Only now can we see that there may be more justification than just political mudslinging for Joe Biden being called “Genocide Joe.” Nonetheless, the US is starting to charge its tune over Gaza and the plight of the Palestinians, not out of altruist reasons, or from realizing that Israel has gone too far in getting “its pound of flesh from over the heart”, but instead from basic political pragmatism. This phrase has come to symbolize an insistence on receiving repayment or justice, even if it results in extreme or unreasonable consequences.
Price of murdering innocent civilians
I can see supporting innocent victims of Gaza is right, but certainly not Hamas. Hamas is the evil organization that started the most recent round of violence on 7th October 2023; however, they were created and financially supported in part by Israel in order to undermine the PLO, and by brutally murdering innocent civilians, have ensured there would never be a two-state solution, and that there would be justification of massive ethic clearing, both of which play into the hands of the extremist Israeli government.
Rasha Mubarak, a Palestinian-American organizer, has condemned Israel’s plans to reduce Gaza’s population and [forced] “voluntary migration” out of the territory, which is [effectively] a push for ethnic cleansing.
“It’s not really voluntary when you’re bombing homes and starving the entire population,” Mubarak told Al Jazeera. “People are either being murdered by the state-sanctioned violence and the bombing or being starved.”
Was it Hamas that started it all on October 7 or an Israeli group pretending to be Hamas that started the mess? One thing is clear, and it does not a take a conspiracy theorist to come to the conclusion, that the sudden and deadly attack on Israel gave the “green light” for all that has happened in retaliation in the wake of the initial killing and kidnapping spree.
Two wrongs don’t make a right!
October 7 to Israel is like what 9/11 is to Americans, and these days can be used to justify far worse crimes in retaliation. But in the meantime, Biden’s plan to “help”, presented as if lending a helping hand, portrayed as if an act from the bottom of his heart, but is, in fact, really a heartless act as it does not consider any real solution, just a stop gap measure, like a band-aid for an amputated arm.
Joe Biden, in his recent State of the Union address, said he wants to alleviate the desperate humanitarian situation in Gaza. The American president said he is “directing the US military to lead an emergency mission to establish a temporary pier in the Mediterranean on the Gaza coast that can receive large ships carrying food, water, medicine and temporary shelters”.
But for all practical purposes, it is too little, and a day late and millions of dollars short, as it will take several weeks to be implemented. In addition, it will provide too little relief and too late. It sounds good; however, one phone call could get immediately aid into Gaza via Israel and Egypt without the need to wait for the provision of a temporary pier.
Biden knows that all he has to say is “Just stop it, and if not, we will stop all financial and military aid, and if you think we sanctioned other countries, we can make life in Israel hell on earth!” But he has not got the balls to say that, and his own political and financial support would be cut off, and not only that – his own family jewels.
Rabid Rabbi!
Benjamin Netanyahu and his minions would have to promise to allow for more access routes and not ambush those collecting the aid, not to mention stopping the killing of women and children. But even now, a “rabid rabbi” has called for the IDF not to spare one living thing, not a single soul, in the orgy of revenge that the IDF is inflicting on the population of Gaza.
Eliyahu Mali, an Israeli rabbi, has urged for the killing of women and children in the Gaza Strip as he considers it a justified response under the teachings of Halakha, or Jewish law.
He claims that the Torah does not allow you to let every soul live. “The terrorists of today are the children of the past.” Rabbi Eliyahu Mali, head of a Jewish religious school in Jaffa, urged his IDF students during a lesson he recently gave to kill all Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, including infants, children, women, and the elderly.
He said openly what many are thinking, even those in high posts within the government, who are pushing for the cleansing of Gaza, and even the West Bank; I suppose, eventually, Israeli proper of Israeli Palestinians. Much of the collective mindset that prevails in Israeli society, and worldwide Judaism, is a direct result of political Zionism in its ugliest form.
Israel as a whole has run amok with how it indoctrinates its people – starting from childhood, through to service in the IDF, and this is where fractures lines appear as the meaning of being Jewish and Zionist are actually contradictory ideologies.
This shakes the very moral foundation and pulls at the roots of Israeli society. Israel is a settler based colonial state whose existence depends on the elimination of the Palestinians. Hence, Israel is a deeply militarized society whose citizens are raised in an environment of historical revisionism and indoctrination that whitewashes Israel’s crimes while cultivating a deep-seated racism and ethnic hatred against Palestinians.
The Chris Hedges Report recently hosted a frank conversation on the distortions of history and reality in the foundations of Israeli identity, and how this is, in fact, bringing abouta negative reaction throughout the world, and fueling anti-Israeli and anti-Semetic feelings that are unprecedented since the time of the Holocaust.
It is not as if what is happening in Gaza is the first time that Israel has participated in mass murder, as one only needs to reflect on the Nakba, the massacres of Palestinians in 1948 and 1956– and these are what set the stage for what is happening now—and it is a matter of either you leave or die!
Religion and Zionism have fused in a toxic way that challenges the meaning of Judaism for many and has the potential to fatally erode support for the State of Israel, especially in the generation that was not raised on such movies as “the Exodus”.
“Religious Nationalism is to religion was what National Socialism was to socialism. That is the codification that allowed for Israel to be created in the first place. Our situation will deteriorate to that of a second Vietnam, to a war in constant escalation without prospect of ultimate resolution” explained one Jewish thinker, Yeshayahu Leibowitz (1903-1994) who warned of what a corrupt rabbinic culture would bring forth on the State of Israel.
If he only knew how right he was, with the hate speech of some Rabbis rivalling that of the Nazis, and how that can bring forth more hate and destruction of the Jewish people.
As recent graffiti in a German metro put it, “The ultimate irony is to become what you once hated”
Seth Ferris, investigative journalist and political scientist, expert on Middle Eastern affairs, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.