Unless you’ve been in some ebola quarantine for the past year you already know there’s been a widening war in the Middle East, picking up steam like a plurality of fusing hurricanes. News anchors keep speaking as though we’re merely nearing it, but like in a fog bank, it’s already here. A glance backward will illustrate we can’t see a foot in front of our faces. We may not think we’re in war theater yet, but 40,000 of our recently deployed troops would beg to differ, and many during WWII may have been straining to see through the fog of war, but no one today would deny that era’s holocaust. Not sanely, anyway.
But plenty of people are denying the present one. Denying it or reveling in it. Israeli authorities argue that the Palestinian arabs instigated it, even though a thorough investigation has yet to be run by the UN, ICJ, UNICEF, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’tsalem, or the myriads of other humanitarian-aid groups. News anchors and correspondents repeat what they’re told by the executive or legislative authorities, who in turn repeat what they’re told by their AIPAC handlers, and every congressperson – apart from “The Squad” – allegedly has at least one. Surely, others have a constellation of them.
Most reading this “know” about Hamas’s 10/07/23 offensive and will argue they know enough, but Israel’s institution of the Hannibal directive – shooting hostages so Hamas would have less leverage on the Israeli leadership – was in effect on that day. And many of the attendants at the Nova music festival were indeed IDF. Anyone over eighteen was, as conscription into it is a national mandate. So, we don’t really know just how many of the 1250 victims were killed by Hamas or the IDF itself.
But I’m not writing this editorial to cast or reflect blame on the progenitors of this very asymmetrical conflict. This is no longer about rectitude. Netanyahu will not commit to a ceasefire, right or not – “victory” or not – indeed, “surrender” or not. He will not commit to a ceasefire with regard to Gaza or not. The West Bank or not. Lebanon or not. Regarding any arabs among my readership, this is about revenge, whatever the Israeli leadership may claim. They will fight whether you do or not, and either way you will die.
The canard that Hamas or the PA has rejected peace negotiations is laughable. Israel has never made a good faith offer, whatever else you may have heard about Hamas’s or the Palestinian Authority’s “bad faith.” Find that claim abominable? Let Israel’s leadership lay the minutes of those multiple negotiations out for the world to see. Declassify them, Bibi. Then talk to us about “bad faith.” I’ll retract this missive and heartily apologize for it, which is more apologia than you will ever issue.
Because Israeli’s have the right to defend themselves, didn’t you know? They have the right to deny others of their rights, didn’t you know? They have the right to rape Palestinian detainees, didn’t you know? They have the right to slaughter however many civilians they see fit, however many schools, hospitals, UN buildings, or places of worship as they see fit.
Because Hamas hides itself among its Palestinian population, didn’t you know? Prior to this conflict 15,714 Gazans were packed into that strip per square mile (140 square miles total). I’m not excusing Hamas’s bloody aggression on October 7th last year, but how could Hamas avoid “using” their fellow countrymen as “human shields” when they had next to no room to operate?
Of course, Hamas was supposed to simply knuckle under to a 76-year-old regional occupation. Deniers of this occupation claim the IDF pulled out of Gaza in 2006, implying that Hamas has no leg to stand on regarding Israeli occupation. Only occupation need not require a physical presence – not when the said occupier still controlled the occupant’s access to water, food, medicine, electricity, opportunity, or agency; let alone control over their proximal sea, land, and airspace. Whatever were Hamas left but resisting underground?
Surely, the author of this essay is an antisemite. Weren’t all the Jews who stood in solidarity with the scores of worldwide peace protesters? The same Jews who opposed the mass murder in their name. Jews like me. Surely, I’m financed by Iran even though my bank records won’t reflect it. Surely, I get my payments from cleverly hidden drop sites. Who’d have suspected that some 40% of America’s Jewry are amply compensated by Iran? Republican think tanks take note; Iran has influence peddled at least 4/10 Jews here because almost half of Jews hate other Jews, didn’t you know? Now you do.
These suppositions that American congresspeople entertain are an insult to anyone, Jew or not, who experience dismay, disgust, and general disenchantment at the wonton slaughter of 41,500 people (a low-rung estimate) in only one year. 58,220 American Viet Nam soldiers died over the course of twenty years. Are we supposed to feel a faint malaise over all this ground meat manufacture?
I’ve heard pundits like Piers Morgan brow beat their guests: “Do you condemn Hamas for their aggression on October 7th ?” All things being equal, I might have agreed with Piers, but all things are not equal and haven’t been since Israel became a nation. It’s here to stay, however else any of us may feel about it, but that doesn’t absolve Israel’s responsibility to its Palestinians. Said denizens have not enjoyed the equality “the Middle East’s only democracy” has been able to bestow upon its more favored subjects.
But, once again, I didn’t draft this epistle to cast blame so much as offer a solution.
The IDF is able to prosecute its “war” (however asymmetrical) thanks to its patron, the USA. We equip it with boatloads of money and weaponry – almost $158 billion adjusted for inflation over the past three quarters of a century. That would leave the onus on our nation to stop said procurement – on our representatives who have turned deaf ears to those of us who’d take issue with this revolting hamburger factory. Many of these representatives have decided to employ whataboutism. They claim there are over fifty conflicts worldwide: why my focus on this one?
This one. Your tax dollars don’t fund Sudan, Myanmar, Haiti, Congo, or more than three dozen other international conflicts that beset the planet. They fund Ukraine and Israel, and last I checked Ukraine hasn’t executed nearly the number of war crimes Israel – an ethno-state – has against its own minorities and next-door neighbors.
“The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” – Edmond Burke. Everyone’s heard the platitude.
But up till now many of us have done nothing. Nothing determinative. Me included.
Before Kamala Harris seized Joe Biden’s baton for presidential candidacy I was enraged by my recourse over our government’s representatives (Democrats and Republicans) depraved indifference to human life. I understand Israel is an ally and the USA has deep vested interests in it, both militarily and commercially, but our returns keep diminishing by virtue of this diplomatic blight. Now that Harris has become the left wing’s only hope it confounds me that our choices are Trump – who’s made it clear he’d support Israel’s ambition to annex the West Bank (something already in motion) were he to win – or her. She’s already made clear that her advocacy for Gazans is toothless. She emblazons “ceasefire” and “two-state solution” even though she’s already declared she won’t implement an arms embargo, the only thing that would serve as leverage against Israel, let alone open peace talks for some solution, one or two-stated. This means she’s throwing the Palestinians to the IDF wolves. And if there’s one thing I hate in our hyper-polarized politics it’s when some politician implies in so many words: “Yeah, you’re unhappy. But where else are you gonna go?” My revulsion is something shared, whatever your political alignment.
It also means to do something – rather than nothing – the onus is on us. Netanyahu implemented the Hannibal doctrine to keep Hamas’s hostages from becoming an impediment to his response efforts. To achieve something substantive, I believe we must take a similar role, but not militarily. Rather economically. And morally. The BDS movement was founded twenty years prior to this international abomination. Boycott, Divestment, Sanction. I’m casting into the aether a BDS movement on the American consumer. That is, a petition for the UN participants to sanction the USA.
Not enough Republicans are in this fight. I grant some of them take issue with this
conflict, if for no other reason the treasure we keep throwing into this international hole. Should UN sanctions occur, our blessed corporations would not absorb that pain. They’d pass it on to you, the American consumers. They’d gouge prices more than they already are as well as lay off workers in vast numbers, as demand for US goods would plummet due to their higher costs. And then we’d see just how much allegiance the Republicans have to Israel after the price of goods (oil included) balloon beyond their already pornographic scope.
This problem has persisted 76 years because we won’t feel our neighbor’s pain. If we’re so supportive of Israel and its inhumane Hannibal doctrine we should find no moral hypocrisy in playing Russian roulette with ourselves.
Come the day we’re all paying $6 per gallon at the pump I think Republicans and
Democrats would finally experience accord with each other about foreign influence on our shared “small d” democracy. And then maybe we can address the equally obscene canard that the 2010 Citizens United Decision is some kind of net win for American free speech.
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