Gaza airdrop vs. Berlin airlift

As Israel continues its genocidal onslaught in Gaza, Palestinians who survive its bombs and bullets are dying of starvation. But the US is now patting itself on the back for airdropping food.

Never mind the cruel irony that its pallets are landing on far too many of these desperate souls, killing them. 

Except that, in this case, the effort is proving as feckless as it is unnecessary. Aid groups are criticizing it with unbridled indignation:

‘The airdrops are symbolic and designed in ways to appease the domestic base,’ Dave Harden, former USAID director to the West Bank, told Al Jazeera. 

‘Really what needs to happen is more crossings [opening] and more trucks going in every day. … The US has the ability to compel Israel to open up more aid and by not doing that we’re putting our assets and our people at risks and potentially creating more chaos in Gaza.

(Al Jazeera, March 2,2024)

Mind you, relief agencies can send in a thousand trucks a day, carrying a thousand times more aid than can be airdropped. But Israel is preventing them from entering Gaza, citing specious concerns that they might be carrying weapons for Hamas instead of food for Palestinians. This is the very definition of cruel and inhumane.

Israel is reputedly the US’s most trusted ally. Yet, it’s acting like the US’s most notorious foe, the USSR. Equally incomprehensible is that the US is allowing this – as if Israel is entitled to act this way.

The US and Israel against the World

I cannot overstate the damning parallels between Israel’s blockade of Gaza and the USSR’s blockade of Berlin. Frankly, it’s the stuff of Kafka novels. 

After all, the US is the most powerful nation in the world. And, arguably, it is Israel’s only bona-fide ally. Yet Israel is ignoring US entreaties to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, willfully making the US complicit in credible allegations of genocide.

This tragic farce defies logic. And the wonder is that the US itself is ignoring entreaties to either exert more pressure on Israel to do the right thing or withdraw support. 

Meanwhile, President Biden is worried that Israel is losing the international goodwill the Hamas attack of October 7 evoked. Remarkably, he does not seem worried that Palestinian supporters are jeering “genocide Joe” everywhere he goes. But he should be worried, be very worried. 

Yesterday, Israel President Isaac Herzog attended the long-awaited opening of a new Holocaust museum in Amsterdam. It’s an indication of how much goodwill Israel has lost that tens of thousands of protesters showed up to jeer him, waving Palestinian flags and shouting, “Never again is now!” 

It’s damning enough that Israel is acting like the Soviet Union that blockaded West Berlin. But these protests suggest that it’s also acting like the Germany that perpetrated the Holocaust. 

Yet, Israel couldn’t care less about the backlash. I’ve argued that the relationship between Israel and the US is like the fable of the scorpion and the frog. An excerpt from the commentary I cited above illustrates this:

Netanyahu is hell-bent on a long, drawn-out crusade to destroy Gaza. That keeps him out of prison, pleases his Nakba-loving right-wing, and undermines Biden’s reelection bid. 

Like Putin, Netanyahu is banking on Trump getting reelected. Because he knows it takes nothing more than idle flattery to get Trump to do his bidding. So, Netanyahu couldn’t care less if MAGA Republicans are the only ones besides right-wing Israelis who support him or if Israeli soldiers are behaving like ISIS terrorists.

Building a port will do little for starving Palestinians

Biden keeps reassuring Israel of unconditional US support. And he keeps denouncing Israel for killing tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians. This fateful inconsistency only compounds the absurdity afoot. 

Apropos of which, he has US troops now building a floating pier off the coast of Gaza to facilitate a maritime corridor for humanitarian aid. But thousands of Palestinians will die from starvation alone while they’re building it. Yet Biden does not seem worried about that.

Again, aid workers are pleading for Biden to save all those lives by compelling Netanyahu to open land corridors for delivering aid into Gaza. Biden’s failure to do so is not just a political one; it’s a moral one, too. 

Biden’s ‘Come to Jesus’ talk with Netanyahu

After Thursday’s State of the Union address, a hot mic caught Biden saying he’s preparing to have a ‘Come to Jesus’ talk with Netanyahu. But talk about too little, too late.

Besides, I argued in the previous commentary cited above that Netanyahu would relish publicly defying Biden. Because he knows doing so would not only shore up his base at home but, perhaps even more importantly, also curry favor with MAGA Republicans. 

That’s why Biden must stop this ‘tail-wagging-the-dog’ farce. He should compel Netanyahu to open the existing corridors to deliver humanitarian aid in volumes and with the speed necessary to avert looming famine in Gaza. Failing to do so will make the US complicit in a humanitarian crisis that echoes the Holocaust.

Coming full circle, drawing red lines, and then failing to enforce them is why everyone thinks Democratic presidents are weak. It’s also why Biden must enforce his: Tell the Israeli people that the US cannot be complicit in the genocidal onslaught Netanyahu is hell-bent on waging in Gaza. And say it’s for them to decide if they want to be.