Several journalists loudly shouted down U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken over the war in Gaza on Thursday, repeatedly interrupting his final press conference as he sought to defend his handling of the 15-month-old conflict.
Israel's genocide in Gaza will be the legacy of the outgoing Biden administration in foreign affairs.
"Criminal! Why aren't you in The Hague," shouted Sam Husseini, an independent journalist and longtime critic of Washington’s foreign policy. The scene in the State Department briefing room was unprecedented and ended when security personnel forcibly picked up Husseini and carried him out of the room as he continued to heckle Blinken.
Another journalist, Max Blumenthal, editor of the blog Grayzone, yelled at Blinken, “Your father-in-law was an Israel lobbyist. Your grandfather was an Israel lobbyist. Are you compromised by Israel? Why did you allow the Holocaust of our time to happen? … How does it feel to have your legacy be genocide?” Blumenthal was also escorted out by State Department staff. Earlier during the briefing, he asked, “Why did you keep the bombs flowing when we had a deal in May? We all knew we had a deal. Everyone in this room knows we had a deal, Tony, and you kept the bombs flowing.”
Since October 7, 2023, Blinken and Biden have supplied Israel with daily shipments of the deadliest weapons the US makes. Those weapons were used by Israel to kill over 46,000 Palestinians, under the pretext that it was fighting terrorists, when the fact is that Israel is an illegal occupation power and the Palestinians have a fundamental right to fight occupation. Resisting a foreign occupier is not terrorism.
In both the World Court and the International Criminal Court, cases have been brought by countries like South Africa and other countries. The courts have found sufficient evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and Benjamin Netanyahu and his former War Minister Yoav Gallant are now under arrest warrants issued by the ICC. Israel is guilty of genocide, arbitrary mass killings and starvation of the indigenous Palestinian population, destruction of schools and hospitals, targeted assassinations of journalists and medical professionals, destruction of villages, home demolitions, and expulsion of their inhabitants, and the destruction of cultural and religious sites.
Observers compare the failure of the Biden-Blinken administration at upholding international law in the case of Palestine while making it a priority in the case of other nations - the double-standard and the Israeli exception - with the W. Bush invasion of Iraq which was justified with lies, misinformation, and made-up arguments. Bush himself was heckled at a press conference and a journalist threw a shoe at him.
No comments:
Post a Comment