Editor’s remarks: Dr. Philip Giraldi in his latest article articulates with such precision and eloquence what is on the minds of many anti-war and antifascist people in America, Europe and the rest of the world. He identifies the reasons why US President Joe Biden obediently follows what the ultra-right Israeli manipulator Netanyahu decides.

Vital US interests are sacrificed to avoid offending Israel and its Lobby

by Philip Giraldi

I don’t have anyone whom I would consider a friend who supports the genocide being carried out by Israel in Gaza. But my occasional interaction with the psychopaths who infest the US government and media and who are intimately connected by virtue of their political instincts as well as their personal interests in campaign donations and/or elevated salaries derived from Israel and its powerful lobby have plenty of sound bites to throw out to demonstrate their love of the Jewish state in all its manifestations. They mouth the Pelosi-Schumer-Biden assertion that “Israel has a right to defend itself” and that Israel is “America’s closest ally” and “best friend,” all of which can readily be exposed as a series of self-serving lies and deliberate misinterpretations of international law. Beyond that, they inevitably cite their view that critics of Israel are fully responsible for what they choose to refer to as the ultimate evil of “surging anti-semitism.” In so doing they conveniently ignore the obvious fact that anger towards Jews collectively speaking is nearly always derived from the crimes against humanity committed by the Zionist political entity that now legally defines itself as Jewish.

I sometimes ask the friends of Israel what interest the United States has that would warrant our country becoming complicit in committing war crimes that, collectively speaking, amount to precursors for the complete expulsion or killing of millions of Palestinians from what remains of their homes. They try to weasel word their way avoiding the implications of that question by observing that the United States is not directly engaged in the conflict, an evasion that I belittle by pointing out that Washington is providing funding, arming and political cover for the more powerful and lethal party engaged in the conflict while also blocking attempts to bring about a ceasefire to comply with orders from that same party, which sure looks like direct involvement to me. I also point out that Israel is working hard to get the US military engaged against Hezbollah in Lebanon and also against Iran and is likely to be able to maneuver the stoneheads in and around the White House to do its bidding vis-à-vis both objectives.

So the big question has to be “Why does the United States engage in a conflict that inter alia has utterly ruined our country’s reputation worldwide and for which there is no real compelling national interest?” The answer is, of course unpalatable to many, but has to be that the US government is in many respects and vis-à-vis some of its designated national policies completely under the control of Israel and its powerful domestic as well as international lobby. This habitual bowing to force majeure has warped the thinking of the ambitious scallywags who seem to be present wherever one turns in places like Washington. How else does one explain the infamous and quite frankly ridiculous comment delivered at the 2018 Israeli American Council meeting by leading politician Nancy Pelosi, who said that “I have said to people when they ask me if this Capitol crumbled to the ground, the one thing that would remain is our commitment to our aid…and I don’t even call it aid…our cooperation with Israel. That’s fundamental to who we are.”

The delusional Pelosi, who appears to have no “fundamental” attachment to the interests of the American people whom she represents, is unfortunately not unique in the halls of Congress, even less so in the Joe Biden White House, which might be regarded as the illustration of what happens when you appoint Zionists to nearly all key positions running your foreign, economic and national security policies. The degree of direct Zionist/Israeli control over the hapless Biden can best be illustrated by reviewing the course of the recent redrafting of a UN Security Council resolution authored by the United Arab Emirates that sought to bring about a suspension of the fighting and the urgent resumption of humanitarian supplies for Gaza. The US forced the revisions after coordination with Israel to permit the Israelis to continue to attack civilian targets and avoid entering into anything like a ceasefire, changing the word “suspension” in the original draft to the less demanding creation of “conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities.” Language authorizing the lead UN role in monitoring and delivering the assistance to the Gazans was also expunged leaving to belligerent Israel the task of completely controlling the distribution of any supplies allowed entry into the areas inside Gaza, which it is also simultaneously continuing to bomb, thereby slowing the stream of urgently needed supplies to a trickle while also killing hundreds more civilians.

To be sure, it was the United States blindly supporting Israel that rendered what was a promising proposal to put an end to the multiplying civilian deaths toothless. Israel demonstrated just how high it regarded Joe Biden when it contradicted what the president said about the US being able to moderate some Israeli offensive action in Gaza. Netanyahu denied that, saying that he and his war cabinet were continuing to make all relevant decisions based on Israel’s own interests. Israel Defense Force (IDF) Chief of the General Staff General Herzi Halevi followed on with his own assessment that finishing the job in Gaza, i.e. totally destroying Hamas by whatever means it requires, will take “many more months.” The Israeli military has indeed visibly increased its efforts by opening up new “battle zones” inside Gaza, to include directly targeting the crowded and starving refugee camps outside the cities. The civilians are paying the price while a grinning Joe Biden is spending his New Year’s holiday in the American Virgin Islands.

Allowing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a known liar and habitual war criminal to tell the US government what to do is about as low as it gets, Mr. Biden! You should not only be ashamed, but more than that, humiliated, compelled to do ghastly things in support of your own fear of possible Jewish/Israeli reaction if you do not bow down before King Netanyahu. He and the band of inhuman monsters he has assembled in his cabinet have made no secret of their intention to remove the Palestinians from Palestine, either by forced emigration or by killing them if necessary. On Christmas Day, Prime Minister Netanyahu told a meeting of his Likud bloc “that he was still working on the ‘voluntary’ immigration of Gaza’s inhabitants to other countries.” His associates Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich have made it clear that the ethnic cleansing process will proceed even if it is not in any way voluntary. As Israel is the occupying power in the former Palestine, what is taking place is, as defined by the Geneva Conventions, the Genocide Convention and the UN Charter, a crime against humanity and the United States is completely complicit in it not to mention actually enabling the slaughter through its supplying of arms and money to the Israelis. It has recently been reported in the Israeli media that the United States has delivered an astonishing “10,000 tons of armaments and military equipment on 244 cargo planes and 20 ships” to sustain the Israeli homicidal assault against the people of Gaza. And to demonstrate its gratitude for the flood of weapons, America’s “best friend” and “closest ally” Israel has nevertheless complained “about a delay in the delivery of munitions.”

The total support of the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians by Washington and the media is not only shameful, it is lacking any context for a crime against humanity that has been going on with US connivance for the past 76 years. Under international law, an occupied people has a right to use force to resist occupation, but even given that, the majority of Israeli deaths on October 7th should probably be attributed to so-called “friendly fire” from the Israeli army not from Hamas. The occupied and woefully abused Palestinians rising-up and seeking both freedom and sovereignty in the land that was once completely theirs is fully justified and should be respected. Israel’s killing women and children through deliberate starvation or even by execution style is indisputably a war crime. Bombing hospitals or leaving newborn incubator babies abandoned to die is a crime against humanity. Arresting innocent Palestinians before parading them naked and even desecrating their dead bodies by harvesting organs that you then sell is unspeakable and almost unimaginable evil as is deliberately targeting and bombing schools and churches where people are trying to find shelter.

The genocide and destruction in Gaza is the worst crime committed in modern history and the man who could have stopped it, Joe Biden, sits on his hands and grins. No one should remain silent when confronted by this horror but the silence and the deliberate distortion of what is taking place is a tribute to Jewish power in America and elsewhere. I am including some recent commentary from the illustrious Australian Journalist Caitlin Johnstone which demonstrates perfectly the hypocrisy and inhumanity of both Biden and the leaders of Britain, France, Canada, and Germany: “Sometimes Israel’s crimes are so horrific that at first you don’t even understand what you’re looking at. You just stare at it trying to make sense of what you’re seeing for a bit, like you would if you suddenly saw a space alien or a leprechaun or something… It’s so incredibly obvious what we’re looking at here. The only thing putting a wobble on people’s perception is the immense amount of propaganda distortion the media is churning out on this issue, plus the fact that the demographics look a bit different from what history has conditioned people to watch out for. If there were two million Jewish people trapped by Christians in a giant concentration camp and placed under total siege, being told that half of them had 24 hours to relocate into the other half or be killed, nobody would have any confusion about what they were witnessing.”

And a leading American journalist Daniel Larison must have the last word of advice from his site on Eunomia: “We are witnessing one of the gravest crimes of our time. Our government is aiding and abetting the perpetrators. It is up to people in this country to make our government cut off all support for this war and to press for an end to the war itself.” Amen, Daniel!

Over 240 US cargo planes and 20 ships have made deliveries to Israel

by Dave DeCamp Posted on December 26, 2023

Two hundred and forty-four American cargo planes and 20 ships have delivered over 10,000 tons of military equipment to Israel since October 7 to support the massacre in Gaza, Israel’s Channel 12 reported on Monday.

The US support has been crucial in Israel’s ability to keep up its relentless bombardment of Gaza. The Washington Post reported on December 9 that, up to that date, Israel dropped over 22,000 US-provided bombs on the Gaza Strip.

The Pentagon has refused to disclose what types of weapons it’s been sending to Israel, but media reports have revealed some details. The Wall Street Journal reported on December 1 that the US had shipped 15,000 bombs and 57,000 155mm artillery shells to Israel since October 7.

The bomb shipments have included over 5,000 Mk84 2,000-pound warhead bombs, which Israel has been dropping on densely populated areas of Gaza. According to an analysis from The New York Times, during the first six weeks of the war, Israel routinely dropped 2,000-pound bombs on areas in south Gaza designated safe for civilians.

The Israeli Defense Ministry has said the US arms deliveries have also included “armored vehicles, armaments, personal protective equipment, medical supplies, ammunition, and more.”

The US-backed onslaught has killed nearly 21,000 Palestinians so far, including over 8,000 children. The number is considered a low estimate as thousands of bodies are believed to be buried deep under the rubble.

US officials claim they are “concerned” about the massive civilian casualty rate in Gaza, but the Biden administration continues to provide unconditional military aid for the slaughter. A report from +972 Magazine revealed that Israel is intentionally targeting civilian areas as part of its war strategy.

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Author: Dave DeCamp

Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar. com

𝑰𝒔𝒓𝒂𝒆𝒍 𝒊𝒔 𝒖𝒔𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒓𝒗𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝒂𝒔 𝒂 𝒘𝒆𝒂𝒑𝒐𝒏 𝒐𝒇 𝒘𝒂𝒓

by Dave DeCamp, Antiwar. com, December 21, 2023

One in four Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip — over 570,000 people — are starving due to the Israeli siege, according to a report using data from the UN and other aid agencies that was released Thursday.

The report, published by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), said the Israeli onslaught in Gaza has “caused catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity across the Gaza Strip.”

The IPC has a five-phase scale for malnutrition, and the report estimates the entire population of Gaza is facing Phase 3 or higher. Phase 3 is defined as: “Households either have food consumption gaps that are reflected by high or above-usual acute malnutrition; or are marginally able to meet minimum food needs but only by depleting essential livelihood assets or through crisis-coping strategies.”

One in four households in Gaza is in Phase 5, which means catastrophic famine-like conditions. Phase 5 is defined as: “Households have an extreme lack of food and/or other basic needs even after full employment of coping strategies. Starvation, death, destitution, and extremely critical acute malnutrition levels are evident. For famine classification, the area needs to have extreme critical levels of acute malnutrition and mortality.”

The IPC report came after Human Rights Watch said Israel was committing a war crime by using starvation as a weapon of war against Gaza’s civilian population. HRW said Israeli forces were “deliberately blocking the delivery of water, food, and fuel, while willfully impeding humanitarian assistance, apparently razing agricultural areas, and depriving the civilian population of objects indispensable to their survival.”

When Israel’s onslaught first began after the October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced a “complete siege” on the already blockaded enclave and said Israel was fighting “human animals” in Gaza, which is home to over 1 million children.

Over 20,000 Palestinians have been killed in the US-backed Israeli slaughter so far, including over 8,000 children. As the war continues, many more could die from starvation and disease caused by the siege.

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Author: Dave DeCamp

Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com

What are the motivations behind Israel’s genocidal acts in Gaza, and what is the way forward?

• Yoav Litvin is an Israeli-American doctor of psychology/neuroscience, a writer and photographer.

Aljazeera, 21 Dec 2023

On October 7, Hamas fighters breached the Gaza prison fence, launching a coordinated attack on at least seven Israeli military installations and more than 20 surrounding residential communities. Over 1000 Israeli citizens, both civilian and military, as well as dozens of foreign nationals, were killed in the attack. Some 240 others were taken captive. Caught off guard and in disarray, the Israeli military responded to the attack in a frenzy, firing indiscriminately on breached localities, slaying Israeli captives alongside Hamas fighters in the process. It took the Israeli forces nearly a day to recapture all lost territory and secure the Gaza perimeter.

Following Hamas’s unprecedented incursion, Israel’s public relations apparatus launched a misinformation campaign aimed at inciting fear and fury and began to spread unverified atrocity propaganda. The campaign, involving tales of babies being “beheaded en masse”, “burned” and “hung on a clothesline”, helped transform the Israeli public’s shock into genocidal tribalism and diverted attention from Israel’s political, intelligence and military blunders that paved the way for the attack in the first place. The campaign also helped the government garner crucial public support for mass mobilisation of reserve units which made the consequent full-scale ground invasion of the Gaza Strip possible.

Keep reading

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What’s the latest UN Gaza resolution that the US has agreed to?

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US ready to back diluted resolution on more aid to Gaza as UN vote delayed

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‘Without work and hope’: Bethlehem’s Christmas economy bleeds from Gaza war

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Israel’s war on Gaza: List of key events, day 77

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After securing unconditional military, political and diplomatic backing of its imperial sponsors in the West, most notably in Washington,  and under the pretext of countering Hamas and rescuing captives, Israel then initiated what has since been accurately described as an AI-guided “mass assassination campaign” in Gaza.

Ten weeks on, most of Gaza is now destroyed, nearly 20,000 Palestinians are dead with many more still under the rubble, and the world continues to watch a genocide unfold in real time. Examining these events through a behavioural-neuroscientific lens could offer insights into the Zionist settler colonialist dynamic in general and the particular motivations behind Israel’s current genocidal acts in Gaza, as well as potential paths forward.

The pillars of Zionist propaganda

In response to historical trauma, Jewish people have a deep fear of anti-Semitism. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, this fear, along with disdain for oppressors, led to the formation of autonomous Jewish self-defence groups in various geographies.

Zionism, a European colonial movement, recognised the potential of this dynamic. It syncretised Jewish longing for safety and self-defence with white supremacist, messianic and fascistic ideologies. This synthesis birthed a new, nationalist Jewish identity that equates Jewish safety with the construction of an exclusivist homeland in Palestine through the displacement of the region’s Indigenous populations.

Settler colonial endeavours typically depend on depicting the targeted territory as “uninhabited”, and its existing inhabitants as inhuman barbarians unworthy of any land.

This portrayal allowed Zionists to displace the Indigenous population of Palestine without moral qualms, portraying the establishment of Israel not as the destruction of a people but as the construction of a “villa in the jungle”.

Within the Israeli society grounded in land and resource theft, offensive aggression under the guise of “self-defence” (as in “Israel Defence Force”) has been rewarded and reinforced from the very beginning and consequently became a routine part of life. By reinstating fear and hijacking trauma associated with past and present negative experiences of Jewish people, Zionist leaders ensured the settler population’s continued support for aggressive, expansionist, hegemonic, genocidal policies and shielded their corruption and other criminal endeavours from public scrutiny.

To maintain Israel’s violently oppressive status quo and expand the territory of the settler colony, Zionists opportunistically conflated their colonial ideology with Judaism.

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OHCHR noted that reporting on the killings “raises alarm about the possible commission of a war crime.”

Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams, Dec 20, 2023

Amid mounting war crime claims against Israeli troops, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights revealed Wednesday that it “has received disturbing information alleging that Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) summarily killed at least 11 unarmed Palestinian men in front of their family members” in the Gaza Strip.

Citing witness accounts shared by the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor and journalists, OHCHR said that while raiding a Gaza City building where multiple related families were sheltering on Tuesday night, “the IDF allegedly separated the men from the women and children, and then shot and killed at least 11 of the men, mostly aged in their late 20s and early 30s, in front of their family members.”

“The IDF then allegedly ordered the women and children into a room, and either shot at them or threw a grenade into the room, reportedly seriously injuring some of them, including an infant and a child,” added the office, which has confirmed the killings at Al Awda building—also known as the Annan building—but not the other details.

OHCHR noted that reporting on the killings in Gaza City’s Al Remal neighborhood “raises alarm about the possible commission of a war crime” and “comes in the wake of earlier allegations concerning the deliberate targeting and killing of civilians at the hands of Israeli forces.”

“The Israeli authorities must immediately institute an independent, thorough, and effective investigation into these allegations, and if found to be substantiated, those responsible must be brought to justice and measures implemented to prevent any such serious violations from recurring,” the U.N. office declared.

“My sister informed me that an Israeli force raided the house and executed the young men… The Israeli soldiers later threw shells at the women, who were being held in one of the rooms.”

Euro-Med Monitor said in a statement Wednesday that Israeli soldiers killed 13 people in the building and “kidnapped an elderly man, whose fate is still unknown,” according to “horrific testimonies” obtained by the Geneva-based group.

“My sister informed me that an Israeli force raided the house and executed the young men,” a relative of the victims told the monitor. “Thirteen persons were shot dead and several more were critically injured. The Israeli soldiers later threw shells at the women, who were being held in one of the rooms.”

“My mother, my sister, and my brother’s wife were injured along with several others,” the relative added. “If they are not saved right away, they might die at any time.”

The monitor noted that 27 women and children “trapped inside the house—many of whom with severe injuries or amputations—appealed to the International Committee of the Red Cross to coordinate their evacuation and save their lives.”

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy group in the United States, responded to the allegations by demanding a United Nations investigation.

“While the Biden administration blocks all attempts to end the genocide in Gaza, real people are being slaughtered daily in ways that echo the darkest periods of human history,” said CAIR national communications director Ibrahim Hooper. “Our nation must call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire to end the killing, ethnic cleansing, and starvation of an entire people—the very definition of genocide.”

Israel’s “genocidal” war on Gaza—launched in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack on October 7 that killed over 1,100 people—has left more than 20,000 Palestinians dead, including 8,000 children, displaced the vast majority of the besieged strip’s 2.3 million residents, and devastated civilian infrastructure.

Separately on Wednesday, Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) sent the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor a list of 40 IDF officers who had command responsibility over units involved in the assault and blockade of Gaza through mid-November.

While not comprehensive, DAWN said, “the list of identified Israeli officials serves as a repository of the prime Israeli suspects the ICC prosecutor (or any war crimes prosecutor) should consider in its ongoing investigation into violations of the Rome Statute in this war.”

Meanwhile, despite growing global calls for a cease-fire, the United States—which gives Israel $3.8 billion in annual military aid and is now considering a $14.3 billion package for the war—delayed a U.N. Security Council vote on a Gaza resolution for the third time this week.

This post has been updated with comment from CAIR.

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

Jessica Corbett

Jessica Corbett is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams.

Israel carries out unprecedented attacks against health workers and infrastructure in the Gaza Strip, bulldozing hospital grounds and detaining doctors

by Ana Vračar, Peoples Dispatch, Dec 19. 2023

Al-Awda Hospital Manager Dr. Ahmed Muhanna was arrested by Israeli Forces and his whereabouts are currently unknown. Photo: People’s Health Movement

“Moral decay,” as Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) put it, is possibly the best way to summarize the past weekend of Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF) attacks on health in the Gaza Strip. Days of unimaginable horrors haunt health workers, patients, and displaced people in Gaza’s hospitals as violent raids and sieges of health centers continue over 70 days into Israel’s war on Gaza.

On Saturday, December 16, reports came in about Israeli bulldozers crushing those staying in tents on the grounds of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza. The raid turned the area into a mass grave, leaving many more injured behind. Soon after the event, Mai al-Kaila, Palestinian Health Minister, called for an urgent probe into the event.

Not only did the Israeli occupation bulldoze living people, but they also “released dogs on us in the courtyard of Kamal Adwan Hospital, and they mauled a wounded person before his martyrdom,” said the Ministry of Health’s statement.

Around the time the ministry’s statement was published, there were still 12 babies in the incubators of Kamal Adwan who health staff could not reach, leaving the infants without food.

The Israeli occupation announced it had detained dozens of people during the raid. According to reports, these also include health workers.

Health workers were detained and taken to unknown locations from Al-Awda Hospital in Jabalya, another health center that had been besieged for days. Among the 21 health workers who had been detained was Dr. Ahmed Muhanna, the director of the hospital, who had been one of the health staff to provide regular reports about the health situation in the Gaza Strip. All the health workers except for Dr. Muhanna were released after a three-hour interrogation, but the hospital director’s current location remains unknown.

A week ago, Dr. Muhanna reported that the situation in the hospital was “critical,” with the hospital under complete siege and snipers having shot two staff members. Shortly before he was taken away by the IOF, Dr. Muhanna had reassured media that the hospital staff remained steadfast and in high spirits despite the siege.

Read more: As attacks on hospitals in Gaza intensify, health workers remain steadfast

Among other hospitals attacked were the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, and Gaza’s biggest hospital, Al-Shifa. Bombs damaged the maternity ward at Nasser Medical Complex, killing one and injuring at least ten. A new mission led by the WHO visited Al-Shifa on December 16, delivering much-needed supplies. The team found a “hospital in need of resuscitation.”

According to their report, there are no blood supplies at Al-Shifa, meaning that no surgical interventions can take place, and supplies needed for pain management are also virtually non-existent. The WHO described the “emergency department as a ‘bloodbath’, with hundreds of injured patients inside, and new patients arriving every minute.”

“Patients with trauma injuries were being sutured on the floor,” the WHO reported, and “care must be exercised not to step on patients on the floor.”

On December 17, news came in that Hani Al-Haitham, the head of Al-Shifa’s emergency department, was killed in an Israeli attack, along with his wife, Dr. Sameera Ghifari, and their children.

Together with the increasing risk of the spread of infectious diseases and food deprivation, the escalating attacks against health services and health workers in Palestine are making Gaza completely unlivable, providing further evidence of the genocidal intention behind Israeli attacks.

People’s Health Dispatch is a fortnightly bulletin published by the People’s Health Movement and Peoples Dispatch. For more articles and subscription to People’s Health Dispatch, click here.

Consortium News, December 15, 2023

Pro-Palestinian Israeli activist Miko Peled explains to a Melbourne, Australia audience Thursday how Israel stole Palestinian cities and farmland in 1948 and has continued its ethnic cleansing until today’s brutal operation in Gaza.

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The defense secretary says the US commitment to Israel is ‘unshakable’

by Dave DeCamp, Antiwzr. com, December 18, 2023

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Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin met with Israeli officials in Tel Aviv on Monday and vowed continued US military support for the Israeli onslaught on Gaza despite the massive civilian casualty rate.

In a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Austin said the US “commitment to Israel is unshakable,” according to The Times of Israel. “America’s commitment to Israel is unwavering, and no individual group or state should test our resolve,” he said.

Austin vowed the US would continue to provide Israel with “the equipment that you need to defend your country,” referring to bombs and other military aid the US has been shipping to Israel since October 7 on a near-daily basis.

US officials have said they want Israel to wrap up the current phase of its war, which involves constant airstrikes and a ground campaign, in the next few weeks and take a more targeted approach against Hamas. Austin said the US had thoughts about more “surgical” operations but made clear the timeline of the onslaught is up to Israel.

“Regarding the timeline, this is Israel’s operation, and I’m not here to dictate timelines or terms. Our support to Israel’s right to defend itself is ironclad, as you’ve heard me say a number of times, and that’s not going to change,” he said.

At a press conference with Austin, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said the Israeli military will “continue to operate in different levels of intensity” as it sees fit and will eventually be able to “transition gradually to the next phase.”

When discussing civilian casualties, Austin said that “protecting Palestinian civilians in Gaza is both a moral duty and a strategic imperative” but also gave cover for the Israeli slaughter of civilians. He said the density of Gaza’s population makes it “very, very difficult to conduct any military operation.”

While US officials claim they are concerned about civilian casualties in Gaza, they are not considering placing any conditions on military aid or limits on the use of US-provided bombs. Since October 7, Israel’s onslaught has killed over 19,000 Palestinians, including over 7,500 children.

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Author: Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com

by Ralph Nader. Counterpunch, Dec 18, 2023

Image by Kim Silverstein. Courtesy JVP.

In the midst of Netanyahu’s annihilation of innocent Palestinian civilians in Gaza, many of them children, women and the elderly, there is a rising urgency from many Israeli and domestic Jewish groups for an immediate ceasefire and greatly increasing the flow of humanitarian aid.

In the U.S. Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now have vigorously engaged in public non-violent civil disobedience – an American tradition – to challenge the inhumane unconditional co-belligerency by Congress and Joe Biden of the present extremist regime’s genocidal destruction of Palestinians. Many U.S. Jewish Americans are standing tall either individually or in groups to exclaim “not in our name” to the U.S.-funded civilian slaughter in Gaza.

A most remarkable, little-noticed open letter to President Joe Biden appeared in December 13, 2023, New York Times,paid for by the legendary Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem and signed by 16 other Israeli peace, human rights, veterans and religious associations. (See the letter here).

Titled “The Humanitarian Catastrophe in the Gaza Strip,” the letter condemns the Hamas “horrific and criminal attack on Israeli civilians” and demands the release of the Israelis in Gaza. What follows are excerpts from their message to the White House:

“Since the war began, Israel’s policy has driven the humanitarian crisis in Gaza to the point of catastrophe – not only as an inevitable outcome of war. As part of this policy, soon after the fighting began, Israel stopped selling Gaza electricity and water, closed its crossings and blocked all entry of food, water, fuel and medicine.”

Citing international law and committed war crimes, the signers continue:

“UN agencies and humanitarian organizations report that the situation in Gaza is catastrophic and they have almost no way left to help the population. The few truckloads that are allowed in – a drop in the ocean, according to the reports – cannot be distributed due to the ongoing bombardments, the destruction of infrastructure and restrictions imposed by Israel. This leaves more than two million people hungry and thirsty, without access to proper medical care, and with infectious diseases spreading due to unhygienic overcrowding and lack of water. This inconceivable reality grows worse by the day.”

“You [Biden] have the power to influence our government to change its policy and allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, in accordance with Israel’s legal obligations ….”

“We are in the final throes of an emergency. Many deaths can still be prevented. Israel must change its policy now.”

The estimated death toll in Gaza at “more than 18,000” is a gross undercount. Well over ten times more children in Gaza have been killed in nine weeks than the number of children lost in the Russian war on Ukraine over nearly 22 months. In addition to the unprecedented intense bombing, large numbers of Palestinian infants, children, women, the infirmed, and disabled are homeless, facing the elements, dying by the minute from the homicidal conditions described by these Israeli human rights groups, journalists, and recorded by U.S. drones above Gaza.

Being reduced to rubble, Gaza has no fire trucks or water to put out spreading fires. The Israeli military has destroyed or rendered the vast majority of hospitals and health clinics inoperative. UN relief agencies are shelled and have seen over 130 of their staff slain.

The Israeli war machine has also taken the lives of over 60 Palestinian journalists (many with their families), including three Israeli reporters. Consistent with its long-time exclusion of outside journalists, the Israeli government doesn’t want the world to see and hear from unembedded, mainstream Israeli or foreign journalists.

Day after deadly day, President Biden, Secretary of State Blinken and Secretary of Defense Austin used words to urge minimizing Palestinian casualties while they deploy deeds of massive shipments of bombs, missiles and UN vetoes. Small wonder our government officials are having little restraining influence. The Israeli Air Force even bombs and contaminates the small agricultural areas destroying olive groves and fields growing grain, vegetable and fruit crops. It is even against Israeli law for Palestinians to collect rainwater which is decreed to be the property of the state.

Pope Francis, long a protector of Jewish rights when he was a cleric in Argentina, called Israeli President Isaac Herzog to express his deep concern about the plight of the Palestinians, saying that “it is forbidden to respond to terror with terror.” The Vatican reported that the Holy Father is in constant touch with the “Christian Church” in Gaza and the West Bank. For decades, Christians in the West Bank have been harassed, discriminated against and encroached upon (e.g., Bethlehem) with little media coverage, except for the courageous Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

Oblivious to world opinion, including that of our allies, Biden and the Democrats are pushing for another $14.3 billion in U.S. taxpayer monies to further annihilate the defenseless, now homeless, human beings in Gaza, screaming in pain and fear, sick, starving and dying, unable to bury their kin. Rotting corpses are piling up, and being eaten by stray dogs.

Meanwhile, people in the U.S. who speak out for stopping this brutality are charged with being “antisemitic” – a grotesque cheapening and misuse of a word that was used to describe the savage Russian pogroms and Nazi horrors of extermination. Silencing peaceful criticism with this slander is a conscious tactic. Note the statement by Shulamit Aloni, a former Minister of Education and winner of the Israel Prize:

“It’s a trick. We always use it. When from Europe, somebody criticizes Israel, we bring up the Holocaust. When, in the United States, people are critical of Israel, then they are anti-Semitic.”

It works all too often. Americans are smeared, being suspended or losing their jobs, their careers, and their customers because they oppose the carnage in Gaza. It is a sign of the partisan censorship that incurring such penalties is not experienced by Americans exclaiming their full support for this genocidal obliteration of Gaza – a multiple war crime pointed out by both Jewish and non-Jewish international law scholars here and abroad.

The least that humane citizens can do is to tell their members of Congress to demand a permanent ceasefire, the release of the Israeli hostages and the large number of Palestinian prisoners (children, women and men) in Israeli jails without charges or due process, and serious movement toward a two-state solution.

The switchboard in Congress is 202-224-3121.

Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer and author of Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!