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BIDEN’S CONVENTION SPEECH MADE ABSURD CLAIMS ABOUT HIS GAZA POLICY
 
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Norman Solomon
August 20, 2024
Counterpunch
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_ Biden’s Convention Speech Made Absurd Claims About His Gaza
Policy _

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An observation from George Orwell — “those who control the
present, control the past and those who control the past control the
future” — is acutely relevant to how President Biden talked about
Gaza during his speech at the Democratic convention Monday night. His
words fit into a messaging template now in its eleventh month,
depicting the U.S. government as tirelessly seeking peace, while
supplying the weapons and bombs that have enabled Israel’s continual
slaughter [[link removed]]
of civilians.

“We’ll keep working, to bring hostages home, and end the war in
Gaza, and bring peace and security to the Middle East,” Biden told
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“As you know, I wrote a peace treaty for Gaza. A few days ago I put
forward a proposal that brought us closer to doing that than we’ve
done since October 7th.”

It was a journey into an alternative universe of political guile from
a president who just six days earlier had approved
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$20 billion worth of more weapons to Israel. Yet the Biden delegates
in the convention hall responded with a crescendo of roaring
admiration.

Applause swelled as Biden continued: “We’re working
around-the-clock, my secretary of state, to prevent a wider war and
reunite hostages with their families, and surge humanitarian health
and food assistance into Gaza now, to end the civilian suffering of
the Palestinian people and finally, finally, finally deliver a
ceasefire and end this war.”

In Chicago’s United Center, the president basked in adulation while
claiming to be a peacemaker despite a record of literally making
possible the methodical massacres of tens of thousands
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of Palestinian civilians.

Orwell would have understood. A political reflex has been in motion
from top U.S. leaders, claiming to be peace seekers while aiding and
abetting the slaughter. Normalizing deception about the past sets a
pattern for perpetrating such deception in the future.

And so, working inside the paradigm that Orwell described, Biden
exerts control over the present, strives to control narratives about
the past, and seeks to make it all seem normal, prefiguring the
future.

The eagerness of delegates to cheer for Biden’s mendaciously absurd
narrative about his administration’s policies toward Gaza was in a
broader context — the convention’s lovefest for the lame-duck
president.

Hours before the convention opened, Peter Beinart released a short
video essay anticipating the fervent adulation. “I just don’t
think when you’re analyzing a presidency or a person, you sequester
what’s happened in Gaza,” he said
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“I mean, if you’re a liberal-minded person, you believe that
genocide is just about the worst thing that a country can do, and
it’s just about the worst thing that your country can do if your
country is arming a genocide.”

Beinart continued: “And it’s really not that controversial anymore
that this qualifies as a genocide. I read the academic writing on
this. I don’t see any genuine scholars of human rights international
law who are saying it’s not indeed there. . . . If you’re gonna
say something about Joe Biden, the president, Joe Biden, the man, you
have to factor in what Joe Biden, the president, Joe Biden, the man,
has done, vis-a-vis Gaza. It’s central to his legacy. It’s central
to his character. And if you don’t, then you’re saying that
Palestinian lives just don’t matter, or at least they don’t matter
this particular day, and I think that’s inhumane. I don’t think we
can ever say that some group of people’s lives simply don’t matter
because it’s inconvenient for us to talk about them at a particular
moment.”

Underscoring the grotesque moral obtuseness from the convention stage
was the joyful display of generations as the president praised and
embraced his offspring. Joe Biden walked off stage holding the hand of
his cute little grandson, a precious child no more precious than any
one of the many thousands of children
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the president has helped Israel to kill.

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_Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org
[[link removed]] and executive director of the Institute for
Public Accuracy. His latest book, War Made Invisible: How America
Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, is published by The New
Press._

* President Biden's Convention Speech; Democratic Convention;
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