, not always, but most often.
Money, campaign money, permits "Genocide Joe" to tell the voter, promise the voter, what the voter wants to hear and to tell the voter what to fear.
"Genocide Joe" will tell voter [ "I" ] am not perfect, but I am better than the other guy. The so-called "Lesser of two evils.;" it almost always works.
Time will tell.
dennis hanna

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Michael F. Brown

Michael F. Brown is an independent journalist. His work and views have appeared in The International Herald Tribune, TheNation.com, The San Diego Union-Tribune, The News & Observer, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Washington Post and elsewhere.