Joe Biden to Visit Israel and Saudi Arabia
There are some very valid critiques of these governments that the President will almost surely overlook during this trip.
Next week President Joe Biden will travel to the Middle East where he will visit Israel, West Bank, and Saudi Arabia. During the trip, Biden will also be attending the Summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council plus Egypt, Iraq, and Jordan (GCC+3). This will be Biden’s first visit to the Gulf region since he’s been president and critics have suggested that the real reasoning behind this trip is oil, despite the many other issues that will supposedly be discussed. Many people have also pointed out the hypocrisy of Biden traveling to Saudi Arabia specifically, as he was critical of the monarchy’s human rights abuses on the campaign trail.
“As a presidential candidate, Biden said he wanted to make Saudi Arabia a ‘pariah’. However, his struggle to reduce record high gasoline prices this year has complicated the situation as the U.S. urges oil producing nations to boost production to offset Russian losses following Western sanctions on Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine,” reads an article published by Reuters last month.
While Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent sanctions on Russian oil have definitely affected gas prices here in the U.S., that is only part of a much broader problem. The main factor in rising prices is the monetary inflation from the trillions of dollars that were printed out of thin air and pumped into the economy in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. So replacing oil shipments from Russia with oil shipments from Saudi Arabia may bring down gas prices somewhat, but it won’t solve the real issue at hand, which is an issue President Biden has consistently blamed on anything other than his own policies.
Regardless of the real intention behind Biden’s visit to these countries, there are some very valid critiques of these governments, specifically Israel and Saudi Arabia, that the President will almost surely overlook during this trip due to the fact that both nations are long-held geopolitically strategic U.S. allies.
Joe Biden will visit Israel first, where he will “discuss Israel’s security, prosperity, and its increasing integration into the greater region,” according to a statement from White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. “The President will also visit the West Bank to consult with the Palestinian Authority and to reiterate his strong support for a two-state solution, with equal measures of security, freedom, and opportunity for the Palestinian people.”
That the Biden administration believes in a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is patently untrue. The U.S. government has been nothing but supportive of Israel despite the latter’s oppressive occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, which has been equated to apartheid by human rights groups. Though it is true that the Palestinian Authority has committed its own human rights abuses, and clearly the same could be said for Hamas, it’s the abuses that the Israeli government inflicts upon Palestinians that tend to receive far less attention than they deserve from Washington and much of the Western media.
This quote from a Fox News article discussing the 11-day war between Israel and Hamas last year gives a clear example of the level of support Israel receives from the U.S. regularly:
Israel is the largest beneficiary of U.S. military assistance, totaling over $3 billion a year, and the U.S. has provided $1.6 billion for Iron Dome since its inception. Since the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, the U.S. has provided Israel with $146 billion in bilateral and missile defense funding. Decades of U.S. policy across administrations from both parties sought to ensure Israel’s military edge over its neighboring adversaries.
During that war, Israel launched several airstrikes on Gaza, some of which killed civilians, including children. One strike even targeted and destroyed a high-rise building that housed media outlets such as The Associated Press and Al-Jazeera, as well as residential apartments. Israel claimed Hamas was operating out of the building but offered no evidence to back up that claim. While everyone inside the building was able to evacuate before it was hit, the fact that the Israeli government would conduct such a strike is itself a cause for concern.
More recently, Israeli forces shot and killed Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. “Israeli officials initially blamed Palestinian militants for killing Abu Akleh. However, separate investigations by United Nations officials, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Associated Press, CNN, Bellingcat, and B’Tselem all concluded that she was shot by an Israeli soldier,” reads an article recently published from Antiwar.com.
Despite evidence to the contrary, the Biden administration maintains that the shooting was unintentional. And not only did Israeli forces likely murder a journalist in cold blood, Israeli police officers actually attacked the pallbearers that were carrying Abu Akleh’s casket during her funeral procession, which caused them to momentarily drop the casket. This is just the most recent example of the Israeli government’s human rights abuses, and if Abu Akleh hadn’t been a U.S. citizen, this story would’ve likely received far less attention.
Speaking of murdering journalists, that brings us to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. There are many examples of the monarchy’s oppressive authoritarianism, but the one that draws the most ire from the corporate press and U.S. politicians is the murder of Washington Post columnist and Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.
Khashoggi, who was critical of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), was murdered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, and a U.S. intelligence report that was declassified last year concluded that MBS had approved of the murder beforehand. This is the main reason Biden has been criticized for visiting Saudi Arabia, but it shouldn’t be the only one.
For the past seven years, the U.S. government has helped to facilitate Saudi Arabia’s brutal war in Yemen, a small and impoverished country that neighbors Saudi Arabia. This war has led to the death of hundreds of thousands of people inside Yemen, and Biden promised early on in his presidency that he would end U.S. involvement in the war. That promise has yet to be kept*, and it is unlikely that Biden will make discussing an end to the war a priority during this trip.
The idea that we have some moral obligation to sanction Russian oil due to their illegal invasion of Ukraine makes no sense unless we also have that same moral obligation when it comes to the Saudi-led, U.S. facilitated war in Yemen. Not to mention all the other disastrous military interventions the U.S. has perpetrated all over the globe for decades.
The U.S. overlooking and often aiding these governments, even with their awful track records on human rights, sheds a light on what is truly meant by all the talk of a “rules-based international order” professed by people like Joe Biden. The U.S. empire does not care whether or not a country has a “liberal” or “democratic” government. They are more than happy to work with authoritarian and autocratic regimes the whole world over, so long as those governments work in tandem with U.S. interests. Joe Biden’s trip to Israel and Saudi Arabia will just be the latest example of that.
*For anyone who wants to see an end to the war in Yemen, call 1-833-STOP-WAR. You will be connected to the office of your representative in Congress. From there you can urge your representative to support H.J. Res. 87, a War Powers Resolution that would end our support for the war. A similar resolution passed both chambers of Congress in 2019 but was vetoed by former President Donald Trump.
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