Tag: Hamas

Genocide in Slow Motion

Israel’s Goal Is Sly, Slow, Mass Murder and Starvation

BILL ASTORE

MAY 20, 2025

It was quickly obvious to me, as it was to so many people, that Bibi Netanyahu and the Israeli government was engaged in a genocide in slow motion, using the October 7th Hamas attack to justify the most ruthless reprisals against more than two million Palestinians in Gaza.

Caitlin Johnstone’s new piece, “Israeli Officials Explain Balancing Act Between Overt Genocide And Maintaining Western Support,” cites the words of Israel’s own government to prove this. Israeli officials are open about it. They make no apologies. They would like to starve and kill more quickly, but they need to go slow so as to maintain support in the U.S. Senate.

I wrote the article below in early December 2023. It was obvious then, as it is today, what Israel’s goal is. Gaza (and the West Bank) is to be ethnically cleansed. Full stop. The main challenge for Israel is to do it in a way that’s palatable to politicians and supporters in the United States.

A palatable genocide. Just think of that idea for a moment.

Anyhow, here’s my article from December 2023, unchanged.

Biden to Israel: Don’t Ethnically Cleanse Too Fast

Don’t Bomb and Kill Too Much, Bibi

BILL ASTORE

DEC 02, 2023

Have you ever heard parents tell their unruly children: Don’t run in the store too fast. Don’t slug your friend too hard. Don’t eat all the candy. Instead of telling them to stop running in the store, to stop slugging their friend, to stop hogging all the candy.

I feel like that’s the Biden and Blinken approach to Israel: Don’t ethnically cleanse Gaza too fast. Just slow down a bit. Don’t make it too obvious. Don’t be too ruthless.

Biden and Blinken are those permissive parents who are dominated by an unruly child. Let’s call the child “Bibi.” They don’t dare tell Bibi to stop. They don’t dare punish him. They don’t dare make a scene, because Bibi will throw a tantrum and make their lives hell. So they allow Bibi to do whatever the hell he wants to do, except just a bit quieter, or slower, or less violent. They enable the child, in short, and indeed Biden and Blinken give Bibi more “clubs” (as in 2000-pound bombs and Hellfire missiles) so he can keep slugging other kids with even more relish.

Don’t kill too many children, Bibi. Good boy!

Speaking of enabling, I got my daily report today from the New York Times on what’s happening in the “Israel-Hamas War.” Note the framing here: the idea this is a war between equals, when Israel is an overwhelmingly powerful nation-state and Hamas consists of maybe 20,000 lightly-armed fighters. Anyhow, here’s the summary:

Israel-Hamas War

  • Israel said it had launched 200 strikes into Gaza since fighting resumed yesterday. Air-raid sirens in Israel warned of possible incoming rockets.
  • Gazan officials accused Israel of striking southern Gaza, where many displaced Palestinians are sheltering.
  • Antony Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, blamed Hamas for the cease-fire’s end and said he had seen signs that Israel had begun to take new steps to protect Palestinian civilians.
  • The resumption of fighting left dozens of hostages still in Gazaand reduced the amount of aid entering the enclave, which had increased during the truce.

Let’s take a look at those bulleted points.

  1. The powerful Israeli military has launched 200 strikes against Gaza, killing hundreds of innocent Palestinians, which goes unmentioned, even as small rockets from Hamas may (or may not) have been launched against Israel.
  2. Gazan officials “accused” Israel of striking southern Gaza: Is there any doubt here? Where “many” displaced Palestinians are sheltering: How many? What type of shelter is available to them? Hasn’t Israeli military action “displaced” more than a million Palestinians, most of whom have no real shelter to speak of?
  3. Blinken blames Hamas: What a surprise! And how is Israel protecting civilians in Gaza when they’re launching 200 “strikes” against them?
  4. Apparently, the only hostages that matter are the ones held in Gaza. Israel’s mass incarceration of Palestinians, including children, goes unmentioned.

Again, Israel is held blameless; Hamas is responsible for everything bad that has happened, is happening, and will happen in Gaza. Because our child Bibi can do no wrong.

Don’t bomb too much, Bibi. Don’t kill too many other children. Don’t ethnically cleanse too fast. There: that’s my good boy. That’s my little angel.

More “War” in Gaza

It’s not an invasion, it’s a “forceful entry”

BILL ASTORE

MAY 06, 2025

It’s rather amazing how the New York Times covers ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza. Today’s NYT features an article (in my email newsfeed) that talks about the “war” on Hamas and identifies the key issue as the hostages and their return. From this article, you’d never know Gaza has been reduced to rubble in a bombing campaign equivalent to seven Hiroshima atomic bombs. You’d never know that more than 60,000 Palestinians have been killed, but that the likely number of killed is probably twice or three times that. You’d never know the Israeli government’s plan is to kill or push out all the Palestinians in Gaza, a “final solution” to the Gaza problem. You’d never know the main victims of Israel’s “war” have been innocent women and children in Gaza.

And while the NYT does mention starvation and the spread of diseases, it provides no estimate for the number of Palestinians killed as a result of Israel’s blockade.

Also, the NYT mentions that Israeli’s latest invasion may endanger the hostages. Nothing is said about endangering the lives of Palestinians in Gaza. Basically, all those who live in Gaza are treated as Hamas, as terrorists, who must either be killed or removed.

This is your “paper of record,” America, with all the news that’s fit to print.

Here’s what appeared in my news feed from the NYT. Judge for yourself:

WAR RETURNS TO GAZA

A plume of dark smoke rises over a Gaza neighborhood in ruins.

After an Israeli airstrike in Gaza on Saturday. Amir Cohen/Reuters

Over the weekend, Israel decided to call in military reservists and escalate the war in the Gaza Strip again.

The news reflects a sharp turn of events. Earlier this year, Israel and Hamas agreed to a cease-fire. That deal held for months, during which Israel halted operations in Gaza and Hamas handed over some Israeli hostages. But the cease-fire ended in March. Now, it seems the war is truly returning.

Why escalate now?

Israel has pressured Hamas to return all of the remaining hostages, especially the 24 who officials believe are still alive. Officials also say that Hamas must disarm as part of any future deal. But Hamas has refused. Before it makes further concessions, it wants the war over and Israel out of Gaza.

Israel hopes escalation will get Hamas to capitulate and return all of the hostages — while giving its troops a chance to destroy the group’s remaining infrastructure.

What is Israel’s plan?

The generals are calling up tens of thousands of reservists to expand operations in Gaza. They plan to occupy the region, forcibly relocate Palestinians in affected areas and oversee aid distribution.

Israel has blocked all aid, including food and medicine, from entering the territory for more than two months. (Some aid workers are accused of participating in the Oct. 7 attacks, The Times explained, and a lawsuit claims that Hamas skimmed $1 billion in U.N. aid. But the blockade has led to starvation and the spread of diseases, as The Times documented.) With direct control, Israel says, it will allow distribution to resume.

Will the plan work?

Israeli leaders say that military pressure secured the release of hostages before. They hope to replicate that success. Critics argue that Israel has by now exhausted its ability to pressure Hamas with force. They worry more fighting will put the surviving hostages at risk. — German Lopez

Related: Israel’s prime minister said the country was “on the eve of a forceful entry to Gaza.”

A Grim Reminder About Gaza

W.J. Astore

100 Kilotons Is Roughly Seven Hiroshimas

The annihilation of Gaza is staggering.

Israel has dropped more than 100,000 tons of bombs on Gaza. That’s 100+ kilotons. The Hiroshima bomb was roughly 15 kilotons. That means the small area of Gaza has been punished by bombing that is the equivalent in explosive force to seven Hiroshimas.

More than 60,000 Palestinians in Gaza are confirmed dead; the actual number of dead may be twice or three times that number. The number of wounded is likely more than 100,000. (Who can say, exactly, given the level of destruction and disruption in Gaza?)

How is this level of destruction in any way justifiable or defensible?

Gaza is already almost destroyed. The Israeli government’s intent is clear: after rendering Gaza uninhabitable, the Palestinians remaining there will be pushed out, displaced, removed. Or they will die, in place, from more bombing as well as starvation and disease.

The U.S. government has enabled this by supplying Israel all the bombs it needs to pulverize Gaza. The U.S. government has also provided diplomatic cover as well as military protection as Israel implements its final solution to the Gaza question.

Some claim this isn’t genocide because Israel isn’t marching Palestinians to gas chambers. But there are many forms of genocide, many ways to kill massive numbers of people.

In The History and Sociology on Genocide (1990), Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn define genocide as “a form of one-sided mass killing in which a state or other authority intends to destroy a group, as that group and membership in it are defined by the perpetrator.”

One-sided mass killing: yes.

Intent to destroy a group: yes.

Gaza and its people are being destroyed before our very eyes. A large part of the effort is being funded directly or indirectly by U.S. taxpayers. Yet we are told it is all the fault of Hamas. That Hamas is making the Israeli government kill and wound hundreds of thousands of people.

One thing is certain: The Israeli government couldn’t perpetrate this genocide without massive military support from the United States.

Perhaps one day, as Omar El Akkad wrote, “everyone will have always been against this” [the ongoing genocide in Gaza]. The question remains: Why now are so many, especially in the Israeli and U.S. governments, still eagerly perpetrating and defending this?

Cap Guns versus Bazookas

W.J. Astore

The “War” between Hamas and Israel

If one side is armed with cap guns and the other with bazookas, would we call that a “war” between roughly equal powers?

I thought of this as I turned to Antiwar.com to see that President Biden has approved yet another massive arms shipment to Israel, to the tune of $8 billion. Here’s the report:

The sale includes AIM-120C-8 AMRAAM air-to-air missiles, Hellfire AGM-114 missiles, 155 MM artillery rounds, small-diameter bombs, JDAM kits, and 500-pound bombs. Many of these munitions have been used by Israel during its campaign of extermination in Gaza, including in attacks on civilian targets.

In June, CNN reported that Israel used US small-diameter bombs in an attack on a school that killed 40 civilians. In October, The Washington Post noted, “The Biden administration has received nearly 500 reports alleging Israel used U.S.-supplied weapons for attacks that caused unnecessary harm to civilians in the Gaza Strip.”

Remember when human rights used to matter (just a little bit)? Remember when genocide was considered morally reprehensible—a murderous wrong? The U.S. government simply ignores human rights except when they advance a particular agenda. And genocide? It’s OK when it’s couched as Israel doing it in the cause of “defending” its “right to exist.”

If your “right to exist” involves denying millions of others their right to exist, have you not bought that “right” with blood money?

Of course, we’re all told by the “experts” that the situation in the Middle East is immensely complicated. Certainly, the history of the region is complex. But what’s happening there today to the Palestinians isn’t complex. In Israel, Zionism has run amuck as Israel grabs land, water, oil and gas rights, indeed everything it can, in the cause of creating a Greater Israel. It just doesn’t matter to most Israelis, and the U.S. government as well, that two million Palestinians will be killed, wounded, or displaced. Might makes right here, accentuated by media spin and government propaganda.

Speaking of the Middle East, I watched a superb documentary recently: “This Is Not a Movie: Robert Fisk and the Politics of Truth.” I highly recommend it. Fisk was a foreign affairs journalist for The Independent. When I lived in Britain from 1992 to 1995, I used to read his articles in that paper. He lived in Beirut and covered the Middle East, ultimately spending forty years living in and writing about the region. The documentary follows him on assignment, demonstrating what a principled and brave man he was. Fisk did journalism the old fashioned way: he got out among the people, he journeyed to the front lines, he saw the dead bodies from massacres (indeed, in one horrific moment, he was forced to climb over a “barricade” of dead bodies, a nightmarish moment for him, as one would expect).

There are very few journalists like Fisk left today. A truth-seeker, he was unafraid to criticize the powerful when they deserved it. He always sought to understand what was happening through knowledge gleaned at firsthand, carrying his trusty notebook and a pen or pencil.

Check out the documentary on Fisk. You’ll learn a lot and be inspired by a man of considerable courage and unimpeachable integrity

Israel Wants to Keep Waging War

W.J. Astore

Surprise!

From my morning Reuters feed:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s promises to press on with Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon dashed hopes that the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwarmight help end more than a year of escalating conflict in the Middle East.

Is anyone surprised at this? Netanyahu gains power from war. He evades prosecution and accountability through war. He achieves his vision of a one-state solution through war. It was never just about Sinwar or Hamas or even vengeance. It’s all about adding Gaza and the West Bank to a “greater” Israel while killing, starving, and displacing more than two million Palestinians in a second Nakba or catastrophe for them.

America’s role is simple: Help and obey Israel in its genocidal activities. And American politicians are more than willing to do this. Look at Congress rapturously applauding Netanyahu. Look at President Joe Biden describing himself as a Zionist. Look at all the money U.S. politicians willingly take from Israeli-American lobbyists. Look at the fear in U.S. politicians’ eyes when AIPAC threatens them.

Over to you, Bibi!

Kamala Harris says Israel has a right to defend itself and that she’ll never approve an arms embargo. Donald Trump is 100% for Israel and accuses Harris of hating Jews and Israel (Harris’ husband, of course, is Jewish, even as Harris herself wholeheartedly defends Israel). Trump’s advice to Israel is to “finish the job”: Trump even accused Biden of being a Palestinian! It’s a strange Palestinian who hugs and defers to Bibi, who proclaims himself to be a Zionist, and who has taken more than $5 million from AIPAC over the course of his career.

And so Trump competes with Biden/Harris over who can be more loyal and subservient to the far right in Israel while ordinary Americans suffer and the Palestinians burn. Politics in America is a sick joke.

The Dishonesty of Western Media on Gaza

W.J. Astore

Genocide? What Genocide?

A fascinating interview, well worth watching.

Suella Braverman is a Tory MP in Britain. Here she debates a student about Gaza and the ongoing genocide there.

Watching this interview exposes the playbook of Western politicians and the media. It’s about accusing student protesters of antisemitism; of getting them to denounce Hamas; of asking them about Israel’s “right to exist”; of starting the debate with the Hamas attacks on October 7th. Those are the “facts” that matter to the Western media and politicians like Suella Braverman.

Fiona Lali, the student here, does a superb job of focusing on the facts that matter: the roughly 40,000 Palestinians already killed by Israel, the more than 100,000 wounded, the millions displaced from their homes, together with the Western policy of covering for Israel while sending them more weaponry to kill more Palestinians. Those facts don’t seem to matter to the mainstream media, and politicians are careful to ignore them or to dismiss them as “necessary” since Israel has “a right to defend itself.”

Apparently, Fiona Lali is associated with “the revolutionary communist party” and is a critic of capitalism. Perhaps the British establishment believed that she’d come across as a crazy radical. As you watch the interview, you realize Lali is the rational “conservative” in that she’s trying to conserve the lives of Palestinians while arguing for free speech and a system that doesn’t exploit the many for the benefit of a few.

I hope Lali is correct that the majority of Britons are against sending more weapons to Israel, though I doubt the Tories in Britain care here.

It’s rather incredible that this Tory MP argues there is no evidence of genocide in Gaza and that the real issue is antisemitism and Israel’s right to exist.

Israel in Gaza: War, Genocide, Both?

W.J. Astore

A War of Annihilation Is a Genocidal Act

History teaches that you can have genocide without war, you can have war without genocide, and you can have war and genocide together.  In Gaza today, the right-wing Israeli government is clearly engaged in a war on the Palestinian people that amounts to a genocide.

The horrific face of genocidal war

Of course, Israeli leaders claim they are engaged in a war against Hamas, and Hamas alone. Events, however, prove they are engaged in a genocidal war of annihilation.

A few harrowing data points: Israeli forces have already killed or wounded 100,000 Palestinians in Gaza.  Journalist Chris Hedges reports that Israel:

has damaged or destroyed all 12 of Gaza’s universities. Some 280 government schools and 65 UNRWA-run schools have also been destroyed or damaged, often resulting in dozens of fatalities. About 133 remaining schools are used to shelter those displaced by the assault. More than 85 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been driven from their homes amid continued Israeli ground and air offensive that has killed more than 25,000 [now more than 28,000] people, including 10,000 [now more than 12,000] children.

Clearly, Israeli leaders are using war as a means of genocide, an excuse for it, as well as a form of camouflage for it.  Don’t be deceived. War and genocide can and do coexist and feed off each other, as did the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews during World War II.  As Israeli leaders readily admit to war while dissembling about genocide, at least they can be justly accused of war crimes while being held to international agreements governing the conduct of war, such as the Geneva Conventions.

Israel’s genocidal war, if left unchecked, will eliminate Gaza and its people. That is the stated intent of the Netanyahu government, which spouts the worst kind of eliminationist rhetoric, rhetoric that amounts to a “final solution to the Palestinian question.”

Any country that arms Israel in its genocidal war is complicit. Guess which country is clamoring to send another $14 billion in weaponry to Israel so it can pursue its war/genocide in Gaza?  Yes: The United States of America. 

In Gaza, both Hamas and Israel may act savagely and cruelly, but only one side truly has the means at its disposal to slaughter the other, and that side is Israel.  Meanwhile, the mainstream media reserves words like “slaughter” for Hamas, even as Israeli forces kill Palestinians on a massive scale.

Clearly, the current strategy of the Israeli government is to destroy Gaza, making it uninhabitable, forcing the Palestinians in Gaza to leave or die.

When Israel is done in Gaza, they will turn to the West Bank.  As Netanyahu said, Israel’s goal is to dominate Palestine “from the river to the sea.”  Palestinians “in the way” are being killed, or starved, or expelled, or (if lucky) reduced to subjects under intolerable conditions of apartheid.

The Israeli government is getting away with this because it has the legal, military, and propaganda cover of the U.S. and much of Europe as well.  The Biden administration complains about the worst excesses of Israel’s genocide while sending its leaders the weapons they need to continue the killing.  Members of Congress like Nancy Pelosi suggest that earnest Americans calling for a ceasefire in Gaza are the useful idiots of Vladimir Putin.

It seemingly never occurs to Biden and Pelosi that they are the useful idiots of Bibi Netanyahu.

Stop the war in Gaza.  Stop the genocide.

Postscript: The “Words About War” Team have posted ten suggestions for writing and talking more clearly, honestly, and accurately about Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza. Please go to https://www.wordsaboutwar.org/gaza.html.

Israel as a Conquering State

W.J. Astore

1973 to 2023, or Burning My Scrapbook

In 1973, I followed the Yom Kippur War as a ten-year-old. I kept a scrapbook of articles on the war and cheered for Israel to win. Back then, I thought of Israel as a beleaguered U.S. ally, fighting for its survival against superior numbers of hostiles armed and supported by America’s #1 enemy, the Soviet Union.

Things didn’t go well for Israel in the opening days of that war. Soviet-supplied SAMs shot down or damaged Israeli planes; Soviet-supplied anti-tank missiles inflicted a heavy toll on Israeli tanks that were rushed into battle without supporting infantry. Things looked bleak for the IDF. But a rush of U.S. replacement equipment to Israel helped to turn the tide as Israel’s enemies turned overly cautious, consolidating their gains rather than exploiting their initiative. The IDF was able to stabilize the fronts then counterattack, seizing territory until both superpowers intervened to broker a truce.

Fifty years later, Israel’s strategic situation is far different. In 2023 Israel is a regional superpower, no longer threatened by the militaries of countries like Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. Forces like Hamas and Hezbollah have the capability to launch terrorist attacks, as Hamas did on October 7th, yet these attacks, gruesome as they often are, don’t pose a threat to Israel’s very existence.

Which is why the response by both Israel’s government and the Biden administration to October 7th is so over-the-top and indefensible. The reduction of Hamas does not require the reduction of Gaza to rubble. Conquest of land won’t conquer atrocity-driven hatreds. Anti-semitism won’t be alleviated by thousands of bombs and missiles, tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians killed and wounded, and the displacement of well over one million Palestinians from their homes.

Looks like conquest to me

Israel’s war against Gaza today isn’t being driven by concerns of national defense. It’s being driven by a desire for conquest. Israel is no longer a plucky underdog, if it ever was. Israel is now a death-dealing overlord exacting a Biblical level of destruction and revenge against a hated people, as Bibi Netanyahu himself admitted, and proudly so.

Shocking to me has been the total compliance, and I mean total, of the Biden administration. Whatever Israel wants, it gets: missiles, artillery and tank shells, bullets, drones, even a couple of aircraft carrier battle groups to deter other countries in the region from striking Israel in solidarity with the Palestinian people in Gaza. Biden and Blinken go to Israel only to embrace Bibi, flying political top cover for him as he launches all his kill missions. 

True, we do hear from Biden and Blinken some concern that Israel may be ethnically cleansing too fast, too ruthlessly. Slow down a bit, Bibi. Don’t make it too obvious that you’re conquering Gaza while driving its people into the desert—or into their graves.

Fifty years ago, I rooted for Israel in what I perceived as its war of survival. Today, I refuse to accept the notion Israel is engaged in a righteous struggle against evil Hamas, which is how the war is being sold here in the USA. Israel, with its powerful military, supplied bounteously by the USA, is engaged in a war of conquest, a retrograde struggle where ethnic cleansing is clearly the goal. Never mind, we are told, all the innocent children who have already died and will continue to die as Israeli warplanes drop more bombs and fire more missiles as the tanks continue to roll firing all those tens of thousands of shells shipped from the USA so that the IDF can bounce the rubble in Gaza.

Israel may be mighty in war, but wars not make one great. In reducing Gaza to rubble, Israel has reduced itself to an imperious and immoral conquering force. In enabling that force, in feeding it the most deadly weaponry and supporting it unequivocally, the Biden administration has shown it can out-Kissinger Kissinger in the practice of amoral realpolitik while obsequiously licking the blood off Bibi’s boots.

If I still had my 1973 scrapbook today, I’d have to burn it.

15,000 Bombs Equivalent to Two Hiroshimas

W.J. Astore

The Israeli Annihilation of Gaza

After dropping 6000 bombs in six days, the Israeli Air Force has now reached the staggering sum of at least 15,000 bombs dropped on densely populated areas of Gaza. The bomb tonnage is already equivalent to two Hiroshimas, notes Joshua Frank at TomDispatch. As he puts it:

[W]ell over 25,000 tons of bombs had already been dropped on Gaza by early November, the equivalent of two Hiroshima-style nukes (without the radiation). Under such circumstances, a nuclear-capable Israel that blatantly flouts international law could prove a clear and present danger, not only to defenseless Palestinians but to a world already in ever more danger and disarray.

Israel is the only power in the Middle East with nuclear weapons; it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that the right-wing government of Netanyahu would choose to use one or more if cornered.

Netanyahu’s goal seems clear: make Gaza uninhabitable to Palestinians through a combination of massive bombing, blockades (water, food, medical supplies, and other essentials), and invasion and occupation. Palestinians are to be “pushed” into the Sinai Desert, with Gaza absorbed into Israel. All this is being justified in the name of neutralizing Hamas, a terrorist organization that has no ability to hurt Israel in a major way. (The brutal attacks of October 7th were a one-off made more brutal by Israeli helicopter gunships whose counterattacks killed friendlies as well as the Hamas attackers.)

In the name of destroying Hamas, Israel is ethnically cleansing Gaza so it can be absorbed into Israel. Apparently, there are enormous gas reserves off Gaza, possibly worth $500 billion, which were to be shared between Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza. With the Palestinians either dead, severely wounded, or evicted from Gaza, Israel will likely claim total ownership over those gas fields. Israel may yet become a major gas supplier to Europe, replacing much of the gas lost when Putin blew up his own gas pipelines to Germany. (Just kidding: America did that, as President Biden promised he would.)

Meanwhile, Joe Biden penned an op-ed to the Washington Post equating Hamas with Putin as “pure, unadulterated evil.” Hamas is allegedly trying to wipe Israel off the map with its “ideology of destruction,” but of course Hamas has no military ability to do this, whereas Israel does indeed have the power to wipe Gaza off the map. So where does Biden see the future heading? Consider this passage:

There must be no forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, no reoccupation, no siege or blockade, and no reduction in territory. And after this war is over, the voices of Palestinian people and their aspirations must be at the center of post-crisis governance in Gaza.

As we strive for peace, Gaza and the West Bank should be reunited under a single governance structure, ultimately under a revitalized Palestinian Authority, as we all work toward a two-state solution.

He may as well wish for puppies and unicorns for everyone. Israel doesn’t want a two-state solution with a thriving Palestinian state. Netanyahu’s goal, to repeat myself, is clear: Gaza absorbed into Israel, with Palestinians displaced in another Nakba, along with the West Bank slowly absorbed into Israel as illegal Jewish settlements are extended.

This is, essentially, what Thucydides meant when he said: the strong do what they will; the weak suffer what they must.

What Biden’s op-ed was really about was justifying his $105 billion package in giveaways, mainly for Ukraine and Israel, with more than half that money flowing to U.S. weapons makers, the merchants of death or, as Biden calls them, job creators. In short, Biden celebrates the creation of a few jobs in America in the name of killing tens of thousands of Russians and Palestinians with American-made weaponry paid for by U.S. taxpayers.

Biden calls that “democracy” in action, the work of the world’s “essential nation” in contrast to the “murderous nihilism” of Hamas.

“Murderous nihilism”? Well, as we used to say as kids, it takes one to know one.

Speaking of murderous nihilism …

When Collateral Damage Is the Strategy

W.J. Astore

Buildings destroyed, civilians killed, millions made refugees: mission accomplished

In Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza, so-called collateral damage (a terrifying euphemism) isn’t a regrettable cost of destroying Hamas. It’s the very strategy and goal of Israel’s response.

Israel* has already killed five thousand Palestinian children, but that’s spun as the regrettable price of destroying Hamas. More than 11,000 Palestinian civilians have been killed already, and I’ve seen reports of 46 journalists and 190 doctors and nurses among the dead. Babies are dying in hospitals due to Israeli attacks on the same and disruptions in power and medical supplies.

International law doesn’t seem to matter. What matters to Israel is expelling the Palestinians; to paraphrase what Tacitus once said of the Romans, Israel is creating a wasteland of rubble in Gaza and calling it “peace.”

They create a wasteland of rubble and call it “peace”

Israel’s goal is simple: the creation of new facts on the ground. Gaza is being rendered uninhabitable for Palestinians even as Hamas is being hunted down and decimated.

Israel recognizes Hamas is both an idea and the people who represent that idea; far easier it is to kill people than the idea, but if you can’t kill the idea, at least kill Hamas members and push Palestinians out of Gaza, mainly by bombing, blockade, and further invasion.

The end game is a land grab. Israel wants to annex Gaza after it’s made Palestinian-free. Palestinians will be pushed into the Sinai Peninsula or elsewhere. Collateral damage doesn’t matter because it’s inseparable from the strategy. In some sense, it is the strategy.

Since the US government has defined no “red lines” for Israel while promising a $14 billion gift in deadly arms, I’m not surprised Israel’s government assumes it can do whatever it wants. After all, President Biden has pledged his total and unconditional support to the right-wing rulers of Israel.

6000 bombs in six days. That was the initial sign that Israel had far more ambitious goals in sight than neutralizing Hamas. Gaza may yet cease to exist, its territory absorbed into Israel, the Palestinians forced out into tent cities or worse. With unconditional US support, Israel may well prevail in this ethnic cleansing, but at immense cost not only to Palestinians but to Jews as well.

*I realize many brave Israelis have resisted and condemned the actions of their right-wing government. I wish to acknowledge their clarity of purpose and moral courage.