By: Donald V. Watkins
Copyrighted and Published on May 3, 2024
An Editorial Opinion
Yesterday, President Joe Biden addressed the nation to condemn college protests against the Israel-Hamas war and Pro-Palestine student encampments on college campuses across America.
Biden acknowledged the right of students to protest the U.S.’s complicity in the war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide committed by Israel against innocent Palestinians in Gaza. However, Biden said the student protests must not disturb the orderly operations of the college and university campuses.
Protesting students who commit misdemeanor offenses (e.g., disturbing the peace, unlawful assemble, trespassing, etc.) must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, says Biden.
Meanwhile, Biden is using the full weight of the U.S. government to prevent the International Criminal Court from issuing arrest warrants against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other top Israeli officials for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide committed by the Israeli military in Gaza.
Biden has steadfastly refused to condemn Israel’s war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, which the U.S. aids and abets. Likewise, Biden has never explained how killing 13,000 innocent Palestinian babies and children and 9,000 innocent women with U.S. supplied bombs and other military aid makes the world safer.
Instead, Joe Biden continues to pledge his unconditional support for Israel's war effort. For reasons he has never articulated, Biden believes that Israel’s war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide against innocent Palestinians in Gaza somehow advance the national security of the U.S.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s position on Gaza is as extreme as Biden’s, if not more so. Trump has advocated killing innocent people of color in the U.S. (e.g., the "Central Park Five," who were later declared innocent of the charges against them), at the southern border (e.g., "military should shoot rock-throwing migrants"), and in Gaza. At least Trump openly expresses his disdain for the people of color he does not like.
Based upon their own words and actions, Joe Biden and Donald Trump are okay with war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, provided that the victims are people of color. As far as I am concerned, there is not a dime’s worth of difference between Biden and Trump in this regard.
No candidate campaigning for U.S. President is willing to take a stand against Israel. No matter how egregious their acts that involves murdering, all other forms of human abuse on tens of thousands Palestinian men, women, children, and babies, you get the sense Israel receives a hero applaud from a greater number of world leaders for exterminating a serious outbreak of rodets occupying the land of Garza rather than accept the fact their action is a clear case of human rights violation.
Neither Joe Biden or Donald Trump will go as far to reprimand Israel. Each worries about the impact on their re-election bid if they openly oppose Israel's leadership.
The Biden Administration is to e def to these students. He has an opportunity to lock this vote down, but it appears he won't make any consessions to this group of voters.
I agree with Prof. Noam Chomsky's statement of the Isreal-Hamas war:
"The Israeli decision to rain death and destruction on Gaza, to use lethal weapons of the modern battlefield on a largely defenseless civilian population, is the final phase in a decades-long campaign to ethnically- cleanse Palestinians.
Israel uses sophisticated attack jets and naval vessels to bomb densely- crowded refugee camps, schools, apartment blocks, mosques, and slums to attack a population that has no air force, no air defense, no navy, no heavy weapons, no artillery units, no mechanized armor, no command in control, no army... and calls it a war. It is not a war, it is murder."
Prof. Chomsky is a highly respected Jewish scholar. Joe Biden continues…