February
26, 2024
For
its victims, war is . . . yes, hell. For the rest of us – the onlooking and
supportive patriots – war is an abstraction embedded in ignorance, a.k.a.,
public relations, served up for public consumption.
At
least that’s the way it’s supposed to be. The reality of war should never
directly confront the official PR of those waging it. If it does, God help the
war industry!
But
that’s what’s happening now, as public support for U.S. complicity in Israel’s
devastation of Gaza diminishes, indeed, starts turning to outrage. Official
spokesmen for the Biden administration, such as John Kirby, strategic
communications coordinator for the National Security Council, are forced to
start mixing apologetic language in with their unwavering support for the
bombing and murder of civilians… excuse me, Israel’s right to defend itself.
“Civilian
deaths are happening, and happening at a rate that obviously we’re not
comfortable with,” Kirby said in a New Yorker interview. “But,” he quickly
added, “it doesn’t mean that they are intentionally trying to wipe the people
of Gaza off the map the same way that Hamas wants to wipe the Israeli people
off the map.”
Wow,
Israel’s actions and official declarations of intent to obliterate Palestine
are making the U.S. government uncomfortable. (But Hamas is still the only bad
guy.) Oh, if only fragments of actual truth about the war could penetrate such
an interview. For instance:
“And
it was mostly – I mean, the majority of the patients that I treated were
children, anywhere from the age of 2 to 17. I mean, I saw horrific eye and
facial injuries that I’ve never seen before, eyes shattered in two 6-year-old
children with shrapnel that I had to take out, eyes with shrapnel stuck inside,
facial injuries. I saw orthopedic injuries where – you know, limbs just cut off
and dangling. I saw abdominal injuries that were just horrific. And it was just
mass chaos. There were children on the floor, unattended to, with head trauma,
people suturing patients without anesthesia on the ground. It was just mass
chaos and really horrific, horrific scenes.”
The
speaker is Dr. Yasser Khan, a Canadian ophthalmologist recently back from a
humanitarian mission at the European Hospital in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza,
near Rafah. He was interviewed by Democracy Now! I wish John Kirby could have
been there. The hospital, he said, was
“about
300, 400 percent over capacity. There was patients and bodies lying all over
the hospital floor, inside and outside. They had orthopedic devices coming from
their legs or their arms. They were getting infected, they were in pain,
because they were on the floor, so the conditions weren’t very sterile. And if
they survived amputation the first time, the infection would get them..”
His
words go on and on. OK, you (I mean Kirby) might say, this is war. People get
hurt. But Israel has to “defend itself.”
This
is self-defense?
“They
have killed over 300 or 400 healthcare workers, doctors, nurses, paramedics.
Ambulances have been bombed. This has all been a systematic sort of – you know,
by destroying the healthcare system, you’re contributing to the genocide.”
Khan
also notes:
“They’ve
attacked the sewage system, the water system, so the sewage mixes with the
drinking water. And you get diarrheal diseases, bacterial diseases. You know,
cholera, typhoid is not far away. Hepatitis A is epidemic there now. They’re
living in cramped spaces.”
And
it gets even more insane:
“What’s
going on is now there’s 10,000 to 15,000 bodies that are decomposing. So, it’s
raining season right now in Gaza. So all the rainwater mixes with the
decomposing bodies, and that bacteria mixes with the drinking water supply, and
you get further disease.”
Israel
has the right to defend itself. But come on, guys, be a little bit more
careful. Kill fewer children. Try not to poison the water. You might say this
is public relations with a limp. Meanwhile, the International Court of Justice
has ordered Israel to “refrain” from taking action that could be considered
genocidal and, good God, “take measures to improve the humanitarian situation
for Palestinian civilians in the enclave,” as Reuters reports.
But
it’s war itself – regardless of “intent” – that is causing this hell. The act
of war, the weapons of war, the political-economic structure of the globe that
is based on endless war and domination, seems never to face serious
condemnation, at least not in any official sense. But if we feed war, we feed
hell.
Perhaps
there’s one bit of recent news about a challenge to the global war industry,
and its public relations perpetrators, that isn’t simply a scream from the
political margins or cries from the victims. It’s the Transatlantic Civil
Servants’ Statement on Gaza, a statement, released on Feb. 2, signed by more
than 800 civil servants from the United States, the European Union and about a
dozen European countries, declaring: “It Is Our Duty To Speak Out When Our
Governments’ Policies Are Wrong.”
The
statement declares the Gaza pummeling “one of the worst human catastrophes of
this century.” And it calls on its countries to halt all military support to
Israel and use their leverage “to secure a lasting ceasefire and full
humanitarian access in Gaza and a safe release of all hostages” and “develop a
strategy for lasting peace.”
A
strategy for lasting peace? That’s another way of calling for an end to war.
It’s about time.
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