Israel’s humiliation of Genocide Joe Biden is summed up in one image.

Right, so here it is, the image that sums up Genocide Joe Biden’s failure to hold Israel to account, an image that should be the final humiliation, an image that shows the systemic failure to show leadership during the worst humanitarian crisis in living memory as the US built pier, built to get aid into Gaza, has broken up and is floating out to sea due to bad weather. The only reason the thing was built, is because Biden wouldn’t hold Israel to account, wouldn’t exert pressure on them to let aid through. Israel won’t open the land border crossings. They have actually violated peace accords in seizing control of the Rafah Border Crossing, they have been tipping off aid truck attack groups to aid truck movements, all made possible because Biden won’t do what is necessary, is prioritising the US relationship with Israel over the humanitarian crisis and what needs to be done and his presidential campaign is likely sinking faster than his joke of a pier is. Frankly if you think he’s a sure thing to win re-election, Biden has a broken pier to sell you.
Right, so the Gaza pier, all that work, weeks of aid hold ups so that this thing could be built, by the US, all under the auspices of delivering aid, absolutely no chance the US were going to use it to smuggle in arms to Israel, even as Israel built a road across Gaza pretty much leading up to it it has been nothing but a disaster from the get go and now, thanks to a bit of bad weather a big chunk of it has broken off and washed up on the beach! For two months this, publicity stunt of a pier had been under construction, by US troops, using US money as a method by which to deliver aid into Gaza because when Biden asked Netanyahu if he would kindly let the aid trucks in, he was basically told no. Never mind this was against provisional laid down by the ICJ at the beginning of the year, never mind that the US is supposed to uphold international humanitarian law, never mind that famine was breaking out and the aid agency UNRWA at that time was still being defunded on the basis of alleged evidence for which Biden only had Israel’s word for that, which was of course good enough, never mind as the biggest aid donor financially and militarily to Israel on the planet and therefore could exert more leverage than anyone else, Biden opted to acquiesce all the way. He put the relationship with Israel above all of that. Above the victims of their genocide, above calls for action from the UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly and world leaders across the globe who condemn Israel’s actions. Instead of leveraging enough pressure just to get Israel to open a door effectively and let aid in, he decided to build a pier in Gaza instead and waste two months doing so, whilst aid was being held up and just like his authority, his pier has cracked up.
Following rough weather, two pieces of pier came apart and started floating out to sea, but this was just the start of the humiliation. One of the boats sent out to retrieve one of the pieces, then got tangled up itself. Then a third piece broke off, that floated off in another direction and then began to sink. I’m reminded at this point that the US christened this thing the Trident pier, so it’s a bitter irony three bits of it decided to float off!
Oh it’s only meant to be temporary some will say, to which I’ll say yeah, sure, but it is still supposed to do the job it was built for and given the thing has cost $320m you would kind of hope it would at least stay in one piece! A third of a billion dollars for heaven’s sake it only opened on the 17th of this month and it’s knackered already!
CNN’s correspondent Natasha Bertrand put out a tweet quoting a Pentagon source, explaining the official military line shall we say, which reads:
‘Deputy Pentagon Press Sec confirms that "due to high sea states and a North African weather system earlier today, a portion of the Trident pier separated from the pier that is currently anchored into the coast of Gaza. As a result, the Trident pier was damaged and sections of the pier need rebuilding and repairing. Therefore, over the next 48 hours, the Trident pier will be removed from its anchored position on the coast and towed back to Ashdod where US central command will conduct repairs. The rebuilding and repairing of the pier will take at least over a week."’
Now this weather front that came up from the south was no joke, you don’t perhaps think that the weather gets that bad in the Middle East I suppose from her in rainy Britain, but it was sufficient to end up beaching two US vessels, with two more breaking their moorings. What chance did this pier have? But again doesn’t underline the stupidity of the idea of a temporary pier, which isn’t going to be able to stand up to conditions?
Well, as that tweet also states, the Biden administration clearly aren’t finished with their stupid yet, as the pier, what’s left of it is now set to be towed to the Israeli port of Ashdod for repairs, which will take over a week, to just be towed back again and what? Fall apart once more in bad weather? It clearly isn’t up to the job, but then did the US ever care? They were told this wouldn’t work, critics, the humanitarian agencies who are responsible for delivering the actual aid, called it nothing more than a publicity stunt, especially when it was being constructed some distance from where aid was needed, with little clue how to get the aid to where it had to get to, north and south of Gaza, because if Israel won’t even open the doors, open the crossing and let aid in, why do you think they would let it move through Gaza? We know they won’t, just look what happened to the World Central Kitchen aid delivery trucks, or have we forgotten about those already? They weren’t the only aid trucks targeted trying to deliver aid within the Strip either, before or since and to underline that matter, let’s talk about how much aid has got in via this pier.
Just last week Reuters put out an article with the blaring headline ‘’More than 569 tons of aid delivered across floating pier into Gaza, says US CENTCOM.’ That being US Central Command, so Reuters there doing a stellar job of stenography for the US administration in reporting such a number, and sure it sounds great, but compared to what was getting through via crossings before, how does that measure up? There are some 2m people in Gaza, most stuck in Rafah, but not exclusively so, so how far does that amount of aid stretch?
Well two days after that Reuters article came out, The United States Agency for International Development, USAID, held a press conference on the arrival and delivery of aid and from the transcript there was a positive start, where they spoke of delivering some of this 569 tons of aid:
‘Since the first shipments of this aid arrived through the humanitarian maritime corridor on Friday, the U.N. has been distributing more than 506 metric tonnes of humanitarian supplies to people in need, including Deir al-Balah, Al-Mawasi, and Khan Younis. To put it into perspective, more than two-thirds of the supplies entering through this new corridor have already been distributed, or in the process of being distributed by humanitarian partners directly to people in need.’
Now, in terms of how far does that aid stretch, over two thirds was delivered and all to areas you will note, that do not include Rafah, where the overwhelming majority, some 1.6m people are trapped. None of this aid via this pier had by time of this press conference reached them and already most of it was gone. So in short, 569 tons of aid, really doesn’t touch the sides in terms of what is needed.
The USAID Response Manager for Gaza, Dan Dieckhaus, who announced this news, also went to great pains to reiterate that the aid coming in by land, as if we didn’t know this already, was insufficient, but he also wasn’t there to sell us a bridge either, or broken pier in this case I suppose, though it was still intact at the time of this presser, because he also said that the US maritime corridor on it’s own, is also insufficient to meet aid needs.
So Biden built this pier, and we still need the crossings open anyway? What was the point of the pier at all then? What a waste of money, when still the crossings need to be forced open to get sufficient aid in. Dieckhaus made this point abundantly clear too:
‘So in addition to the maritime corridor, every land crossing needs to be open and operate at maximum capacity and efficiency. That means enabling aid to cross the border and enabling humanitarian organizations with sustained fuel, safety, and access to collect goods at the border and distribute them throughout Gaza. Every moment that a crossing is not open, that trucks are not moving or where aid cannot be predictably collected at crossings distributed, increases the terrible human cost of this conflict.’
But the real kicker came later. Although having said the pier on it’s own is not sufficient, all crossings need to be opened too, that comparison between aid getting in via the pier and aid getting in via crossing was made clear too:
‘“In terms of how that compares to what had been getting in prior to the recent military activities in Rafah governate [sic]” the Director of USAID's Levant Response Management Team, Daniel Dieckhaus, said, “the amount of assistance that had been getting in was higher in April than it is now,” noting that the amount that the U.N. agencies have been able to collect from border points was down, especially as the access points have declined in number.’
So more aid was getting in via road last month, than is getting in now, via this pier and now the pier is stuffed. Humiliation of the US and Biden administration complete.
There’s an argument that the existence of the pier, gave Netanyahu the opportunity to close Rafah. Aid has to be allowed in, therefore as long as the pier is there, Netanyahu can argue he is doing as instructed, Biden actually facilitating worsening famine, by supplying a pier, that lasted less than 2 weeks and is a dead horse he’s apparently going to keep flogging. Without those crossings being forced open, conditions in Gaza will continue to deteriorate, and instead of doing what needs doing to bring an end to that, Biden and his pier, appear to be facilitating it instead.
Meanwhile, while Biden’s inability to deal with Israel to force aid into Gaza is exposed by a broken pier acting as a metaphor for his broken morality, the same isn’t the case for India, also helping someone out with their docking capacity – except in their case they’re helping their BRICS allies Iran – and Biden is throwing a wobbly about it. Get the details of that story in this video recommendation here and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.