Every year around this time, I devote this space to an end-of-year post, in which I review the year that has passed, speculate about the year to come, and always about US policy toward the Palestinians. 

The late year speaks for itself: There is no need to examine what the administration of US President Joe Biden did in its policy towards the Palestinians, as the entire world sees that Biden and his government had the final say in empowering Israel in its ongoing massacre of tens of thousands of Palestinians, wounding thousands of them, and destroying their homes on the ground on  their heads in the besieged Gaza and the forced displacement of nearly two million citizens.

Only 11 days after the sudden Hamas attacks on October 7 that shook the world, US President Biden was in Tel Aviv carrying a message to the Israelis shocked by the Hamas strike, saying: “Oh Israel, you are not alone...the United States stands by your side” To give Israel the weapons and ammunition it needs and international cover to move forward with its successive massacres.

Of course, President Biden has not differed from his predecessors since 1948, noting that he is the only one who is publicly proud of saying, “He is an avid Zionist,” “If there had been no Israel, we would have created it,” and other expressions that he repeats as if he wants to pass a test regarding the credibility of his Zionism.

Since October 7, the world has been watching Israel bomb Gaza tens of thousands of times, without stopping, under the cover granted by Biden that Israel has the right to “self-defense” and its right to “fulfill its desire to eliminate the Hamas movement,” so it struck hospitals, residential neighborhoods, and schools and bakeries and crowded displacement sites where they told Palestinians they were “safe” places.

There is no doubt that the influx of images showing Israeli, and possible American, atrocities led to hundreds of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets (and are still taking to the streets) in large numbers, in the West and in the East, and pushed the majority of people and countries to call for a ceasefire that clashed, and collides with Biden’s refusal to stop the bloodshed.

Biden and his administration remained extremely committed to standing by Israel, and Biden used his veto power in the Security Council time after time, and sent tens of thousands of tons of munitions to ensure that the killing of innocent Palestinian civilians did not stop even for a moment, which made demonstrators around the world, as well as in front of the White House, denounce him with a slogan. “Joe Biden, the man of genocide,” is a slogan that has stuck like the smell of sulfur to the resident of the White House, despite the protests of his officials that this is not appropriate.

Of course, it was not appropriate for US President Biden (or any other president) to repeat the lies of the Israeli story about the “headless Israeli infants” that he claimed to have seen with his own eyes (10/12), or the evidence of “mass rapes committed by Hamas,” which the president claimed to have verified it himself. But there is no injustice, no lie, whether small or large, is wasted for the sake of Israel. Where Biden said with emphasis and artificial and exaggerated drama, to his listeners from the American Jewish community at the Hanukkah celebration at the White House on December 11, that: “Reports talk about the rape of women (on October 7 by Hamas) - repeated rape - and the mutilation of their bodies while they were alive”, desecrate women's bodies, and inflict as much pain and suffering on women and girls as possible by Hamas terrorists, then kill them.”

Other than his comprehensive and detailed description of Hamas's "horrific attack" on Israel and the Israeli victims... Biden rarely spoke about Palestinian children torn apart, two million displaced people, or hundreds of thousands of people without water or food, let alone his justification for storming all of Gaza's hospitals under false pretenses. . Biden and figures of his administration, such as Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, or his National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, when they talk about the Palestinians, they talk about them as if they were victims of an earthquake or a natural disaster, without mentioning Israel.

White House officials keep reminding us that Biden has said more than once that “Israel must do everything in its power, as difficult as it is, to protect innocent civilians,” and has also made repeated calls for increased aid to Gaza to alleviate the suffering of innocent Palestinians.

At the US State Department, which I go to (almost) daily, the department's spokesman, Matthew Miller, continues - with boring repetition - to insist that Israel does not intentionally target civilians. With US drones flying over Gaza daily, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has visual evidence that the overwhelming bombing of civilian buildings is killing innocent civilians.

Evidence of this is found in the ruins of hospitals, health clinics, ambulances, schools, libraries, places of worship, markets, water pipes, houses, apartment buildings and piles of unburied corpses eaten by stray dogs. All of this information is in the possession of the Biden administration.

Not to mention that the Biden administration, and their colleagues thirsting for Palestinian bloodshed in the US Congress, were warned when Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant and other Israeli officials on October 8 shouted horrific genocidal orders to their army: “No electricity, no food, no fuel, no water. “We are fighting human animals and they will behave accordingly.”

There has been a lot of talk in Washington about a possible ceasefire, perhaps by the end of the year, and perhaps after that. But regardless of whether a ceasefire occurs or not, the Biden administration's callous indifference, and its active and dedicated support for Israel's ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing, will tarnish America's reputation around the world for generations to come. The fact that Biden admits that he did not even ask for a ceasefire in his last conversation with Netanyahu (on Saturday, December 23) says a lot about the cruel and immoral approach taken by the US administration towards the genocide in Gaza in particular, and the Palestinians in general.

But the pinnacle of American hypocrisy came when US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, complained in his annual press conference on December 20, 2023, about global criticism of the United States’ support for the mass killing campaign launched by Israel in Gaza.

Blinken protested and became angry. He said angrily: “I do not actually hear anyone demanding that Hamas stop hiding behind civilians, lay down its weapons, and surrender. This war will end tomorrow if Hamas does that,” Blinken complained. “How is it possible that there are no demands from the aggressor (Hamas), but only from the victim (Israel)?”

Blinken's statement, which mocks human minds, that Israel is the victim and Hamas is the aggressor, is a clear endorsement of the Israeli massacres, and confirms its basic logic that Israel is free to slaughter Palestinian civilians until the armed resistance among them offers "surrender."

We will not wait for the White House or the US Congress to admit their bloody guilt. But that will surely come later, with history judging Washington's unconditional support for Israel's war of annihilation against what the Israeli newspaper Haaretz has repeatedly called the "completely defenseless people" in Gaza.