Tag: Gaza

Sedition! Russia-Ukraine Peace Deal! MTG Resigns! Gaza Peace Deal!

Thoughts on a busy week of news

BILL ASTORE

NOV 22, 2025

It’s been a busy week of news. Here are four items that stood out.

A group of Democratic members of Congress released a short video addressed to the U.S. military, reminding service members that they may refuse unlawful orders.
President Trump denounced the video as “seditious behavior” and said such behavior was “punishable by death,” even resharing posts calling for the lawmakers to be hanged. The Democratic message itself was partisan and thin on specifics, but Trump’s response was far more troubling. U.S. troops already know they can and should refuse unlawful orders—though determining what is lawful in practice is rarely simple. What struck me most was the timing: Democrats issued this warning to the troops in response to Trump, but I don’t recall a similar concern when President Biden continued military support to Israel amid mounting accusations from human-rights bodies of grave—indeed, genocidal—violations in Gaza.

In sum, Congress should confront questionable executive actions directly rather than shifting responsibility to Lieutenant Smith or Corporal Jones.

The Trump administration has floated a 28-point plan to end the Russia-Ukraine War.
Reports indicate the plan involved Russian input but did not include Ukraine or key European partners. Unsurprisingly, many provisions cross Ukraine’s stated red lines. Diplomacy is still preferable to endless war—jaw-jaw over war-war is a sound motto—but it’s hard to see this plan gaining real traction, especially when it seems designed more to satisfy Washington and Moscow than Kyiv.

One thing is certain: Ukraine is learning that when you dance with elephants, you’re likely to get trampled.

Marjorie Taylor Greene has announced her resignation from Congress, effective January 5, 2026.
This surprised me. I read her resignation letter and, despite disagreeing with much of her politics, I respected her consistent opposition to regime-change wars and her outspoken criticism of Israel’s genocidal effort in Gaza and of the undue influence of AIPAC and similar lobbies. She is also right to highlight how far our government has drifted from serving America’s working and middle classes.

MTG, as unlikely as it sounds, is a viable candidate for the Republican nomination for President in 2028, assuming Trump obeys the Constitution and steps aside.

The UN Security Council has approved a U.S.-sponsored Gaza resolution, with Russia and China abstaining.
Their decision not to veto suggests a calculation: let Washington bear responsibility for the consequences of its own neocolonial proposal. The plan itself looks like a thinly veiled endorsement of a murderous status quo—one that provides political cover as Gaza remains strangled and devastated. If the United States is now the guarantor of this “peace,” then it also owns the moral and political fallout. If anything, this “peace” plan will only provide cover for Israel’s ongoing genocide in slow motion.

Which brings me back to unlawful orders. Any U.S. service member asked to support actions that clearly violate international law has a duty to refuse. Yet the Democrats who admonished troops about unlawful orders seemed focused only on hypothetical abuses under Trump, not on real-world concerns about U.S. support for Israel’s genocidal operations in Gaza. For too many in Washington, unwavering support for Israel overrides legal, moral, and humanitarian considerations.

Readers, what did you make of this week’s events? One thing seems certain: we continue to live in “interesting times.”

Is Israel Truly a U.S. Ally?

Evidence Suggests No

BILL ASTORE

SEP 23, 2025

Today, I was back on Judge Napolitano’s show, Judging Freedom. We talked about whether Israel is truly a U.S. ally and the increasing illegality of U.S. governmental actions under the Trump administration.

I tend to be more circumspect when I talk, more blunt when I write. The Judge asked me whether I thought the U.S. was a democracy; I suggested we were a quasi-democracy but what democracy was left was shriveling and withering under pressure from Trump and his minions.

Actually, America is an empire; we left our republic ideals behind soon after World War II, which is why President Dwight D. Eisenhower was issuing powerful warnings about the same in 1953 and 1961. America has always been a war-like nation; now we are increasingly consumed by war and its ever-present costs and burdens. I could have said more about that and wish I had.

In the rise, decline, and fall of empires, we are very much on the downslope even as leaders like Trump suggest that the way to make America great again is to win at war (no matter the morality and legality of our actions). In that sense, we have already lost—indeed, our so-called leaders wander, lost, in a grim and increasingly barbaric wilderness of their own making.

Sadly, there’s only one ship of state, and when the captain and most of his mates are lost at sea and reckless to boot, passengers like us are likely to go down with the ship with them.

The End Game for Gaza

Using Old Tools of War

BILL ASTORE

SEP 12, 2025

I’ve taught military history “from Plato to Nato,” as we used to joke, but my expertise focused on technology and warfare. Along with “revolutions” and “transformations” in weaponry, I probably spent too much time focusing on “decisive battles” and “great captains” in history. When you look at the course of military history, most deaths from war didn’t come in battle. They came from hunger and disease, from famine and pestilence. Sometimes, mass starvation and pandemics were unintentional byproducts of chaos and societal disruption caused by war, and sometimes starvation and disease were intentional weapons and products of war.

And behold a pale horse, and his name that sat on him was Death

You might call this apocalyptic war, from the Bible and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, which included famine and pestilence among the death riders.

An apocalyptic fate seemingly awaits Palestinians in Gaza. I’ve written about Gaza as a genocide, the mass bombing by Israel, the mass killing, with the apparent goal of forcing Palestinians out of Gaza, but I haven’t given enough thought to the use of mass starvation and diseases as weapons in this genocide.

A reader, Dan White, brought this lesson home to me, and I’d like to quote his message to me at length:

I can’t think of a better word than the etiology of starvation. It hasn’t been adequately addressed by the snoozemedia. Starvation death rates have a funny shaped curve. During the first stages of starvation–can’t give any figures on a time period for this or any other part of the process/curve, due to there being varying levels of food deprivation–there are few deaths, generally (but not always) those persons with compromised health/preexisting health problems that make them more susceptible to death than others in the population. After some (varying length) period of starvation, people start to die in larger numbers, and then all of a sudden, everyone is dying, and then everyone is dead. This period of death is fairly short compared to the period of starvation. Again, due to varying levels of starvation and varying levels of preexisting health and varying levels of surplus consumable body tissue in the starved group, this period has no fixed length, but it happens all of a sudden, and it doesn’t take long for everyone to die once it starts–couple of weeks seems common.

The starving residents of Gaza haven’t reached the mass-death stage of starvation, but it could well start happening tomorrow. I can’t say because I don’t know the food reserves preexisting, the food delivery figures since the ‘war’ started, and nobody in the news biz has bothered to look for them, either. There really should have been some government or multistate agency who has looked for them and published them, but nobody has.

When the mass-death stage hits, people in Gaza will be dying by the tens of thousands a week. Stopping the mass-death by all of a sudden providing food isn’t going to work very well, on account of logistical delivery problems and the medical problems of alleviating starvation at this advanced stage–folks’ digestive tracts may well not work well enough even if they get food. That will be the real genocide, and I’d bet money it happens, and bet more money that this is the real objective of Israel’s ‘war’ in Gaza. The notion of Israel’s war objective is displacement of Gazans is an absurdity–you want someone to leave, well they have to be able to walk, right? And they have to have a place to go. Israel is counting on the rest of the world to all of a sudden do a mass-evacuation of Gazans combined with a mass feeding and mass medical intervention all at the same time in order to prevent this mass death of Gazans from occurring? NFW–Israel’s leaders have accepted mass killing as an official state policy, and have commenced doing it, and do it as we speak. And Israeli hasbara [propaganda] will blame us for it, and a whole lot of whored-out American and European politicians, as well as Israel-worshipping American Jews, will go along with it.

What Dan White posits here is horrifying—and increasingly likely. Of course, as people are weakened through starvation, they become more susceptible to various diseases associated with famine and unsanitary conditions.

These “old” weapons of war—starvation and disease—will serve as the grimmest of reapers among the Palestinians in Gaza.

The “mass-death stage” of starvation is nearing, unless the U.S. and other countries intervene to force Israel to allow adequate food and medical supplies into Gaza. A failure to act will only spur the pale horse on whose back Death sits.

Genocide Is Apparently OK in Gaza

Lesson from the LA Holocaust Museum

BILL ASTORE

SEP 09, 2025

The LA Holocaust Museum recently suggested that “Never Again” is a fundamental lesson of the Holocaust. Then they took it back. Here’s the (almost) inconceivable story from Caitlin Johnstone:

Israel supporters are so crazy and evil that the Los Angeles Holocaust Museum recently retracted a statement saying “Never again can’t only mean never again for Jews” after objections from Zionists.

The museum issued a statement saying, “We recently posted an item on social media that was part of a pre-planned social media campaign intended to promote inclusivity and community that was easily open to misinterpretation by some to be a political statement reflecting the ongoing situation in the Middle East. That was not our intent. It has been removed to avoid any further confusion.”

Think about how gross your position has to be for you to be all hey, let’s say no genocide for ANYBODY, and then immediately have to come back and clarify that you definitely weren’t saying no genocide for the Palestinians.

I’m glad that’s clear! Talk about a profile in cowardice.

Then there are those who get testy about applying the word “genocide” to events in Gaza. Their distorted mouth noises sound something like this: Israel is at war with terrorists (Hamas) and *only* 70,000 or so Palestinians are dead so it’s not really a genocide, is it? Plus it’s all their fault because of October 7th, end of story.

For what it’s worth, I taught the Holocaust as a professor of history after attending a seminar at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Also, if it means anything, I’m Catholic, retired military, with no particular axe to grind.

Yes, it’s a genocide in Gaza. A holocaust in slow motion. Heck, Israeli leaders have freely confessed their goal is a final solution to the Gaza question, mainly by killing many Palestinians while forcing the rest to leave. (Whether they’ll have any place to go remains to be seen.)

There is no one model of genocide, and definitions also vary. But if what’s happening in Gaza isn’t a genocide, I don’t know what other word applies. Mass murder, perhaps? Extermination, but slowly? Ethnic cleansing and mass death followed by mass expulsion? That is genocide, plain and simple.

The Seven Habits of a Highly Defective Country

And what to do about it

BILL ASTORE

SEP 02, 2025

Welcome back, everyone. I hope you enjoyed Labor Day Weekend.

It’s grim times in America. Perhaps grimmest of all is the U.S. government’s support of genocide through mass killing and starvation in Gaza. “Never again” was the message of the Holocaust, not “Yes, again” if it benefits Zionists in Israel. 

Americans, in the main, are against mass killing (at least, I hope we are), but what does it matter when all 100 senators take money from AIPAC and the Trump administration is rabidly pro-Israel? “Our” government isn’t ours; the man who gets what he wants with the loudest applause is Bibi Netanyahu. Talk about foreign interference in America’s elections and governance!

Courtesy of Lisa Savage at her Substack site

Why is it so hard for Americans to come together in sensible ways? A decade ago, I wrote about how we’re kept divided, distracted, and downtrodden. The letter D truly is for defective and deficient—disastrous as well—but permit me a little exercise in alliteration as I expand my D list to seven, as in the 7 habits of a highly defective country.

1. Divided: Are you Republican or Democrat? Red or Blue? MAGA or “libtard”? Woke or Anti-woke? Cis white male or BIPOC? Pro-life or Pro-choice? There are far too many labels and efforts that end in division. And we know how rulers use division to conquer.

2. Distracted: Wherever you look, Americans are bombarded with distractions, starting with the screens we carry everywhere with us. The Romans had bread and circuses; we have junk food, NASCAR, and the NFL. Curl up before that 75-inch TV and chow down.

3. Downtrodden: When you’re working 50+ hours a week, straining to make ends meet, suffering from high health care costs, student loan debt, and so on, it’s hard to pay attention to what’s going on in Washington—and even harder to act against it.

4. Discontented: Paradoxically, the discontentment so many of us feel is not resulting in significant political action. Instead, it’s being channeled in counterproductive ways. Consumer goods and drugs from big pharmaceutical companies are offered as palliatives to “cure” our discontentment. We buy more, or pop more pills, but contentment remains elusive.

5. Duopoly: Sure, Democrats and Republicans aren’t exactly the same. But when it comes to war, foreign policy, weapons sales, serving Israel, favoring billionaires, kowtowing to the big banks and Wall Street, and genuflecting to corporations, both parties are virtually indistinguishable. Both also work together to quash third parties. Small wonder that the largest voting bloc in America is Independent/Non-aligned.

6. Discouragement: Faced with that grim fact—a government completely unresponsive to ordinary people—Americans are discouraged from acting in dynamic and outspoken ways. Also serving to discourage political action is America’s increasingly militarized streets, now occupied with agents from Homeland Security and even armed members of the National Guard.

7. Despair: Remember “hope and change” Barack Obama and the surging idealism of 2008? Those were the days. Now it seems the mantra is “no hope” and change that only makes matters worse. This contributes to despair, our sense of hopelessness and helplessness before impersonal government forces—and this is deliberate. A weaponizing of despair. 

So, what is to be done? On the small scale, get involved. Get educated. Follow protesters like Lisa Savage and Clif Brown. Small acts of protest can be contagious.

Clif Brown, taking a stand and sending a message

I do my thing here on Substack and belong to organizations like the Eisenhower Media Network and Space4Peace (The Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space). Since 2007, I’ve written against militarism and war at TomDispatch.com and similar alternative sites. Do what you can, what matches your talents, even if it’s just talking to your family, your friends, your neighbors about your concerns. (Believe me, that isn’t always easy!)

Maybe it’s easier to say where the answer isn’t coming from. It’s not coming from Democrats or Republicans. It’s not coming from Congress. It’s not coming from the richest among us, nor from corporate and financial elites.

Fundamentally, the first big step we need to take as a country is publicly funded elections. No more lobbyists. No more “legal” bribes. That requires a reversal of the SCOTUS Citizens United Decision. It requires legislation or a Constitutional amendment.

How to force that when war and weapons are bipartisan? When the powers that be are more than happy with the status quo? Probably only through mass organizations and protest. Or perhaps the creation of a viable third party–but that will be staunchly resisted by the duopoly (the Dems and Repubs).

The short answer is we need a lot more profiles in courage to counter the profiles in pusillanimity produced and elevated within a corrupt system.

The system as it exists today seems unreformable and unstoppable, but history teaches us that sometimes a crack can widen to a fault that leads to an earthquake quickly and unpredictably. So the only recourse is to keep fighting, to keep the pressure on, hoping those cracks will indeed lead to something greater.

Apathy and surrender are not options. Discouragement and despair mustn’t be our end state. Take inspiration from people like Lisa and Clif, the writing of people like Chris Hedges, and sites like Antiwar.com.

Stay strong. As the Moody Blues once said: And keep on thinking free.

Autonomous Killer Drone Swarms

“New Forms of Domination and Oppression”

BILL ASTORE

AUG 27, 2025

Just what we need: autonomous killer drone swarms powered by algorithms and AI.

Part 3 of the excellent Al Jazeera documentary The Business of War focuses on Israel’s use of killer drones in Gaza. The trend is toward “fully autonomous weapons”—drone swarms that rely on algorithms to identify targets to hit and humans to kill. Officially, a human is still supposed to make the final decision to strike, but in some cases the operator has only 20 seconds to give a “go” or “no go.” And, let’s be honest, the system drives operators toward “go.”

The documentary is especially powerful in showing the devastation in Gaza (images of Stalingrad in World War II come to mind), the deliberate killing of journalists (a war crime), and how drones are used not just for killing but as tools of intimidation and control.

Images of AI-enabled drone swarms chasing and killing people recall scenes from the Terminator films. But as the documentary notes, the danger right now isn’t some future Skynet—it’s how these drones have already emerged as “new forms of domination and oppression.”

Almost as troubling is the military-corporate fusion as these drone swarms are supported by “cloud” resources supplied by Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. A new conceit boasts of Israel as an “AI superpower,” even as corporations make a killing in profits.

All this technology, all this high-tech prowess, is fueling a holocaust in Gaza. Eisenhower warned us in 1953 that humanity might crucify itself on a cross of iron. Looking at today’s autonomous weapons, perhaps we’ve chosen a different cross—one made of silicon.

Appeasing the Military-Industrial Complex

Orwell’s 1984 Wasn’t Meant As a How-To Guide

BILL ASTORE

JUL 15, 2025

In an ever-changing world, the one constant in Universe USA is rising Pentagon budgets. For President Trump, a trillion-dollar war budget is something to crow about. Of course, it’s sold as “peace through strength.” For what is more peaceful than more weaponry, especially nuclear-tipped ICBMs and SLBMs?

America is always arming, uparming, rearming for war allegedly to prevent war. The problem is arming for war usually leads to yet more war. You don’t “invest” in weaponry to keep it on a shelf, rusting away in armories.

Excuse my language, but Vietnam vets and war protesters put it well: Fighting (or bombing) for peace is like fucking for virginity.

Vintage 1969. Makes sense, right?

More telling, however, is the constant state of war preparations that infect and influence our minds. Our “leaders” talk about “all options being on the table” when the only option they consider is military force. We are what we “invest” in. And weapons ‘r’ us.

In U.S. politics, strong and wrong is seen as far better than “weak” and right. And just about every politician inside the DC Beltway appeases the military-industrial complex, Israel, or both. That’s how you end up with disastrous wars of choice in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere, together with full-throated support for genocide in Gaza.

Who cares about right and wrong when might always makes right?

An anecdote: I have a friend who works in the belly of the beast (the DoD). He told me his job makes him think of Winston Smith in George Orwell’s “1984.” The Pentagon under Pete Hegseth has become an exercise in eliminating DEI bad speak and replacing it with doubleplusgood warrior-ethos speak. Lots of time is wasted sending “bad” terms and names down the memory hole.

Even as the DoD’s language is purged of bad speak about DEI, the Pentagon’s embrace of a permanent war economy is tightened. The very idea of a “peace dividend,” floated by Republican President George H.W. Bush in the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s collapse, is seemingly ancient history, an idea never to be considered again, not in Trump and Hegseth’s warrior-USA.

Preparing constantly for war is a powerful way to ensure more war. Overspending on esoteric and genocidal weaponry is a powerful way to hollow out one’s country while establishing the conditions for global mass death.

Perhaps our “leaders” need to recall that Orwell’s “1984” was meant to be a warning of what to avoid, not a how-to guide for authoritarian rule and perpetual war.

“There is no America, there is no democracy”

Thoughts on Gaza and the Profitability of Genocide

BILL ASTORE

JUL 10, 2025

I sent this somewhat despairing note to a friend this morning:

It remains unclear to me whether the U.S. government kowtows to Israel (for all the reasons we know, like AIPAC), or whether Israel is a sort of cat’s paw for U.S. imperial and corporate interests. Maybe it’s not about nations and borders, as the famous speech from “Network” put it, but rather resources and profit, whether oil, water, weapons, and the like. The people of Gaza are simply in the way and entirely expendable to these larger interests. Naturally, propaganda is skillfully used to portray just about every Palestinian as a Hamas terrorist. Then, as you noted, there’s a media blackout on Gaza in most U.S. mainstream media sources.

Short of revolution, I don’t see any changes coming. The Democrats, of course, are just as happy to serve Israel and corporate interests.

This is the famous scene from “Network” featuring a brilliant performance by Ned Beatty:

If the world is a “college of corporations” (heck, even Harvard is a corporation) and if business and money is the universal lubricant, the Palestinians in Gaza are both good and bad for business. They are “good” in the sense that money can be made from killing them, concentrating them, monitoring them, expelling them, and so on. Speaking and documenting this horrendous truth got Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur for Palestine, sanctioned by the U.S. government, as Lisa Savage noted here.

They are “bad” for business with respect to the gas fields off Gaza. Those marine gas reserves are likely worth $5 billion or more, money that would have done much to alleviate poverty in Gaza. Of course, Israel wasn’t about to allow Palestinians in Gaza to share in this bounty. Getting rid of Palestinians is a means to the end of completely dominating future trade in gas and other commodities in the Levant Basin.

I’ve been wondering why Great Britain is at great pains to help the Netanyahu government—then I noted that British Petroleum is one of the giant corporations that Israel granted a license to for future gas exploration. Coincidence?

Now, unlike Ned Beatty above, I’m not saying everything is explained by money and currency flows as “the primal forces of nature.” But it’s always a good idea to follow the money. It’s a ghastly business indeed when genocide makes money, but there you have it. A large part of the Holocaust in World War II was Germans and their fellow travelers taking everything from the Jews before they killed them. Profit from death factories—a grim truth I care not to contemplate, but it happened. Mass death can be a huge money-maker, and those pulling the strings couldn’t care less about body counts. Quarterly profits—now those they care about.

This suggests a strategy for activism—except efforts at BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) are heavily resisted by the powers that be. Surprise! You can find out more about the BDS movement here.

When protests are bad for business, that’s when the powerful pay attention. Powerful people already know the truth—they do everything in their power to determine what is “true”—so they’re not interested in right or wrong. What’s “right” is what makes money and what’s wrong, very wrong, loses money. You can’t appeal to their collective conscience (Good luck with that!), but you can possibly appeal to or cut into their collective profits.

Too cynical? What say you, readers?

“Jew-Hater”

Strange Days in America

BILL ASTORE

JUL 09, 2025

I didn’t know I was a “Jew-hater” until I suggested in a comment that giving Bibi Netanyahu everything he wants (and then some) might not be the same as serving the national interests and security needs of the United States. Well, there, I said it. Maybe Bibi shouldn’t get all the bombs and weapons and support he wants, whenever he wants and whatever Israel does with them.

And for that, I became a “Jew-hater.” I guess because I wasn’t 100% subservient to Bibi.

These are strange days in America. Congress can’t jump to its collective feet quickly enough to applaud Bibi. Members of Congress proudly display Israeli flags outside their offices. Heck, a few members of Congress (notably Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania) aren’t happy unless they literally wrap the Israeli flag around their bodies.

Senator Fetterman (on the right) shows the proper deference to Israel

What gives? What accounts for this madness?

Oh, I know some of the reasons. AIPAC. Christian evangelicals looking to the Second Coming. All the money ($100 million and more) Miriam Adelson gave to Donald Trump. All the profits to be made from weaponry and war. The corporate media, bought and paid for by billionaires. And so on. Yet something deeper, more insidious, seems to be at work here.

We used to have the “America, love it or leave it” crowd. Now we have the “Israel, love it—or else” crowd. In America!

Of course, ad hominem attacks like “Jew-hater” are meant to distract from real issues. People call you names when they can’t think of intelligent and persuasive ways of challenging your arguments. Yet this is America, after all, where much of our discourse (such as it is) consists of name-calling and other forms of insults and slander.

Honestly, I loved the response of another commenter to the “Jew-hater” epithet. The person simply typed: YAWN.

If you’re willing to think or write critically about Israel and the actions of its government and leaders, which indeed every American (and Israeli) should be, be prepared to be attacked as a Jew-hater, an anti-Semite, or worse. It comes with the territory. Even my Jewish friends who write critically are not immune. They, of course, are dismissed as “self-hating Jews.”

Fortunately, it appears most Americans today are onto the game that’s being played here. Progress, of a sort, even as Bibi continues to get everything he wants. Now Bibi says he’ll nominate Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Did I say these are strange days?

Genocidal Parallels and Final Solutions

A Grim Reckoning

BILL ASTORE

JUN 01, 2025

At her Substack, Lisa Savage asks whether the “Gaza Hunger Games” we’re witnessing—the concentration of Palestinians there accompanied by slaughter and mass starvation—was the plan all along for Israel and the United States. It got me to thinking, so I wrote a rather longwinded response to Lisa, which I’d like to share with all of you.

Whether it was the plan all along or whether it’s the result of ad hoc decisions over time, one thing is certain: the holocaust in Gaza must be stopped.

*****

Lisa, I’ve taught the Holocaust, and your question reminds me of a debate among historians: Did Hitler and the Nazis always plan to kill all the Jews, or was it the result of ad hoc decisions over time? Scholars still debate this.*

Perhaps the debate is somewhat artificial in the sense that Hitler and the Nazis vilified the Jews, demeaning them, attacking them, dehumanizing them, establishing the conditions for genocide, which were linked to the need to win a war (Jews as an existential enemy that had to be destroyed, even Jewish children, i.e. they were all “guilty”).

The “logic” of genocide sees even children as enemies who must be eliminated (Image of the “Warsaw Ghetto Boy” during World War II)

Something similar is happening with Palestinians in Gaza. I don’t think Israel and the U.S. had a plan all along to concentrate them in Gaza and kill them. But all that’s gone before this has created the preconditions for a final solution to the Gaza question.

When you vilify Palestinians, demean them, attack them, incarcerate them, dehumanize them, you establish the conditions for a genocide. Then you use the excuse of a “war” to drive the most radical solution–elimination–just as the Nazis used the excuse of World War II to eliminate the Jews (who, of course, posed no existential threat to Germany).

Within the Nazi government (and now within the Israeli government), extremists always come to the forefront. Many officials in Nazi Germany wanted to relocate the Jews, not kill them all, or they wanted to exploit them as slave labor before killing them. But the extremists–the ones who just wanted to kill them all–tended to win the argument. They were the most committed, most sure of themselves, the most radical. 

So, what’s happening in Gaza has been the result of long-term dehumanization and propaganda coupled with ad hoc decisions that have run to extremes, because those who are most radical tend to win these “arguments.”

What is truly unconscionable is the eagerness of the U.S. government to provide Israel with all the weapons and diplomatic cover it needs to implement its final solution in Gaza. Whether the president is Biden or Trump, whether Congress is controlled by the Democratic or Republican parties, the policy and result is the same: a blank check to Israel to kill as many Palestinians as they want, justified falsely in “defending” Israel from Hamas.

The Nazis thought or said the Jews were out to destroy them (obviously the Jews were totally incapable of threatening the German war machine) so they tried to destroy the Jews.

The Israeli government says Hamas is out to destroy them (obviously Hamas is totally incapable of threatening the IDF war machine) so they’re trying to destroy the Palestinians.

Genocide is sold as “defensive” and “necessary.”

The parallels are there, yet few people want to see them.

*****

*Addendum: Among Holocaust historians it’s known as the “intentionalist” versus “functionalist” debate, i.e. was it always the Nazis’ intent to kill the Jews, or did it emerge slowly as a function of specific events and decisions?

Some might say, who cares? Dead is dead. Stop the killing!