Mairav Zonszein writes:

On Monday July 3, while Israeli forces were raiding the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, in a ground and aerial assault that forced thousands of Palestinian civilians to evacuate their homes, U.S. Ambassador Tom Nides hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a Fourth of July event in Jerusalem. They talked about the close bond between the United States and Israel, and smiled for the cameras.

During the Israeli military’s two-day raid—the largest in the West Bank since the Second Intifada—the U.S. effectively lent its support to Israel. A spokesperson for President Joe Biden’s National Security Council told the press, “We support Israel’s security and right to defend its people against Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other terrorist groups.” That echoed Israel’s claims that over 50 attacks against Israelis originated in Jenin over the past two years, as the far-right Israeli government presented its lethal incursion into a densely populated civilian area as a necessary “counterterror operation” targeting Palestinian militants, command posts and arms caches.

The contrasting scene between Jenin and Jerusalem was reminiscent of the May 14, 2018 inauguration of the new U.S. Embassy in Israel, which then-President Donald Trump moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, upending decades of American policy. Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, nominally a White House adviser, smiled for the cameras as she officially opened the embassy in West Jerusalem before a crowd of Israeli dignitaries. Less than 50 miles away, Israeli soldiers shot at hundreds of Palestinians demonstrating in Gaza along its border during the “Great March of Return” protests, killing 60 Palestinians that day. Biden has not reversed the embassy’s relocation to Jerusalem; nor has he reopened the American consulate in East Jerusalem that Trump shuttered, as he promised. [Continue reading…]