The Biden administration may have talked like peacemakers, but a new Israeli investigation shows that in reality they didn’t lift a finger to end Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.
by Kathryn Shihadah
Drop Site News reported Monday on a “sweeping” investigation by Israeli Channel 13. It revealed the truth behind the Biden administration’s show of support for a ceasefire in Gaza: that the Biden team regularly lied to the American people about supposed efforts to bring about a ceasefire with Gaza.
The Israeli television show, Hamakor, featured nine senior Biden officials who were remarkably candid about their frustrations with both the Biden and the Netanyahu administrations.
This is not the first time this message has been disclosed. The investigation confirmed what alternative news sources (including If Americans Knew) and whistleblowers have been saying all along: Biden never had any intention of slowing down or de-weaponizing Israel’s genocide on Gaza.
A number of notable officials, many from the State Department, resigned in the early months of Israel’s war on Gaza, then publicly aired their grievances. They gave accounts of the administration’s unwillingness to even listen to advice that could save Palestinian lives, specifically describing lies or cover-ups that protected Israel and its weapons shipments.
For example, Stacy Gilbert from the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, resigned in May 2024 after seeing that the State Department had falsified a report she had written.
As per a Biden directive, Gilbert had researched the Israeli government’s actions for compliance with US and international law. Her findings – that Israel had deliberately blocked life-saving aid into Gaza – should have triggered the Leahy Law and caused military aid to be withheld from Israel.
But, in Gilbert’s words, “State Department leadership egregiously edited the report to conclude, falsely, that Israel was not blocking humanitarian assistance” (read more here).
Annelle Sheline, who resigned from the State Department’s human rights bureau, told Democracy Now!, “I think, at the end of the day, many people inside State know that this is a horrific policy and can’t believe that the United States government is engaged in such actions that contravene American values so directly. But the leadership is not listening…
“[T]his administration came in pledging to reestablish American moral leadership, reengagement with the international community, uphold the law and the so-called rules-based liberal international order, and I think it’s just become clear that this administration is not, in fact, conducting — carrying out any of those pledges.”
Other whistleblowers during the Biden administration included Josh Paul, director of the State Department’s bureau of political military affairs; LIly Greenberg Call, special assistant to the chief of staff for the Interior Department; Harrison Mann, a U.S. Army major and Defense Intelligence Agency official; Tariq Habash, special assistant in the Education Department’s office of planning; Hala Rharrit, an Arabic language spokesperson for the State Department; Alexander Smith, a contractor for USAID.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken carries a large portion of the administration’s guilt, as he was personally involved in multiple cover-ups, and again and again applied double standards when parallel acts were committed by Israel and other countries.
Blinken declared on multiple occasions that Israel was acting lawfully when it was clearly violating international law – a fact that should have disqualified Israel from receiving the very military aid that kept the war going.
When Blinken delivered an explicit ultimatum to Israel – get hundreds more truckloads of food and medicine into Gaza every day, or else – he did nothing when Israel failed to comply.
Biden’s outgoing ambassador to Israel, Jack Lew, bragged: “Nothing that we ever said was, Just stop the war.”
Israeli show confirms Biden’s position
The Israeli program added more to the body of evidence that Biden actively supported Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza.
Former Israeli ambassador to the US Michael Herzog noted how Biden’s passivity enabled the war to continue indefinitely: “God did the State of Israel a favor that Biden was the president during this period…We fought [in Gaza] for over a year and the administration never came to us and said, ‘ceasefire now.’ It never did. And that’s not to be taken for granted.”
Ilan Goldenberg, a senior national security aide, pointed out that the US team had offered a post-war plan for Gaza, but Netanyahu rejected it, choosing rather to continue “just killing and destroying for the sake of killing and destroying.”
(Netanyahu had – and has – his reasons for keeping the war going indefinitely: to keep his fragile coalition together so he can remain in power, and to avoid a possible prison sentence for corruption.)
Amos Hochstein, a top security official in the Biden administration, admitted what most Israeli citizens know already, that Netanyahu’s stalling tactics “no doubt” cost the lives of Israeli hostages.
Netanyahu was adamant about taking over the Philadelphi Corridor in southern Gaza, claiming that Hamas had a strategically significant tunnel there – one that Israel must control and destroy before there could be any talk of ending the war.
Biden officials saw Netanyahu’s Philadelphi preoccupation for what it was: another way to keep the world’s attention off a ceasefire deal.
In fact, as another Israeli media outlet revealed last week, the tunnel was a complete fabrication.
Former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant reportedly conceded, “It was not a tunnel, but rather an attempt to prevent a ceasefire agreement.”
None of this will come as a surprise to those who follow alternative, non-Israel-aligned media. But for those who trust mainstream media to tell the truth, news of Biden’s duplicity may be shocking.
Consume news responsibly.
Kathryn Shihadah is an editor and staff writer for If Americans Knew.
FURTHER READING ON THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION AND ISRAEL:
- Biden worked ‘tirelessly around the clock’ – to prevent a ceasefire
- Palestinians’ humanitarian conditions caused bitter infighting in Biden administration
- Israel Gives Biden His Marching Orders
- The Case Against Joe Biden for Complicity in Genocide
- “Laws Of War” Biden-Blinken Style
FURTHER READING ON BIAS IN THE MEDIA:
- ‘Raped by Israeli Soldiers.’ Silence From Western Media
- Revealed: The Israel Lobbyists Writing America’s News
- NYTimes rejects Quaker ad for calling Israel’s actions “genocide”
- Study finds 50-year history of anti-Palestinian bias in mainstream news reporting
- Associated Press Double Standard in Israel-Palestine Reporting
