The Israeli tail wags the US dog

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By Carlton Joseph

Carlton Joseph

The Israel-Hamas war has unleased protests calling for a ceasefire in Gaza in the United States, and globally.  Jewish organizations, Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now, organized a protest at the Democratic National Committee headquarters, demanding a ceasefire in Gaza, but was greeted with pepper spray and police use of force, and called pro-terrorist supporters.   Intel Corp. and Siemens AG, prominent venture capitalists, prominent tech executives based in the US, Europe, and Israel pulled out of “Web Summit,” the biggest technology conference in Europe, following remarks by the event’s leader that criticized Western support for Israel after the Hamas attacks.  300 Cooper Union alumni threatened to end donations over the New York school’s response to anti-Israel protests, and Billionaire Barry Sternlicht plans to spend $100 million on a media campaign, targeted at defining Hamas as “not just the enemy of Israel but of the United States.”

Interestingly, the US and Western European countries are impotent, they rightly denounce Hamas’s attack on Israel, but dare not admit that Israel has created the largest open-air prison in the world, and that illegal settlements, and apartheid conditions in Gaza might be responsible for the constant wars between the two peoples.  In fact, they are scared to use the word “ceasefire” because Netanyahu and his ultra-right wing coalition government demand that “ceasefire” is out of the question.

One would think that, since the US supports Israel with over $3 billion annually, and in 2022 Israel received $12 billion in aid, that the US would be able to exert pressure on Israel to agree to a ceasefire.  The US could not even get Netanyahu to agree to a “pause” to allow the UN to send food and medical supplies to the besieged area.  The current situation is a classic example of “the tail wagging the dog” because the US, Western Europe and Canada are either unwilling or unable to exert any pressure on Netanyahu to accept a ceasefire, even though Israel has killed more than 12,000 Palestinians since the Hamas attack. 

US News & World report that Israel is one of the 10 most powerful, politically influential, and militarily strong countries in the world, and has significant international alliances.  Palestine does not have a Navy, Air Force or military; but President Biden, like a broken record, keeps saying that Israel has a right to defend itself, and is so controlled by the American Jewish lobby, that he has deployed the most advanced Air Force guided missiles Carriers, and fighter jets to the area to defend Israel against 2.2 million people, armed with sticks and stones, and missiles that are easily intercepted by Israeli’s Iron Dome system. 

From 2004 to present, Hamas has killed 1,312 Israeli citizens while and the Israel Defense Force (IDF) has killed 15,017 Palestinians, including 4,506 children.  Israel has a right to defend itself, but Palestine also has a right to defend itself, but Palestine does not have a military, so it cannot.  Worst, Israel controls the supply of water, electricity, food and fuel to Gaza, and has cut them off.  Biden’s claim that Hamas wants to annihilate a neighboring democracy lends credence to Trump’s questioning his mental fitness for office.  It’s sad that in a country of 330 million people, that two old, mentally unfit people are competing to become president.  

Hamas’ war methods are so primitive and ineffective, that their main effect is the creation of some psychological trauma and disruption of daily life among parts of the Israeli populace.  The sophisticated Israeli military has decimated the Palestinian population, created total psychological trauma, displaced thousands of people, while hundreds of patients, and medical staff at Al-Shifa Hospital are now fighting death, due to a lack of water and food. 

Fortunately, the rules for war are spelt out in the Geneva Conventions, and other international laws and agreements.  Serious offences such as murder, rape or mass persecution of a group are known as “crimes against humanity” or, in some circumstances, “genocide.”  Military forces cannot deliberately attack civilians nor the infrastructure that they depend on, such as power stations.  The sick and wounded must be cared for, including injured soldiers, who have rights as prisoners of war.  Israel’s has repeatedly committed most of these atrocities in Gaza, prompting Ireland’s President, Michael Higgins to accuse Israel of breaking international law, because it deprived over two million people in Gaza their basic human rights, such as food, water and medicines. 

A group of American University professors wrote that State violence did not begin with the Hamas attacks, ‘but rather it represented a military response by a people who had endured crushing and unrelenting state violence from an occupying power over many years.’ Students believe that peace will be unattainable ‘unless the illegal occupation of Palestinian territory ends and accountability for that illegal occupation is achieved.  It is time the Biden Administration, European leaders and Israel understand that the modern world does not accept the agreement that created the State of Israel in 1948 as legitimate, especially since it involved the expulsion and displacement of over 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland, and did not allow Palestine to have a state of its own.  This is not the 1600’s when the Mayflower docked at Plymouth, and later, annihilated the indigenous population, and claim the county as their own.  This is not the 1800’s American-Mexican war when a million square miles of Mexico was annexed by American.

Today, information is readily available, and people are intelligent; so, thinking that money from foreign sources can influence students at Ivy League American university, with “hefty doses of leftist and anti-Israel propaganda,” is tantamount to saying that American students are dumb and cannot think for themselves.  Bill Maher, in one of his new rules “joked” that America took California, Texas and some other states from Mexico, and they are okay with it and loves America, he could not understand why the Palestinians would not do the same. 

The world will not stand silent and allow Israel to force 2.1 million Palestinians into Egypt and claim Gaza.  The world must without equivocation denounce antisemitism and must also without equivocation denounce Islamophobia.  The only solution is a two-state solution that recognizes the right of Israel and Palestinians to live in safety, dignity and peace.

(Trinidad-born Carlton Joseph who lives in Washington D.C., is a close observer of political developments in the United States.)