Lehlohonolo Kennedy Mahlatsi
Johannesburg - US Presidnt Joe Biden’s much-heralded visit to Jerusalem has confirmed that the US remains Israel’s enabler-in-chief.
Biden promised to continue providing Israel with $3.8 billion (R63bn) in annual military aid to maintain the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. This is more than the US gives any other country.
During his first public appearance after arriving to Israel on July 13, Biden claimed he does not need to be a Jew to be a “Zionist”. In return, Israeli caretaker prime minister Yair Lapid referred to Biden as a “great Zionist.”
Biden’s embrace of an ideology used to justify the decades-long occupation of Palestine and one that is considered responsible for creating an apartheid system comes from a long record of being a close friend of Israel.
Biden has visited Israel several times before becoming president, with his first trip being in 1973 when he was a senator. He has repeatedly expressed his absolute support for Israel, regardless of its heinous crimes perpetrated against the Palestinians and continuous violations against the international humanitarian law.
He failed, once again, to mention Israeli violations and aggression against Palestinians and other countries in the region. He said that the US would continue to advance Israel's integration into the region; expand emerging forums and engagement.
On 13 July 2022, Israeli human rights group B’Tselem put up billboards and digital screens in the West Bank cities of Bethlehem and Ramallah, ahead of Biden’s visit, reading: “Mr President, this is apartheid.”
Biden has refused to reverse other Trump actions that pandered to Israel as well. He has not withdrawn Trump’s illegal recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Nor has he rescinded Trump’s declaration of legitimacy of illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, or reopened the Palestinian mission in Washington.
Biden’s visit demonstrates the scant difference between his administration and Trump’s in their uncritical, unwavering support for Israel. Using taxpayers’ money, the US government continues to enable Israel’s illegal and brutal occupation of Palestinian lands.
The oppressed and dispossessed masses of Palestine never benefited from Biden’s brief Middle East visit. Biden had the executive power to reverse the damage done when Trump moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem, recognising Israel’s control over the disputed capital. Biden chose to not do so.
Instead he called for the two-state solution which has proven to be impossible to realise. He assumes that peace in Palestine must be made through ethnic separation rather than a one-state solution, such as the one South Africa pursued.
He also pledged $100m in aid to hospitals in the occupied city, which suffered significant cuts in donor funding during the Trump administration. The genuine intervention about improving the health of Palestinians will necessitate tackling the large and oppressive structures under which all Palestinians live, not just the facilities where some of them can be treated.
Biden has never addressed Israel’s responsibility for the murder of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, killed by Israeli soldiers in May, as she covered an Israeli Defence Forces operation in the occupied West Bank.
He spent his brief time in occupied Palestine meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid where they signed a joint strategic declaration pledging further bilateral co-operation.
They ridiculed the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which organises non-violent opposition to pressure Israel to adhere to international law and to end apartheid and colonialism.
Biden talks about human rights, then visits two of the Middle East’s worst human rights violators. He criticises other countries – socialist and those not loyal to Washington – for their alleged human rights violations, yet, as Trump did, visited the Saudi government which executed 81 people just recently.
One recent and major milestone of the BDS Movement is Amnesty International’s February 2022 report concluding that Israel’s cruel system of racial domination over the entire Palestinian people constitutes the crime against humanity of apartheid.
The BDS movement has been at the core of the Palestinian anti-apartheid movement for years and now we are witnessing history in motion.
Some of the achievements of the BDS Movement include: A delegation of South African clergy representing the World Council of Churches, the South African Council of Churches and the Evangelical Alliance of South Africa issued a call on Christian communities and institutions, as well as governments to recognise and denounce Israeli policies as apartheid and to end all support to Israeli apartheid.
The UN Special Rapporteur Michael Lynk confirmed Israel perpetrated the crime of apartheid. In April, five UN human rights experts endorsed the report confirming Israel's crime of apartheid.
Activists from 21 African countries gathered in Dakar for the first ever Pan-African Anti-Apartheid Conference in support of Palestine, organised by Pan-African Palestine Solidarity Network. Participants vowed to organise until Israeli apartheid is dismantled.
While Biden and Lapid trumpet their military alliance, we must respond with a peoples’ alliance: that is, an alliance that firmly rejects imperialism and Zionism, that builds the very boycott campaigns they seek to undermine or even criminalise, that supports the Palestinian people and their resistance by all means, and that stands together against the systems of domination, injustice, settler colonialism, and exploitation that they represent.
* Dr Lehlohonolo Kennedy Mahlatsi is an SACP Free State PEC member.