I haven’t written about Gaza because some things are just too evil for human comprehension. Who uses flechette and white phosphorous shells on civilian populations? Flechette shells available here at Ammo To Go at a reduced price of $21.95…
When listening to Netanyahu It is difficult to comprehend the enormity of the irony that the people on whom the Holocaust was perpetrated are now engaging in similar genocide themselves, and doing so with a self-righteous pomposity that beggars belief.
When you look at the map below, who can doubt the central thesis of my diary Israel/Palestine: One state or two? written almost 7 years ago (that a separate Palestinian State is no longer viable)?
But seven years on we are no closer to a political settlement in the region, and have, if anything, moved further away. Maybe those writers and religious seers who predicted Armageddon have a point, at least as far as the chosen land and people are concerned. “Those whom the God’s seek to destroy, they first make mad” (Sophocles, Antigone).
The Netanyahoo/Likud story is such a confutation of reality that one almost cannot believe one’s senses. To say Israel has squandered whatever moral high ground it ever possessed is to engage in gross understatement, as your genocide observation would suggest.
Yet I am unaware of a single elected official in DC who contests the Netanyahu fantasy or questions why the US should be so completely complicit in it. No one! The fundamental “debate” literally doesn’t exist here, at least officially. I presume that there are some elected European officials who at least throw open the possibility that the Palestinians are more sinned against than sinning, and are actively being oppressed by Israel.
The US has also, by its unfathomable blank check writing in the Security Council, ensured that the UN–the very entity that created the state of Israel!–has no ability whatever to monitor or reform or even address the geopolitical situation that it itself created in the 1940s. This is a very convenient sleight of hand in favor of the Israelis indeed.
The latest disproportionate violence has generated a new analogy (to me anyway): that Israel is actually behaving towards Palestinians as if its “manifest destiny” is to absorb all Palestine, in much the same way that the US behaved towards the native peoples of America. Thus, to the supporters of Netanyahoo & Co, Israel’s “destiny” is to cleanse all of Palestine of its native peoples so that Israel and (Jewish) Israelis may prosper, just as America cleansed its lands of native peoples. It is very hard to say that this is not an accurate description of the past 47 years of Israeli behavior, and may very be the long term strategy, which most likely has never been publicized or leaked.
This means that the Palestinians are effectively being herded into smaller (and crappier) “reservations”, like the Gaza Reservation today. And that their humanity must be viciously denied, as we did with the Indian—“the only good Indian is a dead Indian”, ascribed to Gen. Sheridan of US civil war fame. Of course, Indians today have achieved (a sort of) sovereignty on such reservations, and are voting citizens of the US with passports, political rights which today’s Israelis appear to have no intention of ever allowing ANY Palestinians to realize.
As with all historical analogies, there are some gaps and shortfalls, but I think “manifest destiny” more helpful to analysis than harmful. I suppose there is a case to be made that Israel is treating Palestinians worse than we treated our native peoples, but many would dispute that. In any event, the comparison seems somewhat less inflammatory (to Israelis) than calling the (remaining) Palestinian enclaves “ghettos” or “camps”, so Netanyahu might be wise to embrace it, ha-ha!
Not much appetite to question the empire here.
Bibi behaves as if it’s still the 19th century and expects Israel to be rewarded like those states in the 19th century that engaged in genocide. It’s been working well for them for over sixty years; so, no reason for them to change.
Today: Thousands Descend on Manhattan to Rally for Israel
“Religious” leaders cheering on the slaughter of Palestinians. (Just like …)
“Liberal” elite Chuck Schumer:
Israel heard the cheering in Manhattan and dropped more bombs on Gaza.
Real axis of evil in westerm world since WWII: U.S. – Britain – France – Australia and Israel with Canada teetering on the edge of support. Trying to maintain the whte bastion, at least with racist undertones.
No surprise really as the world is run by the intelligence community, 5 eyes anyone?
“Think of the shame for US ambassador Keith Harper, who represents the U.S. at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
This week he cast the sole opposing vote against a UN inquiry into human rights abuses in Gaza.”
h/t Eureka Springs @MoA
Harper is a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. His people got marched there from the east coast in the Trail of Tears. Now this proud native American has prostituted his conscience to Israel, refusing aid to another oppressed people. It is one sad spectacle.
An illustration how well state propaganda works. Exactly why U.S. soldiers died in Vietnam, I was a kid but an what older Polish immigrant neighbour sent his only son to Vietnam to fight the commies over there. He gave his life for his father’s revenge. In following article, David Siegel from the Consulate General of Israel in Los Angeles stated: “… to really defend the civilized world against the threat of Islamic terrorism.”
Cross-posted from my diary – War Crimes by Moral Desolate IDF Soldiers of Golani Brigade.