THE WHITE House is reportedly worried that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu could use his upcoming speech to the US Congress to publicly criticise President Joe Biden and his administration’s response to Israel’s war on Gaza just months ahead of the US election.
The Virginia-headquartered digital newspaper Politico cited an unnamed US official as saying on Saturday that Netanyahu is set to address a joint session of Congress next month and ‘no one knows what he’s going to say.’
The report came after the Israeli premier last week posted a video taking Washington to task for ‘withholding weapons and ammunition to Israel’ for several months amid the Gaza war, and calling it ‘inconceivable’.
Netanyahu later defended his public criticism as ‘absolutely necessary after months of quiet conversation that did not solve the problem.’
Another senior official was quoted by Politico as saying that the latest criticism ‘was not helpful at all,’ and Netanyahu ‘could make it far worse up there in front of Congress.’
The report added that Netanyahu’s speech, due to made on July 24, could create a ‘diplomatically complicated and politically dicey spectacle for a president running for re-election.’
The American news website Axios also said while US officials have publicly stated that they ‘do not know what (Netanyahu) will be talking about,’ privately, Biden’s team is reportedly ‘angry and shocked’ at Netanyahu’s ‘ingratitude,’ with some officials describing him as ‘unhinged’.
Washington has provided Tel Aviv with untrammelled support in military logistics, intelligence, and finance since the occupying regime launched its barbaric aggression on Gaza in October last year.
The Biden administration paused the delivery of 3,500 bombs to Israel in early May amid widespread calls for it to scale back its onslaught on the densely populated city of Rafah in southern Gaza.
However, despite Biden’s public warnings that he would halt arms shipments, the US kept the majority of other weapons and ammunition flowing.
Washington proceeded with a transfer of $1bn worth of arms for Israel in May, the same month it stopped the delivery of bombs, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
The Israeli regime has killed at least 37,551 people in Gaza since it launched its US-backed genocidal war on the territory on October 7th, 2023, the Palestinian Health Ministry said on Saturday, adding that 85,911 people had also been wounded in Gaza since then.
The occupying regime has also imposed a ‘complete siege’ on the territory, cutting off fuel, electricity, food, and water to the more than two million Palestinians living there.
Meanwhile, a number of Holocaust survivors have rebuked Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the occupying regime’s ‘wrong anti-Semitic claims’ to justify killing more than 37,550 Palestinians in the besieged territory.
As many as ten survivors said in a letter published on Saturday that using the Holocaust to justify genocide in Gaza and repress student protest on college campuses is a ‘complete insult to the memory of the Holocaust’. They wrote:
‘As Holocaust survivors, we have no special authority on the Middle East but we do know about anti-Semitism. It’s simply wrong to claim that it’s anti-Semitic to oppose Israeli genocide.
‘It’s also wrong to claim that calling for equal rights for Jews and Arabs “from the river to the sea” is anti-Semitic.
‘As Holocaust survivors, we are just a few individuals but we want to add our voices to the growing global movement to demand a permanent ceasefire, an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, and for the West to stop arming and supporting genocide.’
The survivors pointed to a recent Holocaust memorial, in which Israeli prime minister Netanyahu said: ‘We’ll defeat our genocidal enemies. Never again is now!’
The signatories of the letter also referred to another memorial, in which United States President Joe Biden warned of a ‘ferocious surge of anti-Semitism’ on college campuses.
‘The dehumanisation of Palestinians…, the killing of tens of thousands of civilians, indiscriminate bombing, the destruction of universities and hospitals, and the use of mass starvation — these are clearly stages of ethnic cleansing and genocide. They cannot be defended any more than sending weapons to commit this genocide or refusing funding to (United Nations relief agency) UNRWA,’ the letter said.
‘With no better arguments, our politicians have resorted to misusing the memory of the Holocaust while claiming that protesting against Israeli genocide is somehow anti-Semitic.’
Pro-Palestinian protesters disrupted a joint rally in New York between Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), and Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vermont).
Protesters, mobilised by a New York-based pro-Palestine organisation Within Our Lives, disrupted a joint rally led by the US lawmakers on Saturday which was in support of US President Joe Biden for the upcoming US presidential election scheduled in November.
The three politicians have maintained their support for a second-term Biden presidency.
‘Endorsing Biden is endorsing the ongoing genocide in Gaza’ Within Our Lifetime wrote in a thread on X promoting the demonstration at the Saturday rally.
Pro-Palestinian protesters disrupted the pro-Biden rally chanting: ‘Intifada, Intifada’, and ‘Genocide Joe has got to go.’
‘I’m not supposed to fight back? We’re gonna show them who… we are!’ Bowman told the crowd as the pro-Palestine protesters attempted to disrupt the rally with chants in a video uploaded to X.
The protesters then headed to the politicians’ campaign buses.
According to a video posted to X, they wrote slogans on the buses and placed stickers on the coaches’ panelling.
Bowman, himself, then proceeded to lead the protesters in a ‘ceasefire now’ chant.
He faces a tough re-election bid in New York’s 16th congressional district. He is set to face off against AIPAC-backed Democrat George Latimer later this week on June 26. The division between the two candidates’ views on US support for Israel in its war against Gaza has been a highlight of the election.
In the meantime, analysts say the results of Bowman’s election bid will be a litmus test determining the future of the Democratic Party, with Israeli forces’ months-long genocidal war on the Gaza Strip billed as a main determinant in Biden’s future.
US Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar have rebuked Biden for supporting the ongoing Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
- In Italy, Rome, Milan, and Messina were among the cities hosting rallies in solidarity with the Palestinians at the weekend.
On Saturday, in the Italian capital, Palestinian students organised a rally entitled ‘Stop the Genocide’ to protest against the ongoing US-Israeli genocide in Gaza.
Weekend after weekend, hundreds of pro-Palestine protests have been held across Italy for over the last eight months.
Protesters say now is not the time to ease the pressure against Israel as the Zionists are counting on people’s fatigue and are waiting for their resolve to weaken.
People at the rally said that amid the death and devastation that has been unleashed by Israel against Gaza since October last year, the thing that perhaps hurts Palestinians the most is the inaction of some of their Muslim brethren in West Asia.
Protesters believe that the silence, and at times complicity, of certain Arab countries is disheartening.
Some protesters argued that exports to Israel from Egypt, The United Arab Emirates, and Jordan, have surged in 2024 compared to the previous year, despite Tel Aviv’s genocidal war on Gaza.
Maya Issa of the Palestinian Student Collective said: ‘For over eight months, we’ve been staging protests against the complicity in the genocide of the Palestinians of the international community, of the west, of Italy.
‘It is now time to also point the finger at some Arab countries that have only paid lip service to supporting Palestine and have done nothing to concretely help us.
‘Why is Egypt still blocking humanitarian aid at the Rafah crossing?’
- A pro-Palestinian demonstration in Ghent, Belgium, attracted a significant turnout of over a thousand last Saturday, calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and urging sanctions against Israel.
Footage showed protesters brandishing flags and maps of Palestine, as well as carrying impactful signs with messages like ‘Student Intifada’ and ‘End bloodshed and dehumanisation now.’
Several civil society organisations in Belgium have joined the call to boycott Israel, including prominent groups like 11.11.11, Vrede vzw, and the Ghent Coalition for Palestine, with the notable presence of Belgium’s Deputy Prime Minister, Petra De Sutter.
Known for her support of South Africa’s position against Israel, De Sutter has been vocal in advocating for trade sanctions to be imposed by the Belgian government.
