In a speech in 2019, General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, declared: “We are unique among militaries. We do not take an oath to a king or a queen, a tyrant or a dictator. We do not take an oath to an individual. No, we do not take an oath to a country, a tribe or religion. We take an oath to the Constitution.”
Today, listening to Biden’s incredibly callous, uninformed and inhumane statements regarding the Palestinian armed resistance and the Palestinian people this resistance represents, it appears the oath is taken also in support of the Constitution of Israel.
But wait. Israel is one of the few countries in the world that operates without a formal written constitution. It was supposed to have a constitution, according to the UN resolution 181 that partitioned Palestine and according to its own Declaration of Independance that promised to do so by October 1948. However, Israel didn’t and still doesn’t have one, because the identity it wishes to preserve is exclusionary — i.e. it is a Jewish supremacist identity that excludes the rights of the non-Jewish indigenous population that the Zionist invasion of Palestine had failed to fully displace. Such a settler-colonial apartheid identity is difficult to enshrine in a democratic constitution that is immune from political change and that must address the relationship between religion and state, the status of minorities and the system of government.
And yet, we constantly hear about the “shared values” of both countries, namely, democracy, economic prosperity and “regional security,” sharing a strategic alliance to defend each other from external threats, such as terrorism, extremism, and aggression.
For the Palestinian people, what that translates into is no democracy, no economic prosperity, and indeed, no human dignity. The “regional security” alliance between these two means that they must demonize whole peoples as well as their religious beliefs in the Middle East — from Palestine to Iran, to Lebanon to Iraq to Syria to justify their “security measures.”
Biden’s cold contempt and heartless indifference to the humanitarian crisis that is unfolding in Gaza is mindboggling. According to Chat, the humanitarian situation in Gaza is very critical and alarming:
- More than 800 Palestinians have been killed, including about 100 children, and nearly 4,000 have been injured by the Israeli airstrikes123.
- The airstrikes have destroyed or damaged hundreds of buildings, including residential towers, commercial zones, service facilities, and mosques123.
- The siege has cut off the supply of electricity, water, food, and fuel to Gaza, which is home to about 2.3 million people123.
- The lack of basic services and resources has increased the risk of disease outbreaks, malnutrition, and psychological trauma among the population234.
- The hospitals and medical facilities are overwhelmed and lack sufficient equipment, medicine, and staff to treat the wounded and sick234.
- Many people are trapped under the rubble or have no safe place to go, as Israel has warned of a possible ground invasion123.
Biden’s disgraceful “regional security” response to the unified Palestinian armed resistance to Israel is to blame and demonize Hamas, not its own regional policies and practices. It brought to my mind a brilliant 2014 poem written by Vijay Prashad called “What you bomb” in which he says, “What you bomb is not Hamas. It is Palestine. Not a dream, but a people. Not a refugee camp, but a country alive in its peoples’ hearts.”
The US was instrumental in the creation of the state of Israel in several ways, contributing actively to the Palestinian Nakba just as it is contributing materially and in every other way to their ethnic cleansing in this war:
- The US supported the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which favored the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine1.
- President Harry S. Truman sympathized with the Jews and advocated for their right to have a homeland, especially after the Holocaust1.
- Truman approved the admission of 100,000 displaced Jews into Palestine in 1946 and publicly declared his support for the creation of a Jewish state in 19471.
- The US backed the UN Resolution 181 in 1947, which recommended the partition of Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state2.
- The US recognized the State of Israel on May 14, 1948, the same day it declared its independence from the British mandate1. The US was the first country to do so.
- The US provided diplomatic, economic, and military assistance to Israel throughout its history, especially during the Arab-Israeli wars and the peace process with its neighbors3.
So, Mr. Biden, to quote some more from Prashad’s poem, “Your morality is challenged, your ethics on fire. All you can say, in bad faith, is Hamas, Hamas, Hamas.”
_________________
Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem and whose mother’s side of the family is from Ijzim, south of Haifa. She is an activist, researcher and retired professor of English literature, Al-Quds University, occupied West Bank.
