Ten weeks and over 20,000 dead Palestinians in, including over 10,000 children, President Joe Biden and his diplomatic retinue—including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin—are once again “urging” Israel this week to “better protect Gaza civilians.”
At this point, one can set their watch to weekly matinee showings of what we’ll call “Concern Theater,” which is best defined as the performative spectacle of US officials publicly—or privately, but leaked to a public media outlet—expressing “concerns about” Gaza’s unprecedented civilian death toll. Since Israel began bombing Gaza on Oct. 7, the day after a Hamas-led attack killed 1,139 Israelis, the Biden administration has conspicuously expressed “concerns” or leveled “urgings” about high death tolls on Oct. 11, Oct. 15, Oct. 29, Oct. 31, Nov. 3, Nov. 10, Nov. 29, Dec. 2, Dec. 6, Dec. 11, Dec. 14, and Dec. 18.
Yet the rate of IDF killing hasn’t changed at all, remaining fairly steady since the “war” began:
Israel has dropped over 30,000 bombs (almost half “dumb bombs”) on the roughly 140-square mile Gaza Strip, destroying or damaging 60 percent of buildings and displacing 90 percent of the population, according to the UNRWA. (“Unguided munitions are typically less precise and can pose a greater threat to civilians, especially in such a densely populated area like Gaza,” Natasha Bertrand and Katie Bo Lillis write at CNN about the “dumb bombs.” “The rate at which Israel is using the dumb bombs may be contributing to the soaring civilian death toll.” May be…)
What, exactly, is the point of these manifestly toothless “urgings” and “raisings of concerns” if US support for Israel continues all the same?
The United States, meanwhile, has not paired its “warnings” or “concerns” with actual consequences of any kind, continuing its longstanding unqualified support for Israel with weapons transfers, military support, intelligence, and diplomatic cover. Biden himself has been the single biggest mouthpiece for some of Israel’s most blatant lies. Going on month three of Israel’s deliberate targeting of civilians and critical food, sanitation, transportation and medical infrastructure, one is compelled to ask: What, exactly, is the point of these manifestly toothless “urgings” and “raisings of concerns” if US support for Israel continues all the same?
Primarily, the function of Concern Theater is to placate a domestic audience that needs to be convinced we’re the good guys. Aware of how much the horrific images coming daily out of Gaza are harming their re-election prospects at home, Biden and his team have to do something to make it look like they aren’t heartless monsters. And since they cannot cut off or punish Israel in any way—because they ideologically agree with its military campaign and strategically depend on Israel’s existence in the region, and on its command of all this deathly power—they have to engage in empty, vague expressions of “concern” to make us feel better about them doing what they were always going to do, regardless. Israeli leaders are aware of this and don’t really mind these consequence-free scoldings every few days. So long as the tank artillery shells, rifles, and 2,000-pound bombs are delivered on time, who cares if the Biden White House needs to throw its half-distracted base the occasional liberal PR slop.
Israeli leaders… don’t really mind these consequence-free scoldings every few days. So long as the tank artillery shells, rifles, and 2,000-pound bombs are delivered on time, who cares if the Biden White House needs to throw its half-distracted base the occasional liberal PR slop.
Nothing the US claims it has “concerns” about is at all quantifiable or specific, by design. “‘Far too many Palestinians have been killed,” Blinken told reporters on November 9. Compared to what? What would a sufficient number of Palestinian deaths be? What’s the ratio Blinken would be okay with? The details don’t matter, because Blinken isn’t making an intellectual statement—he’s making a performatively emotional one. His aim is to look concerned, not to actually express concerns that can lead to actionable changes in policy.
And US media largely runs with this framing. Every single time Sullivan, Blinken, Austin, or Biden engage in Concern Theater, outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN dutifully report it without context or criticism. The fact that the White House has issued almost the exact same word-for-word “concerns” a dozen times before doesn’t seem to bother any of these reporters or editors, or merit a mention. US media seems largely unphased by this moral pantomime, still playing along with the polite fiction that the United States isn’t entirely acting in lockstep with Israel and its attendant, manifest war crimes. Skimming The New York Times on Monday, a reader would be under the distinct impression the United States is a disinterested, third-party human rights organization:
Behind closed doors, Biden officials admit it’s mostly hot air, telling reporters that the goal is to cover their asses professionally and morally. One NBC News CYA-themed article, composed largely of Biden administration leaks, explained how the game is played: “If this really goes bad, we want to be able to point to our past statements,” one senior US official said. It’s not as if those in the White House, the military, and State Department aren’t aware they and their boss are a willful party to serious, ongoing, inexcusable war crimes. Dozens of State Department staffers filed dissent memos objecting to Biden’s lockstep support for Israel, and Biden’s own staffers put on a pro-ceasefire vigil outside the White House.
“If this really goes bad, we want to be able to point to our past statements,” one senior US official said. It’s not as if those in the White House, the military, and State Department aren’t aware they and their boss are a willful party to serious, ongoing, inexcusable war crimes.
Biden and his team are aware of all of this and have to do something to fill up time while they continue to arm, support, and back Israel’s scorched-earth assault, with a scale of killing efficiency not seen in modern times. (The quicker the leveling of Gaza and the expulsion/extermination of Palestinians happens, the sooner this performance can enter its second act: lamenting that more Palestinian deaths weren’t avoided.) Roughly 70 percent of Palestinians killed thus far have been women and children. As Jacobin’s Branko Marcetic notes, this puts the rate of dead women and children far above that seen in any recent conflicts:
At the height of the Syrian civil war in 2015 and 2016, a conflict considered especially deadly for women and children, those two groups comprised 25 percent of the civilians killed by one count, or 37 percent by another. When civilian deaths in Afghanistan reached an all-time high in the first half of 2021, women and children comprised 46 percent of all civilian casualties. Over the first two years of the Iraq War, that figure was just under 20 percent. In Yemen — generally considered one of this century’s ghastliest wars — from 2018 to 2022, women and children made up 33 percent of civilian casualties, according to data compiled by the Civilian Impact Monitoring Project on the consequences of armed violence. (If indirect causes of the war like starvation and disease are accounted for, Yemen’s numbers are significantly higher.)
This isn’t to say Palestinian men’s lives don’t count as civilian or innocent—it’s simply a harrowing reminder of the utter falseness of the manifest lie that Israel is targeting combatants or militants. All evidence indicates that Israel isn’t just indifferent to civilian deaths but is, in fact, targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure. The Palestinian civilians who have been killed, maimed, and displaced are not just collateral damage or fallen “human shields,” they are part of a population that is itself being targeted for death or forcible population transfers. That is the only clear and obvious explanation for what Israel is doing and how it is doing it.
A secondary function of Concern Theater is a last-ditch effort to maintain America’s self-appointed Human Rights Hall Monitor brand on the so-called “global stage.” Unlike Trump’s brash, might-makes-right overt nihilism, the Biden White House, like Obama before, repeatedly puts on lofty airs as defenders of “democracy” and “human rights.” This posture has, of course, always been selective and largely pretextual, but the last 10 weeks have removed any doubt about its artifice that may have remained. As Oliver Stuenkel noted in Foreign Policy last month, the United States’ unwavering support for Israel’s uniquely horrific siege and bombing of Gaza has vindicated the commonly held belief in the Global South that all of America’s meddling and sanctimony was entirely self-serving.
All evidence indicates that Israel isn’t just indifferent to civilian deaths but is, in fact, targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure. The Palestinian civilians who have been killed, maimed, and displaced are not just collateral damage or fallen “human shields,” they are part of a population that is itself being targeted for death or forcible population transfers.
Blinken has a fiction to maintain in this moment, that is among his top duties, and he appears to just be powering through it, despite any and all semblance of credibility evaporating weeks ago. The State Department is going to keep pushing the image of the United States as the arbiter or enforcer of the “liberal rules-based order,” no matter how many bodies pile up in Gaza or how little credibility it has. After all, without this narrative continually propping up the fiction of America’s exceptional righteousness, the US diplomatic corp may view itself as nothing but greasy extortionists like their Chinese and Russian counterparts. And this simply cannot be the case.
All this is to be expected, no matter how unseemly the whole production is. Blinken is fundamentally a PR agent for US security interests, of which Israel is a constituent member, and spinning that country’s repeated war crimes as simple miscues, mistakes, or temporary hot headedness is inherent in the undignified, amoral work of imperial middle management. What isn’t inevitable, though, is our media treating this Concern Theater as meaningful, newsworthy, or morally relevant, framing it like the US is merely a third-party coming in to do a little Genocide Harm Reduction via “nods” and “nudges”, rather than the transparent ass-covering of a co-conspirator helping execute one of the greatest crimes of the 21st century.
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