By Norman Solomon / TomDispatch, Common Dreams, The Nation

Yes, the Doomsday Clock keeps ticking — it’s now at 90 seconds to midnight, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists — but the ultimate time bomb never gets the attention that it deserves. Even as the possibility of nuclear annihilation looms, this century’s many warning signs retain the status of Cassandras.

Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump withdrew the United States from vital pacts between the U.S. and Russia, the two nuclear superpowers, shutting down the Anti-Ballistic Missile, Open Skies, and Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaties. And despite promising otherwise, Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden did nothing to revive them.

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By Norman Solomon

For more than four months, President Biden has been the main enabler for Israel’s mass murder of Palestinian people in Gaza. Every day, hundreds of civilians are killed by U.S. weaponry and, increasingly, by hunger and disease. The cruelty and magnitude of the slaughter are repugnant to anyone who isn’t somehow numb to the human agony.

Such numbing is widespread in the United States. Some factors include ethnocentric, racial and religious biases against Arabs and Muslims. The steep pro-Israel tilt of news media runs parallel to the slant of U.S. government officials, with language that routinely conveys much lower regard for Palestinian lives than Israeli lives.

And while the credibility of the Israeli government has tumbled, the brawny arms of the Israel lobby — notably AIPAC and Democratic Majority for Israel — still exert enormous leverage over the vast majority of Congress. Few legislators are willing to vote against massive military aid that makes the carnage in Gaza possible.

A chilling example is Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland. On Monday night, he took to the Senate floor and condemned Israel in no uncertain terms. “Kids in Gaza are now dying from the deliberate withholding of food,” he said. “In addition to the horror of that news, one other thing is true. That is a war crime. It is a textbook war crime. And that makes those who orchestrate it war criminals.”

Watching video from Van Hollen’s impassioned speech, you might assume that he would vote against sending $14 billion in further military aid to those “war criminals.” But hours later, he did just the opposite. As journalist Ryan Grim noted, “the senator’s speech pulsed with moral clarity — until it petered out into a stumbling rationale for his forthcoming yes vote.”

In contrast, three senators in the Democratic caucus — Jeff Merkley, Peter Welch and Bernie Sanders – voted no. Sanders delivered a powerful speech calling for decency instead of further moral collapse from the top of the U.S. government.

While the Senate deliberated, the White House again made clear that it wasn’t serious about getting in the way of Israel’s planned assault on the city of Rafah. That’s where most of Gaza’s 2.2 million surviving residents have taken unsafe refuge from the Orwellian-named Israel Defense Forces.

An exchange at a White House news conference on Monday underscored that Biden is determined to keep enabling Israel’s continuous war crimes in Gaza:

Reporter: “Has the president ever threatened to strip military assistance from Israel if they move ahead with a Rafah operation that does not take into consequence what happens with civilians?”

Spokesman John Kirby: “We’re going to continue to support Israel. They have a right to defend themselves against Hamas and we’re going to continue to make sure they have the tools and the capabilities to do that.”

Later this week, Politico summed up: “The Biden administration is not planning to punish Israel if it launches a military campaign in Rafah without ensuring civilian safety.” Citing interviews with three U.S. officials, the article reported that “no reprimand plans are in the works, meaning Israeli forces could enter the city and harm civilians without facing American consequences.”

Biden continues to serve as an accomplice while mouthing platitudes of concern about the lives of civilians in Gaza. Month after month, he has done all he can to supply the Israeli military to the max.

Under an apt headline — “Biden Is Mad at Netanyahu? Spare Me.” – The Nation senior editor Jack Mirkinson wrote this week: “In the real world, Biden and his legislative partners have continued to arm Israel; the Democratic leadership in the Senate actually brought people in on Super Bowl Sunday to take a vote on a bill that would, along with rearming Ukraine, send Israel another $14.1 billion for what is euphemistically dubbed ‘security assistance.’”

Ever since October, inspiring protests and activism in the United States have challenged U.S. support for Israel’s military assault on Gaza. However, boosted by revulsion at the atrocities that Hamas committed against Israeli civilians on October 7, the usual rationales for supporting Israel’s violence against Palestinians have been hard at work.

In this election year, an additional factor looms large. With just eight months until the voting starts that could propel Donald Trump back into the presidency, the prospect of his return to power is all too real. And with Biden set to be the Democratic Party’s nominee, countless individuals and groups are careful to avoid saying much that’s critical of the president they want to see re-elected.

Instead of candor, the routine choices have been euphemisms and silence. But — morally and politically — that’s a big mistake.

The electoral base that Biden is going to need for re-election is heavily against his support for Israel’s war on Gaza. Polling shows that young people in particular are overwhelmingly opposed. Most have seen through the thin veneer of his weak pleas for Israel to not kill so many civilians.

No amount of evasions, silences or doubletalk can make Biden’s policies morally acceptable. But — while the administration combines its PR hand-wringing with military arms-supplying — Biden apologists go on and on with evasion and verbal gymnastics to defend the indefensible.

A far better course of action would be actual candor about current realities: Joe Biden’s moral collapse is enabling the Israeli government to continue, with impunity, its large-scale massacre of Palestinian people. In the process, Biden is increasing the chances that the Republican Party, led by fascistic Donald Trump, will gain control of the White House in January.

     Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of many books including “War Made Easy.” His latest book, “War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine,” was published in 2023 by The New Press.

By Norman Solomon

Sometimes there’s a thin line between vile demagoguery and pure idiocy. Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi straddled both during a Sunday appearance on CNN, when she smeared protesters who’ve been demanding a ceasefire to end Israel’s slaughter of Palestinian people in Gaza.

“The former House speaker said, without offering evidence, that she believed some protesters are connected to Russian President Vladimir Putin,” NPR reported.

“For them to call for a ceasefire is Mr. Putin’s message,” Pelosi said. “Make no mistake, this is directly connected to what he would like to see. Same thing with Ukraine. It’s about Putin’s message. I think some of these protesters are spontaneous and organic and sincere. Some, I think, are connected to Russia. And I say that having looked at this for a long time now.”

Like Congress as a whole, Pelosi refuses to acknowledge that so many Americans are protesting because the Israeli armed forces have been engaged in mass murder in Gaza for more than three and a half months. And an inconvenient truth is that polling shows a large majority of people in the United States favor a ceasefire.

Pelosi is hardly unusual on Capitol Hill. Bipartisan loyalty to Israel has been the political reflex, with few exceptions. But Pelosi is notably servile to Israel.

Shortly before starting her second stint as House speaker in January 2019, Pelosi was recorded on video at a forum sponsored by the Israeli American Council as she declared: “I have said to people when they ask me – if this Capitol crumbled to the ground, the one thing that would remain is our commitment to our aid, I don’t even call it aid – our cooperation – with Israel. That’s fundamental to who we are.”

Such attitudes have fueled the massive flow of U.S. weaponry and other military aid to Israel, which has been greatly boosted since Israeli forces began methodically killing hundreds of civilians per day immediately after the Hamas attack on October 7.

“All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it’s all from the U.S.,” retired IDF Major General Yitzhak Brick said in late November. He added: “Everyone understands that we can’t fight this war without the United States. Period.”

When Pelosi smears people who are expressing their moral objections to the continuing carnage financed by U.S. taxpayers, she is tacitly echoing what then-Vice President Joe Biden said in 2015 at the Annual Israeli Independence Day Celebration in Washington: “As many of you heard me say before, were there no Israel, America would have to invent one. We’d have to invent one because Ron [Dermer, Israel’s ambassador] is right, you protect our interests like we protect yours.”

The interlocking interests of powerful pro-Israel forces like AIPAC and overall U.S. foreign policy have led, most recently, to the extreme rhetorical and military support for Israel’s ongoing mass murder in Gaza from the Democrat in the White House and both parties in Congress. In this context, Pelosi’s channeling of tactics honed by the likes of Joe McCarthy and Roy Cohn should not be too surprising. And Pelosi seemed to be channeling Richard Nixon when she told CNN that she wants the FBI to investigate the financing of ceasefire protesters.

But there’s also another key aspect of Pelosi’s nonsensical yet calculated smear effort. Biden’s poll numbers have kept dropping, most recently while so many Americans – especially those whose votes he’ll need this fall – find his support for the Gaza slaughter repugnant.

Grasping at straws, Pelosi evidently hopes for some political benefit by casting blame on Russia for how Biden’s deference to Israel has met with strong public opposition and erosion of support for re-election. Yes, her gambit is ridiculous – but at a time when the administration is revving up the cold war with Russia instead of genuinely seeking diplomatic solutions for the Ukraine war and the rampant nuclear arms race, Pelosi decided to throw down a handy demagogic gauntlet to tar ceasefire protesters.

Like President Biden and so many others in the political establishment, Nancy Pelosi cannot imagine breaking with the murderous Israeli government and pursuing a foreign policy of peace instead of nonstop U.S. efforts to dominate as much of the world as possible.

     Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of many books including “War Made Easy.” His latest book, “War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine,” was published in 2023 by The New Press.

Here’s the gist of Norman Solomon’s speech at the January 27, 2024 protest organized by Marin DSA in downtown San Rafael, California:

Mass murder by Israel has been happening in Gaza for more than three and a half months.

We’re here to demand a single standard of human rights. We condemn what Hamas did on October 7, and we condemn what Israel has been doing ever since, with U.S. support.

City councils in Minneapolis, Detroit, Atlanta, Seattle and many other cities have called for an immediate ceasefire. But not Congressman Jared Huffman.

In the Bay Area:

• The Oakland City Council has called for an immediate ceasefire. But not Congressman Huffman.
• The Richmond City Council has called for an immediate ceasefire. But not Congressman Huffman.
• The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has called for an immediate ceasefire. But not Congressman Huffman.

Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. And we say – never again for anyone. Never again for Jews, Palestinians, or anyone else.

Right now – in our names, with our tax dollars – the U.S. government is supporting and enabling Israel’s policy for extermination of Palestinian people. Mass murder of Palestinian people.

Polls in the United States are showing that 60 percent or more of the public favor a ceasefire. But not Congressman Huffman.

On January 18th, 57 members of Congress, including 12 from California, signed a letter to President Biden opposing any expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza. But not Congressman Huffman.

So many people clearly state that Israel’s actions are genocidal. But not Congressman Huffman.

Since early October, more than 25,000 people have been murdered in Gaza, including 10,000 children. So many people in the United States are doing what they can to stop the mass murder. But not Congressman Huffman.

Some in Congress have decided that they don’t want to be accomplices to ongoing mass murder. But not Congressman Huffman.

[ Photos of the protest by Leon Kunstenaar ] 

[ Tweet about the protest from Marin DSA ] 

     Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of many books including “War Made Easy.” His latest book, “War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine,” was published in 2023 by The New Press.

By Norman Solomon

The New Hampshire primary has confirmed that the United States is on the way to a disastrous fall election. Unless a health crisis forces withdrawal from the presidential race, either Donald Trump or Joe Biden is headed for a second term. The electoral outlook is now dystopian.

President Biden’s role as party boss worked out well for him in New Hampshire. No doubt mindful that he finished fifth in the state’s 2020 primary with a dismal 8 percent of the vote, Biden directed the Democratic National Committee to decertify New Hampshire’s historic first-in-the-nation primary, and he kept his name off the 2024 ballot. Yet pro-Biden forces ran a write-in campaign that got him nearly two-thirds of the vote on Tuesday.

The story might have been quite different if a credible progressive candidate for president had stepped forward to give Biden a run for his money. But the closest competitor, Democratic Rep. Dean Phillips — whose overall record is to the right of Biden — finished with 20 percent of the New Hampshire primary vote. Progressive candidate Marianne Williamson, who has never held elective office or led a social-justice movement, received just 5 percent.

Faced with such meager opposition, Biden romped to victory in New Hampshire. Now, with most polls showing him appreciably behind Trump, including in swing states, the Democratic Party is on track to nominate a notably weak candidate at a time when epitomizing the status quo is apt to be a losing proposition. Polling shows that fully three-quarters of the public believe the country is moving in the wrong direction.

The factors that got us to this abysmal situation are numerous, but any meaningful list should include the conformity of so many elected officials and activist groups known as progressive. For many, the temptation to publicly make excuses for Biden and unduly praise him has been too powerful to resist. Meanwhile, actual concerns have tended to stay private — even after it became clear that Biden’s presidency was in grim grooves such as “all of the above” energy policies accompanied by climate doubletalk, anemic responses to systemic racism, a belligerent foreign policy with scant regard for human rights, and rampant militarism.

As the Biden presidency deteriorated, an imperative was to generate sustained pressure from the left to counter ominous trends. Yet, by the end of 2021, the leadership of the Congressional Progressive Caucus had begun what became a pattern of unwisely deferring to the man in the Oval Office.

A turning point came in late 2021 when CPC leaders jettisoned their crucial pledge that the pending infrastructure bill would get through Congress only in tandem with the Build Back Better package — which, as my RootsAction colleague Sam Rosenthal wrote, “contained far more progressive priorities than did the infrastructure bill.” The power struggle “failed catastrophically for progressives, as mounting pressure from the White House and moderate Democrats drove the CPC to relent and vote independently on the infrastructure bill. Build Back Better ultimately failed to secure enough support from Senate Democrats to pass.”

The tragic Build Back Better episode foreshadowed further cave-ins, including premature endorsements of Biden for renomination. CPC Chair Pramila Jayapal endorsed him 14 months ago, less than halfway through his term, declaring: “He was not my first or second choice for president, but I am a convert. I never thought I would say this, but I believe he should run for another term and finish this agenda we laid out.”

Many others followed suit, thus reducing the chances that a progressive Democrat would launch a credible primary challenge to Biden. Even Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — who’d been among the Squad members admirably voting against the move that sank Build Back Better (“This is bullshit,” she said at the time) — endorsed Biden for renomination last July.

The pressures on Democrats in Congress to do that kind of thing are enormous. Countervailing pressure from progressive grassroots activists and organizations is vital — and all too often lacking. As a result, elected officials who ostensibly represent the progressive base to the establishment are more likely to end up serving as representatives of the establishment to the progressive base.

Biden’s all-things-to-all-Democrats act has worn thin to utter transparency, and he has the polling numbers to prove it. The president is currently 16 percent underwater in the approval-disapproval ratio among voters overall. Among key mainstays of his 2020 election victory over Trump — people of color and especially the young — support for Biden has plunged, reaching new depths since October due to his active complicity in Israel’s ongoing mass murder of Palestinian civilians.

On the same day as his victory in New Hampshire, Biden again encountered protesters who disrupted his speech with cries for an end to the U.S.-backed carnage in Gaza. As soon as his speech began at a campaign event in the swing state of Virginia, he was interrupted with the shout “How many kids have been killed?”

At the rally, there was no letup to the outcries about Gaza, which included “Israel kills two mothers every hour” and “Stop funding genocide.” The Hill reported that “chants from the crowd” interrupted Biden’s speech “nearly a dozen times.”

Biden has stressed his ties to organized labor. But several major unions have formally called for a ceasefire in Gaza, including the United Auto Workers, the American Postal Workers Union, and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) that represents almost 2 million workers. Organizers among members of the nation’s largest union, the National Education Association, are now pushing for the NEA to also take a formal position urging a ceasefire.

Such direct challenges to Biden’s support for continuation of the bloodshed in Gaza are yet more indicators of how badly he is out of touch with voters he needs.

Now, among progressives, thoughtful dialogue on what to do about Biden is essential. Valuable ideas include focusing on local and state races as well as giving priority to support for the most progressive members of Congress as they undergo big-money assaults from AIPAC and its reactionary allies.

In any event, candor will be necessary about Joe Biden’s betrayals of key 2020 campaign promises and his complicity with ongoing mass murder by Israel in Gaza. And candor will also be crucial about the very real threat of fascism from Trump forces intent on seizing full control of the U.S. government — with foreseeably catastrophic impacts on civil liberties, reproductive rights, racial justice, climate, the environment, voting rights, what remains of democracy, and so much more. Make no mistake about it: Trump and his top collaborators would like to bring fascism to the United States.

     Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of many books including “War Made Easy.” His latest book, “War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine,” was published in 2023 by The New Press.

By Norman Solomon

Zen wisdom tells us that the finger pointing at the moon is not the moon. Yet it’s easy to fall into the illusion that when we see news about the Gaza war, we’re really seeing the war.

We are not.

What we do routinely see is reporting that’s as different from the actual war as a pointed finger is from the moon.

The media words and images reach us light years away from what it’s actually like to be in a war zone. The experience of consuming news from afar could hardly be more different. And beliefs or unconscious notions that media outlets convey war’s realities end up obscuring those realities all the more.

Inherent limitations on what journalism can convey are compounded by media biases. In-depth content analysis by The Intercept found that coverage of the Gaza war by the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times “showed a consistent bias against Palestinians.” Those highly influential papers “disproportionately emphasized Israeli deaths in the conflict” and “used emotive language to describe the killings of Israelis, but not Palestinians.”

What is most profoundly important about war in Gaza — what actually happens to people being terrorized, massacred, maimed and traumatized — has remained close to invisible for the U.S. public. Extensive surface coverage seems repetitious and increasingly normal, as death numbers keep rising and Gaza becomes a routine topic in news media. And yet, what’s going on now in Gaza is “the most transparent genocide in human history.”

With enormous help from U.S. media and political power structures, the ongoing mass murder — by any other name — has become normalized, mainly reduced to standard buzz phrases, weaselly diplomat-speak and euphemistic rhetoric about the Gaza war. Which is exactly what the top leadership of Israel’s government wants.

Extraordinary determination to keep killing civilians and destroying what little is left of Palestinian infrastructure in Gaza has caused extremes of hunger, displacement, destruction of medical facilities, and expanding outbreaks of lethal diseases, all obviously calculated and sought by Israeli leaders. Thinly reported by U.S. media outlets while cravenly dodged by President Biden and the overwhelming majority of Congress, the calamity for 2.2 million Palestinian people worsens by the day.

“Gazans now make up 80 per cent of all people facing famine or catastrophic hunger worldwide, marking an unparalleled humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip amid Israel’s continued bombardment and siege,” the United Nations declared this week. The UN statement quoted experts who said: “Currently every single person in Gaza is hungry, a quarter of the population are starving and struggling to find food and drinkable water, and famine is imminent.”

Israel is waging a war toward extermination. But for the vast majority of Americans, no matter how much mainstream media they consume, the war that actually exists — in contrast to the war reporting by news outlets — remains virtually invisible.

Of course, Hamas’s Oct. 7 murderous attack on civilians and its taking of hostages should be unequivocally condemned as crimes against humanity. Such condemnation is fully appropriate, and easy in the United States.

“Deploring the crimes of others often gives us a nice warm feeling: we are good people, so different from those bad people,” Noam Chomsky has observed. “That is particularly true when there is nothing much we can do about the crimes of others, so that we can strike impressive poses without cost to ourselves. Looking at our own crimes is much harder, and for those willing to do it, often carries costs.”

With the U.S.-backed war on Gaza now in its fourth month, “looking at our own crimes” can lead to clearly depicting and challenging the role of the U.S. government in the ongoing huge crimes against humanity in Gaza. But such depicting and challenging is distinctly unpopular if not taboo in the halls of government power — even though, and especially because, the U.S. role of massively arming and supporting Israel is pivotal for the war.

“For the narcissist, everything that happens to them is a huge deal, while nothing that happens to you matters,” scholar Sophia McClennen wrote last week. “When that logic translates to geopolitics, the disproportionate damage only magnifies. This is why Israel is not held to any standards, while those who question that logic are told to shut up. And if they don’t shut up, they are punished or threatened.”

Further normalizing the slaughter are the actions and inaction of Congress. On Tuesday evening, only 11 senators voted to support a resolution that would have required the Biden administration to report on Israel’s human-rights record in the Gaza war. The sinking of that measure reflects just how depraved the executive and legislative branches are as enablers of Israel.

The horrors in Gaza are being propelled by the U.S. war machine. But you wouldn’t know it from the standard U.S. media, pointing to the moon and scarcely hinting at the utter coldness of its dark side.

     Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of many books including “War Made Easy.” His latest book, “War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine,” was published in 2023 by The New Press.

By Norman Solomon

Have you heard the one about the U.S. government wanting a “rules-based international order”?

It’s grimly laughable, but the nation’s media outlets routinely take such claims seriously and credulously. Overall, the default assumption is that top officials in Washington are reluctant to go to war, and do so only as a last resort.

The framing was typical when the New York Times just printed this sentence at the top of the front page: “The United States and a handful of its allies on Thursday carried out military strikes against more than a dozen targets in Yemen controlled by the Iranian-backed Houthi militia, U.S. officials said, in an expansion of the war in the Middle East that the Biden administration had sought to avoid for three months.”

So, from the outset, the coverage portrayed the U.S.-led attack as a reluctant action — taken after exploring all peaceful options had failed — rather than an aggressive act in violation of international law.

On Thursday, President Biden issued a statement that sounded righteous enough, saying “these strikes are in direct response to unprecedented Houthi attacks against international maritime vessels in the Red Sea.” He did not mention that the Houthi attacks have been in response to Israel’s murderous siege of Gaza. In the words of CNN, they “could be intended to inflict economic pain on Israel’s allies in the hope they will pressure it to cease its bombardment of the enclave.”

In fact, as Common Dreams reported, Houthi forces “began launching missiles and drones toward Israel and attacking shipping traffic in the Red Sea in response to Israel’s Gaza onslaught.” And as Trita Parsi at the Quincy Institute pointed out, “the Houthis have declared that they will stop” attacking ships in the Red Sea “if Israel stops” its mass killing in Gaza.

But that would require genuine diplomacy — not the kind of solution that appeals to President Biden or Secretary of State Antony Blinken. The duo has been enmeshed for decades, with lofty rhetoric masking the tacit precept that might makes right. (The approach was implicit midway through 2002, when then-Senator Biden chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s hearings that promoted support for the U.S. to invade Iraq; at the time, Blinken was the committee’s chief of staff.)

Now, in charge of the State Department, Blinken is fond of touting the need for a “rules-based international order.” During a 2022 speech in Washington, he proclaimed the necessity “to manage relations between states, to prevent conflict, to uphold the rights of all people.” Two months ago, he declared that G7 nations were united for “a rules-based international order.”

But for more than three months, Blinken has provided a continuous stream of facile rhetoric to support the ongoing methodical killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Days ago, behind a podium at the U.S. Embassy in Israel, he defended that country despite abundant evidence of genocidal warfare, claiming that “the charge of genocide is meritless.”

The Houthis are avowedly in solidarity with Palestinian people, while the U.S. government continues to massively arm the Israeli military that is massacring civilians and systematically destroying Gaza. Blinken is so immersed in Orwellian messaging that — several weeks into the slaughter — he tweeted that the United States and its G7 partners “stand united in our condemnation of Russia’s war in Ukraine, in support of Israel’s right to defend itself in accordance with international law, and in maintaining a rules-based international order.”

There’s nothing unusual about extreme doublethink being foisted on the public by the people running U.S. foreign policy. What they perpetrate is a good fit for the description of doublethink in George Orwell’s novel 1984: “To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it . . .”

After news broke about the attack on Yemen, a number of Democrats and Republicans in the House quickly spoke up against Biden’s end-run around Congress, flagrantly violating the Constitution by going to war on his own say-so. Some of the comments were laudably clear, but perhaps none more so than a statement by candidate Joe Biden on Jan. 6, 2020: “A president should never take this nation to war without the informed consent of the American people.”

Like that disposable platitude, all the Orwellian nonsense coming from the top of the U.S. government about seeking a “rules-based international order” is nothing more than a brazen PR scam.

The vast quantity of official smoke-blowing now underway cannot hide the reality that the United States government is the most powerful and dangerous outlaw nation in the world.

     Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of many books including “War Made Easy.” His latest book, “War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine,” was published in 2023 by The New Press.

By Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon 

An avalanche of polling shows Joe Biden with abysmal approval ratings and grim re-election prospects, but Democratic leaders keep spinning away in dreamland. Even before the Israeli war on Gaza began three months ago, party loyalists were in denial about Biden’s unpopularity with key Democratic-leaning constituencies. Now the situation has worsened, with Biden’s standing in free-fall among young people as well as Arab and Muslim Americans, while support among people of color has seriously eroded.

In a passionate letter posted last week, an anonymous group of Biden 2024 campaign staffers urged Biden to reverse himself and work for “an immediate, permanent ceasefire” in Gaza. The letter from 17 current staff members said: “Biden for President staff have seen volunteers quit in droves, and people who have voted blue for decades feel uncertain about doing so for the first time ever.”

That letter echoed an appeal to Biden two months earlier – not anonymous – signed by 500 “former 2020 Biden for President and Democratic Party staff.” The two unprecedented letters – and other upheaval among seasoned Democrats – have failed to snap the Democratic leadership out of their wishful, magical thinking about Biden. 

Defenders of sticking with Biden glibly dismiss negative poll numbers while noting that polls in January can’t tell us where persuadable voters will end up in November. But there’s a serious problem beyond just polls. It’s the disaffection of activists – pivotal because thousands of talented, hard-working activists are needed to help persuade voters on the fence, and to get-out-the-vote of traditional Democrats who are only “occasional voters.” 

During the Covid-haunted election of 2020, thousands of grassroots activists and groups – including many who were Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren supporters – devoted months of their lives to defeat Donald Trump after Biden became the Democratic nominee. Overall, many progressive groups went all in for Biden when it came down to him or Trump in the fall of 2020. 

But in 2024, many of these experienced activists are disaffected from Biden if not outraged at him, over issues from Gaza to voting rights to climate to student debt. 

In 2020, Arab and Muslim American communities mobilized against the detested, Islamophobic Trump. Today, leading activists in key swing states have been sending a clear message to Biden in public forums: “No Ceasefire, No Votes.”

In 2020, climate activists mobilized to eject the climate-denying “drill baby drill” incumbent. Today, as a result of Biden’s reversals on climate policy – like his broken promise on drilling in Alaska – there is much disgust among activists. 

Five hundred people who were campaign or party staff members in 2020 – recalling that they “fought tirelessly to organize millions of Americans to cast their votes” for Biden – have now signed a well-informed letter urging Biden not only to work for a Gaza ceasefire, but also to “end unconditional military aid to Israel” and “take concrete steps to end the conditions of apartheid, occupation, and ethnic cleansing that are the root causes of this devastation.” 

Will there be enough diligent volunteers to get-out-the-vote for Biden in 2024? Not according to current Biden for President staffers who say volunteers have “quit in droves” over Biden’s handling of the Gaza war – adding: “It is not enough to merely be the alternative to Donald Trump.” 

For more than a year, we’ve been part of the RootsAction team that launched the Don’t Run Joe (now Step Aside Joe) campaign immediately after the 2022 midterm elections – urging progressives to insist on clearing the path for an open primary process that could lead to a dynamic progressive candidate capable of soundly defeating Trump. Now, the awful specter of a Biden vs. Trump contest is causing enormous distress and eagerness to develop an appropriate response. That’s why hundreds of people have already chosen to sign up for a livestream panel discussion on Jan. 16, “What Should Progressives Do About Biden?” 

While establishment Democrats are intent on whistling past the Biden graveyard, there’s a different kind of magical thinking among some who consider themselves to be on the left – a fantastical pretense that it doesn’t really matter whether Trump becomes president again. People who think that Trump and his leadership team are not fascistic, or that a Trumpite return to the presidency wouldn’t be much worse than abhorrent Bidenism, are out of touch with political reality.

     Jeff Cohen is co-founder of RootsAction.org, a retired journalism professor at Ithaca College, and author of “Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media.” In 1986, he founded the media watch group FAIR.

     Norman Solomon is national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of many books including “War Made Easy.” His latest book, “War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine,” was published in 2023 by The New Press.

By Norman Solomon

The vast majority of Congress members have refused to call for a ceasefire in Gaza during three months of slaughter by Israel’s military. Capitol Hill remains a friendly place for the Israeli government as it keeps receiving massive arms shipments courtesy of U.S. taxpayers.

“Israel would not be able to conduct this war without the U.S., which over time has provided Israel with about 80 percent of the country’s weapons imports,” Vox reports. The distance between the Capitol and Gaza can be measured by the vast disconnect between the standard discourse of U.S. politics and the terroristic carnage destroying Palestinian people.

The human toll includes upward of 22,000 dead, more than 85 percent of Gaza’s 2.2 million population displaced, and the emerging lethal combination of hunger and disease that could kill several hundred thousand more.

The impunity enjoyed by Israeli leaders is enabled by President Biden, who clearly does not want a ceasefire. The same can be said of the vast majority of Congress, with silences and equivocations if not outright zeal to voice support for the wholesale killing of civilians in the name of Israel’s “right to defend itself.”

Members of Congress, now providing such easy rhetoric in public statements to justify huge and ongoing military support to Israel, would not be so complacent if they had to dig their own dead children out of rubble.

Seventeen members of the House stepped forward in mid-October to sign on as cosponsors of the ceasefire resolution introduced by Congresswoman Cori Bush, “calling for an immediate de-escalation and ceasefire in Israel and occupied Palestine.” The number of those forthright representatives has not risen during the 11 weeks since then.

What we’ve gotten instead has been the molasses-pace drip of some other members of Congress calling for — or kind of calling for — a ceasefire.

Now in circulation from some antiwar organizations is what’s described as “a growing list of members of Congress who have publicly called for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.” But the basis for listing those names — 56 House members and four senators — ranges from solid to flimsy.

A case in point is my congressperson, Rep. Jared Huffman of California, whose name is on the list but doesn’t belong there. As ostensible documentation, the list provides a link to a Nov. 19 social-media post by Huffman stating that a ceasefire would require “Hamas releases all hostages, disarms & relinquishes control of Gaza” — in other words, full surrender by Hamas as a prerequisite for an end to Israel’s mass killing of civilians there.

Several other listed House members, such as Judy Chu (Calif.), Diana DeGette (Colo.), Teresa Leger Fernandez (N.M.) and Jamie Raskin (Md.), have “publicly called for a ceasefire” only with caveats and preconditions — without calling for the U.S.-backed Israeli government to immediately stop killing Palestinian civilians no matter what.

A lot of members of Congress have taken far worse positions. But we should not be grading on a curve. Constituents need accurate information — so they won’t be under the false impression that they’re being represented by an actual firm supporter of a ceasefire.

Even including the most dubious names that have been put in the category of ceasefire supporters, the current list comprises just 13 percent of the House and 4 percent of the Senate. That’s a measure of just how far we have to go in order to end what amounts to congressional support for Israel’s genocidal war on Palestinians in Gaza.

Outpourings of protests against U.S. support for that war have included large nonviolent actions at bridges, highways, train stations, airports, college campuses, legislatures and more. Some activists have also confronted members of Congress.

But mostly, congressional supporters of Israeli impunity have been spared the nonviolent confrontations that they deserve. Such confrontations can occur at their office on Capitol Hill, but traveling to Washington is not necessary.

Senators and House members have numerous offices back home that are conveniently located for most of their constituents to visit, picket and nonviolently disrupt — insisting that support for the mass murder in Gaza is morally unacceptable.

     Norman Solomon is national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of many books including “War Made Easy.” His latest book, “War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine,” was published in 2023 by The New Press.

By Norman Solomon / Marin Independent Journal — December 30, 2023

Reading social media posts and press releases from Rep. Jared Huffman, of San Rafael, is illuminating.

The House member repeatedly and quite properly condemned the horrific killings of Israeli civilians on Oct. 7 by Hamas. He repeatedly and quite properly condemned antisemitism. What he has not done is devote anywhere near the same amount of emphasis to condemning the horrific killings of Palestinian civilians in Gaza that have continued since that day.

This is particularly striking since Huffman has routinely joined with others in Congress to vote for supplying many billions of dollars’ worth of weapons and ammunition to the Israeli military. It has persisted in killing Palestinian civilians — estimates say at least 19,000 of them since early October. The wherewithal is largely courtesy of appropriations from Huffman and his congressional colleagues.

A pattern of civilian carnage was soon obvious. By mid-November, five weeks into Israel’s massive bombing of Gaza, the World Health Organization’s director-general told the United Nations that the Israeli military was killing Palestinian children at an average rate of about six per hour. That amounts to about 1,000 kids each week.

One wonders whether members of Congress, now providing such easy rhetoric in public statements to justify huge and ongoing military support to Israel, would be so comfortable with those appropriations if they had to dig their own dead children out of rubble.

As a Jewish American, I know about antisemitism. I grew up with the frightening stories of storm troopers and concentration camps, where some of my relatives perished. I know full well that antisemitism is a real problem. None of that justifies continuing to vote in the House of Representatives for massive military aid to Israel — aid that has been and is being used to slaughter civilians as innocent as ones you would see at a shopping mall in Corte Madera, San Rafael or Novato.

By mid-October, there was an opportunity for members of Congress to take a clear stand for a cease-fire. Eighteen Democrats in the House signed on as co-sponsors of the cease-fire resolution (House Resolution 786). But Huffman chose not to be among them and he is still not a cosponsor.

Instead, Huffman has basically supported President Joe Biden’s policies toward the conflict. On Nov. 19, Huffman posted on social media that a cease-fire would require “Hamas releases all hostages, disarms & relinquishes control of Gaza” — in effect, first unconditional surrender. While a letter to Biden that Huffman signed two days later urged “immediate cessation of hostilities against targets with a civilian presence to facilitate the timely evacuation and protection of children and babies,” it notably did not call for a cease-fire.

In the White House and on Capitol Hill, ethnocentric and racial biases have combined with geopolitical priorities and political expediency to enable U.S. government support of ongoing atrocities by the Israeli military. Huffman is a participant in this dynamic.

Congressman Huffman would better represent the decency of people in this congressional district by actually supporting a single standard of human rights.

Unfortunately, proclaiming opposition to antisemitism sometimes serves as a smokescreen for egregious and lethal double standards.

In early December, Huffman distanced himself — a bit — from the ridiculous and manipulative conflation of the Israeli government with the religion of Judaism, writing in a tweet that “anti-Zionism is often antisemitism, but not always.” Since many Jews are anti-Zionist, that should hardly be a revelation.

Yet, last month, Huffman touted his “long-standing opposition to BDS” — the effort to boycott, divest and sanction Israel — and he flatly called it a form of “antisemitism.” Such labeling evades the fact that authoritative human rights groups — including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Israeli organization B’Tselem — have declared that Israel is an apartheid state.

It sounds as if Huffman is claiming that such nonviolent measures as boycotting Israel are antisemitic. That’s absurd. Much as it would have been absurd to call such nonviolent measures that were aimed at South Africa’s apartheid government “anti-White.”

Someday, hopefully, a member of Congress representing Marin will have the minimal courage to apply a single standard of human rights to foreign policy.

Author Norman Solomon is national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. A former candidate for Congress, Solomon lost a primary election to Rep. Jared Huffman in 2012.