Gaza, Israel and ‘Genocide Joe’
Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair
The slaughter of innocents in Palestine’s Gaza Strip continues unabated. As this is being written the civilian death toll stands at over 9,000. That is more than 9,000 men, women and children, including babies and toddlers, who have been massacred by the brutal, racist apartheid regime of Israel.
Yet U.S. President ‘Genocide Joe’ Biden refuses to call for a ceasefire. He and the Israeli government echo each other in repeating a wide variety of lies. Today, this writer will debunk two of the most common.
1. As Israel bombs hospitals, refugee centers, residents and mosques, and indiscriminately kills journalists – all war crimes – Israeli and U.S. ‘leaders’ proclaim that Hamas is everywhere, and must be destroyed.
This is akin to saying that, in the United States, Republicans are everywhere. There are people who support Hamas working in hospitals, hiding in refugee centers, living in residences and worshipping in mosques, the same as in the U.S. there are people who support the Republican Pary working in hospitals, living in tenements, apartments and private houses, and worshipping in churches and mosques. Hamas was elected as the leadership of Gaza after years of neglect and betrayal by the Fatah government of the traitor Mahmoud Abbas.
And since the United States and a few other nations (Canada, to its everlasting shame) have designated Hamas a terrorist organization, everyone who supports it is an acceptable target for Israeli bombs. So what if a few thousand infants and babies are blown to bits in the process? Their parents, living their lives and trying to support and raise their children, may have been sympathetic to Hamas, and therefore their deaths are perfectly acceptable, according to many government ‘leaders’.
2. Secondly is the seemingly constant refrain that Israel has the right to defend itself. That is completely irrelevant in this situation. Israel is not defending itself; it is further entrenching its illegal and brutal occupation of Palestine.
We will compare this to an, unfortunately, common situation, and allow the readers to determine for themselves if and how the concept of ‘self-defence’ comes into play as Israel carpet-bombs Gaza.
A woman is walking down the street when a man grabs her from behind and drags her into a dark alley, trying to rip off her clothing, intent on raping her. She fights back with whatever she has at her disposal: kicking him, scratching him, spitting in his face, etc. The potential rapist now must fight her harder in order to accomplish his goal of completely overpowering her, confident that he can do so because of her being weaker and nearly powerless against him. He must ‘defend’ himself against her ‘violence’.
Now, according to the logic that Israel has a ‘right to defend itself’ against Hamas, one would have to say that that potential rapist has the ‘right to defend himself’ against the actions of the woman he is attempting to rape.
This writer fails to see the logic in this. The woman is the victim, the one for whom self-defence is important. The rapist is the perpetrator. He is not ‘defending’ himself when he increases his aggression towards his victim.
The parallel situation, which this writer is confident he needn’t point out (but he will, anyway), is that Gaza, and all of Palestine, has long been Israel’s victim. That that victimization has been normalized over a period of seventy-five years in no way diminishes the victimhood of the Palestinian people.
Yet Genocide Joe, Israeli Prime Murderer Netanyahu, Canada’s worthless and incompetent Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (who is only the head of the Party because his long-deceased father remains a revered memory in Canada) and many other so-called leaders eschew any sense of leadership by parroting the mantra of ‘self-defence’ to justify genocide.
On Saturday, this writer joined at least 100,000 (by conservative estimates) people at the Freedom Plaza (we renamed it Gaza Plaza) for a demonstration and march in support of the people of Palestine. This event was held in conjunction with countless others around the world in which people demanded a ceasefire. Even Genocide Joe, who opposes a ceasefire, is said to be trying to convince Netanyahu to have a ‘humanitarian pause’, so such ‘luxuries’ as food, water, fuel and medicine can be brought into the Gaza Strip. Netanyahu is said to be uninterested in any such pause.
Why, one must reasonably ask, does the U.S. have to ‘convince’ the Israeli government to do anything? Simply turn off the money tap that flows so generously from Washington, D.C. to Tel Aviv. Despite the fact that Netanyahu is blind to Genocide Joe’s entreaties, the U.S. is on the verge of approving hundreds of millions of dollars of additional aid to Israel, on top of the $4 billion it gives that apartheid regime every year. Is it unreasonable to believe that, if the U.S. said “no ‘humanitarian pause’, no money’”, that the Prime Murderer might just approve such a pause?
Why does the U.S. not do this? Well, unfortunately, the answer to that is not great mystery. First, the U.S. isn’t interested in such ‘trivialities’ as international law or human rights. If it were, it wouldn’t violate them internationally and within its own borders on a regular basis. And it certainly wouldn’t protect Israel from the consequences of its constant violations of international law and human rights, and accountability for its constant, ongoing war crimes, at the United Nations, as it (the U.S.) finances those crimes.
Secondly, in the U.S., it is not the common person on the street who has any say in governmental policies. No, that is the role of lobby groups, and pro-Israel lobbies are among the most powerful. They donate massive amounts of money to the election and re-election campaigns of U.S. officials. Then, when those candidates are elected to office, the lobby groups write legislation for the officials to introduce. Members of the U.S. governing bodies earn very generous salaries and have few responsibilities: most employees are expected to spend a certain number of days working at their jobs, but this is not required for members of U.S. governance. Oh, they usually show up to vote on legislation that one of their bought-and-paid-for colleagues introduces, if its something they think will resonate with the voters, but even that isn’t required. They can fly around the world on the taxpayers’ dime giving speeches or going on ‘fact-finding’ excursions to exotic places.
Third, the U.S. government has long demonstrated its hostility towards Muslims, at least dating back to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S. Muslims, from then to now, have been demonized, and invading, bombing or otherwise destabilizing mainly-Muslim countries has become common practice for the U.S. Please see Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, Libya – the list goes on. No plane flying the U.S. flag has bombed Palestine (yet), but U.S.-made planes have bombed it with U.S.-made bombs.
So this is where the world finds itself today. Israel is committing genocide against the people of Palestine (let us note that slaughtering people with bombs, preventing their escape, starving them, depriving them of water, electricity and medicine comprise a textbook situation of genocide), with the financial support of the U.S. and the diplomatic support of most of the governments of the Global North. People around the world have shown, and continue to show, their support for Palestine, but the governments of the U.S., Canada and much of Europe aren’t listening; they simply don’t care.
If government officials aren’t responsive to their constituencies, they must be replaced. The U.S. will have a presidential election next year, and while it appears that it will pit one Zionist (Genocide Joe) against another (that hopeless, much-indicted buffoon, Donald Trump), Biden needs to learn that active participation in genocide is not acceptable. Trudeau, in Canada, must be taught the same lesson during Canada’s next election.
This is the message the people around the world must send to those in power. Genocide may be acceptable for government leaders, but they must be held accountable. The ballot box is a good starting point; the International Criminal Court is the next reasonable step.
posted by Satish Sharma at
08:05
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