July 15, 2024
In the early
weeks of Israel’s massive bombardment and invasion of Gaza, the Israeli
military was killing anyone who moved and destroying anything that stood. In response to telephone calls from President
Joe Biden and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken urging Netanyahu to
minimize civilian casualties reportedly he would respond: Don’t lecture me, look at what you did to
Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Dresden.
The combined
official death toll from these two atomic bombs and the firebombing of Dresden
was around 239 thousand civilians. After nine months of the Israeli
government’s relentless day and night genocide war machine, bristling with the
latest U.S. weaponry, Israel has killed far more than that number of Gaza
civilians. In a tiny enclave with 2.3 million people (compared to the total
population of Japan and Germany in World War II of 152 million), at least
300,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed with more
dying every day. Daily annihilations by F-16s, tanks, and arbitrary executions,
combined with Israeli bans on food, water, medicine, electricity, and fuel have
generated starvation, diseases, untreated injuries, homelessness for almost all
Gazans. The destruction of Gaza’s hospitals and healthcare facilities adds to
the military-caused casualty toll.
Forty-five
thousand babies have been born into the rubble since October. Infants are
plagued by contaminated water, poor nutrition, and a dire shortage of
healthcare. Their mothers are starving. What about the plight of a similar
number of one- or two-year-olds? What about
fifty thousand serious diabetics without insulin? An even larger number
of cancer patients are denied their medicine and care. Hundreds of healthcare
workers were killed with the hungry, exhausted, sick, and injured survivors
staggering bravely to those broken down hospitals that haven’t been entirely
demolished.
It isn’t as if
major global health and food program organizations have not been sounding the
alarms of famine, epidemics and military violence under the unfolding
eradication of Gaza’s trapped defenseless inhabitants. Organizations such as
UNICEF, the Global Food Program, Oxfam, the UN Humanitarian Agency, The
Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), USAID and Biden’s own
Humanitarian adviser, David Satterfield, know the looming numbers that spell
omnicide for the families of Gaza.
Back in December,
Devi Sridhar, the chair of global health at the University of Edinburgh
estimated half a million Gazans will likely die in 2024 if conditions causing
tens of thousands of deaths in the last three months of 2023 continue.
Conditions have gotten worse as the causes of mortality have grown and
intensified week by week.
In an admittedly
conservative estimate, three researchers published in the prestigious British
medical journal “The Lancet,” that, as of mid-June, “it is not implausible to
estimate that up to 186,000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the
current conflict in Gaza.”
Why then does
the media stick to the official Hamas Health Ministry’s huge undercount now at
about 39,000 deaths? First, early on, the Ministry took its figures from names
of the deceased provided by hospitals and morgues which are now devastated and
inoperative. The Hamas regime doesn’t mind this undercount since it lessens the
criticism that it cannot protect its own people and shelter them from what they
knew was coming after October 7th from the most racist, genocidal, and
expansionist Israeli regime ever.
Netanyahu – who
has boasted over the years to his Likud Party, that he has backed and helped
fund Hamas due to its opposition to a two-state solution – likes the vast
undercount of his mass slaughter.
But there are
other reasons for this adoption of the low Hamas figures. For Biden, it keeps
down the intensity of domestic protests demanding decisive White House pressure
on Netanyahu for a permanent ceasefire, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from
Gaza, and an end to the blockade to allow in the thousands of trucks carrying
humanitarian aid paid for by the U.S.
Netanyahu’s
long-time prohibition of all Israeli and foreign war correspondents from
entering Gaza as independent reporters has concealed from the world much of the
carnage in these killing fields. Finally, finally, on July 11, 2024, more than
70 media and civil society organizations, including the New York Times, the
Washington Post, AP, CNN and the BBC signed an open letter demanding that
Israel “give journalists independent access to Gaza.”
Palestinian
journalists in Gaza are being hunted down by Netanyahu, who allows killing
scores of reporters and their families. The survivors are bravely trying to
report on the devastation for outsiders and social media. Nonetheless, the mainstream press, to do its
job, has to have reporters on the ground.
Netanyahu is a
master at biding his time and stalling to keep his job. Despised by three out
of four Israelis for both his domestic tyrannies and for collapsing his
multi-tiered border defense on October 7, he is also under indictment for
political corruption by Israeli prosecutors. Israeli street protests are
getting larger by the week and the majority of Israelis want new elections now!
The reckoning
over what Netanyahu’s savage terror state has done to innocent Palestinians
from infants in incubators to the elderly in wheelchairs is coming to Israeli
society. As the soldiers return, some will be narrating the horrors they saw
and were ordered to produce. Already six reservists have told an Israeli
magazine that they were encouraged to shoot and kill any Palestinian they saw
on the street or in their homes. There are no operating rules of engagement as
required by international law. They gave examples of the target practice, as
they told the reporter they would no longer serve in Gaza.
Such soldiers
are called “refuseniks,” who became a courageously articulate, if harassed,
protest group about twenty years ago. (See Israeli Refuseniks Forsake Army
Despite Post-October 7 Nationalist Frenzy, The Intercept January 2, 2024)
As more
information flows through the weakening Israeli censorship system, the many
Israeli human rights associations will be strengthened (See December 13, 2023,
an open letter titled, “Stop the Humanitarian Catastrophe” to President Biden
by 16 Israeli human rights groups which appeared in the New York Times). The exaggeration of the Hamas threat to
Israel, following a one-time homicide-suicide mission through a mysteriously
open border into Israel on October 7, 2023 will become evident. Hamas had a
militia of some 20,000 fighters with small arms and dwindling ammunition,
hiding in tunnels against a military, nuclear-armed superpower with over
400,000 army soldiers, hundreds of tanks and 1500 F-16 pilots.
Joe Biden has
just authorized another arsenal of 500 lb. bombs for Netanyahu to use against
the remnants of Gazan civilian life. He touts his refusal to send Israel any
more 2000 lb. bombs capable of destroying entire neighborhoods.
Meanwhile, deep
in the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies, analysts are creating scenarios
of what forthcoming retaliation against our country could look like. With
cheap, advanced armed drones increasingly producible by more makers anywhere,
these scenarios are not the stuff of science fiction.
By kicking the
two-state solution down the road for decades, favoring Israel, with supine
Congressional backing, our presidents have assured that our own national
security, not to mention our tradition of free speech in the U.S., is
increasingly vulnerable.
Gerry
Condon
The
world is headed toward nuclear war. The horrific nightmare of global destruction
that has haunted humanity ever since Hiroshima and Nagasaki is nearly upon us.
For decades, peace activists and nuclear experts have warned about the “growing
danger of nuclear war.” The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has moved the hands
of their Doomsday Clock all the way to 90 seconds! How much closer can we get?
Are these dire warnings being dismissed like the man with the sign shouting
“The End Is Near?”
The
original nuclear powers, the U.S., Russia, China, France and the UK – the five
permanent members of the UN Security Council – never followed the commitment
they made when they signed and ratified the 1970 Nuclear Nonproliferation
Treaty (NPT), which required them to “begin good-faith negotiations for the
total elimination of nuclear weapons.” Instead they have poured billions of
dollars into “modernizing” nuclear weapons. In the meantime, four more
countries have joined the nuclear club – India, Pakistan, North Korea and
Israel.
After
the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact military alliance of the Soviet Union, there
was an opportunity for a broad peace in Europe. NATO, an anti-Soviet military
alliance led by the U.S., should have disbanded at that point. Instead, it
pursued an aggressive policy against a weakened Russia, surrounding it with
hostile military forces, including nuclear weapons.
In
2002, President George W. Bush unilaterally removed the U.S. from the
Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, while placing a U.S. missile base in
Romania. In 2019, President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the U.S. from
the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty that had lowered nuclear
tensions in Europe, while placing another U.S. missile base in Poland. What
were the Russians to think? The U.S. is
clearly seeking a dominant nuclear position.
Neoconservative
war hawks – or “Neocons” – have captured the foreign policy machinery of
Democratic and Republican administrations. Given the declining economic power of the
U.S. vis-à-vis a rising China, the Neocons believe the U.S. must aggressively
employ its military superiority to maintain global dominance. The U.S.
maintains 850 foreign military bases in over 80 countries (compared to a
handful each for Russia and China).
Western
politicians and pundits frequently accuse Russian president Vladimir Putin of
making “nuclear threats.” Indeed, Putin keeps reminding the world of Russia’s
nuclear rules of engagement. Russia reserves the right to use nuclear weapons
first if it is attacked by the superior conventional forces of NATO. The U.S. has a similar nuclear posture – it
will use nuclear weapons first, even against non-nuclear threats such as a
cyber-attack. As Daniel Ellsberg reminded us, to possess nuclear weapons is to
use them every day, like a gun pointed at someone’s head.
Apparently
oblivious to the imminent threat of nuclear war, President Biden continues to
pour billions of dollars of weapons into its proxy war against Russia in
Ukraine, while blocking peace negotiations. The Biden administration is
simultaneously sending billions in weapons to Israel as it commits a horrific
and ongoing genocide in Gaza. Israel threatens other Middle Eastern countries
with its U.S.-backed military, including nuclear weapons. Can anybody now doubt that they would use
them?
The
Neocons are also actively preparing for a war against China.
The U.S. is encouraging Taiwan’s independence from China, conducting
provocative “freedom of navigation” operations in the Taiwan Straits and South
China Sea, and building anti-China military alliances throughout the Pacific.
One of the few foreign policy debates in Congress is which war should take
precedence – the war against Russia or the war against China. Both are nuclear powers. Then there is the joint US/South Korean military
exercises aimed at the “decapitation” of the government of North Korea, another
nuclear power. What could possibly go
wrong?
The
threat of nuclear war does not exist in a vacuum. It is directly related to aggressive military
competition, much of it being driven by the U.S. Nuclear annihilation will come from a
specific war, whether by miscalculation, accident or otherwise.
If
we are serious about avoiding a nuclear war, we must demand that the U.S. stops
sending weapons to Ukraine and Israel, and instead supports ceasefires and
negotiations to stop the killing. We must call for an end to the reckless U.S.
confrontation with China and North Korea. It is critically important that these
conflicts are ended as soon as possible and replaced with negotiations for
peaceful co-existence.
In
the longer run, as detailed in the Veterans For Peace Nuclear Posture Review,
the U.S. must make a sea change in its foreign policy. We must stop intervening in other countries.
We must stop playing “nuclear chicken.” We must demand a peaceful U.S. foreign
policy that respects the sovereignty of all nations and the human rights of all
people.
The
U.S. should sign the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, and reach
out to the other nuclear powers, saying “let’s all get rid of our nuclear
weapons together.” Let’s pursue the
interests of all humanity by replacing competition with cooperation. Let’s stop
spending precious resources on the military and take care of our peoples’ needs
instead. Let’s work together to stop global warming, the other imminent
existential threat. In order to avoid nuclear annihilation – and climate
catastrophe too – we must abolish war once and for all.
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