Care and feeding of victims

Here’s the kind of irony that shows what an upside-down, topsy-turvy world we’re living in. American cargo planes are now dropping food supplies on the people of Gaza while Israel fires into terrorist targets in Gaza from American-made warplanes.

You have to wonder what the Americans are saying to the Israelis while gearing up for the next food flight. Maybe something like: “Hold off on that air strike into the suspected terrorist hideout while we hit them first with bags of wheat.”

Or better, “Assuming you’ll kill and wound civilians as well as terrorists, we’d like to drop some medicine first.” Or, Ok, fire away on that suspected terrorist headquarters, and then we’ll follow up with a medicine drop along with food.”

There are, of course, other ways of bringing aid and comfort to the citizens of Gaza, a Palestinian enclave that’s bursting with nearly 2.4 million souls. Most of them have lost their homes in the war and are now cowering in the southern reaches of the 41-kilometer-long Gaza Strip, trying to avoid the next air strike or ground attack.

A number of Palestinians were killed while scrambling for food, hoping to grab maybe enough wheat to make biscuits and bread for families that haven’t had a proper meal for days and weeks. In the struggle for food, the race goes to the swiftest and strongest, elbowing, clawing and shoving their way past the old and weak, grabbing what they can from bags shrouded by the parachutes that wafted them earthward.

Don’t blame the Israelis if the weakest and unluckiest don’t get to the drop zone in time or get killed on the way. How else can we hope to annihilate the Hamas menace, some Israelis might ask. Can’t be helped. Collateral damage.

Seriously, though, can’t the Americans do more than implore the Israelis, please stop blasting away at terrorist hideouts long enough for us and our NATO allies and friends to feed people and maybe get a stopgap, temporary, thoroughly inadequate deal? The primary goal would be to retrieve some of the 250 hostages whom the Hamas terrorists have been hiding in dungeon-like prisons since capturing them on that awful day five months ago when they stormed across the Israeli border.

Pleas for a cessation of Israeli attacks on Hamas hideouts, though, will never be adequate. There is not the slightest doubt that Hamas will exploit any ceasefire to recover from the severe losses inflicted by the Israelis and certainly will never agree to an arrangement that might look like an admission of defeat.

Knowing Hamas’ never-say-die attitude, Biden might still want to pressure the Israelis to simply suspend their offensive without any deal at all. But how could he possibly make that happen?

The answer is simple — and impossible. He could halt, suspend or delay shipment of American war materiel to Israel, including not simply guns and bullets but also planes, tanks, fancy communications gear and much else. As the biggest recipient of American military aid, Israel relies on its American benefactor for survival in a hostile region surrounded by Arab foes, all of whom have ganged up on Israel in the past and failed utterly.

Politically, especially in an election year, Biden cannot betray America’s commitment, total dedication, to ensuring not only Israel’s survival but also its prosperity in a world of enemies. Multi-tentacled Israeli lobbying organizations are too influential, too enormous to risk losing their support, including the donations of their members and sympathizers.

So the best that Biden can do, besides begging the Israelis to agree on any kind of a stopgap, temporary deal for the sake of the hostages, is to beg, plead, whine for Israel to respect and abide by the concept of a “two-state solution” under which the Palestinians, driven from their ancestral homes after the founding of the Jewish state in 1948, can at least have their own independent state beyond the River Jordan. And, yes, in Gaza.

The two-state solution, though, has proven a palpable farce. Hamas long ago made a mockery of the idea, defeating the relatively liberal Fatah in Gaza and then driving it away. The Palestine Authority survives, barely, at its headquarters in Nablus on the West Bank, over which it has little real authority.

The “two-state solution” is a sham, a cover story for Biden to be able to tell America’s allies he’s doing all he can for the Palestinians as he is for the Israelis. Meanwhile, the best the Americans and their friends can do is wring their hands as the death toll of the Palestinians stuck in Gaza keeps rising.