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In Germany it is a crime to tell the truth about crime

German politician convicted over gang rape warning
The AfD’s Marie-Therese Kaiser was fined for pointing out that Afghans are 70 times more likely to commit the offense than Germans

https://www.rt.com/news/597246-afd-afghan-rape-fine-germany/

Biden Issues Meaningless “warning” to Israel while Continuing to supply the bombs, missiles, money, and diplomatic cover for Genocide

https://www.rt.com/news/597256-biden-israel-rafah-weapons/

Because of Biden and the Neoconservatives, all Americans live in shame.

“‘It sends this really strong message to everyone in America that they can come to this program, they can bring their authentic self, they can be who they are and they will be welcome here.”  (Jamie Stengle, “Boy Scouts of America Changing Name to More Inclusive Scouting America After Years of Woe,” Associated Press (May 7, 2024))

“‘Perhaps you’ll tell me then,’ Tommy went on, ‘why you wormed your way into this camp under false pretenses.  You’re not a Boy Scout at all!’”  (G. Harvey Ralphson, Boy Scouts on Old Superior (1913)”

There is no escape from postmodern America, where every single place, person and institution is essentially one and the same.  You may think there is a difference between Boise, Idaho and Boca Raton, Florida, but that would be before you paid pointless visits to these manifestations of Platonic sprawl.  You may think there is a difference between a priest, a scoutmaster, and a professor, but that would be before these spiritual triplets opened their mouths and showed that you are wrong.  You might enter a church in the hope of finding something different than you find in a museum, a university, or  a legislature, , but you would leave that church sadder and wiser because the same spirit moves every institution..

The spirit of Leviathan.

You have seen that the Boy Scouts is now inclusive, being no longer limited to boys, or scouts, or even to persons who are making some effort to be “brave, clean and reverent.”  As the spokesman for soon-to-be  Scouting America explains, everyone in America can come to this program and “bring their authentic self” with them.  Cowards are not only welcome in Scouting America, they are welcome to “be who they are” and remain cowards.  Likewise persons who do not wash or boast what our unenlightened ancestors called a “dirty mind.”  And reverence always was an elastic word that, when you really think about it, dose not exclude mockers whose reserve their reverence for irreverence., who in their own way very piously sneer.

“All are welcome! All are welcome! All are welcome in this place!”

The munitions have been used against population centers, the US president has said

Non-combatants have been killed by US-made bombs during Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza, US President Joe Biden admitted in a CNN interview on Wednesday.

The US leader warned that Washington would halt bomb shipments to West Jerusalem – its main ally in the Middle East – should Israel expand its offensive in the southern Gaza town of Rafah.

“Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centers,” Biden told the news channel. Earlier, the US had paused a shipment of more than a thousand 2,000-pound (900kg) bombs slated for Israel amid concerns of the use of the larger munitions in the overcrowded conditions of Rafah.

“We’re not going to supply the weapons and artillery shells,” the US leader said, referring to them as “the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities.”

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and its methods have already faced increased scrutiny as the military operation in overcrowded Gaza stretches into its seventh month. According to UN estimates, the population of the enclave was just over 2.2 million before the conflict began. Around 1.4 million displaced Palestinians are taking refuge in the small town of Rafah, a densely packed area that would suffer massive loss of life from these bombs being used.

The IDF already used 2,000-pound MK-84 bombs in strikes on Jabalia and around the Al-Shati refugee camp last year, according to an investigation by the New York Times in December. The use of heavy bombs added to the ever-rising death toll in Gaza, which is approaching 35,000, according to the local health authorities.

The US launched a probe several months ago into whether Israel violated international humanitarian law in its war in Gaza. The report was abruptly delayed after Israel launched its ‘limited’ incursion into Rafah, and is now expected in the coming weeks.

The munitions have been used against population centers, the US president has said

Non-combatants have been killed by US-made bombs during Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza, US President Joe Biden admitted in a CNN interview on Wednesday.

The US leader warned that Washington would halt bomb shipments to West Jerusalem – its main ally in the Middle East – should Israel expand its offensive in the southern Gaza town of Rafah.

“Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centers,” Biden told the news channel. Earlier, the US had paused a shipment of more than a thousand 2,000-pound (900kg) bombs slated for Israel amid concerns of the use of the larger munitions in the overcrowded conditions of Rafah.

“We’re not going to supply the weapons and artillery shells,” the US leader said, referring to them as “the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities.”

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and its methods have already faced increased scrutiny as the military operation in overcrowded Gaza stretches into its seventh month. According to UN estimates, the population of the enclave was just over 2.2 million before the conflict began. Around 1.4 million displaced Palestinians are taking refuge in the small town of Rafah, a densely packed area that would suffer massive loss of life from these bombs being used.

The IDF already used 2,000-pound MK-84 bombs in strikes on Jabalia and around the Al-Shati refugee camp last year, according to an investigation by the New York Times in December. The use of heavy bombs added to the ever-rising death toll in Gaza, which is approaching 35,000, according to the local health authorities.

The US launched a probe several months ago into whether Israel violated international humanitarian law in its war in Gaza. The report was abruptly delayed after Israel launched its ‘limited’ incursion into Rafah, and is now expected in the coming weeks.

Abandon the false pope, not Catholicism!

Bergoglio, The Remnant, and the Gates of Hell

On May 7, 2024, The Remnant published a brief article by Robert Lazu Kmita in which the author candidly struggles with answering a challenge by an Eastern Orthodox acquaintance of his regarding the indefectibility of the Catholic Church under the supposition that Jorge Bergoglio (‘Pope Francis’) is in fact the Roman Pontiff:

• “‘The gates of hell shall not prevail against it’ (Matthew 16:18)” (The Remnant)

Kmita puts the following challenge on the lips of his Eastern Orthodox interlocutor:

“Well? What about the statement of the Savior Jesus ‘That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it’?

Every year, the city of Orléans celebrates with pomp and circumstance the liberation of the city from the English yoke during the Hundred Years’ War, thanks to the victorious intervention of Saint Joan of Arc at the head of the French armies. This year, one of the “pages” chosen to escort a town girl who plays Joan, was thrown out because he belongs to an organization that advocates what Joan did.
 

The post Cancelling Joan of Arc? appeared first on The Catholic Thing.

The United Methodist Church has been in a long decline, recently accelerated by conflicts over LGBTQ issues. Progressives hoped finally to persuade conservative delegates, especially from Africa, to give up their convictions regarding human sexuality. They failed. Spectacularly.
 

The post The Methodist split: a cautionary tale appeared first on The Catholic Thing.

Much has been said about the Millennial and Gen Z cohorts, roughly today’s 20 to 42 crowd, especially their hesitancy towards commitment. They marry later than previous generations – if they marry at all; have driven the U.S. birthrate to dangerously low levels; are more likely to change jobs; and less likely to own a home than their older counterparts.

And if we turn from sociology to faith, we find that this same hesitancy towards commitment is driving younger Americans away from religion. The most cited reasons for rejecting “organized” religion are doubts about religious teachings and about God, dislike of religious organizations, and poor experiences with religious people – all of which are often symptoms of a more basic unwillingness to give oneself to other persons or causes. We can trace this back further to a general lack of trust that fears uncertainty and brokenness. Younger Americans turn the old adage on its head: It is worse to love and lose, so let’s not love at all.

The desire for certainty is natural. Jesus Himself acknowledged it: “For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it?” (Luke 14:28)

But commitment does not function on the level of technical knowledge, the kind of knowledge deemed most valid in the modern world. It cannot be calculated or manufactured because it belongs to another field of knowledge that the world and the educational establishment have ceased to nourish.

This other field where commitment functions is belief. Joseph Ratzinger articulates the essence of belief in modern terms in his magisterial Introduction to Christianity, which is the subject of TCT’s latest course, which begins this evening. The great theologian and pope makes clear that belief “is ordered not to the realm of what can be or has been made. . .but to the realm of basic decisions that man cannot avoid making.” Questions like: Whom I should marry, what I ought to do with my life, how many children should I have, where I should live, and what I should worship? The answers are fundamental decisions that defy mathematical certainty or scientific scrutiny.

Belief, Ratzinger continues, “is entrusting oneself to that which has not been made by oneself and never could be made and which precisely in this way supports and makes possible all our making.” That is, in order to do and understand anything, Ratzinger writes, we have to first take a stand on some ground, which is what the Hebrew word amen signifies.

Younger Americans today, deprived of a strong religious upbringing and formed by ideologies and technologies that marginalize questions of belief, fear commitment because they have no ground to stand on. Despite the illusion of control that their smartphones offer, they float without rudder or compass. Hence, they are less inclined to marry, to have children, to give themselves to work and to the community, or to go to church.

The modern world tries to lull us into believing that we can create our own meaning, our own ground to stand on. But Ratzinger’s caution from nearly fifty years ago has been proven correct by increases in drug addiction, suicides, and generational dissatisfaction. Surveys show that Americans are less happy than ever:

Man does not live on the bread of practicability alone; he lives as man, and, precisely in the intrinsically human part of his being, on the word, on love, on meaning. . . .But meaning is not derived from knowledge. . . .Meaning that is self-made is in the last analysis no meaning. Meaning, that is, the ground on which our existence as a totality can stand and live, cannot be made but only received.

Without the humility to admit that they are not their own gods, younger Americans demanding certainty will continue to drown in uncertainty. Without the courage to take a stand on a ground that is not of their own making, they will make nothing of themselves. Without the audacity to step outside the cave of technological knowledge, they will not know the love that God wishes to rain down on them.

“The tool with which man is equipped to deal with the truth of being is not knowledge but understanding: understanding of the meaning to which he has entrusted himself. And we must certainly add that ‘understanding’ only reveals itself in ‘standing,’ not apart from it.”

To believe in Jesus Christ and to stand on the rock that is the Church transforms commitment from something to be feared into an adventure to be embraced. “Christian belief is the option for the view that the receiving precedes the making,” Ratzinger observes. In embracing Christianity we are not receiving shackles on our freedom or personal fulfillment, as the world alleges. Rather, “Christian faith lives on the discovery that not only is there such a thing as objective meaning but that this meaning knows me and loves me, that I can entrust myself to it.”

Ratzinger acknowledges that the believer “will repeatedly experience the darkness in which the contradiction of unbelief surrounds him like a gloomy prison from which there is no escape.” But those fearing commitment should not see this as a ready excuse to remain in limbo. He assures us that we have no reason to doubt the ground on which we have chosen to stand. For in professing the Christian faith, we say, “I believe in you, Jesus of Nazareth, as the meaning (logos) of the world and of my life.”

If young people have the courage to make this commitment to Christ, all the other commitments they must make obtain meaning in the light of eternity. But this reality they will only understand if they first take a stand.

The post Taking a Stand to Understand appeared first on The Catholic Thing.

What does it mean to be human? 

The most fundamental philosophical question made headlines recently as issues like AI and gene editing have forced communities and politicians to come to terms with who they think counts as a person. For example, earlier this year, the Alabama Supreme Court declared that frozen embryos created through in vitro fertilization (IVF) were human children entitled to the state’s protection under its wrongful death statute. Though the Alabama legislature passed a temporary fix allowing IVF clinics to continue operating with immunity, legislators from both parties have articulated the need to define “personhood”—who among us has rights, protections, and privileges that the government is bound to uphold. 

Yet personhood is just the kind of question that defies consensus. The hope for any sort of agreement or any negotiation on a legal—or even a cultural—definition of personhood seems increasingly dim in our current, hyperpolarized political context. 

Principled pluralism offers positive solutions to today’s political polarization over culture war issues such as religious freedom, LGBTQ+ rights, education, parental responsibility, and the like. But what does this perspective have to offer when pluralism isn’t an option? When the issues are such that competing perspectives literally cannot coexist?

In response, many Christians have either adopted or become sympathetic to approaches that reject traditional liberalism in favor of those that more actively enforce their view of God’s moral order. 

But this particular prescription has side effects I am not prepared to swallow. No, we cannot—even if we think it wise—through sheer power impose our view of the good on a nation that is becoming increasingly diverse. Nor do we need to hopelessly abandon our society to its own dissolution.

We can and should, as Stephanie Summers, the CEO of the Center for Public Justice likes to say, “Love our neighbors through politics” and call on the state to fulfill its duties to protect as many people as possible. However, for issues that touch on such deeply divisive, personal matters as reproductive technologies and our human future, where opposing perspectives are irreconcilable, we need a new approach. The good news is that this approach is rooted in Scripture and the vision of the good life—of human flourishing—the Lord has revealed to his people.

Rather than steeping our arguments about bioethics—whether concerning reproductive ethics, AI, or end-of-life care—in a modern, liberal emphasis on the rights of the individual, we should instead develop public policy perspectives that focus on our network of interdependencies and a view of the common good that is also central to a biblical understanding of shalom, or human flourishing.

A Common Good Framework for Bioethics

A communal emphasis on shalom gives us a framework for talking about bioethics and public policy that bypasses a zero-sum fight over individual rights and autonomy, transcending disagreements about personhood, and instead focusing our attention on the right role of government in shaping a society in which all can flourish.

The field of bioethics grapples with the question of how to protect and promote the inherent dignity of the human person. Many bioethical questions are intensely personal—such as the use of fertility treatments or navigating end-of-life care for loved ones. Others are professional—informing, for example, how a medical professional can fulfill her obligations to her patient. In these instances, while federal and state guidelines offer broad legal frameworks, they also provide significant flexibility, allowing individuals to make decisions based on their own ethical, religious, or moral beliefs.

But some bioethics issues—those often termed “public bioethics”—transcend the domains of family and workplace and should be regulated directly by state or federal governments. 

In his book What It Means to Be Human: The Case for the Body in Public Bioethics, Carter Snead defines public bioethics as the governance of science, medicine, and biotechnology in the name of ethical goods. Sadly, the current landscape of laws and policies in the realm of bioethics did not develop out of a well-reasoned, philosophical foundation. Rather, as Snead asserts, “The story of American bioethics is a succession of political and legal reactions to the reported use, abuse, and exploitation of the weakest and most vulnerable members of the human population.” 

This reactionary history is important, because it explains, in part, how in areas of abortion, end-of-life care, and other bioethical issues, we ended up at an impasse over whose individual rights take precedence. A few key moments solidified our national commitment to a view of human dignity rooted in radical autonomy, which guides our current discourse in public bioethics. The first occurred in the years following World War II. In response to the moral atrocities of Nazi Germany, the international community passed the Nuremberg Code in 1947 and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Though a positive advance overall, these declarations are tethered to an Enlightenment understanding of human nature that emphasizes the individual without acknowledging the relationships and community that are vital to human dignity and flourishing. 

The second moment helped to catalyze the entire discipline of public bioethics in the United States. In the early 1970s, the media uncovered a profound violation of dignity experienced by African American men enrolled in a medical research study in Tuskegee, Alabama. For decades, researchers failed to provide participants with known treatments for syphilis. Formulated as a response to this severe breach of research ethics, the government-sponsored Belmont Report elaborated four foundational principles of bioethics, which several government agencies adopted to protect individuals from research misconduct. As these principles have evolved, the concept of autonomy has emerged as preeminent among the four, a kind of lowest common denominator principle on which all can agree. The result is that, rather than autonomy being merely one component of what it means to be human, human dignity has become synonymous with autonomy, not only in the culture, but also as adjudicated in the courts. Layered on top of this reductionist approach to human dignity in biomedicine is our commitment as a culture to what Robert Bellah, Charles Taylor, and others have termed “expressive individualism,” the idea that our individual autonomy and freedom to craft our own identities and purpose are the key, defining features of our humanity.

Despite having different metaphysical commitments, the public Christian conversation about human dignity has operated under the same individualistic assumptions. In the case of abortion, for example, we have focused our attention on the individual rights of the unborn and, in many cases, have ignored the larger network of relationships and circumstances in which both the child and the mother are involved. As a result, we have become locked into trench warfare, pitting the unborn’s right to life against a woman’s right to autonomy and self-expression.

Though the Dobbs decision was a watershed that allowed abortion to be limited in the states in which pro-life advocates hold a majority, the fact that abortion has been a winning issue for Democrats in the past few election cycles has generated some fear that we have won the battle only to lose the war.

We cannot successfully fight for human dignity on humanist, individualist terms. Instead, I propose that we return to first principles. For the Christian, that means beginning with what Scripture says about personhood and human dignity.

The starting point for any conversation among Christians about bioethics and human dignity, is Genesis 1–2 and the doctrine of the imago Dei. For the average American Christian the logic is simply this: All individual human beings are made in God’s image, which, though marred by sin, nevertheless endows each member of the species with worth and dignity. Therefore, any assault on the dignity of any member of the species should be prohibited.

Because the root of dignity lies with the creator rather than any attributes or skills of the created, all members of the species possess the same inherent worth—no matter how small, disabled, or old, and no matter how newly conceived. Every creature has infinite worth because they are made in the image of the creator of the cosmos.

This is a beautiful, necessary, and yet insufficient foundation for human dignity, an incomplete view of the worth of the human person as grounded in the image of God. Throughout church history, many theologians have understood the image of God not only in substantive terms, similar to the logic just described, but also in relational and functional terms. The relational view of being made in the image of God emphasizes the idea that humans reflect God’s image through their capacity for relationships, both with God and with one another, mirroring the relational nature of the Trinity. The functional view emphasizes God’s role in the universe and our calling to exercise dominion over creation alongside him. These two aspects of what it means to be made in the image of God—relationship and responsibility—have been neglected in much of the West’s understanding of human rights and human dignity, but they are no less important.

This view of human dignity begins to sound a lot more like human flourishing and moves us to the biblical aspiration of shalom. Shalom, or human flourishing, can only take shape in community. After all, the story of what it means to image God does not stop with Genesis. As the narrative continues into Exodus and Leviticus, the Lord makes it clear that his purpose for the nation of Israel is to reflect—to image—his steadfast love and mercy to the nations as a community. They are, as he says in Exodus 19, to be a kingdom of priests—mediating his presence to a watching world. As a result, as many scholars have noted, the law elaborated in the Torah is rooted in the very nature and character of God, which is relational at its core. Though this is apparent throughout the Torah, Leviticus 19 particularly emphasizes that the love of God is directly expressed in our responsibilities toward one another.

God’s purpose throughout the entire biblical narrative is to call us as unique individuals into a community that reflects his character and glory to the world. We simply cannot fully image God apart from our relationships and responsibilities to one another. Thus, our consideration of bioethics and public policy must include the intertwined goods of the dignity of the individual human person as rooted in relationship and responsibility, which includes but is so much more than a bounded autonomy.

This view of human dignity will inevitably complicate the application of bioethics to public policy. Protecting individual human rights, particularly the right to life, is a more narrow call, and is a clear responsibility of the state. Promoting human flourishing as communally envisioned involves multiple spheres of responsibility, including not only the state, but also various civil society institutions, churches, families, and more. Determining whether and when public policy is an appropriate tool for promoting the flourishing of our communities requires nuance and discernment.

But this rich, thick understanding of human dignity as fully realized in the context of a flourishing society provides a bridge for developing consensus policy solutions even across major theological and philosophical differences about personhood.

To illustrate, let’s examine two cultural examples.

“Assisted Suicide” and a Common Good Framework

In the U.S., eleven jurisdictions have legalized assisted suicide, and more than a dozen states will consider legislation either to expand or to legalize assisted suicide this year. The practice has been legal throughout Canada since 2016 under the term “Medical Aid in Dying” or MAiD. At first, only the terminally ill were eligible, but the law in Canada has since expanded to include those experiencing any “grievous and irremediable” condition.

Establishing the right to die is a natural extension of a narrow emphasis on privacy and autonomy as the main tenets of human dignity, and the fight for and against assisted suicide has largely been waged on these individualistic terms. But what would it look like to consider the individual person as embedded in a web of social relations, by which we have particular obligations? How might that help us come to some consensus about assisted suicide?

Consider the example of Canadians gaining access to assisted suicide for the “grievous and irremediable” situation of something like homelessness, which was actually documented for a woman we’ll call Nancy. If we see human dignity in individualistic terms, then we are stuck arguing that our view of human dignity (“all life matters”) trumps the view of human dignity as autonomy. In other words, we must violate someone’s autonomy—the perceived right to develop their own view of the human person—to protect their life. In our current expressive individualistic culture, this line of argument seems futile.

But what if we instead articulate a view of human dignity that acknowledges that Nancy’s flourishing has been diminished by our collective failure to meet her needs? Instead of fighting dignity-as-autonomy, we begin to support both the civil society institutions and public policies that promote Nancy’s dignity as a member of a community—and we acknowledge our obligations to her as part of it.

Practically, this approach leads us to patient, incremental political strategies that include thoughtful coalition building—for instance, working alongside co-belligerents like the many disability rights groups who oppose assisted suicide. In many cases, lack of access to quality medical, hospice, and end-of-life care drives the desire to pursue assisted suicide. What if, instead, we work to improve healthcare access and quality hospice care to make assisted suicide unthinkable?

Approaching assisted suicide with this common good framework provides an opportunity for us to live a whole life ethic that seeks to make euthanasia unthinkable—not in an instrumental manner that uses “whole life” policies as a means to an end, but in a way that overflows from an expansive view of human dignity rooted in the network of interdependencies for which we were created.

A Second Cultural Example: A Common Good Framework Applied to IVF

Through the lens of this wider frame of human dignity based not only on individual rights but also on our network of relationships and obligations, unregulated IVF should also give us some pause. Set aside for a moment the moral status of the embryo, the thorny issue of personhood around which there is so much disagreement. There are several ways that IVF is currently practiced that have the potential to subvert human flourishing.

First, in order to choose embryos that have the best chance of survival in utero, scientists routinely screen embryos for abnormalities. Embryos with obvious defects are passed over for those with a better statistical chance of survival. During this process, the embryos can also be screened for the presence of favorable or unfavorable genotypes, including sex and other genetically determined traits. Many IVF clinics offer this service even for families who are not infertile but simply want to control the sex or some other feature of their child. 

Federal regulations limiting gender selection and any other kind of non-medical genetic tests on an embryo would push against the trend of reducing children to mere products of technological manipulation. Such regulations would not require declaring that the embryo is a person in law—or banning IVF altogether—but would call parents to fulfill their responsibilities toward their children, thereby promoting both their dignity and the dignity of their children. The view that the commodification of children is morally wrong is a value that we share with friends and neighbors outside the Christian community, providing opportunities for coalition building and real political progress.

Second, IVF is often used by women who do not want to pay the “motherhood penalty” in their careers. For biological reasons, the eggs a woman’s body releases when she is young have fewer genetic abnormalities than those released later in life. Women can freeze their “young” eggs and use IVF as a safer way to have children after their career is well established. 

But having children later in life has its own challenges. As a testament to this reality, many private adoption agencies limit adoption to parents under fifty. Though not required by law, such provisions acknowledge the lifelong commitment parents make to a child, the very real emotional and physical strain of parenting, and the responsibilities that that child will have to care for aging parents. 

If we consider the broader dignity of the mother and the child, and the society shaped by their family, a better solution to the dilemma faced by women who want to pursue career and family would be to work to mitigate the perceived motherhood penalty paid by women who have children early in their careers. And, to acknowledge the obligations between parents and children, we could enact regulations limiting IVF to women under fifty. This advocacy would not require consensus about the moral status of the embryo, but it would invite collaboration across religious and other moral differences in pursuit of a better future for mothers and children alike.

Hope and Progress

Of course, IVF is just one area in which the fertility industry needs regulation. The inconsistent application of the widely held Christian view of the value of all life has sadly interfered with our ability to build coalitions that have the potential to deliver meaningful policy results, even beyond issues of life, death, and reproductive health.

Nonetheless, recent momentum in protecting children and families bodes well. For instance, measures like using age verification laws to limit minors’ access to pornography, and efforts to modestly expand child tax credits to support low-income families, have inspired meaningful coalitions working across partisan and religious differences. These can serve as models for the many ways policy can be constructed to honor the relationships and responsibilities for which we are made.

The public bioethics conversations of the twenty-first century will be much more nuanced and complicated than the abortion debate of the last fifty years. If we want to speak thoughtfully about how these and other technologies are shaping our future, we will need to move beyond a reductionist approach to human dignity. A focus on human dignity that elevates the biblical picture of communal flourishing will enable us to develop relationships and build coalitions that ensure we have a trusted seat at the table to influence the regulation of these complex issues for the common good.

Image by Evgeniy Kalinovskiy and licensed via Adobe Stock.

West Jerusalem will be deprived of “offensive” US weapons if it launches a full-scale invasion

President Joe Biden has admitted that at least some Palestinian civilians in Gaza were killed by US-made bombs – and has vowed to halt the supply of any weapons that Israel could actively use in another major military operation in the southern city of Rafah.

The US leader’s remarks come after Israeli tanks and troops entered the eastern districts of Rafah on Monday night, seizing the main border crossing between Gaza and Egypt. This was accompanied by airstrikes on the densely populated city. 

However, Biden believes that Israel has yet to cross Washington’s red line.

“They haven’t gotten into the population centers. What they did was right on the border,” Biden told CNN’s Erin Burnett in an interview on Wednesday.

“I made it clear that if they go into Rafah – they haven’t gone in Rafah yet – if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities – that deal with that problem,” Biden added.

“We’re not going to supply the weapons and artillery shells,” he said, while reiterating Washington’s commitment to Israel’s defense. “We’re going to continue to make sure Israel is secure in terms of Iron Dome and their ability to respond to attacks that came out of the Middle East recently.”

The US has already paused a shipment of weapons to Israel last week due to concerns over the looming ground operation in Rafah, according to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. However, Washington has not decided on the final fate of the arms. 

The paused delivery reportedly included thousands of US-made 2,000-pound and 500-pound bombs indiscriminately used by Israel in its war with Hamas. 

“Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centers,” Biden said.

The pause in arms supplies would mark the first known instance of the US withholding a weapons delivery to the Jewish state since Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel and West Jerusalem’s retaliatory offensive, according to the Financial Times.

The Israeli ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, called the pause “very disappointing,” but told Channel 12 News that he does not believe the US will actually stop supplying arms to Israel.