By Paul Lehmann, Fayette, MO 

03/22/2024

In his State of the Union Address, March 7, 2024, President Joe Biden devoted some time on the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. Many of his statements were misleading and a distortion of the reality in Palestine and unhelpful for peace. Here is a list of fact checks:

Fact: According to Wikipedia, “1,139 Israelis and foreign nationals including 766 civilians and 373 security personnel were killed” on October 7, 2023. “253 Israelis and foreigners were taken captive.”. It was 766 “innocent people” killed, not 1200 as stated by Biden. The President of the U.S.A. has distorted facts including that a third of those casualties were security personnel opposing the invasion, a military action against an occupying power.

Fact: Armed Israeli helicopters arrived within an hour after the Hamas attack began and fired at 300 targets as the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) troops arrived later in the day. Festival goers have testified that they received rocket fire as they fled from the Hamas military. (Hamas did not have local rocket fire capability on that day!) It is well known that Israel uses the “Hannibal Directive” on insurrectionists when mixed in with civilians or when holding prisoners, meaning that IDF will sacrifice innocent civilians near the militant targets in order to destroy the militants. Helicopter gunners have admitted that they fired into crowds where Hamas militants were “hiding”, and IDF confirmed one incident in which they killed 13 of 14 Israeli hostages in a dwelling in order to kill the Hamas fighters holding them. More captives were killed as the Hamas fighters/kidnappers attempted to take them back to Gaza. Israel claims that 1000 or 1200 Hamas fighters were killed on Oct. 7. How many prisoners or civilians were killed along with the fighters? Joe Biden was not telling the true story as to how innocents were killed.

Fact: Joe Biden, parroting the Israeli narrative, led us to believe that the present war began on Oct. 7. The truth is that Oct. 7 was the culmination of an ongoing low grade lopsided war between Israel and Palestinians since 1948 when the Israel was declared a state by the United Nations (and Palestine was not) out of land forcefully taken from native Palestinians, where 750,000 residents were forced to leave into refugee camps where they reside to this day. This is called the Nukhba. Hamas leaders have repeatedly stated that Oct. 7 was a response to the repeated and ongoing forceful theft of Palestinian homes and land and to the desecration of their mosque in Jerusalem, and to the constant harassment and killing of innocent Palestinians, and to the blockade of Gaza, and to the suppression of Palestinian human rights, and the holding of over 9000 prisoners without charges, and more apartheid measures. Biden does not acknowledge Oct. 7 as a battle in a 75-year war of aggression and response!

Fact: From the Hamas Report, January 2024, the mission of Hamas on Oct. 7 was “to target Israeli military sites and to capture soldiers, who could be used to pressure the Israeli authorities to release the thousands of Palestinians held in Israel prisons.” “If there was any case of targeting civilians, it happened accidentally in the course of the confrontation with the occupation forces.” Hamas admitted that “maybe some faults happened,” but these were done in “the chaos caused along the areas near Gaza”. Psychologically, the actions on Oct. 7 were a cry for help from the international community against the oppressive occupation and displacement of the Palestinian people, the goal of Zionist colonialist Israeli leaders. Biden has not acknowledged this information and sided with Netanyahu's vengeful policy.

Fact: Biden used inflammatory and unfounded language when he attached the phrase “enduring sexual violence” to his statement about the deaths of civilians on Oct 7, as if all civilians killed were sexually assaulted! This was clearly in reference to the U.N. Report on sexual assault that came out March 4, 2024, three days before his speech. It actually said there was “reasonable grounds to believe sexual violence occurred during the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7”. But the report went on to say that no alleged rape survivors nor families of alleged rape victims came forward to tell about their experiences, and no interviews of Hamas leaders or personnel were conducted. Every allegation in the report was from second hand sources and devoid of scientific testing, and without confirmation with actual evidence. Hamas has “repeatedly denied allegations that its fighters committed acts of sexual violence during the October 7 attack”. (Aljazeera on U.N. Report). The truth about sexual assault is yet to be definitively told, yet President Biden has passed on this unsubstantiated narrative of Israel to augment his personal prejudice against Hamas and to justify the genocide of 31,000+ innocent Palestinians in Gaza.

Fact: Contrary to Biden's statement that “Israel has the right to go after Hamas”, Israel has no moral right to decimate a people under their jurisdiction for the alleged actions in rebellion by the Hamas fighters in a battle of a long war. Israel has no moral right to expunge a government (Hamas) from existence when it was the action of aggression by Israeli Zionism that caused them to come into existence (in the 1980's) and to rebel violently against oppression. Even leaders in the Israeli military have stated that Hamas cannot be physically wiped out. Israeli's Netanyahu and our Biden continue to act as if that is possible. There will be no permanent peace until Hamas is recognized as a necessary part of the process.

Fact: Any horrible thing that happened on Oct. 7 has been far surpassed in magnitude and intensity by the terror raining on innocent Gaza civilians. The only dismembered babies in the war, the only pregnant women hacked to death in the war, the only loss of limbs and lifelong trauma of thousands of children and adults in the war, the only beheading of hundreds of people in the war, the only starvation of thousands of children all have occurred in Gaza at the hands of Israel shooting weapons, exploding bombs, and blocking humanitarian assistance, all of which is supported by the United States. Joe Biden is co-responsible for genocide and is on the wrong track to achieve a just peace settlement.

Fact: Biden's directive “to establish a temporary pier in the Mediterranean Sea on the coast of Gaza” taking four weeks will guarantee that hundreds, maybe thousands, of children will have died of malnutrition or disease, when opening the border crossings and refunding of UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration) to do the administration of aid to the right places will in one day begin to solve the problem.

Fact: Biden's two state solution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict is in direct conflict with his own blind support of Israel's plan to annihilate Hamas and/or exile all Palestinians from their land. Israel has not produced a post war plan because the Zionist program is to colonize Gaza (already begun in the north) after the Gaza Strip is cleared of Palestinian people. The debate will be over! There is an un-addressed internal schizophrenia in the Biden plan to bring peace and security to the entire Middle East. CEASEFIRE NOW!

Fact: I have run out of room to share more facts not in evidence!