Close to nine months into the genocide in Gaza, the Biden administration shows no sign of stopping the flow of arms and aid to Israel. Earlier in May, Biden declared that he was drawing a ‘red line’: should Israel invade Rafah, the southernmost corner of the Gaza Strip where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinian families have sheltered in tents for months, US assistance to Israel would end.
Over the Memorial Day weekend, Israel began a punishing assault on Rafah’s tent cities, killing countless Palestinians with US-manufactured bombs. As horrific images of charred corpses and decapitated infants spread around the world, the Biden administration denied its red line had been crossed. Many have been left justifiably wondering what it will take for Washington to cease its support for the genocide. Organizers with the Shut it Down for Palestine Coalition have an answer: if Biden will not impose a red line, the people will.
On June 8th, tens of thousands of activists from around the country will converge on DC for a third national mobilization for Palestine in less than a year. This time, donned in red shirts, the mass mobilization will physically surround the White House to form a ‘red line’ of its own—demonstrating the power of the mass movement, as well as the growing public rejection of the US’s role in enabling Israel’s atrocities against Palestinians. Layan Fuleihan, Director of Education with The People’s Forum, joins TRNN to discuss upcoming mobilization, and how the mass movement for Palestine is seizing moral authority after the Biden administration has thoroughly discredited itself.
Additional links/info:
Studio Production: Ju-Hyun Park
Post-Production: Alina Nehlich
Transcript
Ju-Hyun Park: Welcome to The Real News podcast. This is Ju-Hyun Park, engagement editor here at The Real News.
Today I’m joined by Layan Fuleihan of The People’s Forum to discuss the carnage Israel is unleashing in Rafah, an area of Gaza where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians have sheltered for months.
Before we proceed, a reminder that The Real News is a 100% independent, not-for-profit news outlet covering the stories corporate media won’t tell. We have a small but mighty team that’s dedicated to using journalism for the people, but we need your help to do it. Become a supporter of The Real News today by heading over to therealnews.com/donate and make a contribution. It really makes a difference.
Rafah is a tiny strip of land the size of London’s Heathrow Airport. For months, it’s become the site of a massive tent city sheltering hundreds of thousands of Palestinian families displaced by Israeli bombing. Israel has alleged that this area would be considered a safe zone, but throughout this war we’ve seen that promise broken time and again by Israeli airstrikes.
For weeks now, Biden has claimed that an Israeli attack on Rafah would cross a “red line” that would end further arm shipments to Israel. In an interview with CNN earlier this month, President Biden finally admitted that the weapons the US is supplying to Israel have been used to slaughter civilians. And so he stated, “I made it clear that if they go into Rafah — They haven’t gone into Rafah yet — If they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah.”
This stern supposed warning has, predictably, fallen on deaf ears. This week, claiming the tent city is, in fact, a Hamas stronghold, Israel committed its worst massacres to date in Rafah — And I emphasize here that’s massacres, plural, as these are ongoing.
If you’ve been on social media, you’ll likely know what I mean. A video of a father holding his decapitated infant amid the burning remains of their family tent, images of the charred corpses of children and adults burned alive by 2,000-pound US-made bombs.
By any reasonable measure, it would seem that the red line has been crossed, yet Biden still does nothing. So if Biden will not impose a red line, who will? Organizers with the US-based mass movement in solidarity with Palestine have an answer: the people will impose the red line.
I’m joined today by Layan Fuleihan, director of education at the People’s Forum in New York City. She’s here to discuss this phase of Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the upcoming national mobilization to DC this Saturday, June 8, to impose a people’s red line on the Biden administration.
Layan, welcome to The Real News.
Layan Fuleihan: Thanks so much for having me.
Ju-Hyun Park: So let’s cut to the chase: Biden said attacking Rafah would be his red line. Rafah has now been attacked more savagely than ever before, yet the Biden administration continues to say that the red line has not been crossed. What’s your take on what’s going on? Does this red line even exist?
Layan Fuleihan: Well, I would say no, this red line actually does not exist. Biden and the White House have never, never shown any capacity to care for civilian lives, to care for Palestinian lives. And they’ve never been appalled by the genocide that has been ongoing for the past eight months or the genocide that has been ongoing, actually, for the past 76 years. Despite the fact that the majority of the US population is now fully against the US role in executing this genocide against the Palestinian people, the White House is not very concerned with ending the genocide.
My assessment of the so-called red line is that it was set for two reasons: One, Biden has a red line with Netanyahu. We are in a moment right now where the political pressure and the political crisis that has been generated by this genocidal assault on Palestine and the mass movement that has taken the world by storm in support of the Palestinian people has resulted in the fact that the White House and the Israeli occupation have a difference in tactics at this point.
Biden is definitely frustrated with Netanyahu. The White House is definitely frustrated with Tel Aviv, because they have a difference in tactics. They would like to find other means at this point, they’d like to exit this phase of the so-called war so that they can move to other means of controlling and occupying and, in their hopes and dreams, repressing and limiting the Palestinian liberation struggle.
And Biden doesn’t see the ongoing genocide as a successful strategy at this point. It’s clear that Israel is unable to actually defeat the Palestinian resistance. They have not met their military objectives, no matter how many billions of dollars of weapons are transferred over to them.
And so Biden is now moving to other strategies that perhaps we all might be familiar with. The White House does this time and time again: bomb and decimate an area and then come in with aid. Try to use soft power to achieve what you could not achieve militarily.
So that’s my assessment. My assessment is actually that the red line, in fact, was more for the US to try to get Netanyahu in line. The leaked information about the United States pausing a very small weapon shipment, that was not supposed to be public. The White House did not want that to be public. It was the Israelis who leaked it to create chaos and to put the pressure back on Biden so that he would have to face the right wing, who would demand he continue supporting Israel unconditionally.
Now the other element here of the so-called red line is, I’m sure, that the calculation was the fact that the majority of the US population is not only against the genocide, but they are for demonstrating it and creating political crisis until the demand is achieved. We have seen an unprecedented level of mobilization for Palestine over the past eight months.
No elected official is able to have a moment of peace at this point. Biden is unable to campaign. Neither of the ruling parties are looking at a clear path to victory. It’s a huge political crisis, unprecedented.
And so I’m sure Biden was happy with the idea of going out on CNN and being able to say we have a red line, and thinking maybe this is going to appease the masses that are outraged about the US role in the massacre of the Palestinian people.
And it’s backfired on both counts. Netanyahu hasn’t stopped. Not only have they not stopped, they have gone in even deeper into Rafah. They’ve done exactly what they were told not to do.
They are still losing, by the way. They have expanded their operations back again to the entire territory of Gaza, and they are facing losses at every turn. They are committing more and more massacres. The latest massacre, the series of them in Rafah.
But there was one that really shocked the world this weekend that was done with US weapons targeting an UNRWA area of Rafah. There’s just 10 families, and that’s where those graphic images that you refer to came from. And those were US weapons that were used to do that.
The outrage was so great that Netanyahu was forced to say it was a tragic mistake. It certainly was not a mistake, everyone knows what happens if you bomb a tent city. Of course it’s going to cause major destruction and death and massacre.
So we’re in this situation now where it’s backfired on that front. It has not really stopped the Israelis from going forward in their invasion and their occupation. They’d like to do everything they possibly can to just keep using military force to try to distract the world from the fact that they have not yet achieved what they set out to achieve.
And the other thing is that the mass movement for Palestine has not been appeased. In fact, it’s created even more of a crisis for Biden because people are ready to hold him to account. He said there’s a red line, and that red line is the invasion of Rafah. These massacres have been happening. The public are demanding, where’s your red line, Biden? Now they’re having over 50 martyrs every day in Rafah. Where’s your red line?
And he’s coming up with all these ridiculous excuses saying that it doesn’t actually qualify as a ground invasion because there’s not tanks and troops in formation entering Rafah, the image that you might get from a military historical film or something like that. That’s not how Israel fights anymore. That’s not how they fight war. That’s not how they do things. Of course it’s not going to look like that.
But we do have tanks now in central Rafah that have been seen and recorded, and there’s been multiple massacres. And Biden is unable to enforce his own political policy on Israel and on his own administration.
It would be very simple. He just needs to pick up the phone, call the Pentagon, stop all military, political, and economic coordination and transfers with the state of Israel, and that would be, essentially, what could call the shots here. Israel cannot do anything that it’s doing without the full support of the United States.
And so we really don’t see Biden as having moved his policy on Palestine. We’re not waiting for him to do that, either. How many horrific scenes does the White House have to see before they realize that something is wrong? The issue is not that. The issue is that they themselves have the same goal as the Israelis. They would like to see the elimination of the possibility for the Palestinian people to resist occupation and colonization. Their only concern right now is that Israel is not achieving it fast enough.
And so we have, over the past eight months, the mass movement has really grown not just in size but also in strength and in level of organization. And it’s very clear to the general public, to people who have been activated by this struggle for Palestine and to end the genocide, that the moral authority actually lies with us.
And so this is an opportunity for us to really bring that message home and to be very clear: we are the red line. And in fact, the White House is the source of the genocide and of the terror that is being inflicted on the Palestinian people.
And so we are going to form a red line around really what the source of these massacres and these killings are and create more political pressure for the White House, and demonstrate as strongly as possible that there are consequences for Biden’s policy of unfettered genocide and imperialist domination across the world.
Ju-Hyun Park: You’re absolutely right on that point about moral authority. Who is now the moral authority in the room? It seems that it can’t be the so-called government authorities that we are supposed to trust any longer.
And that’s something that’s completely the result of their own behavior. They have no one to blame but themselves. It’s not only because their actions are so brutal and so grotesque, but it’s really that the way that they lie to us so brazenly about this has also really eroded public trust.
As you were saying, they’re claiming that these attacks on Rafah were mistakes. They’ve also claimed that there were somehow Hamas command centers located inside of these tents where there are literal infants and elderly people sheltering.
The public understands what’s going on. We can see very clearly with our own eyes what’s really happening. Our memory is not that short. We also know that this was an UNRWA location.
Just a few months ago, we saw the deep mass defunding of UNRWA led by the US government, among many other Western governments as well. And we know that this is a playbook that’s been used again and again, whether it was in the massacres at Al-Shifa Hospital or the so-called flour massacre that was occurring a couple of months ago.
So we can already see that there is an established pattern where there’s mass killing that occurs on the ground, and then there’s an attempt to obfuscate what happened, why it happened, was it a mistake, was it intentional, was it, in fact, a justified military operation? All those different narratives come out at once, but they only serve to obscure the fact that what happened on the ground was the mass slaughter of mostly unarmed people.
We’re talking people who’ve already been displaced from their homes. People who have already been bombed and, many cases, people who are children, as well as women, as well as families, and the elderly, who are sheltering and really just trying to survive, really just looking for any way to continue to endure in the face of horrific violence.
So you’ve hinted a little bit at what’s going to happen on June 8 when the people’s red line will be established around the White House. And your organization, The People’s Forum, has been a key convener of the Shut It Down coalition, which is calling for this action. Can you tell us more about what’s going to happen on June 8? What’s the plan? Why are we doing it, and how do people get involved?
Layan Fuleihan: Absolutely. The plan is quite simple: we are going to show up in the tens of thousands at least to the White House wearing red, and we are going to form the people’s red line. We are going to surround the White House with the people’s red line.
And why are we doing this? We know that mass mobilizations have had a huge impact on the capacity for US imperialism to maneuver.
A couple of months ago we saw Netanyahu, there was a leak of a private conversation he had where he said, these mass mobilizations across the world and the capitals of the countries across the world, they need to be pressured. They need to be stopped. This is creating too much of a political crisis for us.
And the concept of the red line is a very clear one. We are going to deliver the message that it is long gone the times when the White House can just manufacture reality and package it and send it out to the American public and that’s going to be received well.
For the past eight months, the US has been trying to set the narrative. On Oct. 7, they said that anyone who stands with the Palestinian people is a terrorist. And so you should be ashamed, you should stay home. You should not be out in the streets. You should not be expressing solidarity. Too bad across the country it was tens of thousands out on the street that week very clearly in solidarity with the Palestinian people.
And over time, the mass movement has been able to erode the capacity for the White House to set the narrative. The White House and the Zionist funders and corporate media have been unable to set the narrative. When the Israeli occupation bombed the first hospital in Gaza, Biden went on national television and said, we don’t know who bombed the hospital. And no one believed him, absolutely no one believed him.
Then when the health ministry of Gaza came out with the first list of the martyred, of the killed, Biden went again on national television and said, we can’t verify the numbers. The thing is that we can verify the numbers. Just now they’re saying that it’s not verified if the tanks are in central Rafah, we are verifying it now. We have on the ground, in-person photo, video, and verifiable evidence that the Israeli military has entered into the center of Rafah.
The movement is now the ones who are able to interpret what is happening on the ground and deliver that message without mediation from the corporate media to the American public.
It’s very clear, and the impacts of this are really threatening to the White House because like you said, it’s created a huge lack of trust. The White House’s constant lying and maneuvering information has created a situation where the American public no longer trusts them to actually give the real version of what’s going on around the world, and even at home.
So all that to say the movement for Palestine is very strong, and we know that it’s going to be a long struggle ahead. We know that the US and Israeli interests are completely aligned. And we know that what the US would love most of all is to close off the possibility for any people to resist and build a struggle for their own sovereignty, and in any way to go against what the US would like to see as the world order for its own prosperity and domination.
So this demonstration of a red line, we intend to show the White House exactly who we are, exactly how clear the American public is, and exactly how much they have an inability to limit, repress, or confuse the mass movement for Palestine.
It’s also going to show the media exactly where we are at and deliver that message very strongly. We are seeing breaks in corporate media at this point. The crisis of the ruling class has now reached the ruling class institutions and the corporate media. We are seeing even people like CBS News and others saying, how many more charred bodies do you need to see before the red line is crossed? We are at a moment of extreme political crisis for the ruling class, and so this is the moment to actually intensify the political pressure.
And lastly but certainly not least, we are going to show the Palestinian people exactly where we stand. And the fact that their cause is now the world’s cause, including inside the center of imperialism, and that the people of the United States are with them and not with the White House.
Ju-Hyun Park: You heard it here folks, June 8, this Saturday, tens of thousands of people from around the US will roll out to DC to surround the White House wearing red to form the people’s red line.
Layan, before we say goodbye, where can people go to know more about this, and how do they get involved?
Layan Fuleihan: Sure. So you can go to shutitdown4palestine.org. That’s four the number, so shutitdown4palestine.org. Front page there is all about June 8, and there’s a link there for your organization to endorse. Anyone can endorse. Please send in your endorsement, and then there’s links to find buses.
You can also go to the ANSWER Coalition’s website that is helping to organize the bus information. Major cities and small cities from across the country are already organizing transportation. You can also submit your own transportation there if you want to organize a bus or a van or a car caravan.
And we’re going to be there. We’re going to be there by rain or shine. We’re going to be wearing red, show up at 12:00 PM at Lafayette Park. We’re going to gather there and then form the red line, and it’s going to be an incredible moment. Like I said before, this is a moment of perhaps the most heightened contradictions for the ruling class, for the genocide enablers.
And so it is actually the moment for us to mobilize even more urgently than at any other time. If you have been out every single day, keep being with us. And if you haven’t been out in the streets yet, this is your moment to come and join us.
Ju-Hyun Park: Thanks again, Layan. Once more, that was Layan Fuleihan with The People’s Forum.
Before we sign off, thank you to The Real News studio crew for helping make this episode possible: Alina Nehlich, David Hebden, Cameron Granadino, and Kayla Rivara. This is Ju-Hyun Park, and you’ve been listening to The Real News. Be there on June 8 or find another way to support. We’ll catch you next time.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
