Has the White House ‘weaponised’ Biden’s senility?

Alameen Templeton

Has the US “weaponised” its president, Joe Biden’s, senility? It may be an explanation for the White House’s “Bliden blindness” – its inability or unwillingness to see the mountains of undeniable proof Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
Schools, hospitals, ambulances, water works, roads, sewers, journalists, journalist outlets, their homes, their families – entire clans at times with one bomb – complete city blocks have been pummelled into dust and gore along with their inhabitants for 315 days and still the White house sees nothing as the “official”, but contested, death toll soars past 40 000.
If Biden is able to claim “diminished responsibility” as a defence against any future prosecutions for aiding and abetting Israel’s genocide, could that get his whole administration off the hook “because we were only following orders”?
Just when you think it’s reached rock bottom, the White House starts to dig a deepening wormhole into depravity and moral isolation. And that begs the questions millions of people around the world are asking: “What the hell do they think they’re doing? This is like Hitler. How do they think they can get away with this?”
Could Biden’s well-known battle with senility be the answer?
The latest episode of “Biden blindness” is the House’s decision not to sanction Netzah Yehuda, the notorious Israeli military unit committing egregious human rights violations against Palestinians, most of them civilians.
TRT reports a state department panel had recommended sanctions on the battalion dominated by Hilltop Youth, a radical right-wing settler movement, in accordance with the US’s “Leahy Laws”. These outlaw American aid and military assistance to foreign states who are accused of “gross violations of human rights”.
But that hasn’t stopped state secretary Anthony Blinken, a Jewish American who believes that “security assistance to Israel is sacrosanct”, (probably because “my boss told me”) has decided Netzah Yehuda, doesn’t fit the Leahy Law’s definition of “gross”.
TRT notes this is “showing once again how Washington has found ways to look away from the ongoing carnage in the besieged Palestinian enclave”. It’s weaponised senility and it means the US doesn’t really know what it’s doing or where it’s going and that’s just fine by everyone because “it’s working for Israel”.
Netzah Yehuda is packed with members of ultra-Orthodox Jewish groups, and their atrocities had made the panel consider sanctions on the unit in the first place.
Settler expansion, denial of Palestinian self-determination, theft of water wells and pasturage, the extension of Israeli law over the entire “Section C” of the West Bank, the houses confiscated and stolen – all these are illegal under international law, and the occupation is in reality annexation, theft, the International Court of Justice has ruled.
But still the White House remains set steadfastly on its course to oblivion and future prosecution.
The latest US reluctance to act against the Israeli military is not unprecedented.
“We have to understand that US politicians have been accommodating because of the Zionist influence and the pro-Israeli forces within society, whether they are Jewish organisations or non-Jewish organisations, including members of Congress, particularly Republicans and hardcore Zionist Democrats,” Sami al Arian, a leading Palestinian professor, tells TRT World.
Due to the Zionist influence within the US administration, top bureaucrats like Blinken “have been siding with the Israeli government every single time against their own government”, Arian, the director of the Center for Islam and Global Affairs at the Istanbul Sabahattin Zaim University.
The US’s “ironclad” support has emboldened Israel to carry out its genocidal war on Palestinians, and this makes the US “complicit” in all the atrocities taking place not only during the ongoing war but throughout the conflict, Arian says.
This is known to many Biden administration officials who have resigned, citing the abuse of humanitarian law in Gaza and their fears they could be held individually responsible.
But the White House has continued relentlessly and it appears those remaining are lining up to claim they were receiving orders from a senile octogenarian who didn’t know what he was doing.
The Israeli army, armed and backed by its ally US, continues to kill Palestinian children with impunity in Gaza.
“Unfortunately, there has not been any kind of response that could deter the US from pursuing such complicitous policies, aiding and abetting in the torture and the killing and the murder of Palestinians by this unit, as well as the Israeli army,” says the professor, referring to Netzah Yehuda, which is now operating in Gaza after committing many atrocities in the occupied West Bank.
The “laissez faire senility defence” also frees up Benjamin Netanyahu, the longest-serving prime minister of Israel, and his far-right coalition partners to continue to commit war crimes against Palestinians.
“The State Department has never made an independent determination of a gross violation of human rights by an Israeli unit. Ever,” Charles Blaha, the former director of the State Department’s Office of Security and Human Rights, said in a media report. Blaha was also a former member of the Israel Leahy Vetting Forum.
Another former State Department official concurred.
“Had the US used the leverage that Leahy laws provide over the years to encourage the IDF [Israeli army] to crack down on misbehaviour and to snuff out its current culture of impunity, we would have seen at the very least a much stronger unit discipline (than what we see in Gaza right now) at a tactical level,” Josh Paul, former a state department director told CNN.
A recent State Department statement claims that because the Israeli army “remediated” human rights “violations” of Netzah Yehuda, Blinken decided not to sanction it. However, it was not clear what kind of measures the Israeli army had taken to remedy the group.
Haaretz has shown how Israeli soldiers are using Palestinians as human shields, an accusation Tel Aviv has repeatedly used against Hamas.
Some suggest that Blinken’s decision came after his “quiet” talks with Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant, who reportedly assured the American diplomat that the army would take punitive action against the battalion. The Israeli army had previously halted the activities of Sfar Hamidbar, another controversial unit dominated by extremist settlers, TRT reports.
However, an extensive media investigation has shown that the battalion’s former commanders were never punished, but were promoted instead.
The Israeli battalion, formed in 1999 to accommodate demands of ultra-Orthodox Haredi Jews who refused to serve alongside female soldiers, has had a notorious record, with its members facing many court-martial.
Netzah Yehuda, which means Judah’s Victory, is part of the Kfir Brigade, the largest infantry brigade in the Israeli army.
TRT says: “The brigade’s deputy commander is Mati Shevach, who had led Netzah Yehuda until August 2022. During his tenure, 78-year-old Palestinian-American Omar Assad died in the custody of his soldiers in January 2022.
“An Israeli army investigation concluded that Assad died due to “a moral failure and poor decision-making on the part of the soldiers” of Netzah Yehuda, claiming that it would bar Shevach, the battalion commander, from commanding positions. However, in contrast to the army’s pledge, he was promoted to a leading role in the largest infantry brigade.
“Soldiers complicit in Assad’s death also faced no criminal charges. Shevach now trains soldiers for combat missions in Gaza, according to an Israeli army statement.
“Shevach is not the only one to get promotions in exchange for his battalion’s atrocities. Lt. Col. Nitai Okashi, who led the notorious Netzah Yehuda between 2018 and 2020, was also rewarded. Under Okashi’s leadership, his soldiers assaulted a Palestinian father and son in early 2019 and launched racist attacks on Bedouin men at a gas station in late 2019 in the occupied West Bank.
“Apart from a brief detention of 14 soldiers, the unit faced no serious action.
“Like Shevach, Okashi was also promoted to higher roles, including commander of the Jerusalem Brigade, which has operated across Gaza since the beginning of the ongoing war. In March, he got “a further promotion,” according to CNN.
One Netzah Yehuda member opened up: “A lot of us probably did not see Arabs, Palestinians in particular, as someone with rights – okay, like they’re really the occupier of some of the land, and they need to be moved,” the former soldier told a media outlet. The whistleblower did not want to be named due to fears of revenge attacks.
According to Arian, ultra-Orthodox Jews are very extremist factions of Judaism who believe that non-Jews (like Palestinians) are not of equal status with them and share the status of animals.
“They are willing to commit all these atrocities, all these despicable acts with these kinds of teachings and permissions by their rabbis. There are many, many rabbis (who), for many decades, have been giving permissions for these people to commit whatever they can against the Palestinians,” he says.