US President Joe Biden's article in the Washington Post on the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East was prompted by the fact that Washington and Tel Aviv have begun to lose the information war, Dr. Oscar van Heerden, Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for African Diplomacy and Leadership at the University of Johannesburg, told Sputnik Africa.
According to the expert, there is massive dissent both among the citizens and within the Biden Democratic Party and the State Department, with calls for a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, forcing the US president to adjust the policy of permissiveness toward the Jewish state.
"When I saw it [the article], the first thing that came to mind was [that] this is necessary because the United States, like Israel is beginning to lose the PR war," van Heerden opined. "So I think all-round, the Biden administration is feeling the pressure to change their current stance, which is to give Israel a blank check to do whatever it wants to do."
The expert noted that the Israeli government's actions to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza are similarly motivated. He noted that Tel Aviv agreed to the aid "not out of the goodness of its heart," but because "it is beginning to observe that it is losing the PR war, that the whole world is turning against it."
Returning to Biden's article, the expert stressed that it is full of dualism and contradictions. On the one hand, the president wrote about the need to end the war, while on the other hand, his administration deployed aircraft carrier warships in the Mediterranean to support Israel, landed the Delta Force, which helps the Israeli army on the ground, and created a package of billions of dollars in military aid in the form of weapons.
"On the one hand, you provide the bombs, you provide the equipment that is killing tens of thousands of people. On the other hand, you want to be seen as the savior that has now negotiated and brokered humanitarian aid to come in. And unfortunately, the world is not buying it," the pundit pointed out.
According to the expert, Biden, who wrote the text intended for American citizens and the world community to "reestablish its moral authority" in the world, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hope that their constituents will "take things at face value."
However, van Heerden added, while this tactic worked in the early 2000s when US Secretary of State Colin Powell fooled people with a speech at the UN about Iraqi "chemical weapons" and showed a test tube, supposedly containing a sample of a dangerous substance, now all Gazans have phones with cameras that can record, "no matter how the Western media tries to spin it, no matter how Biden tries to spin it."
"And so, instead of wanting to acknowledge that the death toll [of the Palestinians] is now going well into 12,000, they want to now question the numbers. They have such disrespect for Palestinian life that even in death, they mock the Palestinians," the researcher underlined.
In addition, the expert also noted the dualism of the US government in relation to the Ukrainian conflict. He pointed out that Biden continues to talk about Russian President Vladimir Putin's "evils" while it is the US government and his Central Intelligence Agency that was "actively playing a part in the coup that took place in the Ukraine, that then facilitated the training of Ukrainian soldiers, getting them ready, and equipping them."
"And now [the US government is] engaging in a proxy war against Russia to undermine Russia. And the Europeans are complicit in all of this, both in Ukraine and in Israel," the researcher said.
Two-State Solution?
Commenting on Biden's proposal in his article for a two-state solution for peace while simultaneously expressing one-sided support for Israel, van Heerden said that it essentially means a green light for the Jewish state to commit war crimes and violations of humanitarian law.
"When you say that you support Israel unequivocally, that you've got Israel's back, that there are no red lines, what you in effect saying is that, it's okay that Israel is violating international law. It's okay that Israel is violating humanitarian law. It's okay that Israel is committing war crimes, and by extension, it's okay if the plan is to expel Palestinians from Gaza into the Sinai desert of Egypt," he stressed.
In this regard, the expert revealed that the values of democracy and human rights "are a farce when it comes to the plight of the Palestinians." He added that Washington and Tel Aviv are "colluding" to carry out ethnic cleansing and genocide against the Palestinians.
"Israel has the United States completely in its pocket. It has worked at making sure that the United States will do what it wants it to do for a long time," van Heerden remarked.
On a more global level, the expert noted that, contrary to what Biden wrote for the Washington Post, the US has not been a world leader in recent years. Van Heerden reasoned that Washington's policy of "saber-rattling," wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya, building military bases in Asia to counter China, and waging a "proxy war" against Russia has made the world a "more dangerous place."
In addition, the US role as a defender of Western democratic values is being questioned because of its human rights violations in Ukraine and Gaza, he noted.
Today, van Heerden said, countries such as Russia, China and India have the opportunity "to actually make a real difference in global affairs," by contributing to a peaceful solution in Gaza, a task the US has failed to do.
"The historic peace broker in the conflict of Israel and Palestine has been the United States. And I think we can safely conclude that they have dismally failed in that role. And so I think that there is a need for new players. New great powers need to come into the equation," the pundit concluded.
The Russian Foreign Ministry has called on the parties in Gaza to cease hostilities. According to Russian President Vladimir Putin, the settlement of the Middle East crisis is possible only on the basis of the "two-state" formula approved by the UN Security Council, which provides for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state within the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.