FOR months, US President Joe Biden has been threatening Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with his “red line” on Gaza. Cross this, he warned the Israelis, and the US will … will what, exactly?

Last week, we found out. The Biden administration will do nothing. Worse, it will continue to excuse Israel’s acts of terrorism as merely “the challenge of military air strikes in densely populated areas of Gaza, including Rafah,” according to White House spokesman, John Kirby. No-one asked why bombing “densely populated areas” was all right in the first place.

Kirby was speaking at a White House press conference on Tuesday, in response to the deadly Sunday night Israeli bombing raid on a refugee camp in Rafah. 

The attack killed at least 45 Palestinians and likely far more while seriously wounding hundreds and ignited a deadly fire that ripped through the camp. Grisly footage soon flooded the internet including of a man holding up the headless body of a child as flames raged behind him and people wailed.

The camp was supposed to be a designated “safe zone” but, as one Palestinian woman, wandering the streets of Rafah, told the US television news programme, Democracy Now!, “There is nowhere safe. Where should we go?”

Biden’s red line is made of elastic and it will keep stretching forever. It isn’t red or even deepest pink. It’s invisible. If children watching their parents burnt alive in flaming tents doesn’t cross Biden’s red line, prick his conscience or pluck his heart strings, nothing will.

Earlier in May, Biden told news outlets that “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.”

Last week, the White House said Israel hadn’t really gone into Rafah, or at least not as defined by the “major ground operation” that would, they claimed, cross the mythical red line. “We have not seen that yet,” Kirby said. 

Kirby tried to deflect blame from Israel for the fires that engulfed tents and the people trapped inside them as caused by “a secondary explosion, not the initial strike.”

Netanyahu would get yet one more pass with his incredulous excuse that Sunday night’s events were just another “tragic mistake.”

About 2,000 people gathered in front of the White House to protest over the attack and the Biden administration’s continued support of Israel. 

During a pause amid the familiar chants — “Biden, Biden, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide” — a young woman read out the names of some of those killed at the camp.

Midway through, she paused. “Unknown child,” she said.

Palestinians can be incinerated beyond recognition, but this is of no concern to the Biden administration. The geopolitical balance of power, is. 

Kirby described the Rafah atrocity as “not in Israel’s best interest.” Nor is it in the best interest of the United States, he said, “for Israel to become increasingly isolated on the world stage.”

The bombing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza will continue and Biden’s invisible red line will keep moving.

Linda Pentz Gunter is a writer based in Takoma Park, Maryland.