November 8,
2023
The governments
of Israel and the United States are now in disagreement over how many
Palestinian civilians it’s okay to kill. Last week – as the death toll from
massive Israeli bombardment of Gaza neared 10,000 people, including several
thousand children – top U.S. officials began to worry about the rising
horrified outcry at home and abroad.
So, they went public with muted misgivings
and calls for a “humanitarian pause.” But Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu made clear that he would have none of it.
Such minor
tactical discord does little to chip away at the solid bedrock alliance between
the two countries, which are most of the way through a 10-year deal that
guarantees $38 billion in U.S. military aid to Israel. And now, as the carnage
in Gaza continues, Washington is rushing to provide extra military assistance
worth $14 billion.
Days ago, In
These Times reported that the Biden administration is seeking congressional
permission “to unilaterally blanket-approve the future sale of military
equipment and weapons – like ballistic missiles and artillery ammunition – to
Israel without notifying Congress.” And so, “the Israeli government would be
able to purchase up to $3.5 billion in military articles and services in
complete secrecy.”
While Israeli
forces were using weapons provided by the United States to slaughter
Palestinian civilians, resupply flights were landing in Israel courtesy of U.S.
taxpayers. Air & Space Forces Magazine published a photo showing “U.S. Air
Force Airmen and Israeli military members unload cargo from a U.S. Air Force
C-17 Globemaster III on a ramp at Nevatim Base, Israel.”
Pictures taken
on Oct. 24 show that the military cargo went from Travis Air Force Base in
California to Ramstein Air Base in Germany to Israel. Overall, the magazine
reported, “the Air Force’s airlift fleet has been steadily working to deliver
essential munitions, armored vehicles, and aid to Israel.” And so, the
apartheid country is receiving a huge boost to assist with the killing.
The horrific
atrocities committed by Hamas on Oct. 7 have opened the door to protracted
horrific atrocities by Israel with key assistance from the United States.
Oxfam America
has issued a briefing paper decrying the Pentagon’s plans to ship tens of
thousands of 155mm artillery shells to the Israeli military. The organization
noted that “Israel’s use of this munition in past conflicts demonstrates that
its use would be virtually assured to be indiscriminate, unlawful, and
devastating to civilians in Gaza.” Oxfam added: “There are no known scenarios
in which 155mm artillery shells could be used in Israel’s ground operation in
Gaza in compliance with international humanitarian law.”
During the last
several weeks, “international humanitarian law” has been a common phrase coming
from President Biden while expressing support for Israel’s military actions.
It’s an Orwellian absurdity, as if saying the words is sufficient while
constantly helping Israel to violate international humanitarian law in numerous
ways.
“Israeli forces
have used white phosphorus, a chemical that ignites when in contact with
oxygen, causing horrific and severe burns, on densely populated neighborhoods,”
Human Rights Watch senior legal adviser Clive Baldwin wrote in late October.
“White phosphorus can burn down to the bone, and burns to 10 percent of the
human body are often fatal.”
Baldwin added:
“Israel has also engaged in the collective punishment of Gaza’s population
through cutting off food, water, electricity, and fuel. This is a war crime, as
is willfully blocking humanitarian relief from reaching civilians in need.”
At the end of
last week, the Win Without War organization noted that “senior administration
officials are increasingly alarmed by how the Israeli government is conducting
its military operations in Gaza, as well as the reputational repercussions of
the Biden administration’s support for a collective punishment strategy that
clearly violates international law. Many worry that the U.S. will be blamed for
the Israeli military’s indiscriminate attacks on civilians, particularly women
and children.”
News reporting
now tells us that Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken want a bit of a
course correction. For them, the steady large-scale killing of Palestinian
civilians became concerning when it became a PR problem.
Dressed up in an
inexhaustible supply of euphemistic rhetoric and double-talk, such immoral
policies are stunning to see in real time. And, for many people in Gaza,
literally breathtaking.
Now, guided by
political calculus, the White House is trying to persuade Israel’s prime
minister to titrate the lethal doses of bombing Gaza. But as Netanyahu has made
clear in recent days, Israel is going to do whatever it wants, despite pleas
from its patron.
While, in
effect, it largely functions in the Middle East as part of the U.S. war
machine, Israel has its own agenda. Yet the two governments are locked into
shared, long-term, overarching strategic interests in the Middle East that have
absolutely no use for human rights except as rhetorical window-dressing. Biden
made that clear last year when he fist-bumped the de facto ruler of oil-rich
Saudi Arabia, a dictatorship that – with major U.S. assistance – has led an
eight-year war on Yemen costing nearly 400,000 lives.
The war machine
needs constant oiling from news media. That requires ongoing maintenance of the
doublethink assumption that when Israel terrorizes and kills people from the
air, the Israeli Defense Force is fighting “terrorism” without engaging in it.
Another helpful
notion in recent weeks has been the presumption that – while Hamas puts out
“propaganda” – Israel does not. And so, on Nov. 2, the PBS NewsHour’s foreign
affairs correspondent Nick Schifrin reported on what he called “Hamas
propaganda videos.” Fair enough. Except that it would be virtually impossible
for mainstream U.S. news media to also matter-of-factly refer to public output
from the Israeli government as “propaganda.” (I asked Schifrin for comment, but
my several emails and texts went unanswered.)
Whatever
differences might surface from time to time, the United States and Israel
remain enmeshed. To the power elite in Washington, the bilateral alliance is
vastly more important than the lives of Palestinian people. And it’s unlikely
that the U.S. government will really confront Israel over its open-ended
killing spree in Gaza.
Consider this:
Just weeks before beginning her second stint as House speaker in January 2019,
Rep. Nancy Pelosi was recorded on video at a forum sponsored by the Israeli
American Council as she declared: “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, I don’t even call it aid – our cooperation – with
Israel. That’s fundamental to who we are.”
Even making
allowances for bizarre hyperbole, Pelosi’s statement is revealing of the kind
of mentality that continues to hold sway in official Washington. It won’t
change without a huge grassroots movement that refuses to go away.
Norman Solomon is the national
director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public
Accuracy. He is the author of many books including War Made Easy. His latest
book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military
Machine, was published in summer 2023 by The New Press.
With all Eyes on Gaza, Extremist Israeli Squatters seek to
Ethnically Cleanse the Palestinian West Bank
Amman
(Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – I booked annual leave in early
November to travel for a family visit in the occupied West Bank in Palestine.
Although initially I thought it might be possible to enter the West Bank
despite the ongoing Israeli assault on Gaza, it turned out that while the world
is rightly focused on Gaza, Israel has intensified its restrictions amid a
crackdown in the West Bank
Palestinians
in the West Bank tell me that since the start of the assault on Gaza, Israel
hasn’t allowed in most of the Palestinians trying to enter the West Bank via
King Hussein bridge. This entryway is the Palestinian West Bank’s only
connection to the outside world, and from there they can travel to the
international airport in Amman, Jordan.
Palestinians
must leave through Jordan because Israel does not allow the Palestinians to
have an airport. Palestinians from Gaza must use Cairo’s airport, assuming they
are allowed to enter or leave the Gaza Strip via the Rafah crossing. My friends
from Gaza who managed that expensive journey told me that normally the journey
should take 7 hours but because of security measures it takes Palestinians
three to seven days of travel through the harsh Sinai desert.
In
addition to the restrictions on entering the West Bank, there are also
restrictions on travelling within the West Bank. Roads between towns are cut
off by Israel via checkpoints.
Travel
restrictions are not the worst thing Israel is imposing. Since October 7 at
least 136 Palestinians, including 43 children, have been killed by the Israeli
army and by Israeli illegal squatters in the West Bank. This is a sharp rise in
the death rate amongst Palestinians compared with the rest of the year.
According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, 200 Palestinians had been
killed by Israel from the beginning of the year through October 5, and 2023 had
already seen one of the higher death tolls in recent years.
Furthermore,
as in Gaza but on smaller scale, Israeli army raids also target the
infrastructure. For example, the Israeli army raid on the Nour Shams refugee
camp near Tulkarem in the north of the West Bank not only killed 13
Palestinians (including five children) but also wrought vast destruction on the
roads and infrastructure of the refugee camp as a result of the Israeli army
tactic of using bulldozers. Fathi Hamid who is a resident of the refugee camp
said “we were at home and we heard an explosion and when opened the door to see
what happened, we found nine Palestinians dead including my son. Other
residents came to help but they couldn’t take anyone to hospital as the area
was besieged by the Israeli army.”
On
the British Channel 4, a reporter interviewed a Palestinian girl from Nour
Shams who witnessed her 16 years old brother Taha shot dead by the Israeli
army. He had wanted to become a doctor
when he grew up. Her father was also
shot when rushed to help his son. During the interview she showed the sad
events which they filmed from the window.
As
if Israeli army brutality is not bad enough, Israeli extremist squatters have
also intensified their violence against the Palestinians especially after the
far right Israeli National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, handed out guns
to the settlers, with 150,000 firearms distributed so far. For example in the
village of Qusra in the Nablus area, an Israeli squatter walked towards a
Palestinian man and his son as they waited to join the funeral of four other
Palestinians who were killed earlier by Israeli squatters and shot them dead
before the watching eyes of Israeli soldiers.
Mohammad Jawdat, an eye witness said: “A settler approached them and
opened fire from a handgun then when people rushed to the site, the occupation
army, who was standing by, opened fire at the crowd to disperse us.”
Extremist
views are unfortunately not confined to far, far right figures such as
Ben-Gvir. The president of Israel, Isaac
Herzog, who is also a member of the Labor party, prepared the ground for
collective punishment to be inflicted on the entire Palestinian people as he
accused them all of being responsible for the actions of Hamas when he said
“It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. This rhetoric about
civilians not aware, not involved, it’s absolutely not true. They could’ve
risen up, they could have fought against that evil regime.” Some 50 percent of the population of Gaza
consists of minors, and most adults are unarmed civilians unable to take on the
Hamas Party-Militia.
In
the Palestinian West Bank, Israeli squatters have gone beyond scattered attacks
to threaten the Palestinians with ethnic cleansing. This happened in the
village of Deir Istya In Salfit district
where the Israeli squatters posted leaflets on the villagers’ vehicles telling
them to leave to Jordan and if they failed to do so they would face another
Nakba (catastrophe, as befell them in 1948) and would be forced out of their
homeland violently. This long-term dream
of the Israeli Right has already begun being implemented, as inhabitants of
some hamlets have already been forced out of their homes. While the world is
transfixed by Israel’s aerial destruction of Gaza, another sort of population
transfer has begun in the West Bank.
Mohammed
Samaana , a freelance journalist published in the Belfast Telegraph, is
originally from Palestine and lives in Belfast.
No comments:
Post a Comment