Violence Begets Violence
Gaza and the Business of Death
Veteran journalist, John Pilger, opens readers’ eyes to the tragedy in Gaza with a dedicated chapter in his book, Freedom Next Time. From his first stay in a Kibbutz in the ‘60s, Pilger never stopped drawing attention to the crisis; he produced documentaries and articles brimming with eyewitness accounts, historical context and political insight.
And Pilger, states boldly:
There is no conflict, no two narratives, with their moral fulcrum. There is a military occupation enforced by a nuclear-armed power backed by the greatest military power on earth; and there is an epic injustice.
Testaments of Injustice
Last Week Tonight’s host, John Oliver echoes the condemnation:
While Amnesty International straight-up calls it apartheid. The human rights organization headlines their call to action as “A LOOK INTO DECADES OF OPPRESSION AND DOMINATION”.
Amnesty argues that:
Since Israel occupied East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank in 1967, Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah have been continuously targeted by Israeli authorities, who use discriminatory laws to systematically dispossess Palestinians of their land and homes for the benefit of Jewish Israelis.
The events of May 2021 [protests against forced evictions in East Jerusalem] were emblematic of the oppression which Palestinians have faced every day, for decades. The discrimination, the dispossession, the repression of dissent, the killings and injuries – all are part of a system which is designed to privilege Jewish Israelis at the expense of Palestinians.
Elsewhere, Vox writes:
Tel Aviv feels like a peaceful, prosperous Mediterranean beach city, which it is. But less than an hour drive away are Palestinian towns in the West Bank where the conflict is absolutely palpable even in periods of ‘calm.’ In Gaza, the blockade has driven unemployment as high as 40 percent, made legal imports or exports next to impossible, and even cut off fishermen — once a big industry there — from their fish. In the West Bank, beyond the daily humiliations of Israeli military checkpoints, the occupation has severely constricted movement and trade. The stifled economy is the easiest thing to measure, but many other aspects of Palestinian life suffer, as well.
Journalists, like Dan Cohen and Abby Martin, have produced documentaries, from inside Gaza, on the daily struggles of Palestinians. Their reports (1, 2) express no doubt; neither has it cliches about Israel’s “right to defend itself” nor mental gymnastics about “terrorism” or “democracy”: Gaza is a man-made humanitarian crisis perpetrated by elite political and economic interests.
“Palestine,” said Nelson Mandela, “is the greatest moral issue of our time.” Madiba believed “our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”
Here is US Senator, Bernie Sanders, admitting to indiscriminate war crimes being committed in Gaza:
That the situation is grim is indisputable. Violence and misery saturate the region; it has for seventy-odd years.
Narrative Dominance
The sources above ultimately describe the situation in the same, simple way: Israel, a self-proclaimed ethnostate, is occupying disputed land, building illegal settlements and enforcing their will on indigenous Palestinians in the region through two-tier society, devastating military force, discriminatory policing and control of the economy, infrastructure and natural resources — acts which are all in violation of international law.
The eviction and erasure of Palestinians have forced them to protest, resist and fight back, by any means necessary, against a power a thousand times its own military might.
Listen to civil rights leader, Malcolm X, on armed resistance:
However, these statements, facts in every way, attract derision in the current climate of discourse. The intense pressure from social media, for-profit news media, soapbox celebrities and every other mainstream outlet demands uncritical support for Israel’s actions.
In our collective fight against “terrorism”/“communism”/“pandemics” — pick an enemy, no cost can be spared, no hesitation tolerated. The Western World (notably, the US, UK & EU) and their vassals — glorified US-NATO military bases: Japan, Israel, Ukraine, et al. — must be given unconditional support, infinite resources and an open wallet (of public funds).
The establishment runs manipulative stories 24/7 in order to acquire the social license for war and imperialism. Any who would resist — or even question the circumstances — are deemed immoral; cancelled or punished.
The media, playing its role as a tool of empire, works overtime to obscure this fact, whitewashing war crimes and misrepresenting indigenous people.
Anti-semitism is weaponized to silence critics of Israel’s policies in Gaza. Sanders and Corbyn are two prominent examples. (They also both happen to be working-class/labor-aligned political candidates.)
Malcolm X said:
The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses.
Critically, he warned:
If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.
Same Old Story
It is alarming how often we fall for this trick straight out of the Empire’s playbook.
We must support Taiwan against China! We must arm Israel against Iran! We must liberate Ukraine from Russia! We must topple Gadaffi for Libya! We must invade Afghanistan to defeat Al-Qaeda! We must save Syria from Assad! We must rescue Haiti from Socialism!
No country has become better from US-NATO intervention. Reality demonstrates the opposite.
Oh, but the mission is accomplished: war bucks raked in, corporate stocks skyrocketed, the well-connected enriched; the land grabbed, natural resources monopolized, markets ripened for plunder. Another enemy was created, another war set never to end, another proxy battle for global hegemony.
“The Sword and the Dollar,” Michael Parenti calls it.
Terrorism does not happen spontaneously. Wherever US-NATO has gone to fight “terrorists” has only ever revealed suspect interests, their own military aggression and political bullying — i.e. terror — creating and sustaining climates of suffering. As a society, we remain victims of chronic deception; Ukraine being the last example of elites wielding their vast propaganda machine to get you to consent to war.
Every sincere look into the sources of terrorism fingers the US-NATO cabal. Their foreign policy creates enemies; and wars with a “moral obligation”. In the ensuing chaos and instability, they scoop up land and natural resources on the cheap, privatize social services, demand austerity, and install puppet regimes — all while making bank supplying the weapons of war. Is that the “democracy” that was so vital to deliver?
Here is a young Joe Biden explaining how necessary Israel is for Middle-Eastern dominance. The state — backed totally by the US, which has veto powers at the UN, over 800 military bases worldwide, and an $842 billion dollar “defence” budget — functions as an arm of US foreign policy in the region:
The US exercised its veto power twice since the conflict reignited. Two ceasefire resolutions, one proposed by Russia, and the other by Brazil, were rejected. Likewise, calls for independent inquiries into civilian bombings were ignored by the State Department.
The False David
Narrative managers audaciously ask the public to overlook the mounting atrocities, daily humiliation, poverty and terror experienced by people in occupied territories.
Imperial apologists ignore the UNHRC resolutions, violations of the Geneva Convention, rights of all people to self-determination, non-stop military provocations and forced evictions (1, 2). The public is encouraged not to bother about all the prior wars with identical special interests, bought propaganda, millions spent lobbying, systems of civilian control and windfall corporate profits.
The power-serving media frames the conflict as David versus Goliath. A sickening double standard supports this fantasy; implicit racism, and hypocrisy of the highest order.
By masterful politicking, Israel absolves itself of the necessity for evidence (1, 2) or justification of its actions; the situation warrants no interrogation of the pre-existing socioeconomic conditions or war profiteering in the war of light against darkness, the battle against “human animals”.
History lays some of the blame on the British who unilaterally decided to create a state for the Jewish diaspora and the Zionist movement on land belonging to others:
In 1895, Theodor Herz, father of political Zionism, wrote:
We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country... expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.
In 1938, Israeli Prime Minister, Ben-Gurion said,
I support compulsory transfer. I don't see anything immoral in it.
That is the “compulsory transfer” of people from their homes.
Here’s a leaked snippet from former Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin’s memoirs:
We walked outside, Ben‐Gurion [B.G.] accompanying us. Alton repeated his question: ‘What is to be done with the population?’ B.G. waved his hand in a gesture which said, ‘Drive them out!’
In 1948, Zionist leaders put Plan Dalet into effect which called for forced depopulation through “[d]estruction of villages” where “[i]n the event of resistance, the armed force must be destroyed and the population must be expelled outside the borders of the state.”
By the time Israel declared itself a state in May 1948, more than 200 Palestinian villages were emptied and 175,000 indigenous people made refugees.
By 1949, that number swelled to 750,000 after what is referred to as the “Nakba” (catastrophe). At least 400 Palestinian villages were systemically destroyed; most Palestinian land was simply taken by force.
The UN documents how the self-declared state expanded its territory by 77%, noting how “[o]ver half of the Palestinian Arab population fled or were expelled”.
The 1967 war, in which Israel annexed Gaza, “brought about a second exodus of Palestinians, estimated at half a million.”
(I won’t repeat the long list of resolutions calling for Israel’s withdrawal, support of the refugee crisis their actions created and “termination of all claims or states of belligerency”.)
In June 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon with the declared intention to eliminate the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
Another large-scale Palestinian massacre took place in 1982 prompting the International Conference on the Question of Palestine (ICQP) to adopt several principles in order to challenge the violence. These guidelines stand out:
(a) The attainment by the Palestinian people of its legitimate inalienable rights, including the right to return, the right to self-determination and the right to establish its own independent state in Palestine;
(b) The right of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the representative of the Palestinian people, to participate on an equal footing with other parties in all efforts, deliberations and conferences on the Middle East;
(c) The need to put an end to Israel's occupation of the Arab territories, in accordance with the principle of the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force, and, consequently, the need to secure Israeli withdrawal from the territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem;
(d) The need to oppose and reject such Israeli policies and practices in the occupied territories, including Jerusalem, and any de facto situation created by Israel as are contrary to international law and relevant United Nations resolutions, particularly the establishment of settlements, as these policies and practices constitute major obstacles to the achievement of peace in the Middle East;
(e) The need to reaffirm as null and void all legislative and administrative measures and actions taken by Israel, the occupying Power, which have altered or purported to alter the character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem, including the expropriation of land and property situated thereon, and in particular the so-called “Basic Law” on Jerusalem and the proclamation of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel;
(f) The right of all States in the region to existence within secure and internationally recognized boundaries, with justice and security for all the people, the sine qua non of which is the recognition and attainment of the legitimate, inalienable rights of the Palestinian people as stated in paragraph (a) above.
In 1987, the “intifada” — a mass uprising against Israeli occupation took place.
Noam Chomsky explained in 2015 how Hamas respects its ceasefire agreement with the PLO while Israel, with total US support, continues its siege on Gaza and violence against Palestinians, instigating a Hamas response.
But what about Goliath? What about today?
Political scientist, John Mearsheimer — hardly a quack, provides key geopolitical perspectives in his lecture below.
First, the United States, “joined at the hip” with Israel and impossible to decouple at this point, does not want any country controlling all of the oil in the Middle East. Hence the need for regional dominance via a proxy.
Second, Israel may not want to grant equal rights to a (potential) majority of Palestinians in the region. Doing so undoes their self-proclaimed Jewish state.
Third, Gaza is an open-air prison in which people live in horrible conditions. 2.1 out of 7.3 million Palestinians live in Gaza. Israel controls the airspace and borders. Several human rights organizations label this system “apartheid” (1, 2).
Fourth, Israel has been playing "hard ball” with the Palestinians since 1948. The Jewish state was created expecting the routine violent eruption of Palestinians who, Mearsheimer argues have the right to, want their own state.
Fifth, as the US-NATO enters conflicts to protect lives, so too will regional powers in the Middle East at the bombing of Palestinians, such as Hezbollah or Iran. The conflict has tremendous potential to escalate into a large-scale quagmire.
Sixth, this level of violence and resistance is not unexpected given Israel’s actions and US foreign policy in the Middle East.
Because, unlike his biblical counterpart, this David is armed to the teeth with F16 fighter jets and Apache helicopters.
Some Lives Matter
There is a pervasive myth that the West has a divine right to rule the world.
Historian Gareth Stedman Jones refers to this belief as “the Anglo-Saxon burden of helping backward peoples forward to liberty and democracy”. In order to collectively progress, we must bend the knee to the West; and succumb to their military aggression and economic imperialism.
All modern conflicts are framed using this lie. On one side, they claim, is the innocent, godly and righteous; the “civilized”, entitled to whatever their stake in the war is — the land, resources, or rule.
While against them stand the violent, godless savages, brutes who must be exterminated. The lazy, greedy, property-less hordes of Africans, Arabs, Asians and South Americans.
For one group of people, even the slightest bit of criticism or discomfort is intolerable; for others, their daily strife, and the loss of their lives are considered normal. The indignity and suffering of Libyans, Yemenese or Sudanese, for example, may be detestable but it is natural, just the order of things.
The starving[, bombed and sanctioned black and brown] children on the TV?
Hmmm, it can only be their fault, or their government, or their God, or the misfortune of their birth.
If they do not want to live miserable lives of grinding poverty and ubiquitous violence - at odds with democracy, unlike us, the good guys, well then, they should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps, save hard, buy property, listen to the news that goes against their interests, succumb to the soldier chasing them from their homes with a gun.
If they simply capitulate wholeheartedly to the powers that be, then they can bask in the benevolence of the Civilized, the guaranteed trickle-down of their wonderous entitlements.
They don’t have to do terrorism!
Empathy is bad for business and bad for social control. It is never encouraged.
Pilger puts it so:
For most of the 21st century, the fraud of corporate power posing as democracy has depended on the propaganda of distraction: largely on a cult of ‘me-ism’ designed to disorientate our sense of looking out for others, of acting together, of social justice and internationalism.
A few days in the life of a Gazan — whose seventy-year experience, according to Pilger, has been an “overriding, routine of terror, day after day” with “ruthless control of almost every aspect of their lives, as if they live in an open prison” — and we would also choose violence.
War is a Racket
Who is the number one source of terror in the world today? ISIS? Bashar al-Assad? Boko Haram? Russia? China?
Nope, by enormous margins it is Pax Americana, who run a highly profitable business murdering black and brown people, robbing them of their rights and calling it virtue.
Russian President, Putin explicitly calls the current conflict a failure of US policy:
I think many will agree with me that this is a clear example of the failure of US policy in [West Asia […] [Washington] tried to monopolize regulating [the conflict] but was unfortunately unconcerned with finding compromises acceptable for both sides … It put forward ideas on how it should be done and pressured both sides. Each time, however, without taking into account the fundamental interests of the Palestinian people.
Jonathan Cook suggests that one of the secondary goals of the conflict in Gaza is to maintain the situation as a lab for authoritarian governance, surveillance and policing, as both market and marketplace for civilian control systems and various tools to stamp out populism (the inevitable fight of the disenfranchised for their dignity).
We watch as the power players respond with the only response they know — violence. That is what these proxy battles all over the globe are about; crushing the dissenters who challenge concentrations of power. That is what Conservatism is after all: conserving the status quo, maintaining the existing class system.
Right-wing ideologues in the US Congress and Senate sign off on fighter jets, bombs, tanks, drones, troops and chemical weapons to Israel, to the tune of about $3.8 billion annually, because they believe God wants them to protect Jews and claim the Holy Land.
While, conveniently, they rake in cash from their stocks in the military-industrial complex, a for-profit system of scalable mass murder and destruction, paid for with public funds. While getting pampered by the millions spent by lobbyists from pro-Israel groups, such as AIPAC, and defence contractors, such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon.
The Brink is a great parody of this absurdity. These believers should be reminded of the words of Jesus in Matthew 26, “Those who use the sword will die by the sword.”
About two weeks ago, US President Biden requested $100 billion from Congress which “includes $61.4 billion for Ukraine, $14.3 billion for Israel, and $9.15 billion for humanitarian aid.”
Meanwhile, DeclassifiedUK reveals how Britain exported over £472 million in arms to Israel during the last eight years. Truthdig, reveals that “Since 2008, Britain alone has granted licenses for export to Israel of arms and missiles, drones and sniper rifles, worth $559 million.”
There is clearly a lot of money flowing in this conflict. Assange exposed this trick years ago:
Major General Smedley Butler wrote:
War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
Mixed Reactions
Consider how ordinary Israelis (1, 2) would choose to end the blockade on Gaza over the acts of violence preferred by their leaders.
Former British Ambassador, Craig Murray writes, “The gap between the western political and media elites and their people on this issue is simply enormous.”
In another post, Murray adds:
In both the UK and the US there can be no more stark illustration of the lack of any kind of meaningful democracy, than the fact that there is no major political party that opposes the genocide – despite massive public opposition. […] We are witnessing almost all western governments deliberately facilitating massacre, ethnic cleansing and genocide. We are witnessing almost all western governments turning on their own people to crush dissent at that complicity in genocide. This feels not so much like the week that western democracy died, as the week it was impossible any longer to deny that western democracy died some time ago.
The world over, civilians side (1, 2, 3) with the plight of the Palestinians, in stark contrast to the stance of their governments and news agencies.
Even mainstream anchors and US representatives are beginning to struggle to contain their criticisms of Israel’s response. Not like it was easier in the past, check Obama 10 years ago.
Here are two public statements (1, 2) from Progressive International signed by trade unions and similar groups from all over the world denouncing apartheid in Israel.
It is odd how the public institutions meant to represent the public are at odds with the public.
As Murray explains:
Massive demonstrations have been taking place across Europe against this unspeakable massacre, and the knee-jerk reaction of politicians at their isolation from public opinion has been to try to make such shows of dissent illegal. In the UK people have been arrested for displaying Palestinian flags. In Germany pro-Palestinian demonstrations have been entirely banned. Something similar has been attempted in France, with predictable failure. I have myself attended pro-Palestinian demonstrations in three different countries, and the most striking thing on each occasion was the strong support of passers-by, and the number of people spontaneously coming out to join the demo as it passed.
He also adds much-needed context:
After 20 years, we had finally come through the vicious cycle of the ‘War on Terror’, where terrorism, repression and institutionalised Islamophobia all boosted each other across the western world. Outrage at the appalling genocide in Gaza is very likely to result in isolated incidences of, also appalling, Islamist-inspired violence in Western countries, including the UK, particularly because of the UK’s military support of Israel. That consequential terrorism in itself will be cited by the political elite as justifying their stance. And so the vicious cycle will restart.
Meanwhile, political elites like Israeli Prime Minister, Netanyahu boast about having the Pentagon under their thumb.
Israel’s 9/11?
Yet almost a century of oppression yields no sympathy after Hamas's attack on October 7th. Terrorism was committed. The enemy, regardless of any legitimate or pre-existing social, economic and political determinants, must be brutally destroyed.
The Israeli assault on Gaza has dropped 18000 tons of explosives so far.
Under “normal” conditions, a Palestinian child is killed every 15 minutes. Over 70% of all of Gaza’s casualties are women and children.
People called it Israel’s 9/11. As if 9/11 was cut and dry (1, 2). As if 9/11 too, was not used as the sketchy pretext to invade seven Arab nations. A twenty-year war ensued displacing millions, killing millions and costing billions, jeopardizing all life on Earth, without any justice or peaceful resolution.
A report, by journalist, Max Blumenthal, reveals accounts of the Israeli military being given orders to fire on Israeli civilians and their own military in order to dislodge Palestinian militants. Significant Israeli casualties were due to friendly fire. That paints a different picture of the (actually notoriously callous) Israeli Defense Force (IDF) than the ones on YouTube or in The Economist.
Likewise, how Hamas treated Israeli captives, Yasmin Porat and Yehuda Levis “very humanely”. “No one treated us violently,” Porat emphasized.
This is a very different image from the barbaric terrorist stereotype implanted in our minds, the depictions on CNN, MSNBC and the BBC.
Long after the attack by Hamas, Israel started pulling up tapes of what they claim are Hamas leaders discussing civilian bombings. Along with Blumenthal, journalist, Caitlin Johnstone raised legitimate concerns about this sudden ability to trace attacks.
The Cradle reports that almost half the Israelis killed on October 7th were combatants.
Besides the exaggeration of the civilian deaths caused by Hamas, two other claims made headlines: beheaded babies (1, 2) and rapes (1, 2). These and more were swiftly debunked as the facts came to light.
Kit Klarenberg, writing in The Grayzone, quotes Arnon Sofer of Haifa University, who, in 2004, laid out plans for the isolation of Gaza directly to the Israeli government. Check his prediction:
When 2.5 million people live in a closed-off Gaza, it’s going to be a human catastrophe. Those people will become even bigger animals than they are today…The pressure at the border will be awful. It’s going to be a terrible war. So, if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day…the only thing that concerns me is how to ensure the boys and men who are going to have to do the killing will be able to return home to their families and be normal human beings.
Many of those “boys and men” did not return as “normal human beings”:
Cui bono
“Who stands to benefit?” Asks Pepe Escobar in his piece at InformationClearingHouse.
First winner is the War Party Inc., a massive bilateral scam. The White House’s $106 billion supplemental request to Congress for “assistance” especially to Ukraine and Israel is manna from Heaven to the weaponizing tentacles of the MICIMATT (military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media-academia-think tank complex, in the legendary definition by Ray McGovern).
The laundromat will be on a roll, including $61.4 billion for Ukraine (more weapons and replenishing of U.S. stocks) and $14.3 for Israel (mostly air and missile defense “support”)
Second winner is The Democratic Party engineering the unavoidable change of narrative from the spectacularly failing Project Ukraine; yet that will only postpone the upcoming humiliation of NATO in 2024, which will reduce the Afghan humiliation to the status of sandbox child playing.
Third winner is setting West Asia on fire: the Straussian neocon psycho “strategy” conceived as a response to the upcoming BRICS 11, and everything in terms of Eurasia integration that was advanced at the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing last week (including nearly $100 billion in new infrastructure/development projects).
Then there’s the vertiginous acceleration of the project sponsored by genocidal Zionist maniacs: a Final Solution to the Palestinian question, mixing razing Gaza to the ground; forcing an exodus to Egypt; the West Bank turned into a cage; and, at the most extreme, a “Judaification of Al-Aqsa” , complete with an eschatological destruction of the third holiest place in Islam, to be replaced by rebuilding the Third Jewish Temple.
While there are clues in the hidden dynamics of the parties in conflict:
Klarenberg references a white paper released a week after the attacks where The Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy outlines the “unique and rare opportunity to evacuate the entire Gaza Strip”.
It goes on to highlight the economic and political benefits of evacuating an entire native population from their homeland, and how the “evacuation of the Gaza Strip means the elimination of a significant ally of Iran.”
As Klarenberg points out, the paper concludes ominously:
There is no doubt that in order for this plan to come to fruition, many conditions must exist at the same time. Currently, these conditions are met and it is unclear when such an opportunity will arise again, if ever. This is the time to act. Now.
Clearly, there are political and economic benefits (1; 2) to the escalation of this conflict.
Palestine is yet another example of impunity and luxury for a few, paid for with the misery and suffering of everyone else. Murray calls out the bloodlust:
Only international intervention can stop Israel from doing whatever it wishes, and those countries which have influence with Israel are actively abetting and encouraging the genocide. […] [Israeli PM] Netanyahu now knows that there is no violence against Palestinians so extreme that the western political elite will not support it under the mantra of ‘Israel’s right to self-defence’
Einstein was right in 1948:
And Assange more recently:
FREE PALESTINE.