Palestine Tet – 32 – The Wasteland: The Colorado Congressional Delegation’s pretexts for not supporting an Immediate Ceasefire.

Denver, Colorado. November 4, 2023. Photo Credit: Alejandra Castaneda

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“You can’t sincerely sympathize with the slaughter taking place in Gaza and then work and vote against a ceasefire. Those comments of sympathy, those tears are crocodile tears. You just want the credit for sounding humane and then you do whatever the heck you want”

– Nancy Fey speaking of the Members of Congress from Colorado coming up with pathetic excuses of why they can’t support an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Palestine.

“America is actively working to prevent a ceasefire… America is already part of this war. The trickle of humanitarian aid is matched by a flood of weapons going to Israel, so America is directly aiding the war.”

– Daniel Levy, liberal Israeli Commentator –

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1. In the latest Gaza Humanitarian Report distributed to members of Congress by the Colorado Palestine Community and Allies the facts of the extent of the horrific damage that Israel has perpetrated on the Palestinian people of Gaza was elaborated. It included:

• Death toll and injuries in Gaza stood at 12,000 including 4702 children and 3160 women. 29,000 injured. 3,600 people including 1755 children are reported missing/trapped in the rubble
• 1.4 million Gazans displaced
• Schools, places of worship, hospitals and UN facilities targeted. This includes 127 hospitals attacked
• Gaza is in a state of societal collapse.

The report, with references, continues to document the implosion of the different forms of life support under attack by Israeli missile strikes from the air and increasing the number of IDF forces entering Gaza on the ground.

The same day, in South Africa, the parliament there voted in favor of closing the Israeli embassy.

2. We’ve seen so many of them – Jason Crow, Yadira Caraveo, John Hickenlooper, Michael Bennet, Joe Neguse, Brittany Pettersen – all in-person meetings that lasted about an hour each. The “we” who organized these meetings is the Colorado Palestine Club Lobbying Committee, members of Colorado’s Palestinian Community, along with local supporters and constituents.

Our purpose – ask/press the members of Congress to publicly come out and support calls for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Palestine, to freeze the fighting, and begin the process of setting up an international architecture to resolve the crisis. At the time of this writing we have yet to visit Diana DeGette (D-Colorado representing greater Denver metro area).

Will her take be different? At all more promising?

Oh yes, of course and to end Israel’s genocidal bombing of Gaza, freeze its “mowing the lawn”, ethnic cleansing project in Gaza.

It was as if, one way or another, all of these members of Congress, had consulted each other and come away with a common take on how to respond to the Israeli frenzy: if necessary, meet with the Palestinian delegation and their allies; be personally polite, personable (and they were); sympathize with the humanitarian crisis – even shed a tear or two if you are able without blaming either Israel or the United States for having caused it; encourage the participants to talk more, so you will have to talk less; find a way to turn the discussion away from supporting a ceasefire using whatever filibuster tactics at your disposal (Hickenlooper was especially apt here); if it is not possible to guide the discussion away from a ceasefire, when all else fails, blame Hamas. Shake everyone’s hand and say a few personal words at the end.

3. The bottom line that all shared:

1. Call for a “humanitarian pause” but not a more lasting ceasefire.
2. Avoid any suggestion that the Biden Administration should put any pressure on Israel to negotiate pauses, ceasefires, truces – thus giving Israel a green light to continue it Gaza butchery
3. Defend the Administration’s decision to give Israel an additional $14 billion in aid and an ample supply of weapons with no strings attached.
4. Aid should be used for Palestinian settlement outside of Gaza – essentially – encouraging Palestinians to leave their land; financing “Nakba-2”
5. Blame Hamas for U.S. reluctance to support a ceasefire on the grounds that Hamas cannot be trusted to honor the agreement (while the Netanyahu government can be), although it has been the Israeli government that has violated ceasefires that Hamas has honored.
6. Besides avoiding discussion of ceasefire, counter any attempt for participants to use words like “ethnic cleansing”, “occupation”, “settler colonialism’ and above all “genocide” to describe Israeli actions.

Photo Credit: Gary Anderson

Although there were differences in tone, when it came to the content of their remarks stripped down to the essentials, all of them came together around the same political line. They:

1.  oppose a ceasefire and will not sign on to Cori Bush’sbill in the House of Representatives calling on the Biden Administration to work towards achieving one. This translated into a clear “green light” for Israel to continue its murderous campaign against Gaza.

2. All the blame for the current crisis is placed at Hamas’ door; Israel is viewed to be the innocent victim. 75 years of ethnic cleansing, punctuated genocide is never mentioned nor is the “O” word (Occupation).  Everything between Israel and the Palestinians was honky dory until October 7, 2023 when Hamas and associates launched its military offensive.

3. Refused any suggestion of cutting U.S. aid to Israel in any manner or using withholding any portion of that aid to press Israel to the negotiating table.

Put another way, they held the line on the Biden-Blinken-Sullivan-Madame Warmonger’s goal to destroy the Palestinian Resistance (in the name of course of exterminating Hamas).

Occasionally a hint of honesty entered into their opposition to a ceasefire. Several of them – here names are not so important – openly admitted that they were under strong pressure from big (Jewish) funders, organizations like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), and AIPAC to avoid supporting a ceasefire or face the inevitable loss of support. One of them admitted that when she got elected she thought she’d be dealing mostly with domestic issues and that the flood of foreign policy issues came as an uncomfortable surprise.

None of them showed a shred of ethical or political courage nor could they respond to the most obvious contradiction of the all: that their “humanitarian concerns” are meaningless as long as Israel is permitted to continue its war against Gaza civilians.

Their effort to separate Hamas from the rest of the Palestinian Resistance was both crude and ineffective. Old story: the Palestinian people are “fine” but the PLO is terrible, terrorists; the Iraqi people are wonderful, too bad about the evil Saddam Hussein; ah Libya would be such a great place without Khadaffi! And now the evil Hamas, cause of all problems between Israel and Palestine.

A few afterthoughts:

Disappointing yes, surprising no. All just falling in line to the Biden Administration’s policy. Nothing more, nothing less. And so they will survive or go down politically with that policy. I felt, with a few exceptions, that the issue is over their head and they know rather little about the situation on the ground in the region, nor frankly anything about the roots of U.S. Middle East policy. Good script readers, that’s about it. All the personal little touches were simply other ways to cover their ignorant butts.

On their favorite punching bag – Hamas.

Of course I’m sitting here in Denver; couldn’t be further away from the action but … the realist in me says that Hamas – both as an idea and as a component of the Palestinian Resistance – will not be eliminated, exterminated or even weakened by Israel’s Gaza terror campaign. To the contrary, their influence among Palestinians will soar and is already doing so; their overall role within the Resistance strengthen.

The Biden Administration is under the illusion that Israel can eliminate Hamas (and has thus encouraged Israel to continue with the attacks on Gaza). It won’t happen. Just a neo-Con, imperialist pipedream.

Sooner or later, the United States will have to negotiate with a Palestinian delegation in which in which Hamas is included. This is a simple but poignant fact.  But then Washington has a long tradition of trying to cherry pick with whom it is willing to negotiate. It couldn’t do it with the Vietnamese, nor with the Afghans.

It won’t be able to with Palestine either.