White House says Rafah strike does not violate Biden's warnings to Israel

[Celerity]

As images circulate of the deadly Israeli strike on civilians, Biden confronts calls to make good on his threat to suspend offensive weapons

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/28/biden-rafah-gaza-civilian-deaths-israel-palestinians/

https://archive.ph/cEkqt

A woman sits with a child as Palestinians flee Rafah to escape the Israeli military operation in southern Gaza. (Hatem Khaled/Reuters)

The White House said Tuesday that Israel had not violated President Biden’s warnings on the conduct of its military campaign in Rafah after an airstrike there over the weekend killed at least 45 Palestinians and injured hundreds more, suggesting the United States would impose no consequences for the Israeli action. The airstrike on a makeshift tent encampment caused a fire to break out in the Tal al-Sultan neighborhood of Rafah, a city in southern Gaza, creating one of the most horrifying scenes of the war in the Palestinian enclave. Images of charred bodies and videos of parents burning alive as their children screamed for help ricocheted across social media, prompting renewed global outrage and growing calls for Israel to halt its offensive in Rafah.

Several Biden officials, including Vice President Harris, lamented the “heartbreaking” and “tragic” scenes and loss of life. But they said the mass-casualty event did not cross the “red line” Biden announced this month, when he said the United States would suspend delivery of offensive weapons to Israel if it went into “population centers” in Rafah. White House spokesman John Kirby said Tuesday that Israel had not started a “major ground operation” in the city. State Department spokesman Matt Miller added that Israel had not launched the type of offensive that it carried out in the cities of Gaza City and Khan Younis, where airstrikes leveled entire buildings and hundreds of Palestinian civilians were killed in a day.

“We still don’t believe that a major ground operation in Rafah is warranted. We still don’t want to see the Israelis, as we say, smash into Rafah with large units over large pieces of territory,” Kirby said. The weekend tragedy, he said, “speaks very clearly to the challenge of military airstrikes in densely populated areas of Gaza, including Rafah, because of the risk of civilian casualties, which of course happened terribly in this case, a horrible loss of life.” He noted that Israel said it used 37-pound bombs in the attack, aimed at killing Hamas officials it said were holed up in the city. “A 37-pound bomb is not a big bomb,” he said. “If it is in fact what they used, it is indicative of an effort to be precise and targeted.”

Kirby and other officials pointed to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s comments on Monday that the civilian casualties were a “tragic mistake” and said they would wait for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to release the results of an investigation into what went wrong. The IDF said two Hamas militants were killed in the attack, including the commander of Hamas operations in the West Bank. Some experts and Democratic lawmakers said Israel’s airstrike — along with reports of Israeli tanks rolling into the center of Rafah on Tuesday — had clearly crossed Biden’s red line and urged the president to respond accordingly.

snip

[Lonestarblue]

1. Blowing a baby's head and children's limbs off and burning people alive doesn't cross a red line! What does?

[nancy1942]

11. Apparently not.

Anything goes. Biden is on the wrong side of this atrocity.

[sinkingfeeling]

2. This is not helping Biden. I'm more than annoyed by the US position on Israel's "war".

[lark]

3. Biden is sadly blowing it! He needs to open his mind and see what this is causing.

Netanyahu is much closer to being an enemy than a friend of this country and is doing nothing but increasing the terrorism his country will face. He too should be in jail, just like tsf. Biden needs to wake up.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

4. red goalposts

[Buns_of_Fire]

5. If Bibi keeps this up, the US may have to send him a strongly-worded letter. nt

[Nanjeanne]

6. Not a surprise. Just a disappointment.

[bluestarone]

7. Joe's ok. I would NOT want to be in his shoes on this.

He doesn't have much in the line of choices here. No matter what he's the BEST choice in November. We ALL are very worried about our Democracy, BUT put yourself in Ukrainians future. The day TFG is elected they ALL know it's over for them. Hell, the nuclear bomb could drop that day!!

[LuvLoogie]

8. This is an answer like Dukakis gave when asked

about hypothetical violence against his wife.

Netanyahu is a ghoul. His IDF are infected with racist ghouls. Talk about qualified immunity.

Joe really needs to reconsider. "Outreach" ain't gonna cut it.

[Nanjeanne]

9. I understand Joe is a friend of Israel. But real friends take the keys away when the friend has too much

to drink and insists on driving!

[Lonestarblue]

13. The US can still be a friend to Israel without supporting Netanyahu and this insane war.

The problem really is that the current Israeli government does not want two states and is doing everything it can to prevent Palestinians from having their own state, which is directly against the UN charter supporting two states. There is plenty of blame on both sides for this conflict to still be going on after 75+ years of fighting, but blaming at this point accomplishes nothing.

Israelis, Palestinians, the US, the contiguous Arab nations, and the world need to see a path forward. Netanyahu and his terrorist settlers refuse to concede that Palestinians have any rights to the land they have occupied for thousands of years. I am posting below a Times article showing some of the history of Gaza, like a mosque dating from the 1500s, that Israel is destroying.

I think the US is the only broker that can devise a path forward. Much can be done now to establish that there will be a Palestinian state regardless of what Netanyahu does. Such a state cannot happen overnight, but at least announcing plans and a commission to put together a future path for a Palestinian state would go a long way toward balancing the negative attitudes toward current US policy of, in effect, approving of everything Israel does. The Biden administration may not see genocide, but many people do. Denying it just plays to Netanyahu’s benefit.

From the NYT about the destruction in Gaza and some of its history clearly showing that Palestinians were the indigenous people at the time of the UN declaration of two states.

“THE MOSQUE SITE in the heart of Gaza City has been a place of worship for thousands of years, dating back, according to some accounts, to the Philistines whose temple walls were said to have been pulled down by Samson, the Israelite warrior.

A Christian Byzantine church erected in the fifth century on top of the ruins of an earlier Roman temple was repurposed in the seventh century as a mosque following the Muslim conquest of Gaza. Some researchers suggest the space may have served both Muslims and Christians during this period. But that building was destroyed when Gaza fell to the Crusaders around 1100, and a church was later built at the site. Parts of the church, in particular its central nave, were repurposed as a mosque in the 12th century when Muslims regained control of Gaza.”

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/05/28/arts/gaza-omari-mosque.html?unlocked_article_code=1.vk0.uPxd.89XoWBLbUeG0&smid=url-share

[tritsofme]

12. You can count on President Biden to avoid demagoguery and react with a sober and reasonable mind

In stark contrast to those criticizing him!

[Celerity]

14. The Netanyahu regime is making a mockery of American policy.

[BannonsLiver]

15. +1

Though I do kind of enjoy the bleating.