Israeli podcasters are laughing about genocide. What would it take to stop?

‘The Biden administration has made it very clear that it is embodied in state policy that the US will do whatever it takes to allow these utterances to become reality.’ Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

For a while I used to play a little game called What Would It Take? What would it take for the Biden administration to do something meaningful in order to put an end to the carnage in Gaza? What would it take for the Biden administration to stop the ethnic cleansing currently taking place in the West Bank? What would it take for the anchors of popular US cable news outlets to show any real empathy towards Palestinians?

Would video evidence of a Palestinian being raped by Israeli soldiers at Sde Teiman, a military prison that resembles a torture camp, make any difference? Nah. Judging by the US state department’s response, that’s no biggie. The US, we’ve been told, has asked Israel to investigate itself and we can trust them to do a great job of it.