The other day I wrote that one thing to keep in mind as Antony Blinken makes statements clearly contradicted by reality is that the man is stupid. This is a guy who thought that singing a song about how fucked-up 1980's America was at the time (Neil Young's "Rockin' in the Free World") at a nightclub in Kiev would inspire the people of that country to fight on and continue to die for the USA's proxy war against Russia. No matter how you look at that action it looks stupid. Because it WAS stupid.
Antony Blinken comes from a family of diplomats. He went to the best schools and he had a lot of connections and so he went into the family business. He didn't have the brains or the talent to go into anything else. "Diplomacy" for the USA consists of bullying countries too weak to even think about defending themselves and shamelessly lying about the actions of more powerful countries and then shamelessly lying to their faces and attempting to bully them.
I'd be great at math if my teachers were afraid to mark me wrong when I was wrong. But I'd still be wrong and my eventual PhD in mathematics would be garbage. It's about the same with high-level US diplomats like Blinken, Nuland, and so on.
But, anyway, Biden got a ceasefire resolution passed at the UN Security Council. Then he presented a deal to Hamas and Netanyahu's government. Biden said that the plan was Israeli. While he was saying that, Netanyahu said he rejected the deal. Biden and Blinken shamelessly pretend that didn't happen. Hamas has shown itself open to discussion but they have concerns about the open-ended nature of the deal's "Phase-2" which says that following a hostage exchange, and before a permanent ceasefire and reconstruction of Gaza, Israel can renew its genocide if it thinks Hamas isn't negotiating in "good faith."
Biden’s plan calls for a negotiation during Phase One that would lead to a permanent ceasefire. He even noted, as did the Security Council, that if negotiations need longer to succeed, Phase One, including its temporary ceasefire, will be extended for as long as it takes.
But crucially, the plan also says that if Israel decides Hamas is not negotiating “in good faith,” it can resume its murderous rampage through Gaza. And if that happened, it would be doing so with the full public blessing of the U.S. — a blessing even more explicit than it has given until now.
Blinken has been running around saying that this deal is "virtually identical" to one that Hamas itself proposed in early May of this year.
“The proposal that President Biden laid out 12 days ago was virtually identical to one that Hamas had accepted and put forward itself on May the 6th. So there’s no reason why this agreement should not be reached. The only reason would be Hamas continuing to try to change the terms.”
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The subtlety hidden in the term “virtually identical” that Blinken used attempts to hide some crucial differences, and betrays the real point of Blinken’s public relations sojourn.
The Mondoweiss article reminds us that, at the time, the Biden administration was saying (falsely) that Hamas rejected that deal.
Biden’s proposal is very similar to the one Hamas accepted on May 6. Notably, the United States at the time explicitly said that Hamas had not accepted the proposal. Blinken’s blatant contradiction of his own agency’s words is typical of the prevarication that the United States and Israel have maintained throughout recent weeks, during which the Biden administration has gone to great lengths to create the illusion of pressing for a ceasefire.
Now Biden is saying that Hamas accepted the earlier deal so why isn't it accepting this "virtually identical" one?
However, there is a key difference between the May 6 proposal and the current one, and it lies in Phase Two of the plan.
Biden’s plan calls for a negotiation during Phase One that would lead to a permanent ceasefire. He even noted, as did the Security Council, that if negotiations need longer to succeed, Phase One, including its temporary ceasefire, will be extended for as long as it takes.
But crucially, the plan also says that if Israel decides Hamas is not negotiating “in good faith,” it can resume its murderous rampage through Gaza. And if that happened, it would be doing so with the full public blessing of the U.S. — a blessing even more explicit than it has given until now.
In the end, the whole thing is bullshit. In a world with actual journalists in the Washington Press Corps, such blatant, obvious lies would be attacked relentlessly, rather than parroted and used to establish the "first draft of history." Biden and Blinken would be held to account and their mental mediocrity and moral degeneracy held up for all the world to see.
Alas, we do not live in such a world. Biden and Blinken can lie about an Israeli proposal that the Israeli government itself rejects, and how it is "virtually identical" to an earlier Hamas proposal (that Biden and Blinken at the time blamed Hamas for rejecting) when it is quite different in important respects. And, finally, they can blame Hamas for rejecting the deal when the Netanyahu government had been openly rejecting it from the beginning.
Blinken’s act has a different motive. Aaron David Miller, a long-time diplomat who served in both Democratic and Republican administrations as a leading Middle East envoy, tweeted on Wednesday, “The more this plays out, [the] more it resembles what my former boss James Baker called dead cat diplomacy. The objective is not to reach a deal but to ensure if it fails, the dead cat is on [the] other’s doorstep. Even if a deal is reached, likely won’t go beyond phase 1 for that reason.”
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Despite the constant disdain that Biden, Blinken, and the entire administration have shown for Palestinian lives, it has become clear that their support for Israel’s genocide is hurting them politically. Yet even the obviously feigned concern they occasionally try to show for Palestinian civilians has not sat well with the pro-Israel corner of the Democratic party.
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As long as that self-imposed red line is there, Biden needs to find another way to appease voters at home. Miller’s dead cat, Biden hopes, will allow him to appease the moderate liberals in the party who are uncomfortable with genocide but are looking for a reason to vote for Biden out of fear of Donald Trump, even while he continues supporting Israel’s genocide.
Biden believes that Israel is an asset in the Middle East, rather than a liability. Therefore it is to be supported. Biden might have some twisted ideological/historical notion of Israel as a save-haven for Jews in a clearly hostile world. But that latter possibility is unimportant. More important is Israel's existence as a publicly subsidized purchaser of the USA's military-industrial complex. All of the weapons Biden has been frantically shipping to Israel aren't free. (And if they came from existing US military stockpiles their replacements won't be.) Also, while Israel and Netanyahu do NOT rule the USA, Biden can no more easily tell Netanyahu and Israel to fuck themselves than he could insult the fossil fuels industry if it had a conflict with Wall Street. One actor might be more powerful than another but it remains powerful and can find ways to strike back.
At the end of the day though, all of Biden's "concerns" and this "ceasefire" proposal are merely for public consumption. He is an enthusiastic participant in this genocide. Partly out of inertia. Partly out of racism. A stupid, evil, twisted degenerate doing what stupid, evil, twisted degenerates do.
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