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The U.S. government’s latest plan for getting aid to Gazans has such transparently ulterior motives that it’s almost too much to process. But it’s important that we understand, so here it is: In his State of the Union speech on Friday, President Joe Biden announced the U.S. military will build a ‘temporary’ pier on the coast of Gaza to enable aid and supplies to enter the territory by sea. At the time of writing there is not a lot of detail on how this will be built, staffed, etc but the logistics are beside the point.
Zoom out. Since 1946, the U.S. has given Israel $216 billion of military aid. This includes $3.6 billion in 2023 alone; this estimate for 2024 looks to be around $14 billion (although this may vary). It is directly funding the indiscriminate killing and starvation, the homelessness, displacement, malnutrition, disease, poverty and traumatisation of Gazans that humanitarian aid is trying to prevent. The endless stream of U.S. dollars into Israel’s military makes their aid efforts redundant.
The U.S. has always helped and support Israel, so it’s through this lens we need to evaluate the port plan. Who benefits more from having a clear entry point controlled by Israel’s biggest, richest and most loyal ally: Gazans or Israel?
If Aleksandr Lukashenko, the President of Belarus and Russia’s main ally in Europe, said “Hey, we want to help get aid to Ukrainians so we’re going to set up a temporary pier on the coast that we will retain total control of and it will never be used for nefarious purposes, promise!” you’re telling me we’d have to buy that obvious lie? The international community would call it out immediately as a blatant attempt to help Russia gain territorial control. The plan for a U.S.-controlled port in Gaza is the same.
Let’s take it a step further: why has delivering humanitarian aid via air or land not been effective enough? First Israeli forces targeted the truck deliveries, shooting at Palestinians waiting to receive aid. This forced a shift to air drops – literally parachuting in food – a much slower, more expensive strategy that could never provide for 2 million people. With land and air ruled out, only the sea remains. Is there any reason why Israel and the U.S. would want to justify having a presence on Gaza’s coast?
It’s time to talk about the Ben Gurion Canal plan. I highly recommend reading this in-depth explanation by climate researcher and journalist Patrick Mazza, but these are the key points:
About 15% of the world’s maritime trade goes through the Suez Canal. The Suez is the only fast route to get from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, is controlled by Egypt and makes up about 30% of Egypt’s national GDP.
In the early 1960s, the U.S. drafted a plan to create an alternative shipping route by blasting a path from the Red Sea to the Med Sea through Israel. It was to be called the Ben Gurion Canal (after David Ben-Gurion, the founding Prime Minister of Israel) – but it did not go ahead.
The proposed canal path has a kink near at the end where it has to go around the Gaza strip (see map below). If Israel was ~theoretically~ able to force Palestinians out (or have them ‘voluntarily migrate’), claim this territory and completely flatten it, the Ben Gurion Canal could take an even shorter, more direct route to the sea.
The canal would economically benefit Israel in the same way the Suez benefits Egypt. But arguably the biggest strategic and economic benefits would go to the U.S., which would have a subservient ally in full control of a major international shipping route.
If that wasn’t enough, there is one more non-humanitarian reason for the U.S. to have a pier in Gaza. In 2000, a natural gas field estimated to hold more than one trillion cubic feet of gas was discovered about 30km off the coast. In June 2023, the Israeli government agreed to allow the commercial development (i.e.: extraction and export) of the gas, so long as the Palestinian Authority and Egypt would commit to Israel’s security needs. The negotiations on this were taking place last year. But not anymore.
A temporary pier can very quickly become a more long-term port, justified by ‘security needs’ that the U.S. decides only they can enforce. It’s apparently going to take two months to build the thing, which suggests they intend for it to be operational for quite some time after that. So, where will the U.S. put this ‘temporary’ port for ‘humanitarian aid’ on Gaza’s coast? Near the proposed exit of the Ben Gurion canal, near the gas fields, or somewhere else?
The U.K. is already supporting the plan. I am certain Australia will endorse it (although, as I’m typing we have not) or at the very least, we won’t go against it. There’s a lot more to be said on all this, but let’s leave it here for now.
Smart stuff on the Internet 💭
All the stuff I found on the web that made me think, smile, or have an ‘aha!’ moment. Spend your Sunday reading them – you'll be better off for it:
Stupid White Bastards on The Politics
"Within the same 24-hour period of the news breaking of the charges against the Matildas captain came the images from Western Australia of three Aboriginal children zip-tied together after being caught swimming in the pool of a vacant home. This story won’t get as much airtime, even though it paints a far more vivid picture of who we are as a country... The images of the terrified children as they are stood over by a 45-year-old stupid white bastard will have shocked most who saw them. "
Why Does Every Famous Woman Have a Book Club Now? on The Cut
Quite interesting but I want to clarify that I do not endorse the idea that Dakota Johnson is a chaotic good, ok? “Their rationales may vary, but cultivating bookishness is as good a way as any to transition from one career phase to a more multidimensional one, in the same way that a former Disney teen might guest star on Law & Order SVU as a murder suspect in order to graduate to more mature roles.”
Tradwife Life: How This Alt-Right Label Has Mistakenly Taken Over The ‘Momosphere’ on Centennial World
“Not all tradwife influencers identify with the alt-right, but many cater to this demographic by embodying the archetype of the “ideal” wife and mother. One notable tradwife creator, Ayla Steward, also known as Wife with a Purpose, even started the “white baby challenge,” encouraging her white followers to match (or even surpass) her number of children.”