Another “emergency” shipment of arms to Israel: What a way to end the year! First, the Biden administration sent $106 million in tank shells to Israel without Congressional approval. Now, the government is sending $147.5 million in fuses, charges, etc. to Israel for 155mm artillery shells, also without Congressional approval. Mind you, Hamas doesn’t have tanks or heavy artillery, so these shipments aren’t for “defense.” Tank and artillery shells are really for one thing: urban destruction. Artillery is the very definition of an area weapon, i.e. imprecise. Yet, even as the Biden administration sends this weaponry to Israel, which will enable more killing on a mass scale, it expresses concern that Israel is ethnically cleansing too fast, killing too many innocent civilians too quickly.
Along with bombs, this is what tanks and artillery shells are good for
You can’t have it both ways, obviously. You can’t send heavy calibre weaponry to Israel and then complain when they use it. And to justify this aid as an “emergency” for America’s national defense interests! If democratic processes can be bypassed simply by declaring an emergency that clearly doesn’t exist, there is no democracy. Thanks for making that obvious, Joe Biden.
Meanwhile, Gaza continues to be pounded into rubble. Casualties there will soon exceed 100,000 as nearly half a million Palestinians begin to starve. The Israeli/US end game is clear: render Gaza uninhabitable, forcing the Palestinians to make a choice: leave or die.
The two self-declared democracies of Israel and the USA are combining to ethnically cleanse Gaza of Palestinians with the goal of incorporating its territory into Israel. Now I know why the world hates us: for our freedoms, right?
How can Israel commit such a crime? I suggest you watch the interview below with Gideon Levy, who explains it plainly and succinctly. As he notes:
Israeli Jews generally believe they are God’s Chosen People.
Israeli Jews generally believe they are the real victims here (the Holocaust; Hamas attacks).
Palestinians have been dehumanized as barbarians, as worse than animals.
The Chosen People, the eternal victims, are tired of the beasts in Gaza and are getting rid of them, one way or another.
“We [Israelis] live in denial,” Levy says. Ignorance is combined with nationalism. Most Israelis simply don’t want to know what their government is doing in their name. To that end, media coverage in Israel is entirely one sided; the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza is almost never shown. The only people who suffer are Jews.
To Israelis, life is precious and dear; but Israel acts to show Palestinians their lives are cheap. Gaza, Levy says, was a “cage” for the Palestinians living there; Israel has now decided to empty that cage.
Levy has no illusions about the nature of the Israeli government under Bibi Netanyahu, which he calls a brutal dictatorship. And, if we accept him at his word, for he is an Israeli Jew who knows his country, America is aiding a brutal dictatorship in its goal of clearing the Gaza ghetto irrespective of the cost in lives of innocents.
What does that make the Biden administration? What does that make us?
Note: the video link below contains a warning about graphic material. It’s apparently designed to discourage viewing. There is nothing “graphic” about this video except the truths that Levy speaks.
America as the Essential Nation for Trigger Treats
Some thoughts — more or less connected — on war in Gaza and Ukraine:
Israel is engaged in a “traditional” war of conquest. Like the Romans destroyed Carthage, Israel is essentially destroying Gaza using American-provided weaponry, together with hoary approaches like famine and disease.
What surprises so many is that ruthless wars of conquest aren’t supposed to happen. It’s 2023! We’re civilized people! Only dictators like Putin are ruthless! But, as many people have noted, Israel has already killed more children in two months than Russia has killed in nearly two years of war in Ukraine.
No — Israel and the USA are not civilized. The so-called rules-based order is might makes right. Thucydides defined Israel/USA policy 2400 years ago: The strong do what they will; the weak suffer what they must.
The Palestinians are being killed, starved, and shoved off their land because Israel wants it. The Hamas attacks provided the excuse for the final solution to the Gaza question.
But let’s be clear here: Wars of conquest are a feature of humanity throughout history. Look at the history of the United States and its conquest of Native Americans or its war of “manifest destiny” against Mexico. It’s a land grab.
Gaza isn’t primarily a religious war of Jews versus Muslims. There may be some Jews who believe it’s “their” land because the Torah says so, but many other Jews are against this brazen war of conquest. Religion isn’t the main cause here. The causes are greed and power, land lust and the pursuit of black gold (fossil fuels off Gaza). And vengeance.
The Biden administration refuses to place any conditions on massive weapons shipments to Israel. So much for “leverage.”
*****
Judging by the U.S. federal budget, America’s leaders are most addicted to violence and war, whether manifested against our fellow humans or against nature and the planet. Dangerously, in violence people often find a sense of purpose and belonging as well as scapegoats even as they embrace and empower leaders who promise them blood-soaked redemption.
It’s quite possible the historical Jesus was betrayed and killed because he rejected redemptive violence. Jesus seems to have taught redemptive peace, and that was an unpopular message among Jewish people 2000 years ago, who apparently were looking for liberation through military victory over the Romans, not salvation through the grace offered them by a peace-preaching prophet and rabbi who took the side of the marginalized and oppressed.
*****
The average age of Ukrainian troops is now 43. Young women are being actively recruited into the ranks. Men as old as 60 are being pressed into service. “Body snatchers” are illegally grabbing men off the streets and forcing them to the front. Does this sound like a winnable war for the “imperfect democracy” of Ukraine?
I continue to see a stalemated situation with little chance of a decisive military victory for Ukraine. Assuming the war continues, Ukraine will continue to be hollowed out.
Meanwhile, Russia has most certainly been weakened militarily by this war, and perhaps economically as well with the destruction of the Nordstream pipelines. Russia is less of a threat to NATO than it was two years ago, meaning that NATO has even less to fear from an alleged expansionist Putin. Given the quagmire faced by Russia in Ukraine, I doubt very much that Putin is contemplating an invasion of any NATO country.
Suffice to say I am against another $62+ billion for Ukraine and I am for diplomatic efforts to foster a ceasefire and settlement. Indeed, I think that if the U.S. stops military aid to Ukraine, Zelensky and Putin would likely find a way to end this war and all its killing and destruction.
Yet, the Biden administration is persisting in its plans to send scores of billions in more weaponry to Ukraine, with Senator Lindsey Graham still boasting Ukraine will fight and die to the last man (and woman?). If Biden’s war package is approved, U.S. aid (mainly military) to Ukraine will approach $200 billion in two years. That’s roughly $8 billion a month, double the monthly cost of the Afghan War. Yet Americans are told this is the price of freedom: massive shipments of weapons and other forms of aid so that Ukraine can kill Russians.
The Biden administration has embraced war in Ukraine as well as war in Gaza, essentially placing no conditions on massive shipments of U.S. weaponry to fuel these conflicts. Someone please tell me what is “progressive” and humane about Joe Biden’s policies.
I know freedom isn’t free; I had no idea freedom came at so high a cost in deadly military weaponry and dead bodies. I guess it’s true, then: America is the freest country in the world because we dominate the world’s trade in life-takers and widow-makers. Exceptional we are in our belief in war and weapons; essential we are to any country looking to add “trigger treats” to their arsenals of democracy.
Two nights ago, I watched the classic film version of H.G. Wells’s “The War of the Worlds.” Made in 1953, the film depicts a Martian invasion of the Earth, with humans being massacred in droves due to the superior technology of the Martian fighting machines. As the narrator intoned, channeling the book by Wells, it was the “massacre of humanity.” Spoiler alert: humanity is saved by viruses and bacteria that infect and kill the Martians.
As I watched the Martian fighting ships with their heat rays obliterate human cities, turning them into so much rubble, I was reminded of the scenes of destruction I’ve seen from Gaza. Essentially, the Israeli military, with its superior technology, most of it provided by the United States, are those Martians. The Palestinian people in Gaza are the outgunned humans facing annihilation.
There is a “War of the Worlds” in Gaza, and the Martians are winning. Whether diseases spread by the elimination of hospitals in Gaza by Israel, the cutting off of safe drinking water, the destruction of sewerage systems, and just general destruction of infrastructure will ultimately doom the Israeli war of conquest is unlikely. This time, the Martians just might win, at least in the short term.
Here in the USA, I continue to read articles that suggest Israel is justified in its massacres, though increasingly you see some hedging that perhaps the massive killing and bombing is a bit too indiscriminate. Good luck telling the Martians that.
The Martians in their war on Earth were quite plain about what they were about: the conquest of Earth and the elimination or subjugation of humanity. The Israeli government has been quite plain about what this war is about for them: the conquest of Gaza and the elimination or subjugation of the Palestinians there. It’s an old-fashioned war of conquest that is readily recognizable. One “world” has decided that another “world” must cease to exist.
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.
I’m a member of the Eisenhower Media Network, or EMN. We’re a small network of retired military types and former U.S. government officials who are openly critical of the military-industrial-congressional complex, America’s open-ended forever wars (the global war on terror; the cold war against Russia and China), and rising militarism within and across our society.
Recently, EMN issued a new letter in opposition to the Washington bipartisan consensus for war and more war. I’m proud to say I had a hand in writing it, as did Matthew Hoh and other members of EMN. Here’s what we had to say:
Military and Foreign Policy Experts Open Letter on U.S. Diplomatic Malpractice
Does America inspire the world by the power of its example or the example of its power? Far too often, and despite President Joe Biden’s words during his inaugural address, America’s overmilitarized power and diplomatic malpractice are its examples to the world.
We must change that. To make America truly essential and indispensable, we must not remain the world’s leading arms maker and weapons exporter. We must instead become the world’s greatest and most committed peacemaker and diplomat.
The problem is that America continues to make war, continues being “essential” only as the world’s leading merchant of death, and continues seeking dominance through military supremacy that ends, in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, and earlier in Vietnam, in mass death and colossal folly.
In our first open letter last spring in The New York Times, we, the undersigned, argued that a thoroughly militarized U.S. foreign policy would generate ruinous and worsening consequences and increasingly limited options for the U.S. and the world. Recent events bear this out.
The results of U.S. diplomatic malpractice are cruelly displayed in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific. Risks of further escalation and a world war are rising. Predictably, a militarized foreign policy characterized by rejecting or ignoring international laws and treaties and by disingenuous negotiations and talks has offered no solutions to volatile wars in Eastern Europe and the Middle East while making war more likely in the Indo-Pacific.
Militarized solutions breed and feed more war. Earnest and deliberate diplomacy is the best hope to bring peace, stability and reconciliation to the world.
We chose Ike as our inspiration because he warned Americans of the dangers of the military-industrial complex and because he rejected a world dedicated to manufacturing weapons to commit mass murder.
War in Ukraine
The failure to pursue diplomacy in Eastern Europe, both before and after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, has resulted in a costly and destructive stalemate for which there are two likely futures:
The collapse of the Ukrainian state due to a deteriorating economic and military situation hastened by corruption.Here, Ukraine’s fragility resembles that of previous houses of cards built by the U.S. in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam.
A harrowing and bloody stalemate in Ukraine where firepower, made more lethal by technological advances, rules a battlefield where neither side can achieve decisive tactical or operational gains. The pursuit of ways out of this stalemate likely entails horizontal and vertical escalation, neither of which offers solace to those seeking an end to death and destruction in Ukraine and the establishment of peace and stability.
Horizontal escalation sees the war extending further to civilian population centers and infrastructure and includes the possibility of other nations joining the conflict. Vertical escalation sees the expansion of arsenals to weapons of greater range, lethality, and consequence, including nuclear weapons. These two forms of escalation may be intertwined and reinforcing. So, as the war may expand horizontally to resemble The War of Cities between Iran and Iraq in the 1980s, it may expand vertically as well with more powerful weapons being introduced by both sides. The use of nuclear weapons is increasingly conceivable under these conditions.
These two likely futures may intersect. For example, a Ukrainian collapse could see NATO forces, likely Polish and Romanian, marching into western and central Ukraine to counter a Russian push to fill a collapsing Ukrainian state. Such an event could lead to a war between NATO and Russia, a war that conceivably could go nuclear.
Hamas, Israel and the Middle East
The Russia-Ukraine War now rages concurrently with the war between Hamas and Israel. This war, too, is born of a U.S. refusal to foster diplomacy. Unlike the conventional war between Russia and Ukraine, we are witnessing an asymmetrical conflict more akin to the wars of insurgency many of us experienced in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
Worse, the Hamas/Israel bloodletting in Gaza is characterized by an ethnic cleansing campaign that would be impossible without U.S. diplomatic, economic, media, military and political support. We are disgusted by and find repugnant the brazen and bipartisan support by the U.S. government for rampant violations of international law by Israel. Ethnic cleansing in Gaza, long planned by senior members of the Israeli government and powerful elements of Israel’s reactionary right wing, follows in the ghastly wake of Hamas atrocities against civilians on October 7.
Here, the U.S. government isn’t just passively witnessing war crimes; it is enabling them. With the frightening possibility of escalation to a regional or even a world war, the violence in Gaza has fed and feasted upon decades of deliberate diplomatic malpractice in America. Decades of putting Israel first, second, and last while ignoring the plight and pleas of Palestinians have made political settlements to the blockade of Gaza and the occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank nearly impossible.
Whereas a month ago, we lived with the risk of nuclear war as an outcome of escalating conflict in Ukraine, we now face the elevated risk of a rightfully feared world war as a consequence of entangling alliances between nuclear-armed Moscow and Washington in the Middle East.
China and the Path Ahead
To this, we must add the dangers of war with China, something hyped by leading U.S. politicians; the still unpaid costs of the $8 trillion wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; a militarized federal budget for which 60% of discretionary spending goes to war and all its wounds; and a hollowed American economy.
Decades of reckless U.S. war-making, both direct and via proxies, while coddling corrupt, ruthless, and unjust foreign governments has, not surprisingly, made the world more dangerous and less stable. Failure to invest in and maintain our country has weakened and corroded America’s infrastructure, institutions, and industries. A hypocritical flaunting of international law and an espousal of an ethereal rules-based order, coupled with an arrogant disregard for past U.S. crimes and blunders, have caused dozens of nations to flock to competitors – a movement away from America that will undoubtedly accelerate if we remain on our current militaristic path.
Moreover, decades of colossal military spending have witnessed few strategic gains for the U.S. Our military, often saluted as the world’s greatest by politicians, hasn’t won a major war since World War II. That same military annually faces significant recruiting shortfalls that cast considerable doubt on the integrity and staying power of the All-Volunteer Force. America’s legacy of failed wars is not redeemed by ongoing displays of vacuous military boosterism. Feel-good patriotism can’t suppress the bitterness many of us military veterans feel toward the past, nor does it calm the worries we have about our nation’s future.
Pope Francis has spoken of a “famine of peace” that exists in the world today. In this spirit, we call for immediate ceasefires, without conditions, in Gaza and Ukraine.
The surest way to prevent wars from exploding into uncontainable wildfires is to starve them of fuel. To think or speak that these conflagrations can be managed, adjusted as if by damper or thermostat, is a fool’s conceit or a liar’s word. We have been burned too many times in our professional lives to believe hot wars can be “won” by throwing more gasoline on them, whether rhetorically or in the form of cluster munitions, depleted uranium shells, and similar forms of “aid.”
A better path ahead is clear. Peace, not war, must be fostered. In embracing peace through diplomacy conducted in good faith, America would indeed exhibit the power of its example, becoming essential to a world that cries out for liberty and justice for all.
We are witnessing the obliteration of Gaza. The death toll has already surpassed 16,000 as Israel continues to pummel targets with American-made bombs and missiles. Even CNN is worried (from my email update this AM):
Top UN officials are warning of an “apocalyptic” situation in Gaza with “no place safe to go” for civilians as the deepening humanitarian crisis sparks international concern. Israel is expanding ground operations to the entire territory to “eliminate” Hamas and has told Palestinians to flee large swaths of southern Gaza, where many had previously sought refuge. But the war-torn region is in the midst of a near-total internet blackout as the last major telecommunications operator said services are completely cut off. This means many Palestinians are unable to communicate with one another or call for help while evacuating, and emergency workers can’t coordinate their responses.
Caitlin Johnstone has a telling article in which she states an important truth: Israel couldn’t be doing this without generous U.S. support. Israel is dropping the bombs, firing the missiles, and shooting the artillery rounds and bullets, but the U.S. is largely serving as the merchant of death for all this, though “merchant” is the wrong word. The U.S. is giving all this deadly weaponry to Israel as “aid,” even as there’s much rhetorical gnashing of teeth in Washington about Israel’s “indiscriminate” bombing and wanton killing of Palestinian innocents, including thousands of children. I say “rhetorical” because as Johnstone notes, the U.S. government could curtail Israeli military action by turning off the spigot of arms flowing from U.S. arsenals and warehouses to Israel.
But that’s not going to happen. AIPAC has a hammerlock on Congress; those few members of Congress who’ve called for a ceasefire in Gaza are already being targeted by the powerful pro-Israel lobby, with AIPAC promising to spend upwards of $100 million to unseat those politicians who aren’t consumed by bloodlust against Gaza. The power of AIPAC is reinforced here by the MICC, the military-industrial-congressional complex that Ike warned us about in 1961, which stands to profit immensely from more war in the Middle East as well as Ukraine. The combination of AIPAC with the MICC is akin to Mechagodzilla, an almost unstoppable monster of immense power.
They create a desert and call it “peace”: Gaza turned to rubble
Godzilla in its various incarnations would be hard-pressed to duplicate the scenes of devastation we’re seeing in Gaza. Israel is practicing its own version of the infamous statement from America’s war against Vietnam: “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.”
The Israeli version: We had to destroy Gaza to save it from Hamas.
It made no sense in Vietnam, and it makes no sense today in Gaza. But this is not about making sense: it’s about power and vengeance and profit.
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.
Don’t worry, be happy about unaccountable weapons exports to Israel
Just in case you missed this story (courtesy of ReThink Roundup):
Biden’s secrecy on arms transfers to Israel unnerves some Democrats. As Palestinian civilian deaths mount, President Biden faces growing pressure from Congressional Democrats to publicly disclose the scope of U.S. arms transfers to Israel. Contrary to Ukraine military aid, for which the Pentagon releases recurring fact sheets about the U.S. arms transfers, the administration has not made public the quantities of weapons it is sending to Israel. The administration is also pushing for the authority to bypass notification requirements to Congress that apply to every other country receiving military financing, a move members of Congress and advocates have criticized.
I think Biden’s secrecy on arms transfers to Israel should unnerve all Americans, don’t you?
And why should Israel be the only country in the world where weapons can be shipped, funded by U.S. taxpayers, where Congress won’t be notified?
What is it about this shameless kowtowing to a far-right government in Israel? A government that is bitterly resisted by many Israelis? One led by Bibi Netanyahu, who has said that the idea for killing all Jews in the Holocaust came from an Arab leader rather than Adolf Hitler? Seriously, he said that.
Strangely, Netanyahu is a Holocaust denier in the sense he claims the idea came from Arabs rather than Hitler and the Nazis.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump, Biden’s mostly likely opponent in 2024, is arguably even more virulent in his support of Israel and its attacks on Gaza.
All these U.S. government officials and candidates who love Israel so passionately should grab assault rifles, head to Gaza, and go down into the tunnels and root out Hamas. Put your mouth where you’re sending America’s money.
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.
I wrote a note to my representative in Congress, William Keating (D), who is the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. I expressed my opposition to massive Israeli bombing and massive U.S. aid that facilitates that bombing. Yesterday, I received a form letter in reply that reveals Israel remains the “Daddy” to the U.S. Congress.
How so? The letter from Mr. Keating is plainspoken and direct in its condemnation of Hamas. There is, however, absolutely no criticism of Israel. None. Hamas is pure evil, Israel is a blameless victim, and that’s all you need to know, according to the letter signed by Keating.
Some examples from the letter: Hamas is described as launching “brutal attacks” that bring “death and destruction” to Israelis and Palestinians. They use Palestinian civilians as “pawns” and “human shields.” They are “terrorists.” It’s their attacks that have “already taken the lives of too many civilians.”
The letter also expresses support for a Palestinian state (no other details), for humanitarian aid to Gaza, while mentioning that Israel, in protecting itself against terrorism, must try to protect innocent civilians in Gaza as well. But perhaps the key passage in the letter is this one:
Israel has the right to protect its citizens against terrorists who continue to attack the country after Hamas carried out the largest massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust. A ceasefire would only benefit Hamas and allow the terrorist group to rebuild, strengthen, and fortify its positions.
As Ranking Member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Mr. Keating closes his letter by urging Hamas “to stop these violent attacks, which have already taken the lives of too many civilians.”
Here’s what’s missing from the letter: Any condemnation or even admission of the “violent attacks” by Israel that have already claimed the lives of more than 10,000 Palestinian civilians, including more than 4000 children. (The likely death toll is far higher since many bodies remain trapped and smashed and flattened under rubble.) Mr. Keating is completely unable or unwilling to criticize Israel in any way. Israel is completely in the right, Hamas is totally responsible for all the killing, and that’s all you need to know.
I see articles that say massive bombing of Gaza isn’t “genocide.” As if it’s a good thing that Israel isn’t killing all the Palestinians in its orgy of bombing.
Again, Mr. Keating rejects any ceasefire as a boon to the terrorists (Hamas, of course; there’s no such thing as an Israeli terrorist). Without saying it explicitly, he tacitly supports Israel’s strategy to turn Gaza into rubble while expelling as many Palestinians as possible.
In sum, Mr. Keating, and indeed nearly all members of Congress, are 100% behind the right-wing Israeli government. To the question, “Who’s your daddy?” the clear answer for Keating and his fellow members of Congress is “Israel and Bibi Netanyahu.”
Bracing Views 