Israel and its allies

US President Joe Biden landed in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, despite what some naively thought may be at least a delayed trip given that it had only been hours to Israel’s terrorist airstrike on a hospital in Gaza – an attack that led to at least 500 killed and many injured. A hug, a press talk, and a happy acceptance of the Israeli spin on Tuesday’s hospital bombing are the key takeaways from Biden’s Tel Aviv visit, affirming that the US remains firmly in Team Israel. The American president has backed Israel’s bizarre allegation that it was the Islamic Jihad that attacked the hospital – a suggestion so odd that even on face value one is at a loss for words. Countless fact checks have already appeared on social media, countering Israel’s claims. But the American president will not have any of that, saying that based on what he had “seen”, the attack was done by “the other team”. Apart from the grotesque sports metaphor, the Israel-Palestine situation has laid bare Western hypocrisy regarding war, terror, and human life.

While adding the disclaimer that “Hamas does not represent all the Palestinian people and has brought them only suffering”, Biden has also said that he is asking Israel to provide “life-saving capacity to help the Palestinians who are innocent and caught in the middle of this”. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose term in office has been one of the cruellest for the Palestinians, has resorted to not just disinformation but clear lies, his government spinning every act of violence the IDF perpetrates as either self-defence or an act by Hamas. Netanyahu has, however, found a “true friend” in Biden, per the Israeli prime minister whose press statement alongside the American president seemed to be a reiteration of continued violence against Gaza. Back in the Middle East, members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) held an urgent meeting on Wednesday in Jeddah and came up with a less-than-urgent message for Israel: the OIC strongly “condemns” the “brutal Israeli massacre” in the hospital and sees it as “organised state terrorism and a war crime”. The OIC has asked the international community to “urgently intervene to stop the war crimes committed by the Israeli occupation in the Gaza Strip and provide international protection for the Palestinian people” and has said the “Israeli occupation [is] accountable for the consequences of its crimes, terrorist practices and brutal attacks against the Palestinian people”.

The OIC’s words may be correct but those expecting anything stronger may have to wait some more – perhaps even indefinitely? The Iranian foreign minister had suggested at the OIC that member-states should impose an oil embargo and other sanctions on Israel over its violence against the Palestinians. Given the OIC’s history, that would have been a surprising result. But where do Palestinians stand now? The world’s Western powers have already come out strongly on the side of Israel while Palestine is left in the hands of the OIC countries and others who have historically not managed much of a way out for them. Add to that the non-stop obfuscation, apologia, and spin by Israeli authorities and their Western allies – and it seems even Tuesday’s horrifying hospital bombing will be forgotten soon instead of being designated a confirmed war crime. Not all is lost though; after Israel’s strike on the hospital, Jordan cancelled a summit it was to host in Amman with the American president and Egyptian and Palestinian leaders. We need more solidarity across what is called the Muslim world – as well as across the whole of the Global South – for the Palestinian people whose resistance against ethnic cleansing, Israeli terror and now open genocide is almost of mythical proportions. Meanwhile, the world looks on as Israeli airstrikes continued into Wednesday as well, as Gazans continued to be without water, and as humanitarian aid continued to be stuck somewhere between the land of apathy and the island of despair.