Biden Administration Demands That Israel Declare It is Not Deliberately Starving Gazans

Lisa Grande is the Biden administration’s Middle East aid envoy and an employee of the State Department’s Bureau of Near East Affairs. In other words, she could be considered to be among the last examples of the State Department “Arabists” who were, and are, united in their anti-Israel animus, which began in 1947-48 with their attempts to prevent American recognition of the State of Israel, continued with their devotion to Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel Nasser, and now is expressed in their enthusiasm for the “Palestinians” and that soi-disant “two-state solution” that would require Israel to be squeezed back within the 1949 armistice lines (which those Arabists like to describe, wrongly as “boundary lines”), that would leave Israel with a nine-mile-wide waist from Qalqilya to the sea and provide the Arabs with a 23rd state. Think of such rebarbative “Arabists” from the past as William Phillips, Talcott Seelye, Loy Henderson, Raymond Hare, and Parker Hart, and the parts they played in the formation of America’s pro-Arab policy in the Middle East that lasted for many decades. I wrote above that “she could be considered” a State Department Arabist, but that would not be true, for she did not spend her professional life at Foggy Bottom. No, Lisa Grande spent 25 years working for the United Nations, which, however, is also a swamp of anti-Israel attitudes.

Now Lisa Grande has just been particularly nasty toward Israel by “demanding” that Israel declare that it is “not deliberately starving Gazans.” Why should Israel agree to such a perverse demand, to make such a humiliating and unnecessary statement? Israel has now been put in the awkward position of having to dignify that preposterous charge, to accept the suggestion that there is good reason for others to need reassurance from Israel that it is “not deliberately starving Gazans.” But there is no evidence that Israel is doing so. The IDF has facilitated the delivery of tens of thousands of truckloads, carrying more than 1.1 million tons of humanitarian aid, mainly food, into Gaza since the war began. No country has done more than Israel to ensure the safe delivery of that humanitarian aid. More on Grande’s unnecessary and nasty demand can be found here: “US said to demand Israel declare it is not deliberately starving Gazans,” Times of Israel, December 19, 2024:

The Biden administration’s Middle East aid envoy Lisa Grande reportedly made demands of Israel regarding the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, in a harsh phone call with Israel’s military liaison to the Palestinians, COGAT chief Gen. Ghassan Alian.

Gen. Ghassan Alian, who directs COGAT, the Israeli office that coordinates humanitarian aid in Gaza, is an Arab and a Druze.

Channel 12 news reports that Grande demanded during the call that Israel declare it is not following a policy of deliberately starving Gazans amid the ongoing war, which was sparked by Hamas’s brutal massacre in southern Israel on October 7, 2023.

She also demanded that Israel cancel all civilian evacuation orders, allow Palestinians who have been evacuated to return to their homes, and present a comprehensive plan to reduce harm to civilian infrastructure, according to the report.

The sheer intolerable presumption of Lisa Grande is something to behold. She is dictating to the IDF what it must do as it fights the terror group Hamas in the last stages of the war in Gaza. She wants the IDF to cancel all evacuation orders for civilians, but those evacuation orders are precisely what save the lives of Gazan civilians; they are constantly being warned, as the field of battle moves around, to move away from — “evacuate” — areas that are soon to become targets of IDF attacks. Similarly, she wants the IDF to allow Gazans (“Palestinians”) to return to their homes, but this, too, is an impossible demand; the IDF cannot allow civilians to return to those homes if they are in an area of active hostilities. Grande is in essence trying to force Israel to stop its fighting in Gaza by insisting that all civilians remain in, or return to, their homes. And then she has the gall to ask Israel, even as it is fighting a five-front war in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iran, to produce a “comprehensive plan to reduce harm to civilian infrastructure.” When do you want this “comprehensive plan” by, Lisa? Is this a “have it on my desk by Monday morning” command from on high? What would Grande suggest Israel do? Drop smaller bombs on those who would rape, torture, mutilate, and murder the Jews of Israel if given half a chance? Not drop bombs at all because they do, after all, damage infrastructure and we can’t allow that, can we?

I hope that someone in Congress — Senator Fetterman? Congressman Ritchie? — will raise holy hell over Lisa Grande’s de-haut-en-bas manner, her attempt to have Israel snap to, salute her, and promise to fulfill her every demand. “We swear — cross our hearts and hope to die — that we are not starving ‘Palestinians’ to death in Gaza.” Would that satisfy her? And a further promise not to “evacuate” any people in Gaza, and to allow those who have previously “evacuated” to return home, should satisfy two of her other demands. That would mean, of course, that without those evacuations that save so many lives, the IDF would have to end its war in Gaza prematurely. And Hamas would be saved by the bell — her bell. But why should the lisa-grandes of this world care about that?