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The Common Ills

 

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Israel's War on Gaza: Day 296 (7/28/24)

Iraq snapshot Tuesday, July 30, 2024

 Iraq snapshot

The Common Ills

Tuesday, July 30, 2024.  Gaza remains under assault as the Israeli government attacks a water reservoir, their actions have already made the destroyed area a breeding ground for disease, JD Vance is a "weirdo" and much more.

Where to start?  Well blame it on my wild heart.  For the bulk of this month, we've been calling out Josh Shapiro as a v.p. choice (see Elaine's "Hell no to Shapiro" and Ruth's "Josh Shapiro adds nothing to the ticket" and Rebecca's "shapiro not only supports genocide, he also covers..." and the July 5th snapshot for starters).  Guess who finally got the memo?  Yes, after three weeks of the hideous David Sirota pimping Josh Shapiro, people like Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon finally find the spine to say I object:

Kamala Harris has gained strong support as the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate. Putting Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro on the ticket would likely fracture that support.

The most divisive issue among Democrats is the U.S.-enabled Israeli war against the civilian population of Gaza. To unify the party and defeat Trump’s MAGA forces, Harris needs to distance herself in a meaningful way from Joe Biden’s Gaza policy. If she does so, she can win back the votes and energy of young activists, progressives, racial justice organizers, Arab Americans and Muslims—many of whom devoted weeks or months of their lives in 2020 to defeating Trump on behalf of the Biden-Harris ticket.

But a Harris-Shapiro ticket would jeopardize all that. 

[. . .]

Overall, Josh Shapiro is liberal and sometimes progressive on domestic issues (though notably not on fracking or tax subsidies for private schools). But on the contentious issue of Israel’s relentless war against Palestinian civilians in Gaza, Shapiro sounds much less bothered by the lethal violence than by U.S. ceasefire activists, many of whom he has demonized. Here’s a bit of the history:

In 2021, after Ben & Jerry’s (a company founded and led by Jewish Americans) refused to sell its products in Israel’s illegal settlements, then-Attorney General Josh Shapiro threatened the company by urging Pennsylvania state agencies to enforce a constitutionally suspect law targeting advocates of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel over its discriminatory policies. Shapiro smeared such advocates by claiming that “BDS is rooted in antisemitism” – although the effort has wide support globally, including from many Jews, as a thoroughly nonviolent tactic in advancing Palestinian rights.

After the horrific Hamas attack of October 7, several dozen Pennsylvania-based Muslim groups wrote a letter protesting Governor Shapiro’s one-sided comments: “Not only did you fail to recognize the structural root causes of the conflict, you chose to intentionally ignore the civilian loss of life in Gaza.” Responding to the letter after Israeli bombs and missiles had killed more civilians in Gaza than had been killed by Hamas in Israel on October 7, the governor’s spokesman said: “We all must speak with moral clarity and support Israel’s right to defend itself.”

Last December, after he amplified the Capitol Hill demagoguery of MAGA Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, Gov. Shapiro contributed to the firing of the University of Pennsylvania president. Referring to UPenn’s president, Shapiro said: “I thought her comments were absolutely shameful. It should not be hard to condemn genocide.” By then, after two months of Israeli bombing, more than 17,000 Gazans had been killed, mostly women and children—and later that month, Israel was charged with violations of the Genocide Convention in South Africa’s filing at the International Court of Justice.

In early April, after Democratic governors in other states had called for a ceasefire in Gaza, Muslim leaders in Philadelphia criticized Shapiro for his refusal to do so.

Beginning in late April, Gov. Shapiro and his office repeatedly prodded campuses to “restore order” and take action against student encampments, including the University of Pennsylvania Gaza Solidarity Encampment which called on the college administration to provide greater transparency on university investments, divest from Israel, and reinstate the banned student group Penn Students Against the Occupation.

On May 9, Shapiro invoked student “safety” in demanding the encampment be shut down. Police shut it down the next day, arresting 33. In two different interviews, Shapiro seemed to compare campus ceasefire activists, many of whom are Jewish or students of color, to “white supremacists camped out and yelling racial slurs” and “people dressed up in KKK outfits or KKK regalia making comments about people who’re African American.”

In May, as activism continued to grow over Israel’s lethal violence against civilians in Gaza, Gov. Shapiro issued an order aimed at Israel’s critics that revised his administration’s code of conduct to bar state employees from “scandalous or disgraceful” conduct—a vague and subjective directive criticized by the legal director of Pennsylvania’s ACLU as a possible violation of free speech protections.

In a July 23 post on X, progressive leader and former Ohio State Senator Nina Turner wrote: “Choosing Governor Josh Shapiro for Vice President would be a mistake. Governor Shapiro compared pro-peace protesters to the KKK. That’s simply unacceptable & would stifle the momentum VP Harris has. Hopefully she is looking to build a broad coalition to beat Trump.”

Welcome to the room . . . Sara.

Took your sweet time getting here, didn't you, Norman and Jeff?

That David Sirota wasn't immediately called out for pimping Shapiro (I immediately called him out) goes to how f**ked up the circle-jerk left and 'left' are.

Gaza matters.  Putting Shapiro on the ticket is flipping the bird to all the students who protested on campuses and demanded an end to the assault.

If you don't get how much Gaza matters, grasp that CODEPINK -- that famous organization of 'women' for 'women' and by 'women' -- just published an essay on the topic.  It's a piece written just for their organization -- their organization of women.  

And it's by a man.

CODEPINk has always tried to pretend to be a feminist organization.  But it's not.  The grassroots are probably feminist and they're certainly more radical than the aged leadership -- they're the ones who prevented Susan "Medea" Benjamin from hopping on stage with the Nick Fuentes crowd -- but they are a fake ass organization and they will always remain that just like Medea will turn her weekly column written with a man.  But if they presented themselves as anything other than a woman's organization, they wouldn't get the press they've recieved over the years.

In the real world . . . 

As the slaughter continues in Gaza, the lives of the Palestinians worsen.  The United Nations notes:

Evacuation orders issued by the Israeli military have impacted Nuseirat and Bureij refugee camps, forcing families to relocate “again and again, knowing that safety is non-existent in the Gaza Strip”, said the UN agency assisting Palestine refugees, UNRWA, in a post on X.

More than nine months into the war in Gaza, only 14 per cent of the enclave has not been impacted by evacuation orders, said UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini.  

“Quite often, people have just a few hours to pack whatever they can and start all over again, mostly on foot or on a crowded donkey cart for those who can afford it,” he said. “Almost everyone in Gaza has been impacted by these orders. Many were forced to flee on average once a month since the war began nine months ago.”

Water plant destroyed

In a related development, the UN agency condemned the reported destruction of a water plant in Rafah in southern Gaza, a focus of Israeli military action since early May. 

“Any time, something happens - like what appears to happen in Rafah over the weekend, with a water plant destroyed - it impacts the ability we have to generate water,” said Scott Anderson, UN Deputy Humanitarian Coordinator and Director of UNRWA Affairs in Gaza. The UN agency has been unable to independently assess the situation, he noted. 

Uprooted – again

Echoing the testimonies of forcibly displaced people who are among those assisted by UNRWA, Mr. Anderson recounted how one woman with twins explained the chaos of the upheaval: “She said, yeah, basically, that was one child for each arm and a little backpack, you know, and off they go to try to find safety.”

According to UNRWA, evacuation orders are now issued “every other day”, while UN aid coordination office, OCHA, reported on Friday that humanitarian partners estimated that more than 190,000 Palestinians had been displaced last week in Khan Younis and Deir al Balah, since an evacuation order issued seven days ago.

On the water plant, Servet Gunerigok (ANADOLU AGENCY) reports:

The UN coordinator in Gaza on Monday said there should be compliance with international law after Israel’s bombing of a drinking water reservoir in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip.

"International humanitarian law was very clear what it asks of parties to the conflict, so I don't think you need an additional commentary from me," Sigrid Kaag, senior humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator for Gaza, told Anadolu.

"In the meantime, what we do need, regardless, also in compliance and alignment with international law, is for safe access, safety and security to deliver, and we need to obviously ramp up all facilities that provide water, that we have clean water for the population, that we can provide for sanitation," she added.

The Israeli army has admitted its soldiers were responsible for the bombing of the water reservoir in Tal al-Sultan, and is said to have initiated an investigation.

The incident has raised alarm about the worsening water crisis in the area.

A video circulating online shows an Israeli soldier planting an explosive device at the main water reservoir, which was then detonated.

One of the soldiers posted a video of the explosion on social media with the caption "Destruction of the Tel Sultan water reservoir in honor of Shabbat."

Local institutions and municipalities in Gaza have repeatedly accused the Israeli military of deliberately destroying water networks, wells, and desalination plants, exacerbating the drinking water crisis.

Starvation is used as a weapon, water is denied and destroyed, schools and universities are bombed, the Israeli government is committing War Crimes and destroying life in Gaza.  Their actions are leading to diseases spreading.  AP notes, "Skin diseases are running rampant in Gaza, health officials say. The cause, they say, is the appalling conditions in overcrowded tent camps housing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians driven from their homes, along with the summer heat and the collapse of sanitation that has left pools of open sewage amid 10 months of Israel’s bombardment and offensives in the territory."  Yasmine Hassan (CBC) explains:

As of June 30, there were over 65,000 cases of skin rashes in Gaza, and over 100,000 cases of scabies and lice, according to the World Health Organization. 

Impetigo, the infection that Dr. Al-Farra is treating at Nasser, is common and mainly affects children and infants. It starts with a blister and, after about a week, spreads to the rest of the body, and is highly contagious. The reddish sores, often found around the nose, mouth, arms and legs, eventually burst and develop a crust. It's typically treated with antibiotics.

But Nasser Hospital has been overwhelmed by patient demand after being sieged in February by Israeli troops. At the time, an Israeli spokesperson described that raid as "precise and limited," and said the IDF had credible information of Hamas members hiding in Nasser, which Hamas called "lies." The raid displaced some 2,000 people to Rafah and Deir al-Balah. 

In addition, REUTERS notes, "Gaza’s health ministry declared a polio epidemic across the Palestinian enclave, blaming Israel’s military offensive."

At TRUTHOUT, Sharon Zhang writes:

Nour Odeh, Palestinian political analyst and former spokesperson for the Palestinian Authority, noted that the sheer proportion of Gaza that is being evacuated and attacked confirms that Israel’s siege of Gaza is an ethnic cleansing campaign.

“These are not ‘evacuation’ orders. They’re ethnic cleansing tactics,” Odeh wrote on social media.

It has been reported for months that there is nowhere safe to go for Palestinians in Gaza, with danger from Israel’s bombardments and famine and disease campaign lurking around every corner. This danger has only intensified as Israel has shrunk the area of Gaza that is not subject to evacuation, while escalating its horrific humanitarian aid blockade and destruction of the medical system.

One of the only places left that isn’t under evacuation, the “safe zone” in al-Mawasi, is now completely full, the Palestine Red Crescent Society reported last week. Before being designated as a “safe zone,” al-Mawasi was already deemed unlivable, with the stretch of desert lacking basically any infrastructure. Indeed, conditions in al-Mawasi are worse than elsewhere, with access to water and toilets severely limited, even when compared to the extremely low access available to Palestinians elsewhere in Gaza.

“In the so-called ‘humanitarian area’ in Al-Mawasi, there is no space even for a single tent due to the overwhelming number of people desperate for safety,” said the Red Crescent. 

Gaza remains under assault. Day 298 of  the assault in the wave that began in October.  Binoy Kampmark (DISSIDENT VOICE) points out, "Bloodletting as form; murder as fashion.  The ongoing campaign in Gaza by Israel’s Defence Forces continues without stalling and restriction.  But the burgeoning number of corpses is starting to become a challenge for the propaganda outlets:  How to justify it?  Fortunately for Israel, the United States, its unqualified defender, is happy to provide cover for murder covered in the sheath of self-defence."   CNN has explained, "The Gaza Strip is 'the most dangerous place' in the world to be a child, according to the executive director of the United Nations Children's Fund."  ABC NEWS quotes UNICEF's December 9th statement, ""The Gaza Strip is the most dangerous place in the world to be a child. Scores of children are reportedly being killed and injured on a daily basis. Entire neighborhoods, where children used to play and go to school have been turned into stacks of rubble, with no life in them."  NBC NEWS notes, "Strong majorities of all voters in the U.S. disapprove of President Joe Biden’s handling of foreign policy and the Israel-Hamas war, according to the latest national NBC News poll. The erosion is most pronounced among Democrats, a majority of whom believe Israel has gone too far in its military action in Gaza."  The slaughter continues.  It has displaced over 1 million people per the US Congressional Research Service.  Jessica Corbett (COMMON DREAMS) points out, "Academics and legal experts around the world, including Holocaust scholars, have condemned the six-week Israeli assault of Gaza as genocide."   The death toll of Palestinians in Gaza is grows higher and higher.  United Nations Women noted, "More than 1.9 million people -- 85 per cent of the total population of Gaza -- have been displaced, including what UN Women estimates to be nearly 1 million women and girls. The entire population of Gaza -- roughly 2.2 million people -- are in crisis levels of acute food insecurity or worse."   THE NATIONAL notes, "Gaza death toll rises to 39,400 killed with 90,996 wounded." Months ago,  AP  noted, "About 4,000 people are reported missing."  February 7th, Jeremy Scahill explained on DEMOCRACY NOW! that "there’s an estimated 7,000 or 8,000 Palestinians missing, many of them in graves that are the rubble of their former home."  February 5th, the United Nations' Phillipe Lazzarini Tweeted:  

April 11th, Sharon Zhang (TRUTHOUT) reported, "In addition to the over 34,000 Palestinians who have been counted as killed in Israel’s genocidal assault so far, there are 13,000 Palestinians in Gaza who are missing, a humanitarian aid group has estimated, either buried in rubble or mass graves or disappeared into Israeli prisons.  In a report released Thursday, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said that the estimate is based on initial reports and that the actual number of people missing is likely even higher."

As for the area itself?  Isabele Debre (AP) reveals, "Israel’s military offensive has turned much of northern Gaza into an uninhabitable moonscape. Whole neighborhoods have been erased. Homes, schools and hospitals have been blasted by airstrikes and scorched by tank fire. Some buildings are still standing, but most are battered shells."  Kieron Monks (I NEWS) reports, "More than 40 per cent of the buildings in northern Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, according to a new study of satellite imagery by US researchers Jamon Van Den Hoek from Oregon State University and Corey Scher at the City University of New York. The UN gave a figure of 45 per cent of housing destroyed or damaged across the strip in less than six weeks. The rate of destruction is among the highest of any conflict since the Second World War."

In US election news, we'll note this from yesterday's DEMOCRACY NOW!

AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to Renee Bracey Sherman. She’s a reproductive justice activist. And she wrote a very interesting piece in Teen Vogue. And it’s called — the piece is called “JD Vance Doesn’t Want All Women to Be Trad Wives, Just White Women.” Explain, Renee.

RENEE BRACEY SHERMAN: Well, hi, Amy. Thanks for having me. And I should just let your audience know that — full disclosure — I am a childless cat lady. I am fine with that, and my life is amazing.

But what I think is really important is, people have maybe seen this trad wife phenomena on TikTok, where usually white women are making these videos about how amazing it is to make everything from scratch, and this idyllic, like, 1950s home life, and how great it is just to be home and opt out of the working society, right? And these are videos that are basically propaganda for the world that people like JD Vance want.

But what we have to think about is, if you actually look at history, women of color have never been part of that idyllic society, right? Women of color always had to work, whether they were wet nurses and enslaved women and being abused by white women on plantations during slavery, to when they were working in the 1950s. They were still in the homes — right? — because of mass incarceration, family separation, all of these things. They did not get the choice to decide: “Well, do I stay home, or do I work?” With low wages, without access to social safety net supports because of racist barriers, they’ve always had to work.

And so, when JD Vance talks about what this future looks like, where he wants women at home, he’s picturing white women. He is very sure that he wants white women to be at home procreating, while the rest of us are laboring under capitalism, so he and his donors can keep making more and more money off of our backs and off of our low wages.

AMY GOODMAN: So, can you talk more about the issue of Vance’s views on gender, sex and marriage, and what it means, why he is attacking people who don’t have children, and being very focused on the nuclear family? It can’t even be, as in the case of Kamala Harris, stepchildren.

RENEE BRACEY SHERMAN: I mean, the short answer is he’s a weirdo. The longer answer is he’s a white supremacist, and he’s a white nationalist. He believes that the only children are ones that are physically born through natural birth conception. Those are the ones that are legitimate, right? Which is wild, because he promotes adoption as an alternative to abortion, which it is not, but then attacks Pete Buttigieg for adopting children, right? Again, he has this view that certain families are valuable. And that is families that are white, that have natural children, that have, you know, single — or, heterosexual parents.

He does not recognize that this world, we make our families in lots of different ways. Divorce, stepparents, adoption, abortion, all of these ways that we make our families, that is the reproductive future that we’re all building together. He cannot stand that. He cannot stand that fighting for abortion access, fighting for reproductive justice, all of this, ensures that we are able to decide if, when and how to grow our family. It terrifies him.

AMY GOODMAN: In other news about JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee has written the foreword to the forthcoming book by Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, head of Project 2025. Trump’s campaign has disavowed any connection to Project 2025, a radical, almost thousand-page Republican blueprint to overhaul U.S. policy on everything from immigration to reproductive rights to the climate. Can you talk about the MAGA right’s views on reproductive rights in particular, what you think a Trump-Vance White House would mean for reproductive rights?

RENEE BRACEY SHERMAN: I mean, a Trump-Vance White House, for reproductive rights and abortion access, is terrifying. If you care about abortion, if you care about IVF, if you care about sex, if you like having sex, if you like having sex with whoever you want, if you like sex toys, all of those things could be gone, right? This is the modern-day Comstock. Anthony Comstock, in the mid-1800s, used the mail service to try to ban contraceptions, pornography, sex toys, all of these things, right? Project 2025 is just the updated version of that. And Vance is just the updated version of Anthony Comstock.

So, anything that you love about your sex life, your family, the freedoms that you get to have to build the families that you care about, that you love, build your life, that is under threat with this Project 2025. And I really hope that people pay attention to that, in a way that they didn’t necessarily hear us when we said that Roe could and would be overturned. Please listen to us right now, that they are very serious about this. This is not a pipe dream. They wrote it down. It is their goal. And they will stop at nothing to achieve it.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about how Vance’s personal background and professional history cast doubts on his public stance on gender roles in family life, married to a very high-powered, successful working woman, quit her law firm the week of the Republican convention? On Friday, Vance was asked about his wife in an interview with Megyn Kelly.

SEN. JD VANCE: Look, I love my wife so much. I love her because she’s who she is. Obviously, she’s not a white person. And we’ve been attacked by some white supremacists over that. But I just — I love Usha. She’s such a good mom.

AMY GOODMAN: Your response, Renee?

RENEE BRACEY SHERMAN: I mean, he’s a weirdo. Like, it is wild to me that you are married to a woman of color, and you can’t see her as anything other than not a white person and a mom, right? But that’s who he is. He has such a worldview in which — that whiteness is the default — that is the thing that we focus on — that women’s role in society is to have children. And I think it’s terrifying that he can’t see us for anything else, that he — as I wrote in the piece, you know, he enjoyed them being a power couple, until he needed to achieve the higher echelons of power, and then she had to give up hers. I think he believes that women are there to be subservient to men like him. And it is a really terrifying future in which we don’t get to decide what our futures are, particularly that women of color need to serve white men like him.

AMY GOODMAN: Renee Bracey Sherman, I want to thank you for being with us, reproductive justice activist and writer, founder and co-executive director of We Testify. We’ll link to your piece in Teen Vogue, “JD Vance Doesn’t Want All Women to Be Trad Wives, Just White Women.” Her forthcoming book is titled Liberating Abortion: Claiming Our History, Sharing Our Stories, and Building the Reproductive Future We Deserve.

Next up, we speak with Politico reporter Ian Ward about “The Seven Thinkers and Groups That Have Shaped JD Vance’s Unusual Worldview.” Back in a minute.

We're out of space but we've been noting the Friday Green Zone shooting where someone in/on the US Embassy shot a gun and wounded a woman in a nearby apartment who was praying.  MIDDLE EAST MONITOR becomes the first US outlet to note the shooting.  We'll go into this tomorrow but I'm noting it now to give them credit.

Millions of People Threatened as Funds for Humanitarian Aid Fall to Record Low

Millions of People Threatened as Funds for Humanitarian Aid Fall to Record Low

By Bharat Dogra

Global Research,

At a time when trillions of dollars are being wasted annually on weapons, high

luxury and wasteful consumption as well gigantic projects of highly suspect usefulness, the most urgently needed funds to save human lives, including those of children, in humanitarian crisis situations are just not available.

It is difficult to believe, but the hard fact is that the much needed funds for humanitarian assistance of critical importance are falling short to the extent of about 90 per cent or so.

In its update published on May 31, 2024 (Global Humanitarian Overview or GHO) the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has stated that population in need of humanitarian assistance at world level in year 2024 is 308 million. However keeping in view the fund constraints OCHA is targeting only 187 million people needing humanitarian assistance in 71 countries. For this OCHA needs funds amounting to 48.6 billion dollars in 2024. However up to May 2024 it had received only 7.8 billion dollars. Hence the gap was about 40.6 billion dollars (48.6 minus 7.8).

By the end of June the amount raised had risen to about 9 billion dollars. In other words only about 18 per cent of funds needed were available, leaving a gap of about 82 per cent.

However while examining this number please keep in mind that OCHA is targeting only 187 million people out of the 308 people in need. If all the people in need are considered, then the available funds would equal only 10 per cent of what is needed, or perhaps even less.

This is an amazing reflection of the kind of world we are living in, where over a thousand billion dollars are being thoughtlessly, in fact cruelly, spent on prolonging horrible wars and weapon-piles but a hundred billion dollars cannot be spared for saving highly endangered human lives, including children and expectant or breastfeeding mothers, in the worst affected humanitarian crisis areas.

Worldwide Military Spending Reaches $2400 Billion. Plenty of Money for Weapons. Shortfall in Funds for United Nations (OCHA) Humanitarian Endeavours

Of course there is spending other than the one mobilized by OCHA or outside its network on humanitarian assistance, but then there are also many other people needing help due to extreme hunger, deprivation and insecurity who are left out in the OCHA estimate. Even if all data are included, the conclusion is inescapable that the overwhelming majority of the people who need urgent humanitarian help are not getting this, or else what they are getting falls fall short of their needs.

In addition whatever little help is available is not being distributed equally. Urgent needs of millions of people are being neglected to a horrible extent. This includes people of several countries like Burkina Faso, Niger, Mali, Myanmar and Afghanistan which are not on the priority lists of main donor countries.

The conditions are so alarming in several places that several refugees and displaced people, who have been denied help needed to survive, are returning to home places amidst continuing conditions of high insecurity and may be killed.

Clearly there is very urgent need for raising humanitarian aid funds at least to the levels targeted by OCHA, while remembering that these are only modest targets and are not adequate for meeting humanitarian needs. Next year higher targets should be set and these should be met. In addition there is great urgency of ending various conflicts as early as possible. The number of conflicts has increased in recent times and higher numbers of people are caught in them. Conflicts are also getting more prolonged than before and possibilities of peace agreements for ending wars and conflicts have been significantly reduced. This is a very important cause of the increasing number of people needing humanitarian assistance. In addition, apart from the shortage of funding, conflicts also create conditions in which it becomes more difficult to take relief to people caught in conflicts.

Even after several conflicts end, in view of the devastation caused by them, need for humanitarian assistance in these regions will continue. Hence clearly two of the world’s biggest priorities should be to bring very early peace in various conflict zones and to raise the funds needed to provide humanitarian assistance in adequate ways.

*

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Bharat Dogra is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include Protecting Earth for Children, Planet in Peril, A Day in 2071 and India’s Quest for Sustainable Farming and Healthy Food. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © Bharat Dogra, Global Research, 2024 

Only a Failing US Empire Would be So Blind as to Cheer Netanyahu and His Genocide

Only a Failing US Empire Would be So Blind as to Cheer Netanyahu and His Genocide

Every empire falls. Its collapse becomes inevitable once its rulers lose all sense of how absurd and abhorrent they have become

By Jonathan Cook

Global Research, July 30, 2024

Middle East Eye  

There is only one country in the world right now, in the midst of Israel’s slaughter in Gaza, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is guaranteed dozens of standing ovations from the vast majority of its elected representatives. 

That country is not Israel, where he has been a hugely divisive figure for many years. It is the United States. 

On Wednesday, Netanyahu was back-slapped, glad-handed, whooped and cheered as he slowly made his way – hailed at every step as a conquering hero – to the podium of the US Congress. 

This was the same Netanyahu who has overseen during the past 10 months the slaughter – so far – of some 40,000 Palestinians, around half of them women and children. More than 21,000 other children are reported missing, most of them likely dead under rubble. 

It was the same Netanyahu who levelled a strip of territory – originally home to 2.3 million Palestinians – that is expected to take 80 years to rebuild, at a cost of at least $50bn.

It was the same Netanyahu who has destroyed every hospital and university in Gaza, and bombed almost all of its schools that were serving as shelters for families made homeless by other Israeli bombs.

It was the same Netanyahu whose arrest is being sought by the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, accused of using starvation as a weapon of war by imposing an aid blockade that has engineered a famine across Gaza. 

It was the same Netanyahu whose government was found last week by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to have been intensifying Israel’s apartheid rule over the Palestinian people in an act of long-term aggression.

It was the same Netanyahu whose government is standing trial for committing what the ICJ, the world’s highest judicial body, has termed a “plausible genocide”. 

And yet, there was just one visible protester in the congressional chamber. Rashida Tlaib, the only US legislator of Palestinian heritage, sat silently grasping a small black sign. On one side it said: “War criminal”. On the other: “Guilty of genocide.”

One person among hundreds mutely trying to point out that the emperor was naked.

Cocooned From Horror

Indeed, the optics were stark. 

This looked less like a visit by a foreign leader than a decorated elder general being welcomed back to the Senate in ancient Rome, or a grey-haired British viceroy from India embraced in the motherland’s parliament, after brutally subduing the “barbarians” on the fringes of empire.  

This was a scene familiar from history books: of imperial brutality and colonial savagery, recast by the seat of the imperium as valour, honour, civilisation. And it looked every bit as absurd, and abhorrent, as it does when we look back on what happened 200 or 2,000 years ago. 

It was a reminder that, despite our self-serving claims of progress and humanitarianism, our world is not very different from the way it has been for thousands of years. 

It was a reminder that power elites like to celebrate the demonstration of their power, cocooned both from the horrors faced by those crushed by their might, and from the clamour of protest of those horrified by the infliction of so much suffering. 

It was a reminder that this is not a “war” between Israel and Hamas – let alone, as Netanyahu would have us believe, a battle for civilisation between the Judeo-Christian world and the Islamic world.

This is a US imperial war – part of its military campaign for “global, full-spectrum dominance” – carried out by Washington’s most favoured client state. 

The genocide is fully a US genocide, armed by Washington, paid for by Washington, given diplomatic cover by Washington, and – as the scenes in Congress underlined – cheered on by Washington. 

Palestinians line up to fetch some water in a refugee camp in Gaza. (Photo: Mahmoud Ajjour, The Palestine Chronicle)

Or as Netanyahu stated in a moment of unintentional candour to Congress:

“Our enemies are your enemy, our fight is your fight, and our victory will be your victory.”

Israel is Washington’s largest military outpost in the oil-rich Middle East. The Israeli army is the Pentagon’s main battalion in that strategically important region. And Netanyahu is the outpost’s commander in chief. 

What is vital to Washington elites is that the outpost is supported at all costs; that it doesn’t fall to the “barbarians”.

Outpouring of Lies

There was another small moment of inadvertent truth amid Netanyahu’s outpouring of lies. The Israeli prime minister stated that what was happening in Gaza was “a clash between barbarism and civilisation”. He was not wrong. 

On the one side, there is the barbarism of the current joint Israeli-US genocide against the people of Gaza, a dramatic escalation of the 17-year Israeli siege of the enclave that preceded it, and the decades of belligerent rule under an Israeli system of apartheid before that.

And on the other side, there are the embattled few desperately trying to safeguard the West’s professed values of “civilisation”, of international humanitarian law, of the protection of the weak and vulnerable, of the rights of children.

The US Congress decisively showed where it stood: with barbarism. 

Netanyahu has become the most feted foreign leader in US history, invited to speak to Congress four times, surpassing even Britain’s wartime leader, Winston Churchill.

He is fully Washington’s creature. His savagery, his monstrousness is entirely made in America. As he implored his US handlers: “Give us the tools faster and we’ll finish the job faster.” 

Finish the job of genocide.

Performative Dissent

Some Democrats preferred to stay away, including party power broker Nancy Pelosi. Instead, she met families of Israeli hostages held in Gaza – not, of course, Palestinian families whose loved ones in Gaza had been slaughtered by Israel. 

Vice President Kamala Harris explained her own absence as a scheduling conflict. She met the Israeli prime minister, as did President Joe Biden, on Thursday. 

Afterwards, she claimed to have pressed Netanyahu on the “dire” humanitarian situation in Gaza but stressed too that Israel “had a right to defend itself” – a right that Israel specifically does not have, as the ICJ pointed out last week, because Israel is the one permanently violating the rights of the Palestinians through its prolonged occupation, apartheid rule and ethnic cleansing.

But the dissent of Pelosi – and of Harris, if that is what it was – was purely performative. True, they have no personal love for Netanyahu, who has so closely allied himself and his government with the US Republican right and former president Donald Trump.

But Netanyahu simply serves as an alibi. Both Pelosi and Harris are stalwart supporters of Israel – a state that, according to the ICJ’s judgment last week, decades ago instituted apartheid rule in the Palestinian territories, using an illegal occupation as cover to ethnically cleanse the population there. 

Their political agenda is not about ending the annihilation of the people of Gaza. It is acting as a safety valve for popular dissatisfaction among traditional Democratic voters shocked by the scenes from Gaza.

It is to deceive them into imagining that behind closed doors, there is some sort of policy fight over Israel’s handling of the Palestinian issue. That voting Democrat will one day – one very distant day – lead to an undefined “peace”, a fabled “two-state solution” where Palestinian children won’t keep dying in the interests of preserving the security of Israel’s illegal settler-militias.

US policy towards Israel has not changed in any meaningful sense for decades, whether the president has been red or blue, whether Trump has been in the White House or Barack Obama. 

And if Harris becomes president – admittedly, a big if – US arms and money will continue flowing to Israel, while Israel will get to decide if US aid to Gaza is ever allowed in. 

Why? Because Israel is the lynchpin in a US imperial project for global full-spectrum dominance. Because for Washington to change course on Israel, it would also have to do other unthinkable things. 

It would have to begin dismantling its 800 military bases around the planet, just as Israel was told by the ICJ last week to dismantle its dozens of illegal settlements on Palestinian territory.

The US would need to agree a shared global security architecture with China and Russia, rather than seek to bully and batter these great powers into submission with bloody proxy wars, such as the one in Ukraine. 

The Coming Fall

Pelosi, remember, smeared students on US campuses protesting Israel’s plausible genocide in Gaza as being linked to Russia. She urged the FBI to investigate them for pressuring the Biden administration to support a ceasefire. 

Netanyahu, in his address to Congress, similarly demonised the demonstrators – in his case, by accusing them of being “useful idiots” of Israel’s main foe, Iran. 

Neither can afford to recognise that millions of ordinary people across the US think it is wrong to bomb and starve children – and to use a war with an unachievable aim as the cover story.

Hamas cannot be “eliminated” through Israel’s current bout of horrifying violence for a very obvious reason: the group is a product, a symptom, of earlier bouts of horrifying Israeli violence. 

As even western counter-terrorism experts have had to concede, Israel’s genocidal policies in Gaza are strengthening Hamas, not weakening it. Men and boys who lose their family to Israeli bombs are Hamas’s most fervent new recruits.

That’s why Netanyahu insisted Israel’s military offensive – the genocide – in Gaza could not end soon. He demanded weapons and money to keep his soldiers in the enclave indefinitely, in an operation he termed as “demilitarisation and deradicalisation”. 

Decoded, that means a continuing horror show for the Palestinians there, as they are forced to continue living and dying with an Israeli aid blockade, starvation, bombs and unmarked “kill zones”. 

It means, too, an indefinite risk of Israel’s war on Gaza spilling over into a regional war, and potentially a global one, as tripwires towards escalation continue to grow in number.

The US Congress, however, is too blinded by championing its small fortressed state in the Middle East to think about such complexities. Its members roared “USA!” to their satrap from Israel, just as Roman senators once roared “Glory!” to generals whose victories they assumed would continue forever. 

The rulers of the Roman empire no more saw the coming fall than their modern counterparts in Washington can. But every empire falls. And its collapse becomes inevitable once its rulers lose all sense of how absurd and abhorrent they have become.

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Jonathan Cook is the author of three books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His website and blog can be found at www.jonathan-cook.net

Featured image: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a joint meeting of Congress at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., July 24, 2024. (Reuters Photo)

The original source of this article is Middle East Eye

Copyright © Jonathan Cook, Middle East Eye, 2024