https://arab.news/pm7ct
First, let’s dissect this puzzle.
On Feb. 29, 2024, then-US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin sent shock waves when he informed lawmakers in the House Armed Services Committee that more than 25,000 Palestinian women and children had been killed by Israel in Gaza up to that date. By doing so, Austin, the military chief of the Biden administration, delivered a fact that immediately subverted his own government’s rhetoric.
The announcement was shocking for two main reasons. First, Austin himself had orchestrated the relentless flow of US arms to Israel, directly enabling the very campaign that liquidated those innocent people. Second, the figure provided was noticeably higher than the casualty tally reported by the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza for the same period — 22,000 women and children in the first 146 days of the war.
The crux of the contradiction, however, was that Austin’s detailed account of the US-funded Israeli atrocities in Gaza directly subverted the official narrative regularly disseminated by the White House.
