The Death of Plausible Deniability: An Ethnic Cleansing in Real Time

 

BY KATHLEEN WALLACE

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

Those who knew the history in terms of the plight of the Palestinians and the details for the creation of the modern Israeli state knew what was going on and what was about to happen late last year. We watched in horror as our news media reported in their always slanted manner, calling murdered children minors, using that vile passive voice in every instance of outright murder. We watched fellow Americans taken in by the very well-documented practice of hasbara and largely shook our fists at the sky while our nation funded the ongoing atrocity.

The clarity in terms of a politician’s zealousness in defense of Israeli genocidal practice lines up very well on a graph compared to his or her AIPAC donations (I’m looking at you, you Fetterman, you absolute lumbering, lurching ghoul). This has always been clear to anyone paying attention. The slinging of the ever-loved “antisemitism” branding has been launched towards anyone, even with temerity, voicing “Maybe it’s not okay to level hospitals and murder kids”. Idiotically, this antisemitism branding has even been used against Jewish individuals speaking out against the ongoing atrocity. They’ve been brutalized and beaten for voicing this humanity in the streets of Israel. But it’s only antisemitism if it’s against Zionism by these ridiculous rules. It’s a very bizarre state of affairs well beyond the average American’s ability to parse out. It’s definitely a level of the surreal that is difficult to comprehend.

Those in power offering platitudes for Israeli state actions know in their hearts why they are doing it, and I can’t imagine it sits well if a person has even 1% of functioning humanity within. It’s most certainly spurred by motivations of self-interest, not because they truly support ongoing genocide. The leaders never were the best of us, and it probably isn’t all that difficult for them to compartmentalize. But they should be aware that in the eye of history, they will most certainly be looked at and paired with the most barbaric, their names mingling with the Himmlers and Goebbels for future descendants. Their children’s children will want to change their surnames; it will carry such shame that they came from such utterly depraved ancestors.

The proof of this genocide is already there for anyone looking. Every phone that has captured the sniping of children, of doctors—the bulldozing effects on bodies….it’s all there, in unthinkable detail. It is certainly not secret or hidden; there are even Telegraph accounts showing these atrocities with accompanying “likes” and jokes in Israel. They truly have succeeded at dehumanizing those just miles away from them.

The PR has been fantastic in other nations, nothing so brazen as “likes” with Palestinian snuff films, but more the weaponizing of guilt that decent individuals feel. It’s the rightful shame of humanity due to what was done to the Jewish populations during the Nazi period. The hasbara PR has performed well– purposeful mucking up of the water. It has led those who wish to never again see such inhumanity to blindly support another genocide—it is stolen valor from holocaust victims and it is being used to victimize a whole new group of individuals.

The average American has been either feeling that support for Israel is mandatory because of the holocaust or is merely hiding behind an ignorance of current events. Life is hard here so they really aren’t paying attention to what happens elsewhere. The irony is that part of why life is hard here is because the resources of the state are being shuffled elsewhere, and the safety net here has been shredded worse than old fishnet stockings. 2,000-pound bombs would fund a lot of healthcare.

CNN continues to frame this as the “Israel-Hamas War” and pre-existing anti-Arab racism has conveniently been there to weaponize with some of the population as well. Xenophobic Americans say things like “they are just a bunch of religious nuts” in terms of any group who is primarily Muslim, but ignore that a murderous theocracy is the one doing the theft of land and murder. Palestinians in many instances opened their homes to refugees in the past only to face betrayal–definitely a situation along the lines of what indigenous peoples faced in the Americas. They helped refugees and settlers, then had their land stolen and their loved ones murdered. When they fought back, they were branded “savages”. It is not even a new story that Israel is peddling. So no, this isn’t the “Israel-Hamas War”. This is more along the lines of ….say, a coveted Southern California climate region with great canal potential (and can serve as an outpost of continued Western hegemony) Murder-Theft situation. A home invasion.

The truth is trickling out now in America, though–one would have to be completely blind or unfathomably evil to continue to support what is going on in Gaza. The beyond tone-deaf manner of the Biden administration hosting an iftar dinner (breaking the fast of the recent Muslim holiday) when a full-scale starvation situation is being created is difficult to fathom. Gaslighting is the fuel they are using to cook the food for that celebration, I would say.

So of course the munitions, the backing needed to complete this genocide—it’s all being supplied by the United States. You don’t get to supply all the needed equipment to murderers and then come to the funeral and pretend to care. That’s definitely serial killer actions, Joe Biden. Perhaps that’s the best analogy for the behavior of the United States government right now. Ted Bundy hugging the murdered girl’s mom by the casket kind of actions. I’d even go so far as to say it’s perhaps worse than a run-of-the-mill unhinged serial killer. I say this because in many ways it is a measured and rationalized support to advance the aims of the military-industrial complex. You know, the great evil warned about by Eisenhower. These people know full well that to advance this, it will be required to clear out an entire group of souls who already live there. This is an evil form of deranged pragmatism that is so skewed that in the end it won’t allow the perpetrators to have anything but continued strife abroad and internal strife as well, since even the most callous and uninvolved Americans are getting pissed about the sheer amount of money being spent on anything and everything but the well being of Americans.

Thaer Ahmad, a Palestinian-American physician, walked out of a White House meeting as a form of protest due to the atrocities he has seen– after handing Biden a letter from a Palestinian orphan begging for it to stop. At least this has made the national news. One hopes that even the more slow-witted begin to question their nation’s unwavering support for murder, maiming and starvation. The knee-jerk “well they have hostages” makes little sense when the number of Palestinian hostages held in Israel is taken into account as well. Desperate people try desperate measures, and people will fight back to free their own people. Not to mention that collective punishment is a war crime. Insane Republican politicians in the US are even saying things like “Palestinian babies may not be innocent’. It’s disgusting, and the immediate, visceral response to that is the correct one. You can’t cage people in an apartheid situation intermittently mixed with ethnic cleansing. It is amazing that our level of humanity (in terms of governmental actions) hasn’t progressed beyond this behavior that would have been at home during the Roman Empire.

The absolute audacity of the World Central Kitchen aid worker murders should clarify even further who the villain is in this story. They don’t want people to be fed. Starvation is the goal. Of course, targeted attacks on intellectuals, healthcare workers, reporters…it’s all been happening with great regularity, but this one is getting a bit more traction in the news cycle. Sadly, it’s probably because some white aid workers got killed. But Israel got its way; the agency has ceased activity in terms of feeding the starving.

The fact that we are facing an unprecedented number of pediatric amputees in this world right now says it all. Every single time you see one of these monstrous political class talking heads making excuses, think what your response would be to sending a bomb down that kills or maims kids– and if that kid lives, keeping food from reaching them until they starve. There is no reality or plane of existence where this is acceptable to perpetrate or abet. Yes, I think we’ve hit a tipping point where even the masterful obfuscation will no longer work. There are more of us who believe this is depravity and those in power need to realize that their serial killer hold on all of us is vanishing.

Kathleen Wallace writes out of the US Midwest. Her writing is collected on her Substack page.           

  https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/04/05/the-death-of-plausible-deniability-an-ethnic-cleansing-in-real-time/