By Jamal Kanj
While claiming to work hard for a ceasefire for over a year, US President Joe Biden has been ineffective in curbing Netanyahu’s relentless pursuit of war.
American news outlets reported that the deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system was “to defend Israel against a possible Iranian attack” These misleading headlines exemplify how easily the managed “free” press can become a tool for governments or special interest groups to manipulate truth, spread propaganda, distort facts, and shape public opinion.
When it comes to discussing Palestine, there is an iron gate controlling information and shaping perceptions, keeping the American public in a state of ignorance or false consciousness. We saw this recently when CBS News host Tony Dokoupil, challenged African American writer Ta-Nehisi Coates on his reflections from his visit to Palestine.
The “Zio Iron Gate” (ZIG) tightly regulates what Americans can hear and read about Palestine, reminiscent of tactics used by authoritarian regimes. Palestinian voices are largely absent from mainstream discourse, and when someone like Coates tries to share his unfiltered observations, he is berated for failing to rationalize Israeli apartheid.
Contrary to American ZIG efforts to define aggression as defense, Israel’s own media was more forthright in discussing a new Israeli request for a second THADD ahead of the “expected Israeli reprisal attack” against Iran. It was further confirmed by President Joe Biden, when asked during his recent trip to Germany whether he was aware of Israel’s planned strike on Iran and its targets, he responded with a brief “Yes and yes.”
A subsequent, purportedly “unauthorized release of classified documents,” marked top secret and posted online on Telegram, revealed that Israel is moving “military assets in place to conduct a military strike” against Iran.
Meanwhile, ZIG is shaping an alternative reality for the American-enabled impending Israeli assault on Iran. The indisputable truth, Biden’s deployment of the American defense system is an escalatory measure to enable Israel’s aggression on Iran, not to defend Israel “against possible Iran attack.”
THADD was first introduced to military service in 2012. The US Defense Department’s Missile Defense Agency has on hand 800 interceptors for the only seven THAAD systems, with an eighth due to be delivered in 2025. Each terminal consists of 48 interceptor missiles on 6 truck-mounted launchers, 8 tubes each. The price for deploying the THAAD system empowering Israel to wage war on Iran is projected to cost US taxpayers an additional $1 billion. This comes on top of the $14.5 billion approved in November 2023, and the nearly $4 billion in annual military aid.
Lockheed Martin’s designed THADD interceptors are much equivalent to the American taxpayer-financed Israeli Arrow 2 system. Thus, raising the question of the added value the THAAD brings when the American-financed Israeli missile defense has similar capabilities covering all the Israeli-occupied land area. Because, it’s not the American missile interceptor system what interests Netanyahu. But rather to have US soldiers in a combat role against Iran. The stationing of 100 American soldiers in harm’s way is Netanyahu’s objective to get American soldiers dragged into the quagmire of Israel’s never-ending wars.
As I’ve detailed in an earlier article, Israel has been preparing for years to strike Iran. The delay was likely to allow Zionist Sayanim in Washington time to find a way to entangle the US in yet another war engineered for Israel. Netanyahu and Israeli supporters in Washington have been advancing Israeli objectives under false pretenses, pushing America to fight Israel’s wars in Iraq and Iran, among others, for more than two decades.
The Pentagon’s explanation for deploying the THAAD system in Israel reached new heights of absurdity. In addition to the typical boilerplate obsequence statement to defending America’s welfare state, Pentagon spokesman Pat Ryder stated that the deployment was also “to defend Americans in Israel.”
Ryder’s dubious statement came almost on the same day the US embassy in Lebanon urged “US citizens in Lebanon… to depart now.” For Americans who choose to become Israeli citizens, the Pentagon sends THAAD to protect them; yet sees no need to defend American citizens in Lebanon, even as they are targeted by American-made bombs where at least one American citizen, Kamel Ahmad Jawad, was killed in an Israeli raid. To add insult to injury, Jawad’s murder was initially downplayed by State Department spokesman Mathew Miller, who incorrectly claimed on October 2 that Jawad was “a legal permanent resident, not an American citizen”—before being corrected later that week.
This highlights the Biden administration’s apparent two-tiered approach to American citizenship—one for Jewish Israeli Americans and another for Muslim and Christian American citizens. For example, while the White House welcomed the family of American-Israeli citizen Hersh Goldberg-Polin, it did not extend the same courtesy to the family of the Christian Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was killed by an Israeli army sniper in 2022. Despite Israel’s refusal to cooperate with the US investigation into her death, the administration quietly shelved the case, seemingly allowing the killing of a “lower-tiered” non-Jewish American citizen to go unaddressed.
Another example of this lower-tier citizenship is 78-year-old American-Palestinian Omar Assad, who “was handcuffed, blindfolded, and gagged by Israeli soldiers, then left to die in a cold car park.” The administration also failed to take action two months ago when an Israeli soldier, likely using an American-made or financed weapon, shot 26-year-old American Turkish citizen Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi in the head two months ago. Instead of conducting an independent investigation into the killing of this “less-than-equal” American, the Biden administration requested that the perpetrator investigate their own crime.
While claiming to work hard for a ceasefire for over a year, President Biden has been ineffective in curbing Netanyahu’s relentless pursuit of war. He is likely to fail again in controlling Netanyahu’s biblical obsession against the goyim in Iran, as Netanyahu knows that, regardless of Biden’s private disapproval, he will ultimately endorse his actions.
Indifferent to Biden’s expressed opinion, Netanyahu will choose the targets and time of the Israeli strikes against Iran to maximize their impact on the US elections. A wider conflict could push more pro-genocide voters toward Donald Trump, while anti-genocide voters might withhold support for Kamala Harris. This could once again enable Netanyahu to deliver the White House to Trump, in exchange for a larger deal: the annexation of the West Bank in exchange for the $100 million campaign donation (legal bribe) from Israeli citizen Miriam Adelson to the Trump campaign.
– Jamal Kanj is the author of “Children of Catastrophe,” Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America, and other books. He writes frequently on Arab world issues for various national and international commentaries. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle
