Posts Tagged ‘Gaza’

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‘At Any Moment We Could Die’: Atrocities Mount as Israel Ramps Up Assault on Northern Gaza

October 12, 2024

Israeli attack on Jabalia

An injured man carries the body of a child killed by an Israeli attack on the Jabilia refugee camp in northern Gaza on October 11, 2024.

(Photo: Dawoud Abo Alkas/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“People are starving,” said a Médecins Sans Frontières driver trapped in northern Gaza. “I am afraid to stay, and I am also afraid to leave.”

Jake Johnson. Common Dreams, Oct 12, 2024

The death toll from Israel’s latest ground and aerial assault on northern Gaza continued to mount on Saturday as the U.S.-armed military targeted the Jabalia refugee camp and other parts of the region, trapping hundreds of thousands of people, firing on those who try to flee, and blocking deliveries of lifesaving humanitarian aid.

Israeli strikes on Jabalia homes and schools housing displaced people killed more than 20 Palestinians and wounded dozens more late Friday. Hours later, the Israeli military issued fresh evacuation orders for northern Gaza, instructing residents to move to a so-called humanitarian zone that Israel has repeatedly attacked.

Many have opted to remain in their homes as Israeli quadcopters and snipers target those attempting to escape the besieged and famine-stricken region. As Al Jazeera‘s Hind Khoudary explained Saturday, “Palestinians say they prefer dying in their homes because they believe that there is no place safe across the Gaza Strip, so even if they evacuate they might get killed on the way.”

Sarah Vuylsteke, project coordinator for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), said Friday that “nobody is allowed to get in or out, anyone who tries is getting shot.”

MSF said five of its staffers were trapped in Jabalia and “fearing for their lives.” An MSF driver said that they were “staying at the Al-Yemen Al-Saeed Hospital, but [Israeli forces] bombed it,” killing roughly 20 people.

“I don’t know what to do, at any moment we could die,” said the MSF driver, identified as Haydar. “People are starving. I am afraid to stay, and I am also afraid to leave.”

Video footage posted to social media shows the disturbing aftermath of an Israeli strike on a residential block in Jabalia:

One resident of northern Gaza told+972 Magazine that “quadcopter drones are hovering low over the streets, firing at anything that moves.”

“Snipers are positioned on rooftops, targeting anyone who steps outside,” said 27-year-old Mohammed Shehab. “At the same time, soldiers and tanks have pushed into the camp, demolishing homes and bulldozing roads and fields.”

The true death toll from Israel’s latest assault on northern Gaza is impossible to discern, given the difficulty of navigating the area amid relentless airstrikes and gunfire as well as fuel shortages caused by Israel’s siege.

“We are unable to count the number of massacres happening in Jabalia, and ambulances are unable to reach the calls due to the fuel shortage in northern Gaza,” wrote journalist Hossam Shabat, who is on the ground in northern Gaza.

One Palestinian trapped in northern Gaza said there are “dead bodies everywhere, and the wounded lie in the streets with no one able to help them.”

The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor warned that as the international community looks on—and as U.S. military aid continues to flow—Israel is “accelerating the pace of its genocide against the Palestinians” by “carrying out mass and planned killings, as well as widespread forced displacements,” in northern Gaza.

“The Euro-Med Monitor field team received testimonies from citizens, who were able to reach Gaza City, about witnessing dead bodies lying in the streets,” the group said. “The Israeli army is systematically working to empty northern Gaza of its residents and force them to move to the south, recently issuing several evacuation orders and dropping leaflets demanding their evacuation.”

“The forcible deportation of a population is defined as a crime against humanity under the statute of the International Criminal Court, and the United Nations and the international community must intervene immediately to save tens of thousands of Palestinian residents in northern Gaza who face ethnic cleansing by Israel,” said Euro-Med. “Furthermore, the U.N. and international community have a legal and moral obligation to put an end to the horrific crime of genocide being committed by the Israeli occupation for the second year in a row now.”

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Philip Giraldi: Who Is In Charge of US Foreign Policy?

October 11, 2024

Is it Israel and its Powerful Lobby or The White House or No One at all?

Philip Giraldi • October 10, 2024

It probably would surprise no one to learn that there are several viewpoints among critics of the current wars devastating the Middle East regarding who is actually encouraging a growing bloody conflict which might soon involve at least six countries in the region. In simple terms, there is a school of thought that believes that Israel, backed by its various powerful diaspora lobbies, is defying world opinion to continue its slaughter of its indigenous Palestinians and neighboring Lebanese. In other words, it is all about Israel acting maliciously and badly. However, another viewpoint sees instead a neocon dominated United States foreign policy exploiting Israeli truculence and its hard right wing leadership to carry out American national objectives in the region, in a sense using Israel as its proxy and actually encouraging its bad behavior. Meanwhile, a third plausible examination of developments tends to meld the two approaches, suggesting that the US and Israel are in a conspiratorial cooperative relationship and are in full agreement regarding reducing the power of the Jewish state’s neighbors. That would make Israel the preeminent military power dominating the Persia Gulf and beyond to control a large chunk of the world’s energy resources while also benefiting American weapons manufacturers and other political and Wall Street constituencies.

The problem is that there is sufficient carefully selected evidence to support every point of view including an alternative suggestion that American foreign policy is broken, adrift and does not reflect any US national interest at all, witness the recent $8.7 billion aid package sent to a belligerent Israel when Americans were dying in North Carolina in the wake of a devastating hurricane for which FEMA only provided meager assistance because it claimed it had run out of money. The steady flow of money and weapons from the US to Israel suggests that the United States is for some reason supporting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s expansion of the war against Hamas when the White House could have ended the war in a day by cutting off that support. Alternatively, Israel might be seen as continuing its slaughter in spite of perhaps insincere US objections because it presumes that its powerful Lobby in the US will keep Joe Biden in line with an election coming up lest it weigh in heavily to help Donald Trump. And, of course, if the two nations are acting in collusion it could all be Kabuki with Washington and Tel Aviv cynically intending to do whatever it takes reshape the Middle East to Israel’s benefit. Take your choice of which scenario fits best.

One needs to determine what actually justifies the reality of a multiplicity of fronts, to include providing political cover in the UN, where the United States is interacting to support “greatest ally and best friend” Israel while at the same time constantly verbalizing the apparently false claim that it is trying to avoid the conflict’s expanding into a major conflagration that could engulf the entire region and beyond, driving up energy costs dramatically just for starters. Such a managed co-escalation might also increase the risks and costs geometrically as more players get involved, up to and including the possibility that Israel will opt to use its nuclear weapons to “defend” itself or to attack Iran, which is where both Russia and the United States might become involved in a nuclear exchange to defend their respective “friends.”

So what is the truth and what are the lies and who in Washington and/or Tel Aviv is calling the shots in the Middle East? And what do they really intend and how do they see it all ending? There are four obvious US government players who are on the ground and meeting with the key figures in the nations involved in the fighting as well as with those ostensibly engaged in the what are being called negotiations to put an end to the killing with a ceasefire acceptable to all parties. One must concede that their task is a difficult one at best as all parties to the peace talks recognize that the United States is not an unbiased intermediary given its total commitment to support Israel politically as well as with arms and money while freely labeling the Jewish state’s neighbors and opponents alike as “terrorists” and “autocrats.” The four would be composed of two obvious officials Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director William Burns and Secretary of State Antony Blinken while a third and fourth are not-so-well-known, consisting of special negotiator for the president Amos Hochstein and the White House Coordinator for the Middle East Brett McGurk. Both Burns and Blinken have made numerous trips to the Middle East and Ukraine to convey the views of the president and make their own assessments of the situation on the ground after meeting with local officials. The role is rather unusual for Burns as a CIA Director normally operates behind the scenes and does not get involved in policy making, but Burns is not a typical director in that he has no background in intelligence. He was a highly regarded State Department officer who wound up as the US Ambassador to Russia. He very carefully worked through the nuances of the US-Russian relationship and was highly praised for explaining things from the Kremlin perspective so US planners would be able to understand very clearly the differing perspectives of the two nations. He described, for example, how very sensitive Russia was over the issue of Ukraine becoming part of NATO, a warning which was subsequently ignored by President Biden.

Blinken is, of course, better known as he served as Deputy Secretary of State during the Barack Obama administration and is regarded as a particularly close associate of Joe Biden. As Secretary of State he has been a very active traveler throughout both the Middle East and Ukraine. Blinken is Jewish and is regarded as a protector of Israel, which is, of course, also the President’s frequently enunciated view. After the Israeli assassination of Hezbollah leader Nasrallah he said that the “World is safer without Nasrallah…” whereas most of the world would quite reasonably prefer to see Benjamin Netanyahu removed. Blinken also appears to favor preemptively attacking Iran to eliminate its nuclear energy program even though there is no evidence that it is weapons-development related. He has recently come under pressure for lying about two State Department reports that indicated very clearly that Israel has been deliberately starving and killing the Gazans by blocking US supplied food and medicine supplies at the border. One large convoy of trucks containing enough food to feed most of the local people who were in danger of dying from starvation was deliberately held up at the border until the food became rotten and had to be destroyed. Blinken lied both to Congress and to the American people about the Israeli policy, saying that blocking food supplies by Israel was not taking place. It was a consequential lie as people died and are continuing to die because of it and Blinken has paid no price for what must surely be considered a major war crime.

The third policy planner is an unusual individual Amos Hochstein, who was born in Israel and served in the Israeli Army. He has been designated as Biden’s personal roving ambassador in the Middle East with a particular brief to work to avoid the expansion of the Gaza fighting into Lebanon against Hezbollah. In that effort, he has obviously failed as both Israel and Lebanon now consider themselves to be at war. It is presumed that Hochstein is the “active arm” in the White House campaign to shield Israel from any harm initiated by its much abused neighbors. Why anyone would select an Israeli who is a product of the Israeli Army as a negotiator of some type among the nations that the Israelis have been victimizing for the past seventy-five years has to be considered an enduring mystery. It is perhaps another gimmick move by Biden to pretend that he is neutral in the conflict while doing everything he can to turn Netanyahu free to destroy or subject all his neighbors.

Which brings us to the fourth likely top planner National Security Council Coordinator for Africa and the Middle East Brett McGurk. McGurk has been a bipartisan fixture floating around the national security and diplomatic communities for a number of years with the reputation of being a “hardliner” particularly when dealing with Arabs, which is not to say that he has learned anything beyond the fact that if one wants to survive in Washington it pays to love Israel. It is interesting to note that the Biden Administration claims that it is working hard to achieve a ceasefire in both Lebanon and Gaza but it continues to cover for Israel politically and provide it with the weapons and money to continue it genocidal activities as well as in support of its plan to occupy southern Lebanon to create a “buffer zone.” Israeli media is already reporting that real estate agents are offering attractive properties for Jewish buyers in what is still Lebanon, just as Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has been peddling exclusive sea front lots in Gaza. In other words, don’t believe anything coming out of the Biden Administration as evidence for anything as it appears that its “policy makers” and press spokesmen have acquired the Israeli tendency to lie about everything.

Politico has a recent piece on both Hochstein and McGurk and it does not make one feel warm and fuzzy about what the Biden administration is up to. The article is entitled: “US officials quietly backed Israel’s military push against Hezbollah -The officials urged caution and stressed the need for diplomacy. But the timing was right for such a military shift, they concluded”. It seems that the guys who are promoted by the Biden administration as peacemakers are anything but. Politico obtained insider information from a number of anonymous sources in both Washington and Israel and learned that Biden’s team has actually agreed with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s broad strategy to shift Israel’s military focus to the north against Hezbollah. This tilt, contrary to what the White House has been preaching, produced a reaction from a number of Pentagon, intelligence and State Department officials that such a move would drag the United States into the war, which is really what Netanyahu intended, but the shift in policy was approved anyway. One senior US official noted but dismissed the flaw in a policy of calling for peace while encouraging war as “Both things can be true — the US can want diplomacy and support Israel’s larger goals against Hezbollah. There’s clearly a line that the administration is toeing, it’s just not clear what that line is.”

In spite of concerns from some in the government that a reckless Israel will go too far and ignite a major regional war that could easily spread beyond the Middle East, Politico reports how Hochstein and McGurk worked “behind the scenes” to encourage Israel and they are now describing Israel’s Lebanon operations likely to include a major land invasion as a “history-defining moment” — one that will “reshape the Middle East for the better for years to come.” That would seem to confirm that the United States and Israel are in fact collaborating and the US is fully complicit and de facto supporting the genocidal intention of Netanyahu to make a new Greater Israel largely free of Arabs. For the US, the extra benefit gained from defeating Hezbollah will be that it ultimately weakens Iran, neocon Washington’s perpetual arch enemy, which relies on Hezbollah as a proxy and a resource for projecting power. Of course, it could all go the other way and the joint American-Israeli plan could come to naught. Hezbollah notably routed invading Israeli forces in south Lebanon back in 2006 and it is better trained and equipped now than it was then. And what happens if Israeli army is in trouble and the US is forced to act on its pledge to “defend” the Jewish state, thereby leading a small war to expand and include Iran and Russia? The ball will be in your court Mr. Biden, or possibly Mr. Trump or Ms. Harris. Consider carefully how you will play it but if you really do want a ceasefire, I wouldn’t send Blinken, Hochstein and McGurk around to do the negotiating.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

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Biden is letting Israel trap the US into war with Iran

October 8, 2024

One year after Hamas’ Oct 7 attacks, regional conflict is raging with no end in sight

Analysis | Middle East

Paul R. Pillar, Oct 07, 2024

The Biden administration is not only endorsing but also on the verge of actively assisting a new Israeli armed attack on Iran. National security adviser Jake Sullivan says that the United States is working directly with Israel regarding such an attack. “The United States is fully, fully, fully supportive of Israel,” declares President Joe Biden.

The projected attack serves no U.S. interests. The attack perpetuates a broader pattern of escalating violence in the Middle East that also serves no U.S. interests. The Iranian missile salvo to which the coming Israeli attack is ostensible retaliation was itself retaliation for previous Israeli attacks. Retaliation for retaliation is a prescription for an unending cycle of violence.

The United States is facilitating an attack on a nation that does not want war and has been remarkably restrained in trying to avoid it, in the face of repeated Israeli provocations. A sustained Israeli bombing campaign against Iranian-related targets within Syria elicited a response only when it escalated to an attack on a diplomatic compound in Damascus, killing senior Iranian officials. Even then, the Iranian response, in the form of an earlier salvo of missiles and drones in April, was designed and telegraphed in a way to make a show of defiance but — with most of the projectiles certain to be shot down — to cause minimal damage and almost no casualties.

When Israel assassinated visiting Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in a government guest house in Tehran in July — the sort of attack that would elicit a quick and forceful response by the U.S. or Israel if it happened in one of their capitals — Iran did nothing until last week. It finally acted only after yet another Israeli attack— this time an assault on residential buildings in a suburb of Beirut that killed a senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard officer along with Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah. Far from being motivated by any grandiose ambitions of regional dominance or desire to destabilize the region, Iranian leaders believed that they were getting killed by a thousand cuts from Israel and that they had to respond to the repeated Israeli attacks lest they lose the confidence not only of their own people but of regional allies. The missile firings that constituted Iran’s retaliation, like the ones in April, again caused minimal damage or casualties.

By cooperating with Israel in a new attack, the United States is assisting a state that has been responsible for most of the escalation and the vast majority of death and destruction in the Middle East for at least the past year. Although Hamas’ attack on southern Israel last October is commonly seen as the starting point of the subsequent mayhem in the Middle East, the question of who is responding to whom could go back farther than that. For example, the 1,200 deaths from that Hamas attack, horrible to be sure, were fewer than the number of Palestinians that Israel had killed in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip just from the day-to-day operations of the occupying Israeli army, supplemented by settler violence in the West Bank, during the previous eight years.

Since the Hamas attack, the devastating Israeli operation in the Gaza Strip has gone far beyond anything that can be construed as defense, or even as a response to Hamas, and has brought suffering to innocent civilians that is orders of magnitude greater than anything Hamas or any other Palestinian group has ever done. The still-rising official death toll exceeds 41,000, with the actual number of Palestinian deaths probably much higher and likely into six figures. Much of the Strip has been reduced to rubble and rendered unlivable.

After Hezbollah fired rounds into Israel last October in a show of support for the Palestinians in Gaza, the story of conflict along the Israeli-Lebanese frontier has mainly been one of repeated Israeli escalations. Israeli attacks in Lebanon have far exceeded Hezbollah attacks on Israel, in number but especially in physical effects, with almost no casualties within Israel apart from a few military personnel at the border. The rapidly rising toll of deaths in Lebanon from Israeli attacks has now passed 2,000, with about 10,000 injured and about 1.2 million people displaced from their homes. As in the Gaza Strip, civilians constitute much and perhaps most of that toll, including as a result of Israeli airstrikes that have demolished residential buildings in densely populated neighborhoods.

As a growing Israeli ground assault in Lebanon accompanies the aerial bombardment, Israel has told people in almost the entire southern third of Lebanon to move north, even though Israel already has been conducting lethal aerial attacks throughout Lebanon, including as far north as Tripoli. This also is reminiscent of the pattern in Gaza, in which residents are told to move, only to be bombed again in their new location.

The offensive Israeli actions that figure into confrontation with Iran — including the aerial and clandestine assassination operations in Lebanon, Syria, and the heart of Tehran — also have each constituted escalation. Those operations appear designed at least in part to goad Iran into entering a wider war, preferably one that also involves the United States.

Other motives behind the Israeli escalation are multiple and vary with the specific target. The deadly assaults on the Palestinians — in the Gaza Strip and increasingly also in the West Bank— are part of a long-term effort to use force to somehow make Israel’s Palestinian problem go away, through a combination of outright killing, inducing exile by making a homeland unlivable, and intimidation of any who remain.

Israel’s officially declared objective for its attacks in Lebanon is to permit a return home of the 70,000 temporarily displaced residents of northern Israel — whose numbers constitute less than six percent of the Lebanese who have been driven from their homes so far by the Israel offensive. That objective is genuine, but an escalating war along Israel’s northern border only places the objective farther out of reach. The Israeli operations also clearly are designed to cripple Hezbollah as much as possible, although they sustain and heighten the sort of anger that led to Hezbollah’s establishment and growth in the first place.

An Israel that is the strongest military power in the Middle East and is throwing its armed might around in seemingly every direction but the Mediterranean Sea is a nation drunk on the use of force and stumbling into still more use of it with little or no apparent attention to any long-term strategy for achieving an end state, other than living forever by the sword. Each tactical success, including the killing of a prominent adversary such as Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah, only seems to deepen the inebriation.

Beyond this, one gets into a mixture of motivations that are specific to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and ones shared with other Israeli policymakers. It is widely recognized, including by Netanyahu’s domestic opponents, that he has a personal stake in continuing and even escalating Israel’s wars. This is partly because of the usual rally-round-the-flag effect that attenuates the political problems of a wartime leader. It is also more specifically because Netanyahu is dependent on the support of the most extreme members of his right-wing ruling coalition to hold that coalition together, thereby keeping Netanyahu in power and delaying the day he has to confront fully the corruption charges against him.

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An armed attack on Iran would extend the Israeli policy— not unique to Netanyahu, although he has been its most prominent exponent — of stoking maximum hostility toward, and isolation of, Iran. That policy serves to weaken a rival for regional influence, to place blame for everything wrong with the region on someone other than Israel, to inhibit any engagement with Iran by Israel’s patron the United States, and to divert international attention away from Israel’s own actions.

The diversion seems to work. The international attention to what may come next in the confrontation with Iran, in addition to the escalating operations in Lebanon, has meant less attention than would otherwise have been given in newspapers and the airwaves to the continued carnage in the Gaza Strip that claims civilian lives, such as Israeli attacks within the last few days on a girls’ school and an orphanage that several hundred displaced persons were using as shelter.

The U.S. presidential election provides another motivation for the Israeli government to escalate regional warfare. Netanyahu certainly would like to see a second term for Donald Trump, who gave Israel just about anything it wanted during his previous time in office, with nothing in return except political support for Trump. This relationship is part of a broader political alliance between the Republican Party and Netanyahu’s Likud Party. To the extent an escalatory mess in the Middle East causes problems for the Biden administration and thereby hurts the election chances of Vice President Kamala Harris, that is a bonus from Netanyahu’s point of view.

Netanyahu is more likely to enjoy that bonus and the other fruits of ramping up conflict with Iran to the extent that the United States gets directly involved in that conflict. Such involvement not only makes the politically costly mess for the Biden administration all the messier, but also enables Netanyahu to claim credibly that he has the United States fully at his side in his government’s lethal activities.

None of these Israeli objectives are in the interest of the United States. Several of the objectives, such as hamstringing any U.S. diplomacy that involves Iran, are directly and manifestly opposed to U.S. interests.

Israel’s regional warfare — and more specifically a U.S.-backed attack on Iran — would harm U.S. interests in several additional ways.

Closer association with Israel’s lethal operations increases the chance of reprisals, including terrorist reprisals. It also worsens U.S. isolation in international politics.

Supporting or participating in an Israeli attack on Iran would further undermine U.S. claims to be in favor of peace and observance of a rules-based international order. It would mean attacking the country that in this confrontation has exercised restraint in the interest of avoiding war and is firmly in support of ceasefires on each of the fronts seeing combat. It would mean aiding further attacks by the country that in the same confrontation has inflicted far more death and destruction, and done more to promote escalation of the violence, than any other in the region.

An attack on Iran would roil the oil market and cause economic dislocations that would reach the United States, especially but not solely if such an attack targeted Iranian oil facilities.

An attack would set back any chance for fruitful diplomacy involving Iran on matters such as security in the Persian Gulf region.

An attack would increase the chance that the Iranian regime would choose to develop a nuclear weapon. Nothing would be better designed to strengthen the arguments of those in Tehran willing to take that step than armed attacks demonstrating that Iran does not now have a sufficient deterrent.

Israel has already entrapped the United States to a large degree in its lethal ways in the Middle East, and the entrapment threatens to become deeper with the anticipated new attack on Iran. The entrapment would not have been possible without mismanagement of the U.S.-Israeli relationship on the Washington end. President Biden’s approach of holding Netanyahu close in the hope of influencing his policies has failed. It also has been counterproductive. In the absence of any willingness to employ the leverage that U.S. material aid to Israel represents, all the bear-hugging and expressions of support have only reassured Netanyahu that he can continue to prosecute his wars and ignore American calls for restraint without losing that aid.

It is refreshing to see reports that at least within the Department of Defense there is some recognition that the policy has been counterproductive by emboldening Israel to escalate. It is perhaps unsurprising that the department whose personnel would be on the front line of any expanded warfare involving the United States is more willing than others to recognize the nature and sources of the violence plaguing the Middle East and the need to deter or restrain Israel rather than embolden it. One can only hope that this willingness will spread more widely in policymaking circles.

Paul R. Pillar

Paul R. Pillar is Non-resident Senior Fellow at the Center for Security Studies of Georgetown University and a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He is also an Associate Fellow of the Geneva Center for Security Policy.

The views expressed by authors on Responsible Statecraft do not necessarily reflect those of the Quincy Institute or its associates.

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𝐀𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐇𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐭𝐡𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐖𝐡𝐨 𝐕𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐢𝐧 𝐆𝐚𝐳𝐚 𝐒𝐚𝐲 𝐎𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝟏𝟏𝟖,𝟎𝟎𝟎 𝐇𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐁𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐊𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐝

October 5, 2024

𝑇ℎ𝑒 ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑙𝑡ℎ𝑐𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑟𝑠 𝑠𝑎𝑖𝑑, 𝑑𝑒𝑠𝑝𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝐼𝑠𝑟𝑎𝑒𝑙𝑖 𝑐𝑙𝑎𝑖𝑚𝑠, 𝑛𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑚 𝑠𝑎𝑤 𝑎𝑛𝑦 𝑚𝑖𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑎𝑡 ℎ𝑜𝑠𝑝𝑖𝑡𝑎𝑙𝑠 𝑖𝑛 𝐺𝑎𝑧𝑎

Dave DeCamp, Antiwar. com, October 3, 2024

Ninety-nine American healthcare workers who volunteered in Gaza over the past year published an open letter to President Biden and Vice President Harris on Thursday that detailed the horrors they witnessed and called for an end to US military support for Israel.

The healthcare workers said they believe the true death toll in Gaza is much higher than what Gaza’s Health Ministry is reporting, estimating it to be over 118,908.

“This letter and the appendix show probative evidence that the human toll in Gaza since October is far higher than is understood in the United States,” the letter reads. “It is likely that the death toll from this conflict is already greater than 118,908, an astonishing 5.4% of Gaza’s population.”

The latest numbers from Gaza’s Health Ministry put the number of Palestinians killed by Israel in Gaza since October 7, 2023, at 41,788. The ministry’s figures only count the bodies that are brought to hospitals and morgues and don’t account for people missing and presumed dead under the rubble.

The American healthcare workers said that everyone in Gaza is either sick, injured, or both. “With only marginal exceptions, everyone in Gaza is sick, injured, or both. This includes every national aid worker, every international volunteer, and probably every Israeli hostage: every man, woman, and child,” the letter says.
Palestinians inspect damages at Al Shifa Hospital after Israeli forces withdrew from the hospital and the area around it following a two-week operation in Gaza City on April 1, 2024. REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas

They said that almost every child under five they encountered “had both a cough and watery diarrhea.” Each signatory to the letter saw wounds in children that showed they were being purposefully targeted by the Israeli military.

“Specifically, every one of us who worked in an emergency, intensive care, or surgical setting treated pre-teen children who were shot in the head or chest on a regular or even a daily basis,” the letter reads. “It is impossible that such widespread shooting of young children throughout Gaza, sustained over the course of an entire year is accidental or unknown to the highest Israeli civilian and military authorities.”

Dr. Mark Perlmutter, an orthopedic and hand surgeon, was quoted in the letter saying, “Gaza was the first time I held a baby’s brains in my hand. The first of many.”

The healthcare workers said newborn babies were dying due to the conditions caused by the Israeli siege and attacks on hospitals. Asma Taha, a pediatric nurse practitioner, said, “Every day, I saw babies die. They had been born healthy. Their mothers were so malnourished that they could not breastfeed, and we lacked formula or clean water to feed them, so they starved.”

The healthcare workers said their Palestinian colleagues were targeted by Israeli forces and captured during Israeli raids on hospitals. “Many of these colleagues of ours were taken by Israel during the attacks. They all told us a slightly different version of the same story: in captivity, they were barely fed, continuously physically and psychologically abused, and finally dumped naked on the side of a road. Many told us they were subjected to mock executions and other forms of mistreatment and torture,” the letter reads.

Israel claims Hamas has used hospitals as “command centers,” but the letter said that none of its signatories saw any sign of militant activity. “The 99 signatories to this letter spent a combined 254 weeks inside Gaza’s largest hospitals and clinics. We wish to be absolutely clear: not once did any of us see any type of Palestinian militant activity in any of Gaza’s hospitals or other healthcare facilities,” the letter reads.

The letter concludes with a plea for Biden and Harris to end US support for the genocidal war: “Every day that we continue supplying weapons and munitions to Israel is another day that women are shredded by our bombs and children are murdered with our bullets. President Biden and Vice President Harris, we urge you: end this madness now!”

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𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐦𝐞𝐫’𝐬 𝐠𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝟏𝟎𝟎 𝐬𝐩𝐲 𝐟𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐬 𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐆𝐚𝐳𝐚 𝐭𝐨 𝐚𝐢𝐝 𝐈𝐬𝐫𝐚𝐞𝐥, 𝐢𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐠𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐬

October 4, 2024

Morning Star, October 3, 2024

THE Labour government has ordered 100 spy flights over Gaza to aid Israeli intelligence, an investigation by Declassified UK revealed today.

The intelligence-gathering flights began in December under the previous government.

Eleven flights took place in Labour’s first week in power, and during Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s first full month in office in August, the Royal Air Force (RAF) flew 42 flights over Gaza.

Declassified UK found that the flights were departing from Britain’s air base in Cyprus.

The flights may have gathered up to 500 hours of footage of Gaza, Declassified UK said, though it is unclear exactly where the British intelligence is going and what it comprises.

Earlier this month, Liberal Democrat MP Mike Martin, a former British army officer who served in Afghanistan, asked the military whether “UK intelligence is passed to Israel for the purposes of military targeting.”

Labour’s armed forces minister Luke Pollard responded by saying the surveillance flights were “solely tasked to support hostage rescue.”

Britain’s intelligence support to Israel is not limited to aerial missions.

An Israeli official disclosed to the New York Times that a secret British reconnaissance team was deployed to Israel early on in its attack on Gaza.

The British team gives “added value” to its intelligence operations, he said, adding that Britain is providing intelligence that “Israel cannot collect on its own.”

There is no evidence the new Labour government has brought this spy team home from Israel.

​​A Ministry of Defence spokesperson told Declassified that Britain is not a participant in the war in Gaza, adding: “Our mandate is narrowly defined to focus on securing the release of the hostages only, including British nationals, with the RAF routinely conducting unarmed flights since December 2023 for this sole purpose.”

–
https://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/article/starmer-government-has-ordered-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-to-aid-israel-investigation-reveals

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Iran bombs Israel, but buck stops with Biden

October 3, 2024

Iran bombs Israel, but buck stops with Biden

If Israel’s response sucks us into war, it will be on the administration’s hands. Here’s why.

Trita Parsi, Responsible Statecraft, Oct 01, 2024

Today, Iran launched a massive missile attack against Israel, which Tehran billed as a response to Israel’s recent assassinations of leaders of the IRGC, Hezbollah and Hamas. Israel now appears to be mulling a retaliation in turn that could push the sides into all-out war.

When Israel and Iran narrowly avoided a full-blown conflict in April, I warned that we shouldn’t let Biden’s help in averting escalation overshadow his broader, strategic failure to prevent such a dangerous moment from ever arising. Had the U.S. used its considerable leverage with Israel to end its war in Gaza, the region would not have found itself on the edge of a disastrous war in April; six months later, the Middle East is back at the brink of disaster.

Iran has made it clear that it does not want a regional conflict; Tehran doesn’t seem to believe it can afford such a war. But Netanyahu clearly thinks it’s in his interest to ramp up conflict right now, as Washington stands frozen — a month out from an election and with a lame duck president who seems incapable of telling Israel “no,” no matter the costs for American security.

One must hope that somehow, further escalation is avoided. But the risk of just such an outcome is enormous, and if the U.S. finds itself in a new forever war in the Middle East, the buck will stop with Biden. This White House has repeatedly chosen to keep the U.S. on the precipice of war, rather than restrain Israel’s military as its expanding wars killed more and more civilians in Gaza and now Lebanon. The Biden administration has helped bring about this extraordinarily dangerous moment by providing Israel with the weapons, political protection, diplomatic support, and money it requires to pursue the exact escalation that the Biden administration professes it does not want.

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Biden’s strategy has been to put enormous effort into deterring Iran and its partners from retaliating against Israel, while doing virtually nothing to discourage Israel from escalating in the first place. This lopsided approach has in fact been a recipe for escalation, repeatedly proving to Netanyahu that Washington has no intention of bringing pressure to bear on Israel, no matter its actions.

If Biden enables further escalation from Israel, this could very well lead to a direct U.S.-Iran military confrontation that would be profoundly destabilizing in the region. The consequences for U.S. national security of such a war are hard to quantify — but it’s easy to imagine consequences on par with the disastrous military adventurism that George W. Bush’s administration pursued in the Middle East.

If U.S. service members find themselves in the line of fire in an expanding Iran-Israel conflict, it will be a direct result of this administration’s failure to use U.S. leverage to pursue America’s most core security interest here — avoiding war.

Joe Biden came into office promising to end the era of forever wars and the quixotic, costly efforts to transform the Middle East. Now, Biden appears to have fallen into the trap of thinking that U.S. military force will transform the region for good. It is stunning that Washington appears not to have learned this lesson yet.

Trita Parsi

Trita Parsi is the co-founder and Executive Vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

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Congresswoman Tlaib Slams US-Funded ‘Bloodbath’ as Biden Calls Israel Bombing Lebanon ‘Justice’

September 29, 2024

Tlaib Slams US-Funded 'Bloodbath' as Biden Calls Israel Bombing Lebanon 'Justice'

Mourners carry the bodies of people killed in Israeli airstrikes on el-Karak in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa valley, during their funeral on September 27, 2024.

(Photo: Hassan Jarrah/AFP via Getty Images)

“The U.S. government are conspirators to the war criminal Netanyahu’s genocidal plan,” said the Michigan Democrat.

by Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams, Sep 28, 2024

U.S. President Joe Biden and Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib on Saturday had notably different responses to Israel’s intense bombing campaign in Lebanon over the past 24 hours, which killed hundreds of people including key Hezbollah leaders.

“Our country is funding this bloodbath,” Tlaib (D-Mich.) said on social media Saturday morning, sharing a post from Zeteo‘s Prem Thakker with videos of the Israeli assault on Lebanon that began Friday, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in New York City to address the United Nations General Assembly.

“Sending more of our troops and bombs to the region is not advancing peace,” added Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in Congress and a leading critic of Israel’s yearlong genocide in the Gaza Strip. “The U.S. government are conspirators to the war criminal Netanyahu’s genocidal plan.”

In the post shared by Tlaib, Thakker noted that “the U.S. was reportedly informed of this mass Israeli attack on Beirut in Lebanon shortly beforehand,” which “comes just one day after [the] U.S. released $8.7 billion more in aid to Israel.”

Tlaib also shared that her office is fielding “desperate calls” from U.S. citizens who are struggling to leave Lebanon. She declared that “the mission of the U.S. Department of State is to protect Americans, and they are failing AGAIN.”

Biden, meanwhile, began his Saturday afternoon statement by noting that Israel killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, which the Iran-backed Lebanese political and paramilitary group confirmed earlier in the day—a development that elevated fears of a broader regional war.

“Hassan Nasrallah and the terrorist group he led, Hezbollah, were responsible for killing hundreds of Americans over a four-decade reign of terror,” Biden said. “His death from an Israeli airstrike is a measure of justice for his many victims, including thousands of Americans, Israelis, and Lebanese civilians.”

The president continued:

The strike that killed Nasrallah took place in the broader context of the conflict that began with Hamas’ massacre on October 7, 2023. Nasrallah, the next day, made the fateful decision to join hands with Hamas and open what he called a “northern front” against Israel.

The United States fully supports Israel’s right to defend itself against Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and any other Iranian-supported terrorist groups. Just yesterday, I directed my secretary of defense to further enhance the defense posture of U.S. military forces in the Middle East region to deter aggression and reduce the risk of a broader regional war.

Ultimately, our aim is to de-escalate the ongoing conflicts in both Gaza and Lebanon through diplomatic means. In Gaza, we have been pursuing a deal backed by the U.N. Security Council for a ceasefire and the release of hostages. In Lebanon, we have been negotiating a deal that would return people safely to their homes in Israel and southern Lebanon. It is time for these deals to close, for the threats to Israel to be removed, and for the broader Middle East region to gain greater stability.

While the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) thanked Biden “for standing with our democratic ally Israel,” journalists from around the world and other critics highlighted that his statement “has not a word on civilian casualties.”

Ali Abunimah, director of The Electronic Intifada, was among those who pointed out that Biden said the “assassination of Nasrallah, in an Israeli massacre that killed hundreds, ‘is a measure of justice for his many victims.'”

“Utterly depraved, and by this twisted, criminal Biden logic, those who tried to assassinate Trump were also instruments of ‘justice,” Abunimah said, referring to former U.S. President Donald Trump, Republican nominee for the November election.

Middle East expert Assal Rad said: “Biden calls massive bombs in a densely-populated area that leveled six apartment buildings in Lebanon ‘a measure of justice.’ The torching of international law and the precedent that is being set should terrify us all.”

Rad also slammed Biden’s cease-fire call, saying: “This is nonsense. You can’t provide the funding and weapons to continue the conflict *without* conditions, twist humanitarian law to give Israel total impunity, and reject every international institution that seeks accountability, and then say your ‘aim is to de-escalate.'”

Others recalled Israel’s 2004 assassination of Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin, which also killed seven other people. The administration of former Republican U.S. President George W. Bush—who launched the global War on Terror in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks—didn’t issue a forceful condemnation like some European leaders, but a spokesperson for the State Department said at the time that “we are deeply troubled” by the attack.

As’ad Abukhalil, a Lebanese American professor at California State University, Stanislus, declared Saturday that “there has been no U.S. president EVER who has unconditionally allowed unrestrained Israeli savagery in the Middle East as Biden has done.”

Abukhalil warned that “the U.S. will suffer for years to come from the policies of Biden in the Middle East,” which he described as “more far-reaching [than] Bush’s.”

Biden, a Democrat, was initially seeking reelection in November, but after a disastrous summer debate performance against Trump, he passed the torch to Vice President Kamala Harris. After putting out Biden’s Saturday statement, the White House released a similar one from Harris—which was also lauded by AIPAC.

“Hassan Nasrallah was a terrorist with American blood on his hands. Across decades, his leadership of Hezbollah destabilized the Middle East and led to the killing of countless innocent people in Lebanon, Israel, Syria, and around the world. Today, Hezbollah’s victims have a measure of justice,” Harris said. “I have an unwavering commitment to the security of Israel. I will always support Israel’s right to defend itself against Iran and Iran-backed terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis.”

“President Biden and I do not want to see conflict in the Middle East escalate into a broader regional war,” she added. “We have been working on a diplomatic solution along the Israel-Lebanon border so that people can safely return home on both sides of that border. Diplomacy remains the best path forward to protect civilians and achieve lasting stability in the region.”

In response, Margaret Zaknoen DeReus, executive director at the California-based Institute for Middle East Understanding, said: “Like Biden, not a word from the VP , from the candidate of joy & freedom, about the 1,000+ Lebanese men, women and children Israel obliterated. Not a word about hundreds of thousands of Lebanese displaced, entire city blocks destroyed. We don’t exist as human beings to this [administration].”

Responding to both statements on social media, the anti-war group CodePink said that the Biden-Harris administration “believes flattening a residential area with… bombs is ‘justice.'”

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Biden Claims He’s Working for Peace in the Middle East But Continues to Back Israel

September 25, 2024

Biden made the claim in a speech at the UN General Assembly

by Dave DeCamp, Antiwar. com, September 24, 2024

President Biden delivered a speech to the UN General Assembly in New York on Tuesday and claimed that he was working to bring a “greater measure of peace and stability to the Middle East” even though his administration continues to provide full-throated support for Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza and its escalations in Lebanon.

Biden acknowledged that “innocent civilians” in Gaza are “going through hell,” a situation he helped create by providing a constant flow of weapons to Israel since October 7, 2023. An Israeli Air Force official recently said that without US support, Israel could only sustain military operations in Gaza for a few months.

The president said it was time for Hamas and Israel to finalize the terms of a hostage and ceasefire deal, but US officials have admitted that there’s no chance of an agreement before Biden’s term ends on January 20, 2025. Biden could force Israel to accept a deal by withholding military aid, but there’s no sign he’s willing to take that step.

US President Joe Biden delivered remarks at the United Nations (John Wong/EYEPRESS)

Discussing the situation between Israel and Hezbollah, Biden said, “Full-scale war is not in anyone’s interest. Even as the situation has escalated, a diplomatic solution is still possible.” His comments came a day after Israel launched a massive bombardment against southern and eastern Lebanon, killing over 500 people, mostly civilians.

Biden claimed that his administration is “working tirelessly” to achieve a diplomatic solution between Israel and Hezbollah. But the US backed the latest Israeli escalation and is deploying more troops to the Middle East as a show of support. US military aid and promises to defend Israel in the event of a major regional war have emboldened Israel to escalate in Lebanon and elsewhere in the Middle East.

Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib expressed disappointment with Biden’s comments about Lebanon and said the US was the only country that could stop the escalations. “It was not strong. It is not promising and it would not solve this problem,” Bou Habib said. “I (am) still hoping. The United States is the only country that can really make a difference in the Middle East and with regard to Lebanon.”

In his address, Biden also called for countries to stop arming the opposing sides in the war in Sudan. “The world needs to stop arming the generals, to speak with one voice and tell them: Stop tearing your country apart. Stop blocking aid to the Sudanese people.  End this war now,” he said.

A day earlier, the Biden administration named the UAE a “major defense partner” as Abu Dhabi is funneling weapons into Sudan to arm the Rapid Support Forces and fuel the war. The designation will give the UAE access to more sophisticated US weapons and military technology.

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Lebanon Health Minister: ‘Majority, If Not All’ of 558 Killed by Israel Were Civilians

September 24, 2024

Experts say the scale of the Israeli bombardment in Lebanon on Monday is unprecedented in 21st-century conflicts

by Dave DeCamp, Antiwar. com, September 24, 2024

Lebanese Health Minister Dr. Firass Abiad told The New York Times on Tuesday that the “overwhelming majority, if not all,” of the people killed and wounded by Israel’s bombardment in Lebanon on Monday were civilians.

The latest health toll from Lebanon’s Health Ministry puts the number of killed by the Monday bombing at 558, which includes 50 children and 94 women. Nearly 2,000 were wounded in the attack.

The Times notes that Lebanon’s Health Ministry’s figures have historically been viewed as reliable. The ministry is not run by Hezbollah but is overseen by the Lebanese government and collects its data using an emergency operations center that gathers casualty figures from private and state-run hospitals.

Israel targeted residential areas of southern and eastern Lebanon on Monday, claiming Hezbollah missiles were being hidden inside houses. The Israeli military said that it hit more than 1,600 targets, and experts say it’s one of the heaviest single-day bombings in modern warfare. The toll in Israel’s bombardment is about half of the toll for the entire 2006 Lebanon War, which lasted 34 days.

“Prior to the Gaza war, munitions deployed with this intensity and with this frequency would have been almost unheard-of,” Emily Tripp, director of the monitoring group Airwars, told the Times. “There is no comparison in terms of death toll or munitions use with previous 21st-century air campaigns of this nature, as far as we know.”

The US supported the Israeli bombardment despite previously claiming it opposed escalation and is sending more troops to the region as a show of support. Israeli strikes continue to hit Lebanon on Tuesday, and Hezbollah has fired hundreds of rockets into Israel in response.

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John Mearsheimer: Death and Destruction in Gaza

December 14, 2023

By John J. Mearsheimer, Information Clearing House, Dec 13, 2023

I do not believe that anything I say about what is happening in Gaza will affect Israeli or American policy in that conflict. But I want to be on record so that when historians look back on this moral calamity, they will see that some Americans were on the right side of history.

What Israel is doing in Gaza to the Palestinian civilian population – with the support of the Biden administration – is a crime against humanity that serves no meaningful military purpose. As J-Street, an important organization in the Israel lobby, puts it, “The scope of the unfolding humanitarian disaster and civilian casualties is nearly unfathomable.”[1]

Let me elaborate.

First, Israel is purposely massacring huge number of civilians, roughly 70 percent of whom are children and women. The claim that Israel is going to great lengths to minimize civilian casualties is belied by statements from high level Israeli officials. For example, the IDF spokesman said on 10 October 2023 that “the emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy.” That same day, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced: “I have lowered all the restraints – we will kill everyone we fight against; we will use every means.”[2]

Moreover, it is clear from the results of the bombing campaign that Israel is indiscriminately killing civilians. Two detailed studies of the IDF’s bombing campaign – both published in Israeli outlets – explain in detail how Israel is murdering huge numbers of civilians. It is worth quoting the titles of the two pieces, which succinctly capture what each has to say:

“‘A Mass Assassination Factory’: Inside Israel’s Calculated Bombing of Gaza”[3]

“The Israeli Army Has Dropped the Restraint in Gaza, and the Data Shows Unprecedented Killing.”[4]

Similarly, the New York Times published an article in late November 2023 titled: “Gaza Civilians, Under Israeli Barrage, Are Being Killed at Historic Pace.”[5] Thus, it is hardly surprising that the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, said that “We are witnessing a killing of civilians that is unparalleled and unprecedented in any conflict since” his appointment in January 2017.[6]

Second, Israel is purposely starving the desperate Palestinian population by greatly limiting the amount of food, fuel, cooking gas, medicine, and water that can be brought into Gaza. Moreover, medical care is extremely hard to come by for a population that now includes approximately 50,000 wounded civilians. Not only has Israel greatly limited the supply of fuel into Gaza, which hospitals need to function, but it has targeted hospitals, ambulances, and first aid stations.

Defense Minister Gallant’s comment on 9 October captures Israeli policy: “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.”[7] Israel has been forced to allow minimal supplies into Gaza, but the amounts are so small that a senior UN official reports that “half of Gaza’s population is starving.” He goes on to report that, “Nine out of 10 families in some areas are spending ‘a full day and night without any food at all’.”[8]

Third, Israeli leaders talk about Palestinians and what they would like to do in Gaza in shocking terms, especially when you consider that some of these leaders also talk incessantly about the horrors of the Holocaust. Indeed, their rhetoric has led Omar Bartov, a prominent Israeli-born scholar of the Holocaust, to conclude that Israel has “genocidal intent.”[9] Other scholars in Holocaust and genocide studies have offered a similar warning.[10]

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To be more specific, it is commonplace for Israeli leaders to refer to Palestinians as “human animals, ”human beasts,” and “horrible inhuman animals.”[11] And as Israeli President Isaac Herzog makes clear, those leaders are referring to all Palestinians, not just Hamas: In his words, “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible.”[12] Unsurprisingly, as the New York Times reports, it is part of normal Israeli discourse to call for Gaza to be “flattened,” “erased,” or “destroyed.”[13] One retired IDF general, who proclaimed that “Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist,” also makes the case that “severe epidemics in the south of the Gaza Strip will bring victory closer.”[14] Going even further, a minister in the Israeli government suggested dropping a nuclear weapon on Gaza.[15] These statements are not being made by isolated extremists, but by senior members of Israel’s government.

Of course, there is also much talk of ethnically cleansing Gaza (and the West Bank), in effect, producing another Nakba.[16] To quote Israel’s Agriculture Minister, “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba.”[17]Perhaps the most shocking evidence of the depths to which Israeli society has sunk is a video of very young children singing a blood-curdling song celebrating Israel’s destruction of Gaza: “Within a year we will annihilate everyone, and then we will return to plow our fields.”[18]

Fourth, Israel is not just killing, wounding, and starving huge numbers of Palestinians, it is also systematically destroying their homes as well as critical infrastructure – to include mosques, schools, heritage sites, libraries, key government buildings, and hospitals.[19] As of 1 December 2023, the IDF had damaged or destroyed almost 100,000 buildings, including entire neighborhoods that have been reduced to rubble.[20] Consequently, a stunning 90 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians have been displaced from their homes.[21] Moreover, Israel is making a concerted effort to destroy Gaza’s cultural heritage; as NPR reports, “more than 100 Gaza heritage sites have been damaged or destroyed by Israeli attacks.”[22]

Fifth, Israel is not just terrorizing and killing Palestinians, it is also publicly humiliating many of their men who have been rounded up by the IDF in routine searches. Israeli soldiers strip them down to their underwear, blindfold them, and display them in a public way in their neighborhoods – sitting them down in large groups in the middle of the street, for example, or parading them through the streets – before taking them away in trucks to detention camps. In most cases, the detainees are then released as they are not Hamas fighters.[23]

Sixth, although the Israelis are doing the slaughtering, they could not do it without the Biden administration’s support. Not only was the United States the only country to vote against a recent UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, but it has also been providing Israel with the weaponry necessary to wage this massacre.[24] As one Israeli general (Yitzhak Brick) recently made clear: “All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it’s all from the U.S. The minute they turn off the tap, you can’t keep fighting. You have no capability.… Everyone understands that we can’t fight this war without the United States. Period.”[25] Remarkably, the Biden administration has sought to expedite sending Israel additional ammunition, by-passing the normal procedures of the Arms Export Control Act.[26] 

Seventh, while most of the focus is now on Gaza, it is important not to lose sight of what is simultaneously going on in the West Bank. Israeli settlers, working closely with the IDF, continue to kill innocent Palestinians and steal their land. In an excellent article in the New York Review of Books describing these horrors, David Shulman relates a conversation he had with a settler, which clearly reflects the moral dimension of Israeli behavior toward the Palestinians. “What we are doing to these people is actually inhuman,” the settler freely admits, “But if you think about it clearly, it all follows inevitably from the fact that God promised this land to the Jews, and only to them.”[27] Along with its assault on Gaza, the Israel government has markedly increased the number of arbitrary arrests in the West Bank. According to Amnesty International, there is considerable evidence that these prisoners have been tortured and subjected to degrading treatment.[28]

As I watch this catastrophe for the Palestinians unfold, I am left with one simple question for Israel’s leaders, their American defenders, and the Biden administration: have you no decency?

NOTES

[1] https://jstreet.org/press-releases/moment-of-truth-for-israels-government/

[2] Both quotes can be found in: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-12-09/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/the-israeli-army-has-dropped-the-restraint-in-gaza-and-data-shows-unprecedented-killing/0000018c-4cca-db23-ad9f-6cdae8ad0000

[3] https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-calculated-bombing-gaza/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

[4] https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-12-09/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/the-israeli-army-has-dropped-the-restraint-in-gaza-and-data-shows-unprecedented-killing/0000018c-4cca-db23-ad9f-6cdae8ad0000

[5] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/25/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-death-toll.html

[6] https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/press-encounter/2023-11-20/secretary-generals-press-conference-unep-emissions-gap-report-launch

[7] https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/defense-minister-announces-complete-siege-of-gaza-no-power-food-or-fuel/

[8] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67670679

Also see: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/11/opinion/international-world/us-government-gaza-humanitarian-aid.html

[9] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/10/opinion/israel-gaza-genocide-war.html

Also see: https://www.nybooks.com/online/2023/11/20/an-open-letter-on-the-misuse-of-holocaust-memory/

[10] https://contendingmodernities.nd.edu/global-currents/statement-of-scholars-7-october/

[11]

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/Fr24GcCDgyM?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

[12] https://news.yahoo.com/israeli-president-says-no-innocent-154330724.html#:~:text=“It%20is%20an%20entire%20nation,It%27s%20absolutely%20not%20true.

[13] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/15/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-war-rhetoric.html

[14] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/10/opinion/israel-gaza-genocide-war.html

https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2023-11-23/ty-article-opinion/.premium/giora-eilands-monstrous-gaza-proposal-is-evil-in-plain-sight/0000018b-f84b-d473-affb-f9eb09af0000

https://mondoweiss.net/2023/11/influential-israeli-national-security-leader-makes-the-case-for-genocide-in-gaza/embed/#?secret=rzxQkv5QIA#?secret=hBFMAN9VdO

[15] https://www.timesofisrael.com/far-right-minister-says-nuking-gaza-an-option-pm-suspends-him-from-cabinet-meetings/

[16] https://mondoweiss.net/2023/10/israeli-think-tank-lays-out-a-blueprint-for-the-complete-ethnic-cleansing-of-gaza/

[17] https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-11-12/ty-article/israeli-security-cabinet-member-calls-north-gaza-evacuation-nakba-2023/0000018b-c2be-dea2-a9bf-d2be7b670000

[18] https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/watch-israeli-children-sing-we-will-annihilate-everyone-gaza

[19] https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-war-gaza-public-library-destroyed-bombing

The Chris Hedges Report

Israel’s War on Hospitals

Eve of Destruction – by Mr. Fish Israel is not attacking hospitals in Gaza because they are “Hamas command centers.” Israel is systematically and deliberately destroying Gaza’s medical infrastructure as part of a scorched earth campaign to make Gaza uninhabitable and escalate a humanitarian crisis. It intends to force 2.3 million Palestinians over the bo…

Read more

22 days ago · 481 likes · 174 comments · Chris Hedges

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20231211-report-israel-destroyed-192-mosques-in-gaza-strip/embed/#?secret=3Jug2qfe0B#?secret=8btQeX0KA5

https://www.npr.org/2023/12/09/1218384968/mosque-gaza-omari-israel-hamas-war

[20] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67565872#

[21] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-gaza-attacks-north-south-us-veto-un-ceasefire-resolution/

[22] https://www.npr.org/2023/12/03/1216200754/gaza-heritage-sites-destroyed-israel

[23] https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israel-says-groups-of-hamas-militants-surrendered-amid-gaza-fighting-7891bc22

[24] https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-vetoes-un-security-council-resolution-demanding-immediate-gaza-ceasefire/

[25] https://www.jns.org/biden-is-the-primary-obstacle-to-israeli-victory/

[26] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/09/world/middleeast/us-israel-tanks-ammunition.html

[27] https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2023/12/21/a-bitter-season-in-the-west-bank-david-shulman/

[28] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/11/israel-opt-horrifying-cases-of-torture-and-degrading-treatment-of-palestinian-detainees-amid-spike-in-arbitrary-arrests/

John Mearsheimer is an American political scientist and international relations scholar who belongs to the realist school of thought. He is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. He has been described as the most influential realist of his generation.

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