Thoughts and Prayers on Gaza

The Biden admin sounds like the pro-gun GOP

We’re all familiar with the ugly, hypocritical ritual with which the GOP greets any new mass shooting. Before the bodies are cold, before a shooter is identified, ghoulish invertebrates like Ted Cruz and Mike Johnson slither over to their keyboards, flex their pale fingers, and type the words “thoughts and prayers.” They are praying. Their spouses are praying. The dead are in their thoughts. Until the next mass murder victim pushes them aside, anyway.

Everyone—not least Republicans—understands that “thoughts and prayers” is not actually a statement of solidarity with victims, nor a promise to do anything to prevent mass gun violence from happening in the future. Rather “thoughts and prayers” is a deliberately hypocritical verbal shibboleth designed to deflect criticism and to ensure that mass shootings continue.

The Republicans do not actually care about stopping mass shootings, or ending gun violence. Their priority is making sure guns are completely unregulated. The GOP wants to appear to be compassionate and caring, and they want to appear as if they are addressing the problem. But really, they just want to obstruct solutions. “Thoughts and prayers” then are not “thoughts and prayers” for the victims or their families, nor for future victims or their families. Instead, the GOP is thinking and praying for a strategy that will allow them to continue to flood the country with guns. It’s weaponized hypocrisy. The performance of concern and empathy is a strategy designed to obscure their callous indifference to mass murder.

Democrats are rightly disgusted and repulsed by the GOP’s pious brow furrowing. And yet, on Gaza, the Biden administration has essentially copied the Ted Cruz thoughts and prayers playbook.

For months (and again this week) the Biden administration has said it is working towards a ceasefire deal in Gaza, involving the return of Israeli hostages and the cessation of hostilities. Meanwhile, Israel’s far right, genocidal, corrupt war criminal president Benjamin Netanyahu keeps reiterating that he does not want a ceasefire deal, because he loves war and war crimes in themselves, and also because if the war ends he’s probably going to get kicked out of office and end up in prison.

To get Netanyahu to agree to a ceasefire deal, Biden would need to apply real pressure—just as, to reduce gun violence, the US would need to pass legislation making it more difficult to purchase and carry guns. Biden could, for example, threaten to end arms sales to Israel, since Israel’s military efforts are heavily dependent on foreign aid. Biden could sanction the most rabid of Netanyahu’s ministers, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir. He could, and should, do both, because both will probably be necessary to force Netanyahu to stop escalating and pushing for a regional war.

Republicans in the US do not want to pass arms legislation. They want to natter about thoughts and prayers instead of, or more precisely so they don’t have to, pass gun control legislation. Similarly, it’s become clearer and clearer that Biden’s reiterated statements calling for a ceasefire are not meant to get the region to a ceasefire. They are meant to shield the administration from criticism as they pursue their preferred policy of doing nothing while Israel kills and kills and kills—probably substantially more than 186,000 people now, over half women and children.

It's probably true, in an abstract sense, that Biden would like Israel to stop committing war crimes in Gaza, just as it’s true, in an abstract sense, that the GOP would like an end to mass shootings. At the least, mass death which you don’t want to do anything about is politically inconvenient. It makes you look callous; it makes you look weak. It makes you look like a hypocrite. Sometimes it makes you look so bad that you even have to address it halfheartedly—which is why the GOP signed on for a weak gun control bill under Biden, and why Biden did pause weapons shipments briefly.

Such hesitant, vacillating actions show that politicians do, in fact, understand that if you want to stop violence, you have to take steps to stop violence. Standing on the sideline and muttering about thoughts and prayers and ceasefires doesn’t do much, and everyone recognizes that it doesn’t do much. It is designed not to do much, and to excuse and justify not doing much.

But those excuses and justifications are transparent. Republicans believe that gun restrictions are worse than piles of dead children. And Biden believes that ending arms sales to Israel is worse than piles of dead children. Their rhetorical formulations are meant to obscure this simple, ugly, calculus. Republicans deserve no credit for their thoughts and prayers; Biden deserves no credit for his ceasefire talk. Instead, they deserve to be derided as bad faith actors engaged in apologizing for, and enabling, atrocity.