Tag: Netanyahu

Israel’s So-Called Seven Front War

W.J. Astore

And I thought a two-front war was bad

From my CNN feed this morning (October 6th):

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country faces war on seven fronts and called them the “enemies of civilization.” Heavy Israeli airstrikes pounded southern Beirut overnight, with the military saying it was targeting Hezbollah.

Wow. And I thought a two-front war was bad.

Netanyahu is a war criminal. And whether it’s Joe Biden or Kamala Harris or Donald Trump, U.S. leaders bow before him, giving him all the weapons, military cover, and diplomatic cover he needs to wage his so-called seven-front war.

Let’s not forget the rapturous applause Netanyahu received on his recent appearance before Congress. Half the Congress allegedly hates the other half, but they sure came together to profess their love of Netanyahu and Israel.

Maybe Netanyahu and Israel are the “enemies of civilization”? Perish the thought.

Israel is at pains to portray its neighbors as uncivilized even as Israeli bombing produces scenes like this one:

Civilized Israeli bombing of Beirut, Lebanon (Hussein Malla/AP)

That scooter just might be Hezbollah. Maybe Israel can rig it with explosives and remotely detonate it in another one of their “precision” attacks, like all those pagers exploding in “precise” ways.

CNN, of course, always reports the Israeli perspective. Rarely if ever do you hear the Arab perspective, the Persian perspective, the Palestinian perspective. Why listen to the “uncivilized,” right?

The 2024 election in America, which has witnessed total support by Democrats and Republicans of whatever Israel does no matter how heinous, shows the utter bankruptcy of U.S. government rhetoric and the moral bankruptcy of its leaders.

Why do we continue to listen to these people? Why do we contemplate voting for them?

Coda: Netanyahu is going to keep waging war and committing crimes against humanity because that’s what’s keeping him in power. As long as the U.S. keeps arming him and blessing him, mass death will follow. How pathetic is it that our leaders clap to this man like so many trained seals?

(No insult to trained seals intended.)

Netanyahu and Biden Speak

W.J. Astore

A Grim Day in Washington, DC, and Across the World

I was wrong about Congress and its subservience to Bibi Netanyahu. I had set the over/under at 50 for the number of ovations he would receive, and 25 as the number of standing ovations. Apparently, he received 58 standing ovations in his address to Congress yesterday. Though not every member of Congress joined the orgy.

With respect to what Netanyahu said, Caitlin Johnstone covers it well. I’m less interested in what he said than what the orgy of applause says about America. Stormy applause for a foreign leader engaged in a genocide in Gaza: you can draw your own conclusions here. I’m sure it has nothing to do with the power of AIPAC and similar Zionist lobbies.

At 8:00PM EST, my wife and I tuned in to President Biden’s first speech since his surprise withdrawal by tweet from the 2024 campaign. I sure wish politicians could speak simply, clearly, and sincerely. How about a short speech like this?

My fellow Americans, thank you for your confidence in me, thank you for allowing me to serve for more than fifty years, and thank you for your patience as I recovered from COVID. After much reflection, I’ve decided I’m simply too old, too compromised, to be president after my current term ends in January 2025. In my stead, I heartily endorse my vice president and running mate, Kamala Harris. I have complete confidence in her. With that said, I want to thank everyone watching, here and around the world, for the best wishes you’ve shared with me. I will continue to work tirelessly for peace and for the betterment of the human condition everywhere, not forgetting the health of our environment as well. Thank you all again, and good night.

A person can dream, right?

Instead, Biden plodded through a speech that lasted about fifteen minutes but which seemed much longer. I was a bit surprised at how long it took him to mention Kamala Harris by name. There were the usual blessings extended to America and the troops, and the usual rhetoric that nothing is impossible to America and Americans, though I’m not sure of that. High-speed rail seems impossible, to cite one example.

All in all, the Congressional orgy for Bibi together with Biden’s sad withdrawal speech made for a very grim day in Washington, D.C. and indeed across the globe. For what happens here in America doesn’t stay here. It ripples to places like Gaza, Russia, China, powerfully and unpredictably.

As I said, yesterday was grim, and the prospect of a Trump/Harris race makes the future even grimmer for meaningful change toward a less militaristic and more peaceful world.

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.

Shameless Secrecy by the Biden Administration

W.J. Astore

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.

More bombs? Sure!

On the Afghan War and Israeli Aid

sparring
Netanyahu: A man who knows how to spar

W.J. Astore

The FP: Foreign Policy feed that I receive had two items that grabbed my attention this morning.  The first involves the war in Afghanistan.  In short, there’s no end in sight.  Unlike in the Vietnam War, no one is seeing any lights at the end of tunnels.  Nevertheless, U.S. and NATO leaders vow to keep supporting Afghan forces as they continue to lose territory to a resurgent Taliban that had basically given up in 2001.

Here’s the latest from FP (co-authored by Paul McLeary with Adam Rawnsley):

NATO’s not done in Afghanistan. It looks like the United States and NATO are going to stick it out in Afghanistan for at least a few more years, as the Afghan army continues to battle a resurgent Taliban with no end in sight. Following a NATO meeting in Brussels this week, British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon told reporters that U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter “told us the troop numbers and the dispositions are being looked at again,” as President Barack Obama weighs whether to draw the U.S. presence in Afghanistan down from 9,800 to 5,000 by the end of this year. NATO says it’s in, at least through the end of next year. Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the allies are abandoning their plans to pull back to Kabul by the end of this year, and “will have what we call a flexible regional approach, meaning that we will continue to be of course in Kabul but also out in the different regions.”

That’s significant. So are comments by an anonymous NATO diplomat who told the AP that the alliance will most likely come up with the $5 billion needed to fund the current number of Afghan security forces through 2020. The longest of the Long Wars grinds on.

Put bluntly, U.S. and NATO leaders continue to reinforce failure in Afghanistan.  Their strategy, such as it is, is simply more of what hasn’t worked over the last fifteen years.  Apparently, forever war is sustainable to the U.S. and NATO.  No one seems to be asking whether the cost is sustainable to the Afghan people.

The second item involves American aid to Israel, which is primarily military aid.  Here’s how the folks at FP put it:

Israel: After much back and forth sparring, the U.S. and Israel appear to be nearing an agreement on a U.S. military aid package. Israeli officials had been hoping that the Obama administration would agree to a memorandum of understanding (MOU) promising $40 billion in aid over a decade — an increase of $10 billion over the last MOU. So far, the U.S. has been discussing a deal in the range of $35-37 billion. Other questions about the aid remain up in the air such as whether the final package will include money for missile defense and how much of the money Israel will be able to spend among its own defense contractors versus American companies.

There you have it: the “sparring” between Israel and the U.S. is about whether Israel will get a huge chunk of America aid, or a gargantuan chunk of aid.  Meanwhile, the U.S. government seems to have no influence over the Israeli government.  Netanyahu does pretty much what he wants to do, even as he thumbs his nose at Obama.

The “punishment” for Netanyahu’s intractability – well, there is none.  As a punch-drunk American heavyweight boxer staggers about the ring, a sneering Israeli lightweight launches punch after punch, taunt after taunt.  And after absorbing the punishment the heavyweight simply throws in the towel and agrees to the lightweight’s terms.

Of course, none of this will change under President Hillary Clinton.  If anything, Clinton will pursue the Afghan War with more vigor and ladle even more “aid” to Israel.  Under President Trump, who knows?  All bets are truly off since Trump changes his positions as often as most men change their underwear.  (For example, Trump first affirmed neutrality in negotiating between the Israelis and Palestinians, then pledged one-sided support for Israel in a speech to AIPAC.)

Well, my dad always said, the more things change, the more they remain the same.  In these two cases, he was right – yet again.