You know something on a new level is going on when Bernie Sanders, a Jew who almost became US president, who normally just can’t bring himself to go back tracking on his claim that the war against Hamas must go on, in spite of the fact that everybody and anybody with half a mind releases that the unconditional support for Israel in its methods of mass murder, collective punishment, and revenge attacks, is on the level of being one of Hitler’s Willing Executioners.
To the surprise of many, one could say to cries of disbelief, he seems to be taking a new position in light of what is happening in Palestine, when he posted on his political site that:
Let me be clear: NO MORE US funding for Netanyahu’s illegal, immoral, brutal, and grossly disproportionate war against the Palestinian people. Congress must reject any effort to pass 10 billion USD of unconditional military aid for the right-wing Netanyahu government.
Double Standards/NATO Standards
He went on to explain how, since October 7th, over 22,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli strikes, two-thirds of these victims have been women and children – and another 57,000 have been wounded. It is also worth nothing that the West, especially the US and the Biden Administration, are applying double standards to war and what amounts to genocide.
I’d suggest there is something the Biden Administration and its advisors, political spin doctors, look into, and they should make a comparison of what has gone on with the deliberate targeting of civilians in Belgorod and Gaza and who is guilty of these war crimes. It seems as if the meaning of murder and genocide are shifting these days, as much as are the political winds.
It is also worth comparing the 516 children killed in the SMO in 2 years, with how many the Zionists have killed since October, and with the number, the Ukrainians has killed in Donbass, which is reported to be more than 15,000, let’s not forget all those murdered elsewhere in 2014, when the conflict in Ukraine actually started, such as the people murdered by Ukrainian ultranationalists in Odessa.
And, as they say, timing is everything, with 22 civilians killed and over 100 wounded in the Ukrainian attack on Belgorod the other day. No military targets were attacked, only civilians—which is what I would best describe as selective targeting, and even the timing is carefully selected, as it was with the New Year’s celebrations in Donetsk that were also targeted by Ukraine. Naturally, the reaction was swift, but not with indiscriminate attacks on civilian targets but deliberate retaliatory strikes on confirmed military ones on the part of the Russian Federation.
But if you search for targeting of civilians, in Ukraine, on Google, the first results show that ONLY the Russians are guilty, and that only shows how most of the internet is also part of the game. The European Union condemns in the strongest possible terms the Russian Armed Forces and their proxies of the continued targeting of Ukraine’s civilian population.
Only Amnesty International comes close to the truth by describing how Ukrainian forces have put civilians in harm’s way by establishing bases and operating weapons systems in populated residential areas, and this is the same thing now that Israel is claiming Hamas is doing, and UN facilities are also being targeted by Israel using this excuse, notwithstanding schools, safe zones, and even the Palestinian Red Cross.
There are no safe places, as the New Yorker writes, in Gaza, as everything is in the crosshairs of Israeli retribution, and soon the same scenario may be repeated in Lebanon or the West Bank.
It should come as no surprise that South Africa has filed a case at the main judicial body for the United Nations, the International Court of Justice in The Hague, accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, who by refusing to allow the supply of food and water, is taking actions that are tantamount to war crimes/genocide!
“I believe South Africa will win an order against Israel to cease and desist from committing all acts of genocide against the Palestinians,” says Francis Boyle, an international human rights lawyer who won two requests at the ICJ under the Genocide Convention of 1948 for provisional protection on behalf of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina against Yugoslavia. Boyle says Israel has a history of listening to the United States’ orders to stop its assaults on the Occupied Palestinian Territories. “We here in the United States of America have the power to stop this.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=togLIOLYxT0
To think, people wonder how the Germans let the holocaust be done in their name. They at least had the excuse of ignorance. A few days ago the apparently not following the established agenda, BBC Hardtalk Program dived into the contradiction of the Israel Campaign in Gaza, during an interview with former Israeli PM. Naftali Bennett.
The program was making a comparison to America’s overreaction, in particular highlighting how mistakes were made in response to 9/11, and Israel was not only making the same sort of mistakes but in the process of reacting to Oct 7 was turning the world against Israel, emphasizing even Joe Biden is telling how the indiscriminate bombing is causing Israel to lose its support.
Lots of history here, mostly dating back to the changes in borders and the resulting occupied territories after the Six Day War of 1967, and the core of the problem now faced, is the motivation for a do-or-die proposition for both sides. Unfortunately, Israel is not recognized anymore for its founding principles, and the political Zionism of today has transformed into a geopolitical reality, which is why so many countries, especially Western ones, are willing to apply double and contradictory standards to Israelis and Palestinians, and even different interpretations of what they claim is international law.
It boils down to “who has the right to defend themselves,” the occupied or the occupier?
The situation as such, that without the immediate start of a massive intervention of humanitarian assistance to help the Palestinians, as they are in a state of unprecedented destitute, including those who were displaced to the South who now have nowhere else to go. And with weather conditions are horrible, no food, no water, no medicine or houses, many of the remaining structures in the south housing refugees from the North are being intentionally bombed, with unimaginable carnage in Gaza right now.
That’s a classic way of pushing them out of their land, destroying their homes then hospitals, schools, bakeries, playgrounds, even UN shelters; all this is designed specifically to turn Gaza into an unlivable hell, so what has taken place over the last month and a half was a classic case of ethnic cleansing. Now people are still gathered in huge numbers in the South, people who have been dislocated and forced from the northern Gaza Strip. Israel is now preventing people who wish to return back to their homes in the north, and preventing humanitarian assistance from reaching the north, or any other part of Gaza.
The motivation should be clear. There are definitely double standards, in the application of law, media coverage and fixing responsibility for what is happening before our very eyes. And even when there are deep discussions on the topic, few Palestinians or native born Israelis are on the learned panels, and most of those taking part are focused on their talking points, as they already have their fixed agendas and fixed answers to complicated issues.
It is as if a second Naba is taking place. What Israel did since the beginning of the situation has nothing to do with eradicating Hamas. Instead what Israel is doing is a classic design of a second Naba of ethnic cleansing, leaving three out of every four people living in Gaza displaced from their homes, while Israel tries to force Egypt to allow the entire population to be deported and dumped in the Sinai Peninsula. Those of us old enough to remember the Israeli occupation of Sinai after the 1967 war know what will happen next. The Palestinian refugees will again be labeled; root and branch, men, women and children, as “terrorists” and the Zionists will expand into the Sinai again.
This must be stopped.
Seth Ferris, investigative journalist and political scientist, expert on Middle Eastern affairs, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.