The Biden administration criticized an Israeli announcement of 4,000 new illegal settlement units in the West Bank but appears to have no plans for taking action.

Biden officials have been unequivocal in their support for Israel’s assault on Gaza, barely paying lip service to a ceasefire. More concerning is their refusal to acknowledge Israel initiated and provoked this escalation. 

In yet another demonstration of the bankruptcy of Biden’s policy on Palestine, the State Department called a UN Security Council resolution opposing Israel’s latest settlement move as “unhelpful,” a sure sign the U.S. will veto it. And reinforcing Biden’s bankruptcy is the emergence of a new Democratic Party PAC funded by Jeffrey Yass, who has funded Trump Republicans, to bolster the rightwing settler agenda here in the U.S.

Last week the State Department refused to admit that Israel is occupying the West Bank or that the country has nuclear weapons.

Yesterday in a shocking exchange at the State Department, the spokesman for Biden’s foreign policy team refused to describe Palestinians in Jenin and other areas of the West Bank as living under military occupation by Israel.

The U.S. State Department welcomed Israel’s statement on the killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, and Rep. Marie Newman and reporters Said Arikat and Matt Lee promptly rejected the American stance. “That’s not what accountability is, unless you guys have a different definition of it than the dictionary does,” Matt Lee mocked.