President Joe Biden is greeted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after arriving at Ben Gurion International Airport, Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2023, in Tel Aviv. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
“I had a long talk with Netanyahu today,” US President Joe Biden said on Friday as he was leaving Washington to spend the Christmas holiday at Camp David. Asked to describe the call, Biden provided only one sentence: “I did not ask for a ceasefire.”
In other words, Biden gave the Israeli government his blessing to not just continue but intensify the genocide in Gaza over the holiday weekend.
That phone call marked the prelude to a bloodbath. On Christmas Eve, Israel bombed the Maghazi camp, one of the most densely populated areas in the Gaza Strip. At least 70 people were murdered. “What is happening at the Maghazi camp is a massacre that is being committed on a crowded residential square,” said Gazan Health Ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qudra.
The relentless bombardment continued on Christmas Day with hundreds killed, mostly women and children.
This mass murder was accompanied by open statements of genocidal intent and the deliberate circulation by the Israeli military of shocking footage of hundreds of detainees huddled naked and blindfolded.
The call between the two old war criminals, Biden and Netanyahu, was not the exception but the rule. Every major decision taken by Israel is done with the prior knowledge and full support of the United States government. Every new atrocity is preceded by a high-level meeting with Washington, either by phone or through the seemingly endless parade of US officials traveling to Tel Aviv.
Israeli troops, paid with billions in US military funding, are dropping American-made bombs from American-made aircraft onto civilian targets designated by American spy planes flying over Gaza, in coordination with American officers.
The Biden administration, which is working to provoke a war in the Middle East targeting Iran, has decided that the “final solution” of the Palestinian question is a vital strategic aim of US domination in the Middle East.