By Deisy Francis Mexidor on October 23, 2023 in Washington DC
Children trembling with fear from Israeli bombs, bodies wrapped in white sheets, destruction, U.S. citizens watch today on TV, as the news of the day, Israel’s genocide in Gaza continues to unfold.
President Joe Biden made his message to the nation last week, a day after the hug and handshake with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv, a soapbox moment to drive home to Americans the need for continued unflinching support for Israel.
But the majority does not want that narrative of horror to continue. A recent poll found that 66 percent of Americans are calling for a cease-fire in the besieged Gaza Strip.
Often the matrix of the media is even more perplexing. Amid the images of terror emerge the stories of Israeli civilians, of the two captives freed by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas). No one asks who is rescuing the Palestinians.
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and her colleague Rashida Tlaib (Mich.), are the only two Muslim women in Congress, and they have been outspoken critics of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.
There have, however, been a handful of progressive Democrats who urged the Biden administration to push for a cease-fire amid Israel’s war against Hamas, which erupted on October 7.
According to a Democratic aide, Omar, Tlaib and other progressives who have criticized Israel were briefed by federal Capitol Police and the House Sergeant at Arms to warn them about possible threats.
“I can’t believe I have to beg my country and my colleagues to value every human life, regardless of faith or ethnicity,” Tlaib wrote in an X post.
Last week a high level State Department official announced his resignation because he claimed he could not work “in support of a set of important policy decisions, including sending more weapons to one side of the conflict.”
For Josh Paul those provisions are “short-sighted, destructive, unfair and contradictory to the very values we publicly espouse.”
Paul, who spent 11 years as director of public and congressional affairs for the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, wrote in his resignation letter that Washington’s current position contradicts everything he was taught to support.
The United States proclaims its advocacy of “a world built around a rules-based order, a world that promotes both equality and fairness, and a world whose arc of history bends toward the promise of liberty and justice for all,” Paul noted in expressing his frustration.
“Decades of this same approach have shown that security for peace leads to neither security nor peace,” he wrote as he warned of his fear “that we are repeating the same mistakes we have made in recent decades, and I refuse to be a part of it any longer.”
The Common Dreams website sited United Nations experts, human rights organizations and international law scholars who accuse Israel of committing heinous war crimes, including genocide.
The UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and Israel, said in a report that “the damage and casualties caused by the Israeli attacks” on Gaza “were not commensurate with the military advantage and therefore the actions constitute a war crime,” it added.
Today an Israeli representative answered the charges by coming on the UN stage and tearing up the report and walking off while saying “Terrorists have no human rights.”
At least 5,182 have been killed to date and another 17,101 injured in the occupied territories, mostly in the Gaza Strip, 17 days after the start of the Israeli attacks, according to official sources.
While the Biden administration helped broker a deal to allow very limited, almost token, humanitarian aid into Gaza through its border with Egypt, leaders here have refused to call for a cease-fire and remain committed to continuing to arm the Israeli army as it prepares for a ground invasion.
Israel, already the largest recipient of U.S. military assistance, received more so-called “smart bombs” and other weapons in recent days.
In addition, Biden asked the U.S. Congress to approve a new military aid package valued at $105 billion, aimed in particular at Israel and Ukraine. More money down the rat hole of war at the expense of social programs that could be used to help curb the growing poverty here in the US
No one was to die. Neither on one side nor the other. Perhaps, as John Lennon said “we all talk about revolution, evolution, devouring, whipping, flogging, regulations, integrations, meditations, United Nations…All we are saying is let’s give peace a chance”.
For the Palestinians that peace remains, would have to remain on the recognition of those 75 years of suffering and dispossession of their rightful lands.
Source: Prensa Latina, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English
The genocide committed by Israel against the Palestinian people, continuing its policy of state terrorism, has its roots in 75 years of colonization, military occupation and apartheid regime. Not only did the tragedy of the first Nakba result in expulsions and massacres, but since then, Israel’s government funding of the advancing supremacist settlers has entrenched its project of total territorial occupation, compounded with ongoing extermination.
