Biden Stands By While Israeli Rafah Invasion Looms

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חשיפה: הפקודה הסודית של קבינט המלחמה, “אוי לרשע ואוי לשכנו”, קובעת כי כל שכונה עזתית שבה מוחזקים חטופים תוחרב לאחר חילוצם

News Update: the IDF rescued two Israeli captives from Gaza.  After the operation, the IAF destroyed the entire neighborhood in which they’d been held. Dozens died.

And Israeli security source told me that the savagery after the rescue was ordered by the Israeli war cabinet.  The directive featured a Biblical verse about the rebellion of Korach against Moses described in the Book of Numbers.  Moses told Korach’s followers to separate themselves from him lest they be destroyed along with him. He warned them: “Woe unto the wicked and woe unto their neighbors.”  Hamas, in this twisted metaphor, is Korach and the destroyed Gaza neighborhood, is his followers.

To which I respond: “Woe unto Israel and woe unto the Jewish people,” beset by this rancid regime exploiting sacred texts to legitimize their genocidal acts.

The apparent intent of this savagery, was to show all of Gaza that recompense for permitting Hamas to hold captives among them, was the wholesale destruction of everything and everyone in their neighborhood.

Pres. Biden held his first phone his first phone conversation with Bibi Netanyahu in over three weeks.  It is only his second call in the past eight weeks.  They spoke for 45 minutes, mostly about a ceasefire plan.  They even devoted a few minutes to discuss the prime minister’s plan to invade Rafah, which shelters 1.5-million Gazans who’ve fled from Israeli assault in northern Gaza.

Facing consternation at his invasion plans–by everyone from the White House to the United Nations–Netanyahu, according to a US official, affirmed that the IDF would not invade before the civilians left Rafah.  Unlike his initial battle directive, he appeared to accept Israeli responsibility for their removal (aka expulsion). He tasked the IDF with devising an evacuation plan.  But anyone who knows the Israeli army knows it does not evacuate civilians. Its job is to fight–and kill.

The official said Israel has agreed that a precondition for any Rafah operation was:

…”The population would have to move, would have to be moved safely and everything else.” The administration official said how that can be accomplished remains “a huge question.”

Another report added:

“We clarified our concerns about whether this is even possible in the current reality in Rafah,”

An Israeli media outlet said the US warned ominously:

…That Israel has not conducted the pre-operational planning necessary to ensure that civilians will be kept out of harm’s way and that failure to do so risks “disaster.”

How would they move?  Where would they move?

Netanyahu said that while Israeli forces fight with Hamas in Rafah, civilians would be able to flee back to the north, where much of the infrastructure has already been destroyed in the war…

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After fleeing northern Gaza and starving in Rafah, he wants them to make the return trek to the north where there is even less food and shelter than the miserable crumbs they eek out in the south? He blithely told his trusty news outlet, FoxNews:

…There’s “plenty of room north of Rafah for them to go to” after Israel’s offensive elsewhere in Gaza, and said Israel would direct evacuees with “flyers, with cellphones and with safe corridors and other things.”

None of that is worth a bucket of warm piss, as a US vice president once described his job. Bibi ever the liar. Or as they say in Hebrew: Bibi shakran ben shakran (“liar, son of a liar”). To which I would add: father of a liar (son, Yair).

As I published this post, news outlets announced that the IAF had begun bombing Rafah. No civilians had been evacuated.  They remain there sitting ducks, as bombs rain down on babies sheltered by nothing more than tents. It makes a mockery of all of Israel’s promises.

An Israeli security source told me, following soon after Netanyahu’s initial statement about the imminent invasion, that the “evacuation” from Rafah will be “the same” as northern Gaza.  Civilians will have to fend for themselves.  There will be no assistance offered to them.  Whether Bibi’s subsequent promises mean anything will be tested in coming days. If I were a betting man, I’d bet the House against him.

An Israeli media report says that Netanyahu has told his generals that they have another month before they must wrap up military operations. They told him in turn: we can fight, but what do you want us to do with those 1.5-million refugees in Rafah?

It’s astonishing that in the face of 28,000 Palestinians dead and another 75,000 wounded or missing–and a looming invasion which will murder tens of thousands more–Biden speaks of a hostage exchange and ceasefire.  Does anyone believe that as Israel escalates a war that is already a slaughter, it will negotiate in good faith for a cessation of hostilities? Yet another indication that the US president is hopelessly adrift. He is not facing the reality on the ground in Gaza. He’s flailing about, desperately clinging to a few shreds of hope, while death swirls around him.

Netanyahu, on the other hand, marches firmly forward on his genocidal death march. He lets nothing stop him. Not US presidents. Not UN general secretaries. Not International Courts of Justice.  They all dither while Netanyahu orders his troops to advance, and the corpses pile higher.

By war’s end, I predict there will be 50,000 Palestinian dead. I hope I am wrong.