“The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.” George Orwell
Virtually all the media, even those moderately sympathetic to the cause of the Palestinians, refer to the events of 7 October and its aftermath as the war between Israel and Hamas. I tend to cling to the outmoded concept of wars being a way of nations resorting to conflict resolution through military means when diplomatic means have failed, or have never been tried. Sometimes it’s a matter of big just rolling over small, but usually it involves two countries, nations or states. There have been any number of warring factions within larger political entities. From 1948 Israel has existed as a nation, given that recognition by the UN with remarkable international unanimity, although the measure also accorded a Palestinian state, a solution which has never been implemented and one which the current Israeli Government will stop at nothing to prevent.
Gaza is an occupied territory. Since 2006 it has been condoned off and fully controlled by Israel. No ships could arrive; nobody could enter or leave without Israeli approval. Food entering the territory was calculated to not exceed the cumulative minimum caloric levels to avoid starvation of the population. Perhaps the Israelis hoped that the Palestinians would just become depressed and die off. They’ve spared no effort to that end but have not succeeded so they appear to have moved on to the final solution, which meets all the international criteria for genocide.
Our media talk about genocide often, but such talk is usually limited to the big one in Europe in the 1940’s while those in Africa don’t get much mention, just as the slaughter of the Armenians was largely forgotten by the world for a century. This one is there for all to see, although the Israelis did shut down the internet for a while to stop live reports from getting out. More journalists have already been killed in this two month old conflict than in all other recent US wars.
In recent weeks, some hostages on both sides have been released. Each has his or her own story but some Israeli women, upon release, have even expressed gratitude to their captors for their considerate treatment. You might have missed that if your news comes from the major media, just as you may have missed the stories of Israeli troops simply blowing up buildings where Hamas was thought to be holding hostages, killing everyone inside, captors, hostages alike, in order to avoid negotiations with the enemy. Illegal settlers in the occupied West Bank have continued murdering Palestinians with impunity.
In October Josh Paul, Director of the State Department’s Bureau of Military Affairs, resigned saying the Biden Administration’s “blind support for one side “ was leading to policy decisions that were “short-sighted, destructive, unjust and contradictory to the very values that we publicly espouse”.
Israel has been getting a lot of bad press, despite all its MSM and Congressional support, so a propaganda counteroffensive was due.
On December 6th the New York Times published a story containing the following:
“ President Biden condemned the “unimaginable cruelty” of Hamas attackers who raped and mutilated women in Israel on Oct. 7, and he blamed the terrorist group’s refusal to release its remaining female hostages for the breakdown in cease-fire talks. Hamas has rejected the allegations. …
“Survivors and witnesses of the attacks have shared the horrific accounts of unimaginable cruelty,” Biden said. “Reports of women raped — repeatedly raped — and their bodies being mutilated while still alive — of women corpses being desecrated, Hamas terrorists inflicting as much pain and suffering on women and girls as possible and then murdering them.”
“Matt Miller, a State Department spokesman, said that “a number of people believe” that Hamas did not want to release female hostages because of the stories they would tell about how they were treated. But he said he was “not able to speak with a definitive assessment that that is the case.”
This came two months after the Hamas insurrection and as far as I know that brutal attack lasted a day or two, catching the Israelis, always known for their intelligence sophistication and expertise, unprepared. A forty page report has emerged showing that an attack by Hamas was known a year before the attack happened, much as the 9-11 attacks in the US were known and reported by US intelligence services but ignored by President Bush. Was Bibi following the same script? Bush was hoping to have a war on Iraq. He got his excuse, even if it was based on knowing lies. Was this the Netanyahu’s chance to launch the final solution?
I have no way to know whether or not Biden’s allegations hold any truth. Perhaps, but we have heard lurid stories put out by the government of babies being beheaded for which there was no evidence. There is no way to conduct a rage-driven massacre of 1500 people in a gentle humane way, any more than there is a way to humanely bomb a crowded concentration camp holding more than two million people into oblivion.
Meanwhile, the people in northern Gaza were ordered to evacuate to the southern part within 48 hours so that their homes, schools, hospitals and mosques could be destroyed and then, after many arrived, the bombing and artillery attacks started in the south. A cease fire to exchange hostages was arranged for four days then the assault continued, despite Biden’s urging the Israelis to adhere to international law while getting on with their self-defense activities (i.e. slaughter of the Gazans). Saturday Night Live couldn’t make this stuff up. Well, they could, but it would never be aired.
The last time I checked, Biden’s approval rating was 27% and falling. Economists, even some intelligent-seeming ones, are amazed by this, since while inflation has been way up, it is easing and the stock market is making a nice recovery. Unemployment is down as more people are taking second jobs to help with rising costs. None of the experts even consider that the the levels of distrust and disgust with the government are harder to quantify in their charts. As an American who has spent very few of the past fifty years in my native country, it is hard for me to accept that the Americans I knew, who were were mostly decent people regardless of their political affiliation, have nearly all died or mutated into monsters supporting any means to world domination, even genocide if that’s what it takes, but if I look at our political representatives of both major parties, that’s more or less the way it appears. There are occasional signs of hope such as this letter by White House staffers protesting administration policy. May their numbers increase.
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