The United States’ Role in the ‘Super Bowl’ Massacre in Rafah

As Americans were distracted by the Super Bowl, the Israeli military slaughtered dozens in the southern Gaza city of Rafah. To recover two hostages, Israel murdered 74 Palestinians in the city it previously declared a “safe zone.” 1.4 million Gazans, more than the population of San Diego or Dallas, fled to Rafah before the Super Bowl Massacre on Sunday. Images circulated of refugee tents reduced to craters and the lifeless body of a girl suspended on a building, missing limbs (Daily Dot). These bombings, according to the Israeli government, were a “diversion” designed to distract from its hostage recovery operation. At the very moment that it was murdering scores of civilians in the location where they were promised safety, the government of Israel aired a Super Bowl ad to drum up U.S. civilian support for the onslaught (The New Arab).  

The next day, the Biden administration announced it would not decrease any military assistance to Israel (The Guardian). Every death in Gaza depends on U.S. political cover and material assistance, with the United States transferring over 70,000 weapons, including missiles, aircraft, and targeting systems, to the country the size of New Jersey (Axios). As Human Rights Watch points out, Obama criticized Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for blocking food and water from reaching besieged civilians in Aleppo, Israel has “done the same thing to Gaza’s civilian population for over three months without any criticism for this tactic from the Biden administration.” 

Though the U.S. reasonably criticized Russia for bombing hospitals in Ukraine, no such condemnation was forthcoming for repeated Israeli attacks on hospitals in Gaza. Instead, the Biden administration is satisfied with the Israel Defense Forces’ promises that they are “looking for ways to ensure the safety and security of individual patients” as the attacks continue (HRW). Two weeks ago, an Israeli death squad disguised as medical workers executed three Palestinian patients in a hospital located not in Gaza but in the occupied West Bank (Reuters). 

Netanyahu last week rejected a Hamas proposal for a ceasefire and prisoner exchange as “delusional,” announcing that he would settle for nothing less than a so-called “complete and final victory” (BBC). He later disclosed that he had instructed the Israeli military to draw up plans to “evacuate” the entirety of the civilian population of Rafah, most of whom have been previously displaced from other parts of Gaza. This would be textbook ethnic cleansing under the definition used by the United Nations Commission of Experts for Yugoslavia: “a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas” (United Nations). 

TAKE ACTION

• Join the phone zap TODAY, Wednesday, February 14th at 2 PM EST and call and email Congress to demand an immediate, permanent ceasefire. 

• Find and attend a local action in solidarity with Palestine.

•  Support the Palestinian Youth Movement, Within Our Lifetime, Jewish Voice for Peace, and the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights.  

Rather than condemning blatant war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by its international partner, the Biden administration took decisive action to ensure the wholesale collapse of Gazan society amid famine by unilaterally withdrawing funding from the largest humanitarian organization, the UN Relief and Works Agency. UNRWA is a “quasi-state” that supports six million Palestinians within and outside Palestine through operating schools, healthcare facilities, and critical humanitarian aid (Al Jazeera). The Biden administration justified this unimaginably cruel decision by referencing unsubstantiated claims that a dozen UNRWA took part in the October 7 attack: .09% of the agency’s 13,000 employees. 

To recap: the United States is arming and actively supporting the Israeli government, which has publicly announced its intention to ethnically cleanse Rafah after killing tens of thousands of Palestinians and displacing the overwhelming majority of the Gaza Strip. Rather than restrain its ally when it unleashes death squads on hospital patients and bombs refugees with American munitions, the U.S. has withdrawn funding from the humanitarian organization serving the regime’s victims. Knowing this, we have a choice to make. 

In 1951, the Civil Rights Congress submitted a petition to the United Nations imploring a halt to the “institutionalized oppression and persistent slaughter” of Black people in the United States. The organization cited the democratic exclusion, economic impoverishment, and rampant state violence against Black people as evidence of “serious bodily and mental harm to members of the group,” including but not limited to murder. The petition was titled We Charge Genocide (BlackPast). 

Today, we charge genocide against the Israeli state and their accomplices in Washington, the Biden administration. Since the beginning of the conflict, The ARD has maintained its principled, consistent position that the oppression of Palestinian people is a historic catastrophe and that opposing the massively disproportionate attacks against civilians and civilian infrastructure in the occupied Gaza Strip conducted with American weapons is a moral and political necessity. If you live in the United States and pay taxes to the federal government, you are actively complicit in genocide and ethnic cleansing. It’s beyond time for you to respond accordingly. 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Israel bombarded the southern Gaza city of Rafah during the Super Bowl, killing dozens.

• Israel has announced plans to “evacuate” the city. This is textbook ethnic cleansing.

• Rather than condemn these atrocities, the Biden administration vowed to continue supplying weapons while cutting off humanitarian funding to Palestinians.