On Monday, Washington sent an unequivocal message about America’s commitment to safeguarding innocents caught in conflict zones.

Never a nation to put political expediency over principle, the US took the bold step of — checks notes — not vetoing a resolution demanding the cessation of a massacre.

Hopefully, you’re picking up on the sarcasm. Joe Biden’s countenancing (indeed, he’s facilitating) a collective punishment campaign in Gaza, where Benjamin Netanyahu’s subjecting the populace to systematized slaughter in pursuit of an unachievable military objective.

This (the slaughter) was inevitable, by the way. I said as much in the days following the October 7 Hamas attacks, and I lost more than a few readers for my trouble. Obfuscate as Netanyahu will, but the Israeli right’s narrative is straightforward. It goes like this. There’s a threshold for brutality and barbarism beyond which collective punishment’s acceptable. Hamas crossed that threshold during a day of rape, pillage and indiscriminate murder. So much the worse for Gazans.

That’s what this comes down to. Inescapably. Maybe you agree with that narrative. If so, have some courage: Admit it. To yourself and to everyone else. And when you do, exhort the rest of us to be equally honest: If those were our mothers, sisters and daughters on October 7, we might support collective punishment in Gaza too.

That’s the (exceedingly harsh) reality of the situation. The problem for Biden and the US is that supporting (even tacitly) collective punishment isn’t just unacceptable in polite company, it’s unacceptable in impolite company on the Security Council at a time when American foreign policy vis-à-vis two of the P5’s leans heavily on Washington’s (already farcical) pretensions to the moral high ground.

Here’s a nation (America) regaling the world with tales of Russian war crimes in Ukraine and openly accusing China of genocide against the Uyghurs, not only declining to place limits on weapons shipments to a military engaged in what Biden himself described as an “indiscriminate” bombing campaign, but refusing even to abstain from a vote demanding a humanitarian ceasefire that might bring some relief to a population coping with the ever-present threat of death from the sky and facing the prospect of starvation.

In addition to being morbidly hypocritical (and thereby highly amenable to exploitation by state propaganda apparatuses in Russia and China), this recently took on an air of tragicomedy when, rather than instruct Netanyahu to desist from perpetuating a famine, the US instead decided to build a temporary sea port for the delivery of aid. So, the US will provide Israel with money and weapons to wage a collective punishment campaign, then turn around and spend more money to ameliorate the impact of that campaign. Small wonder American foreign policy is such an easy target for the likes of Maria Zakharova and her Chinese counterpart Hua Chunying.

And so it was that the US on Monday mustered the fortitude to abstain from a vote on a measure demanding an immediate halt to the fighting in Gaza during Ramadan. The US abstention cleared the way for the Security Council to approve a ceasefire resolution for the first time since the war started. The body also called for the unconditional release of the remaining hostages, but didn’t make the ceasefire demand contingent on Hamas freeing the captives, a stinging rebuke to Israel.

The history of the fraught effort to secure a ceasefire resolution includes three US vetoes and two from Russia and China, who refused US drafts which Moscow and Beijing deemed too vague regarding the Council’s expectations for the cessation of hostilities.

“Finally — finally — the Security Council is shouldering its responsibility,” Algeria’s ambassador exclaimed, after the vote.

Conflicting reports suggested Netanyahu might’ve canceled plans for an Israeli delegation to visit the US. Biden summoned Israeli representatives to hear The White House’s concerns about a military operation in Rafah where, on the IDF’s estimates, as many as 8,000 Hamas fighters are hiding among more than a million Gazans.

Russia, without so much as a hint of irony to account for that other war, tried unsuccessfully to add an amendment to Monday’s resolution stipulating that the halt for Ramadan lead to a “permanent” ceasefire.

An irritable Netanyahu said Biden’s abstention marked a “retreat from the consistent American position since the beginning of the war.” Yes, Mr. Prime Minister. That’s the whole point.