The Speech Biden Won’t Give

By Dan Fischer - Promoting Enduring Peace, November 2023

Nov. 11. President Biden could prevent many further Palestinian and Israeli deaths by giving this speech insisting on an immediate ceasefire in Gaza along with a release of hostages. It would be widely popular among the two-thirds of eligible voters—including 80% of Democrats, 57% of independents, and 56% of Republicans—who favor a ceasefire. It’s unlikely that Biden will give such a speech, since he sees Israel as an enforcer for the U.S. and global elite. Thus, massacres will likely continue and the “genocide” designation could become less and less ambiguous. If there’s anything that might force Biden to stop the bloodshed, it’s the peaceful uprisings worldwide demanding mutual security and a swift transition to a democracy between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea.

Good evening. Earlier this month, I was challenged by one Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg: “Mr. President, if you care about Jewish people, as a rabbi, I need you to call for a ceasefire right now.” I have been thinking about these words ever since.

When I ran for vice president in 2008 and for president in 2020, I promised to be a steadfast friend of the Israeli people. Being a good friend sometimes means stepping up to offer criticism. It means not enabling self-destructive behaviors. As true friends of the Israeli people, we Americans must demand an immediate end to the massacres of Palestinians, a mutual release of all Israeli and Palestinian hostages and prisoners, and a policy shift toward respecting universal human rights as guaranteed under international law.

It’s been nearly five weeks since October 7, and it’s estimated that more than 1,200 Israelis and 11,000 Palestinians are dead. The full death toll may be higher, with many Palestinian bodies lying under the rubble of destroyed and damaged homes, schools, hospitals, mosques, and marketplaces. It is clear that the vast majority of fatalities on each side were civilians. In Gaza, more than two-thirds of the dead are estimated to be women and children.

Around 240 Israelis were taken hostage on October 7, and we can only hope that they have survived the past month’s often indiscriminate crossfire. Meanwhile, thousands of Palestinians are detained without any charge or trial, in Israeli prisons where they’re tortured and ill-treated.

My fellow Americans, I apologize for not being more honest with you. Over the past weeks, I have amplified Israeli propaganda points even when they contradicted the best available evidence. I claimed I saw photos of babies beheaded by Hamas, even though I had not seen them and was relying on the words of Israeli officials. I accused Hamas of routinely using “human shields,” although Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and UN fact-finders have time and again found no evidence supporting the claim. I disputed the integrity of the Gaza’s Health Ministry death toll estimates, despite their numbers being historically reliable and even though my administration’s assistant secretary Barbara Leaf had informed me the death toll could be significantly higher.

I should have forthrightly told the Israelis that recent history suggests that Hamas won’t likely be defeated by military means. Gazan support for Hamas significantly increased after Israel’s bombardments in 2014 and 2021. There’s nothing like war and massacre to harden one’s heart. As Palestinian anti-Hamas activist Rami Aman has explained, Israeli missiles are “creating more Hamas, more Hamas more Hamas.”

I have failed to denounce the frankly genocidal incitement coming out of the mouths of Israeli leaders. I should have spoken up when Netanyahu invoked a Biblical instruction to “slay both man and woman, infant and suckling” and when President Isaac Herzog declared, “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible.” I should have said something when Defense Minister Yoav Gallant dehumanized Palestinians as “human animals” and military spokesperson Daniel Hagari explained “the emphasis is on damage and not accuracy.” I should have voiced outrage when the New York Times reported “Israeli leaders believed mass civilian casualties were an acceptable price,” and officials cited “the dropping of the two atomic warheads in Hiroshima and Nagasaki” as a model.

In truth, Israel has clearly been committing war crimes with U.S. weaponry and support. This will no longer happen. Collective punishment, disproportionate attacks, targeting of civilians, and use of white phosphorus will no longer be tolerated. The vicious cycle of bloodshed and bitterness needs to end. In the words of Representative Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian member of Congress, millions of Americans have protested because they “don’t believe the answer to war crimes is more war crimes.” 

On October 24, an Israeli pilot dropped a U.S.-supplied missile on a three-story house in southern Gaza where the poet and journalist Ahmed Abu Artema and dozens of his extended family members resided. The blast injured Abu Artema and instantly killed his two aunts, a cousin and a stepmother. Abu Artema’s 12 year-old son Abboud and 10 year-old niece Joud were critically injured and would both die in intensive care over the following days. From his hospital bed, Abu Artema asked harrowing and important questions.:

“Israelis are claiming and saying that it’s a war against Hamas. But where is Hamas? Take my house as [an] example. Four women and two children were killed in this Israeli strike. And this is what’s happening every day. Thousands, the vast majority, of the victims of this Israeli war until now are innocent women and men and children, complete families. Israel is targeting the families.”

I say to Mr. Abu Artema that the attack on his family is an example of the atrocities that Israel will no longer be allowed to commit with impunity. I hereby announce that I will be working with Congress to immediately end military aid to Israel.

There is thankfully a path toward peace. Families of Israeli hostages have already said they support an all-for-all prisoner swap. Hamas has already said they would agree to such an exchange. The Israeli and U.S. governments have been standing in the way.

We should also speak about a longer-term vision, one that provides lasting peace and security for Palestinians and Israelis. With steadfast U.S. support, Israel’s decades of settlement expansions have fragmented the West Bank and made a two-state solution obsolete. The status quo is also a nightmare for Israelis and Palestinians, and neither population cannot afford decades of more negotiations over a two-state plan that hasn’t and won’t work.

My administration will therefore be urging Israeli and Palestinian leaders to establish a unified democratic state with one vote for each person from the river to the sea. In 2007, Palestinians were asked if they would support “a one-state solution in historic Palestine where Muslims, Christians and Jews live together with equal rights and responsibilities.” 70 percent said yes, they would. Many Israelis would share this aim if Palestinians could convince them it’s a real possibility.

Finally, there is much that needs to be done here at home. It is a disgrace that my predecessor Franklin Roosevelt didn’t do much more to stop the extermination of the Jews and prioritize rescue of Jews during the Holocaust. The White House will host a press conference tomorrow with leading immigrant and interfaith advocates. There, I will announce a plan we have drafted to ensure that the United States and our allies, including the future joint Israeli-Palestinian state, will collectively open our arms to Jewish and other refugees of any religion or race who need to seek safety. Never again will refugees be sent back to their exterminators as happened to hundreds of passengers on the St. Louis in 1939.

We will replace the 3.8 billion dollars in annual military aid to Israel with aid for sustainable reconstruction and a just implementation of Palestinian refugees’ right of return. By further slashing the U.S. military budget, we will also redirect money toward enacting a Just Transition here on Turtle Island, as many Native Americans have called North America before Europeans arrived. We will move together beyond the wasteful extraction-based economy of infinite growth, fossil fuels, nuclear power, factory farms, commercial ranching, pollution and deforestation. Indigenous and People of Color-led initiatives will help defend Native sovereignty and build a low-energy, renewable-powered economy with fresh and local plant-based food made available and affordable to all. America and Israel have colonial pasts, but we can share a decolonial journey going forward.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author.