Reacting to the October 7 attacks by Hamas, Biden portrayed the wars in Israel and Ukraine as two sides of the same battle. After returning from Tel Aviv, where he literally and figuratively hugged Benjamin Netanyahu, Biden addressed the nation from the Oval Office. "You know," he said, "the attack on Israel is the most similar to war, tragedy and brutality to which the people of Ukraine have been exposed for 20 months." However, as the conflict progressed, as Israel's retaliation grew bloodier, the resemblance became increasingly difficult to discern. The accusations that Biden made against Vladimir Putin ricocheted and undermined not only his moral authority but also the international community's solidarity with Ukraine.
Biden is right when he says that from a moral point of view the atrocities committed by Hamas against the civilian population of Israel can be compared to what the Russian forces did to the Ukrainians in Bucha and other attacked cities. There is logic in the president's political calculation. Financial aid to Israel for the war in Gaza has full bipartisan support in Congress. Ukraine does not have such support. Before October 7, half of the Republicans in the House of Representatives rejected the White House's proposal to grant Ukraine a smaller package of additional aid in the amount of 300 million dollars. By connecting the two conflicts, Biden tried to use the events in Israel to secure political support for Ukraine. He hoped that the energy of a resolute consensus in support of Israel would revive the right's waning enthusiasm for Ukrainian resistance to Russian aggression.
The exact opposite happened. Linking the conflicts in Israel and Ukraine did not produce a single moral imperative. It just exposed the double standards. Since the beginning of Putin's war in Ukraine, since evidence of war crimes by Russian forces began to pour in, it has been obvious that the American accusations have a weak spot. The US has a long history of a deeply ambivalent attitude towards war crimes - as shown by the United States' refusal to recognize the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC). It is an inconsistency that threatens to undermine the belief that Putin has overstepped not only state borders in this war, but also moral ones - a view that is very important to the struggle of Ukrainians. The United States was very harsh in condemning attacks on civilians in Ukraine, while it is now extremely cautious in condemning similar attacks in Gaza. This is certainly great news for Putin. His cynical belief that ethical standards are nothing more than weapons in a propaganda war has been practically confirmed.
In a televised address to the nation, Biden tried to show that from the point of view of American interests, Israel's war against Hamas and the Ukrainian war against Russia are equally important. "It is important to America's national security that we ensure that Israel and Ukraine are successful in their endeavors." What makes them important, he added, is not only the reality of events on the ground, but also the way in which that reality is perceived. It is not only what the United States does, but also how others see what the US wants and stands for that matters: "We know that Europe and all our allies, as well as our adversaries and competitors, are watching what is happening carefully." Probably the most satisfied observer is the unscrupulous killer from the Kremlin, because what we are watching is the world's painful attempt to turn in two different directions at the same time.
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No one has even tried to conceal Israel's intention to punish the entire population of Gaza by cutting off their access to drinking water and electricity. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced a "total siege of Gaza" on October 9. "They will have no electricity, no food, no fuel." The next day, Major General Ghassan Alian addressed the residents of Gaza in Arabic: "Human animals will be treated like this. You will have neither electricity nor water. You will only get destruction. You asked for hell, you will get hell".
We don't have to guess how the Biden administration would have reacted if such statements had come from Moscow instead of Tel Aviv. In November 2022, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, US Ambassador to the United Nations, addressed the Security Council regarding Russian attacks on civilian infrastructure in Ukrainian cities, which left millions without electricity and clean water:
"It is difficult to describe in words how terrible these attacks are... I felt the full weight of their consequences when I met ten-year-old Melina in the building where displaced families were preparing to spend the winter. And that building was hit and damaged by Russian missiles."
Later that month, Antony Blinken condemned Russia's attacks on vital infrastructure in even harsher terms: “Heating, water, electricity - for children, for the elderly, for the sick - these are the targets of President Putin. He attacks them with all his might. Brutal attacks on the Ukrainian people are a barbaric act."
When Ukraine was the target, the Biden administration readily supported the indictment of Putin for attacking civilian infrastructure. In March, Biden supported the ICC's decision to issue an arrest warrant for Putin on war crimes charges, even though the US does not recognize this court, which Biden himself confirms. When the United States began submitting evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine to the ICC in July, the New York Times reported that "U.S. intelligence agencies have information detailing decisions by Russian officials to attack civilian infrastructure in Ukraine." If the reports are true, it means the Biden administration was actively helping the ICC prepare a possible indictment against Putin for attacks on civilians.
Some of the captured Russian soldiers in Ukraine have already been convicted of war crimes. In January, the Washington Post reported that the convicted soldiers included "two who admitted to shelling residential buildings in the first weeks of the war." The United States has often called on the international community to pay attention to the footage of the destruction of all those places where ordinary people - especially children - are trying to lead a normal life. In July, for example, Linda Thomas-Greenfeld reported to the Security Council that “Russian forces are peppering Ukraine with missiles that sow death and destruction. We've all seen pictures of bombed houses, schools and playgrounds."
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The Biden administration isn't stopping at accusations against Russia; she announced that the countries that supply Russia with weapons can also be accused of war crimes. In January, accompanying Biden on an official visit to Mexico, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the Iranians had chosen to "allow Iranian weapons to be used to kill Ukrainian civilians, to deny Ukrainian cities heat and electricity, which from our point of view points of view makes them potential accomplices in mass war crimes".
In an interview he gave to NBC in July, Sullivan talked about the sources of America's "moral authority" when it comes to Ukraine. He implicitly confirmed that in his opinion these are not international agreements, because the USA has not even signed some of them. He explained that this authority stems from the obvious unacceptability of Russia's decision to subject Ukraine to a "brutal, criminal attack... to bombard cities with missiles and bombs and kill civilians, to destroy schools, churches and hospitals." The implications are clear: the moral authority of the United States is based on opposition to certain forms of violence, specifically, the calculated destruction of civilian infrastructure and the use of bombs and missiles to kill civilians. If so, then America's moral authority is on a very slippery slope right now.
Each recorded Israeli airstrike on Gaza after October 7 killed an average of 10 civilians. The Biden administration has said that killing civilians at this rate is not acceptable. As Blinken said on a visit to India, “too many Palestinians have been killed; too many people have died in the past weeks". By the logic applied to Iran, the US should accept its own share of responsibility for indirectly contributing to its suffering. But there is no indication yet that the US is ready to submit to the same moral standards it imposes on others. Also, there is no indication that behind-the-scenes attempts to pressure Netanyahu are having an effect on the ground. It appears that the US administration's moral initiative - believing that its principled support for Israel gives it the right to demand curbs on what Biden described as "blind rage" in a visit to Tel Aviv to save Palestinian lives - is not yielding results.
Ukrainians would probably prefer that Biden didn't even mention them, because he did them a disservice with such statements. The crisis in Gaza has already pushed Putin's war out of the headlines, as well as from the top of the priority list of most Western governments. As the conflict in Ukraine turns into a war of attrition, into a bloody stalemate with no visible way out, it is increasingly difficult for democratic states to maintain the view that this is not a proxy war between great powers, but a genuine struggle for human values and an international order based on universal rules. . What will the governments of these countries say when Putin disables the electricity grid in Ukraine again in the winter? Will they continue to repeat that these are terrible and barbaric acts? Or will there be an uncomfortable silence, because such words have lost their power to express a common sense of horror in the face of inhumane acts, whoever and wherever they are committed?
(The New York Review of Books; Peščanik.net; translation: Đ. Tomić)
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