A Moral Imperative for the 2024 US Elections

Will Americans Vote for Genocide?

by Kim Petersen / October 1st, 2024

Is it acceptable for Israel to wipe Palestine and Palestinians off the map? On 5 November 2024, Americans have an opportunity to signal whether genocide is anathema for the majority of its citizens.

So, how can Americans signal their abhorrence for genocide?

Americans have been locked in a pattern of voting for the political duopoly: either wing of the business party. It is widely held that on most major matters there is little to separate the Democrats and Republicans. And this has led to many Americans voting based on whichever party is perceived to be the lesser evil.

Despite this lesser evilest-inspired voting, the election results have resulted in the presidency and congressional majority rotating between the Democrats and Republicans with little change in the US trajectory. As far as the US economy is concerned, the country has continued to increase its debt burden. As far as US foreign policy is concerned, the US has continued to wage wars abroad. As far as support for democracy is concerned, the US has continued to initiate coups against governments it does not approve of. As far as Israel is concerned, it continues to enjoy steadfast support from the duopoly.

One commonly heard refrain posits that continually resorting to the same action with expectation of a different result meets the definition of insanity. The expectation of lesser-evilist voting producing a significantly different outcome on the political scene given that such action has never brought about a change before speaks disparagingly to the strategy of lesser-evilist voting.

Being considered insane, however, is less disparaging than being considered immoral. That would be shameful.

Given the nugatory outcomes of lesser-evilist voting, another proposition comes to mind:

Fool me once, shame on you;
fool me twice, shame on me.

There are two candidates seen as frontrunners for the presidency of the United States. However, the Democratic Party candidate, Kamala Harris, and the Republican Party candidate, Donald Trump. Both stand solidly behind the Zionist entity dba as the state of Israel, and neither of these candidates will exert pressure on Israel to cease and desist in its commission of war crimes. In fact, the US funds Israel, arms Israel, and has situated its military and armaments in the region in support of Israel. This is despite Israeli officials openly calling for the eradication of Palestinians, causing a case to be brought against Israel charging it with genocide in the International Court of Justice.

The upshot of this is that a vote for either Harris or Trump must be considered as a vote for genocide. The only out for a voter to escape criticism for supporting genocide is, pathetic as it may be, ignorance.

What can Americans do to avoid supporting genocide? One can always abstain from voting. That, however, would not be fighting against genocide. Moreover, abstaining would still allow the supporters of genocide to vote for a genocidaire as president.

Strangely enough, many Americans seem oblivious to the existence of other presidential candidates that one can vote for. One can even cast a vote for a candidate opposed to Israeli crimes against Palestinians. To wit, there is candidate Cornel West who calls 7 October a “counter-terrorism response“; Libertarian Party candidate Chase Oliver has pledged to end the genocide; candidate Jill Stein has a platform Pledge to Stop Genocide.

Unfortunately, in a winner-take-all voting system, one must consider how the strong individual desire to attain political office plays against a tactical and selfless decision to coalesce around one anti-genocide candidate to increase the chances of shutting down a genocide in progress.

Voting in the US elections on 5 November 2024 is an opportunity to indicate one’s abhorrence to genocide. Elementary morality demands a vote for an opponent of genocide.FacebookTwitterRedditEmail

Kim Petersen is an independent writer. He can be emailed at: kimohp at gmail.com. Read other articles by Kim.

The Most Important US Presidential Election of Our Lifetime

The Rightward Trajectory of the Two-Party System

by Roger D. Harris / October 1st, 2024

Left-liberals plea every four years that this really is the most important election ever and time to hold our noses and send a Democrat to the White House. The manifest destiny of US world leadership, we are told, is at stake, as is our precious democracy which we have so generously been exporting abroad.

Let’s leave aside the existential threats of climate change or nuclear war. However important, these issues are not on the November 5 ballot. Nor are they addressed in even minimally meaningful ways by the platforms of either of the major parties.

The USA, with its first-strike policy and upgrading its nuclear war fighting capacity, bears responsibility for Armageddon risk.  And, in fact, the land-of-the-free has contributed more greenhouse gases to the world’s stockpile than any other country.

But the US electorate never voted these conditions in, so is it realistic to think that we can vote them out? The electoral arena has its limits. Nevertheless, we are admonished, our vote is very important.

But do the two major parties offer meaningful choices?

Apparently, the 700 national security apparatchiks who signed a letter endorsing Kamala Harris think so. They fear that Trump is too soft on world domination. They find a comforting succor in Harris’s promise “to preserve the American military’s status as the most ‘lethal’ force in the world.” And oddly so do some left-liberals who welcome the security state, largely because they too don’t trust Trump with guiding the US empire.

Although a major left-liberal talking point is the imminent threat of fascism, their fear is focused on Trump’s dysfunctionality and his “deplorable” working class minions; not on the security apparatus of the state, which they have learned to love.

But fascism is not a personality disorder. The ruling class – whether its nominal head wears a red or blue hat – has no reason to impose a fascist dictatorship as long as left-liberals and their confederates embrace rather than oppose the security state.

Not only were the left-liberals enamored with the FBI’s “Saint” Robert Mueller, but they have welcomed the likes of George W. Bush and now Dick Cheney, because these war criminals also see the danger of Trump.

The Democratic Party has been captured by the foreign policy neoconservatives who are jumping the red ship for the blue one. It’s not that Donald Trump is in any way an anti-imperialist, but Kamala Harris is seen as a more effective imperialist and defender of elite rule.

The ruling class is united in supporting US imperial hegemony, but needs to work out how best to achieve it. The blue team is confident that the empire has the capability to aim the canons full blast at both Russia and China at the same time. And they tend to take a more multilateral approach to empire building.

The red team is a little more circumspect, concerned with imperial overreach. They advocate a staged strategy of China as the primary target and only secondarily against Russia. This suggests why Ukraine’s president-for-life, who is at war with Russia, in effect campaigned for Kamala in the swing state of Pennsylvania.

The inauthenticity of the left-liberals

 While some left-liberals support a decisive Russian defeat in Ukraine, their overall concern is beating Trump.

The Democratic Party was transformed some time ago by the Clintons’ now defunct but successful Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), which advocated abandonment of its progressive constituencies in order to more effectively attract corporate support.  While both parties vie to serve the wealthy class, the Democrats are now by a significant margin the ones favored by big money.

The triumph of the DLC signaled the demise of liberalism and the ascendency of neoliberalism. Much more could be said about that transition (viz the Democratic Party has always been capitalist with neoliberalism being its most recent expression), but suffice it to say the Democratic Party is the graveyard of progressive movements.

Liberals no longer even pretend to have an agenda other than defeating Trump. Their neglect of economic issues that benefit working people has created a vacuum, which opens the political arena for faux populists like Trump.

The now moribund liberal movement is thus relegated to two functions: (1) providing a bogus progressive patina to reactionary politics and (2) attacking those who still hold leftist principles. “Progressive Democrat,” sociologist James Petras argues, is an oxymoron.

Left-liberals have the habit of prefacing their capitulations with a recitation of their former leftist credentials. But what makes them inauthentic is their abandonment of principles. No transgression by the Democrats, absolutely none – not even genocide – deters this inauthentic left from supporting the Democratic presidential candidate.

We can respect, though disagree, with the right-wing for having principled red lines, such as abortion. In contrast, left-liberals not only find themselves bedfellows with Cheney, but they swallow anything and everything that the Democratic wing of the two-party duopoly feeds them.

Consequences of supporting the lesser of the two evils

 Although today the Democratic Party is arguably the leading war party, we would have cold comfort with the Republicans in power. And domestically the Democrats talk a better line on some social wedge issues that don’t threaten elite rule, such as women’s reproductive rights, although – as will be argued – their walk is not as good as their talk.

Getting back to “this year more than ever we have to support the Democratic presidential candidate,” the plea contains two truths. First, the “more than ever” part exposes a tendency to cry wolf in the past.

Remember that the world did not fall apart with the election of Richard Nixon in 1968. No lesser an authority than Noam Chomsky is nostalgic for Tricky Dick, who is now viewed as the last true liberal president. Nor did the planet stop spinning in 1980 when Ronald Reagan ascended to the Oval Office. Barack Obama now boasts that his policies differed little from the Gipper’s.

Which brings us to the second truth revealed in the plea. The entire body politic has been staggering to the right regardless of which wing of the duopoly is in power. This is in spite of the fact that the voting public is well to the left of them on almost every issue, from universal public healthcare to opposition to endless war.

Moreover, the left-liberals’ lesser-evil voting strategy itself bears some degree of responsibility for this reactionary tide.

The genius of the Clintons’ DLC was that the progressive New Deal coalition of labor and minority groups that supported the Democratic Party could be thrown under the bus with impunity, while the party courts the right. As long as purported progressives support the Democrats no matter what, the party has an incentive to sell out its left-leaning “captured constituents.”

Thus, we witnessed what passed for a presidential debate with both contestants competing to prove who was more in favor of genocide for Palestinians and an ever expanding military.

The campaign for reproductive rights aborted

 But one may protest, let’s not let squeamishness about genocide blind us to the hope that the Democrats are better than the Republicans on at least the key issue of abortion.

However, this is the exception that proves the rule. As Margaret Kimberley of the Black Agenda Report noted, after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, there were protests everywhere but at Barack Obama’s house, “the person who could have acted to protect the Roe decision.”

When Obama ran in 2008, he made passage of a Freedom of Choice Act the centerpiece of his campaign. Once elected with majorities in Congress, he could have enshrined abortion rights into law and out of the purview of the Supreme Court. Instead, he never followed through on his promise.

This was a direct outcome of the logic of lesser evilism in a two-party system. The folks who supported abortion rights had nowhere to go, so they were betrayed. Why embarrass Blue Dog Democrats and antagonize pro-lifers when the progressive dupes will always give the Democrats a pass?

Angst is not a substitute for action

 The Republican and Democratic parties are part of the same corporate duopoly, both of which support the US empire. Given there are two wings, there will inevitably be a lesser and greater evil on every issue and even in every election.

However, we need a less myopic view and to look beyond a given election to see the bigger picture of the historical reactionary trend exacerbated by lesser-evil voting. That is, to understand that the function of lesser-evil voting in the overarching two-party system is to allow the narrative to shift rightward.

If one’s game plan for system change includes electoral engagement, which both Marx and Lenin advocated (through an independent working class party, not by supporting a bourgeois party), the pressure needs to be applied when it counts. And that might mean taking a tip from the Tea Party by withholding the vote if your candidate crosses a red line. But that requires principles, which left-liberals have failed to evidence. Angst, however heartfelt, is not a substitute for action.

The left-liberals’ lesser-evil voting, which disregards third-parties with genuinely progressive politics, contributes to the rightward trajectory of US politics. It is not the only factor, but it is a step in the wrong direction. As for November 5, we already know who will win…the ruling class.FacebookTwitterRedditEmail

Roger D. Harris was an international observer for Venezuela’s 2024 presidential election. He is with the US Peace Council and the Task Force on the Americas Read other articles by Roger.

Biden’s Israel Policy Has Led Us to the Brink of War on Iran

by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies / October 2nd, 2024

Photo credit: CODEPINK

On October 1, Iran fired about 180 missiles at Israel in response to Israel’s recent assassinations of leaders of its Revolutionary Guard (IRGC), Hezbollah, and Hamas. There are conflicting reports about how many of the missiles struck their targets and if there were any deaths. But Israel is now considering a counterattack that could propel it into an all-out war with Iran, with the U.S. in tow.

For years, Iran has been trying to avoid such a war. That is why it signed the 2015 JCPOA nuclear agreement with the United States, the U.K., France, Germany, Russia, China and the European Union. Donald Trump unilaterally pulled the U.S. out of the JCPOA in 2018, and despite Joe Biden’s much-touted differences with Trump, he failed to restore U.S. compliance. Instead, he tried to use Trump’s violation of the treaty as leverage to demand further concessions from Iran. This only served to further aggravate the schism between the United States and Iran, which have had no diplomatic relations since 1980.

Now, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sees his long-awaited chance to draw the United States into war with Iran. By killing Iranian military leaders and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on Iranian soil, as well as attacking Iran’s allies in Lebanon and Yemen, Netanyahu provoked a military response from Iran that has given him an excuse to widen the conflict even further. Tragically, there are warmongering U.S. officials who would welcome a war on Iran, and many more who would blindly go along with it.

Iran’s newly elected president, Masoud Pezeshkian, campaigned on a platform of reconciling with the West. When he came to New York to speak at the UN General Assembly on September 25, he was accompanied by three members of Iran’s JCPOA negotiating team: former foreign minister Javad Zarif; current foreign minister Abbas Araghchi; and deputy foreign minister Majid Ravanchi.

President Pezeshkian’s message in New York was conciliatory. With Zarif and Araghchi at his side at a press conference on September 23, he talked of peace, and of reviving the dormant nuclear agreement. “Vis-a-vis the JCPOA, we said 100 times we are willing to live up to our agreements,” he said. “We do hope we can sit at the table and hold discussions.”

On the crisis in the Middle East, Pezeshkian said that Iran wanted peace and had exercised restraint in the face of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, its assassinations of resistance leaders and Iranian officials, and its war on its neighbors.

“Let’s create a situation where we can co-exist,” said Pezeshkian. “Let’s try to resolve tensions through dialogue…We are willing to put all of our weapons aside so long as Israel will do the same.” He added that Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, while Israel is not, and that Israel’s nuclear arsenal is a serious threat to Iran.

Pezeshkian reiterated Iran’s desire for peace in his speech at the UN General Assembly.

“I am the president of a country that has endured threats, war, occupation, and sanctions throughout its modern history,” he said. “Others have neither come to our assistance nor respected our declared neutrality. Global powers have even sided with aggressors. We have learned that we can only rely on our own people and our own indigenous capabilities. The Islamic Republic of Iran seeks to safeguard its own security, not to create insecurity for others. We want peace for all and seek no war or quarrel with anyone.”

The U.S. response to Iran’s restraint throughout this crisis has been to keep sending destructive weapons to Israel, with which it has devastated Gaza, killed tens of thousands of women and children, bombed neighboring capitals, and beefed up the forces it would need to attack Iran.

That includes a new order for 50 F-15EX long-range bombers, with 750 gallon fuel tanks for the long journey to Iran. That arms deal still has to pass the Senate, where Senator Bernie Sanders is leading the opposition.

On the diplomatic front, the U.S. vetoed successive cease-fire resolutions in the UN Security Council and hijacked Qatar and Egypt’s cease-fire negotiations to provide diplomatic cover for unrestricted genocide.

Military leaders in the United States and Israel appear to be arguing against war on Iran, as they have in the past. Even George W. Bush and Dick Cheney balked at launching another catastrophic war based on lies against Iran, after the CIA publicly admitted in its 2006 National Intelligence Estimate that Iran was not developing nuclear weapons.

When Trump threatened to attack Iran, Tulsi Gabbard warned him that a U.S. war on Iran would be so catastrophic that it would finally, retroactively, make the war on Iraq look like the “cakewalk” the neocons had promised it would be.

But neither U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin nor Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant can control their countries’ war policies, which are in the hands of political leaders with political agendas. Netanyahu has spent many years trying to draw the United States into a war with Iran, and has kept escalating the Gaza crisis for a year, at the cost of tens of thousands of innocent lives, with that goal clearly in mind.

Biden has been out of his depth throughout this crisis, relying on political instincts from an era when acting tough and blindly supporting Israel were politically safe positions for American politicians. Secretary of State Antony Blinken rose to power through the National Security Council and as a Senate staffer, not as a diplomat, riding Biden’s coat-tails into a senior position where he is as out of his depth as his boss.

Meanwhile, pro-Iran militia groups in Iraq warn that, if the U.S. joins in strikes on Iran, they will target U.S. bases in Iraq and the region.

So we are careening toward a catastrophic war with Iran, with no U.S. diplomatic leadership and only Trump and Harris waiting in the wings. As Trita Parsi wrote in Responsible Statecraft, “If U.S. service members find themselves in the line of fire in an expanding Iran-Israel conflict, it will be a direct result of this administration’s failure to use U.S. leverage to pursue America’s most core security interest here — avoiding war.”FacebookTwitterReddit

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Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies are the authors of War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, published by OR Books, November 2022.  Medea Benjamin is the cofounder of CODEPINK for PEACE, and the author of several books, including Inside Iran:  The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran.  Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher for CODEPINK and the author of Blood on our Hands:  The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq. Read other articles by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies.

The World Confronts its Malaise

Part I- How was the Middle East destruction allowed to fester and happen?

by Dan Lieberman / October 3rd, 2024

The world is in shock; stricken by the realization that mass murder occurs unimpeded and those who were regarded as protectors against atrocities are those who enable the slaughter of innocents. An uneasiness has gripped the world and brought it to the depressing state of watching helplessly as democratically chosen leaders aid and abet in the most severe criminal activity ─ genocide. Israel has achieved a level of committing atrocities, denying humanity, and displaying insanity that is incomprehensible. Go back in history and return to Hulegu, prince of the Mongol Empire, besieging Baghdad in the thirteenth century. “Surrender and give in to your new authority or all will die,” Hulegu shouted to those behind city walls. Benjamin Netanyahu can be paraphrased as uttering a similar threat to the Palestinians, with one difference; “Even if you remain passive to our dictates after surrender, your community will eventually perish; assistance by Western nations assures us of that.”

Destruction of the Palestinian community has been ongoing, starting in late 1947 and accelerating in contemporary times. The horrors inflicted upon the Palestinians have been obscured and nonchalantly received by Western governments. One event tells the story, serving as a catalyst for additional atrocities that have intensified. Details of that event expose the malaise that fails to understand how the Zionists deceitfully use the damage they inflict upon others to gain advantage. This deceit continues with similar events in the present and predicts a future of chaos for the Middle East. The moment missed has led to a future soon to be missing.

On February 25, 1994, Baruch Goldstein, born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, entered the Ibrahami mosque in the Cave of the Patriarchs in the West Bank city of Hebron. Using an automatic weapon, Goldstein indiscriminately killed 29 and wounded 125 of the 800 Palestinian Muslim worshippers participating in the first of the five daily Islamic prayers. On that day, Western leaders should have realized they were dealing with a genocidal Israeli population, that this genocide could not proceed one day further, and failure to halt the drift doomed the Middle East to an endless conflagration that would engulf much of the world.

The fanatical and crazed Baruch Goldstein could not have prepared the act by himself; the calculated manner of presentation and the lack of attention to him carrying a gun and wanting, for no adequate reason, to enter the mosque area, indicate Israeli authorities were complicit in assembling the plans for his attack. Although no longer a doctor in the Israeli military, Goldstein wore his antiquated uniform and “carried a Galil assault rifle and four magazines of ammunition, which held a total of 140 rounds in 35 rounds per magazine.” Events are clouded by observer contradictions and agendas. Tablet magazine has an accepted version (Note:Edited for brevity) that features dubious reasons for inattention to Goldstein’s strange behavior and for not asking sensible questions. The New York Times provided additional facts.

At 5:05 a.m. Feb. 25, 1994, the phone rang in the regional command center of the Israel Defense Forces in Kiryat Arba, on the outskirts of Hebron. Shlomo Edelstein, the officer in charge, picked up the phone. “He told me to send a jeep within five minutes to the infirmary,” Edelstein recalled, “which seemed really strange to me, because he wasn’t the doctor on call. And even if someone called him directly at home, say, why would he ask for the jeep? If it was a real emergency, wouldn’t he need an ambulance?”

Edelstein called Motti Unger, who drove the community’s emergency vehicle, and asked him to swing by and see what was up. Goldstein just needed a quick ride to the nearby Cave of the Patriarchs, slightly more than a mile away. The ride lasted about seven minutes, not long enough for Unger to ask any questions. He gave Unger his car keys and asked him to drop them off later with his wife.

Unger didn’t find it strange that the doctor was wearing army fatigues, or that he was carrying his Galil automatic rifle. Hebron was a violent place, and attacks on the region’s Jewish residents were getting more and more common. If he needed a quick early morning ride, he probably had his reasons. The soldiers guarding the cave were just as incurious. One of them asked the doctor why he was there so early, and in uniform no less. The doctor smiled and mumbled something about miluim, Hebrew for reserve duty, and walked in. The doctor walked over to the green metal door that connected the room to the much larger Isaac Hall, at the end of which, according to legend, lies the locked door that leads directly to Gan Eden, the Garden of Eden. Normally, the door would’ve been guarded. The doctor unbolted the door and walked in.

He took a few steps along the wall in the marvelous room with the high, arched ceilings and the ornate rugs. And then, he took out his rifle and started shooting. When security forces finally made their way to the scene, they found the bodies of 29 Muslim men, murdered as they prayed peacefully. And in one corner, lying perfectly still, his head bludgeoned by a fire extinguisher wielded by a few of the men who rushed to stop the attack, was doctor Baruch Goldstein.

The New York Times article adds,

Muhammed Abu Saleh, a guard at the mosque door, said that Goldstein had demanded to enter, saying he was the duty officer, and that when Mr. Abu Saleh objected, the doctor knocked him down with the butt of his rifle. “When I saw him, he was running toward the hall where everyone was saying prayers,” said Khatem Kafisha, who had been taking off his shoes near the door. “He could have shot any one of us who was outside, but it was clear he only wanted to open fire on the worshipers so he could hit as many people as possible.”

The aftermath of the atrocity is an example of how the Zionists cleverly use the damage done to others to eventually advance their cause. It compares to changing the student protests against Jewish participation in the genocide of the Palestinian people to student protest as anti-Semitic attacks on the Jewish people.

Israeli leaders showed contempt for the atrocity. Yitzhak Rabin addressed the Knesset:

You are not part of the community of Israel. You are not part of the national democratic camp which we all belong to in this house, and many of the people despise you. You are not partners in the Zionist enterprise. You are a foreign implant. You are an errant weed. Sensible Judaism spits you out. You placed yourself outside the wall of Jewish law. We say to this horrible man and those like him: you are a shame on Zionism and an embarrassment to Judaism.

The Israeli government’s words made headlines and impressed a world to believe the Israelis wanted peace and reconciliation with the Palestinians. The same world was unaware that, “in October 1993, after a series of previous disruptions, Goldstein poured acid on prayer rugs in the Ibrahimi Mosque, burned large holes in them, and assaulted six Palestinians worshipers.” Muslim authorities informed Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of the “dangers” posed by Goldstein. “These daily violations in the Ibrahimi mosque cannot be given silent treatment.” Rabin, who posed as a follower of the Oslo Accords, did not respond to the earlier information. Israeli authorities took no action. Now, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) demanded that all settlers be disarmed and an international force be created to protect Palestinians. The Israeli government only arrested followers of Goldstein’s hero, the deceased Meir Kahane, forbade certain settlers from entering Arab towns, and demanded those settlers, and only those, turn in their army-issued rifles.

This was a moment in which an enraged world community may have been able to thwart the ongoing genocide. Those responsible for the Ibrahim Mosque massacre were the foreign settlers who occupied land stolen from the Palestinians. The illegal occupation of the lands provoked the Palestinians into retaliation against these foreign settlers. The retaliation gave Baruch Goldstein and his deranged followers a deranged reason to commit an atrocity against the Palestinians. The cycle of violence had one principal contributing factor — the settlers occupying stolen land. Stop the illegal settlements and the violence will cease. A moribund world could not commit to appropriate action. A moribund world created a world of eternal victims.

The atrocity did not end at the Ibrahami Mosque. In mass protests by Palestinians throughout the West Bank, 20 to 26 Palestinians were killed while 120 were injured in confrontations with the Israeli military. Nine Israeli Jews were also killed. A naïve world did not notice that actions did not follow words, that the Palestinians did not receive compensation or more protection. The opposite occurred; the Hebron settlers received assistance in expanding their settlements and increasing their violence against the Palestinians.

Israeli measures taken in Hebron following the massacre include:

• A round-the-clock curfew imposed on Palestinian residents.
• Forcible division of the Ibrahimi Mosque to create a separate prayer space for Jews with a separate entrance. In addition, the mosque is opened exclusively for Jews 10 days a year, and Muslims 10 days a year.
• Palestinian shopkeepers on Shuhada Street in the heart of Hebron were forced to close their businesses, which were welded shut by the Israeli army, under the pretext of securing settlers living on the busy commercial artery.
• Palestinians were restricted, at first from driving and later from walking as well, on a large section of Shuhada Street, prompting its nickname of “Apartheid Street.” The US government spent millions of dollars through USAID renovating Shuhada Street prior to its segregation, most of which is now reserved for the exclusive use of Jewish settlers.
• Numerous new Israeli military checkpoints and obstacles to movement were put in place making it difficult for Palestinians to move around the city, including children who must pass through checkpoints to get to school.
• There are over 120 obstacles to Palestinian movement designed to segregate “restricted areas” (settlements and surrounding areas) from the rest of the city, including 18 permanently manned military checkpoints.
• Several streets in the center of downtown Hebron that lead to the settlements are prohibited for Palestinian traffic and some also for pedestrian movement.
• 512 Palestinian businesses in the restricted areas have been closed by the Israeli military and at least 1100 others have closed due to restricted access for customers and suppliers.
• More than 1000 Palestinian homes located in the restricted areas, over 40% of the area’s residences, have been abandoned, according to a survey by B’Tselem and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.

Malaise in the international community caused an inability to find justice for the Palestinians murdered by Brooklyn born Baruch Goldstein in the Cave of the Patriarchs. Malaise set the stage for continuous murders of Palestinians. Goldstein provoked, Palestinians responded, and the Palestinian response moved Israeli officials to take action… against Palestinians. The mass murder of Palestinians was turned into a provocation against Israelis and the Palestinian victims were additionally victimized. Every day, Americans hear about the foreign event that occurred on October 7, 2023. Every day, Americans should learn about American events, about Americans who have gone to the occupied territories and caused death and misery to the peoples in the Middle East. February 25, 1994 prefaced a multitude of provocations, many by Americans, that eventually caused the events on October 7, 2023.



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Part II: The World Confront its Malaise

From an American killing 29 Palestinians to an American bomb killing Hassan Nasrallah

by Dan Lieberman / October 4th, 2024

Read Part 1.

The events described in previous articles ─ pro-Israel influence that enabled rapid recognition by the U.S. government of the Israel regime in 1948 and an American murder of 29 Palestinians at the Cave of Patriarchs in Hebron in 1994 are not isolated relics of the past. They link to events that occur in contemporary times and remain alive as if happening today ─ salient features in the historical narrative that a world ignored and served to claim more victims.

Pro-Israel influence that enabled rapid recognition by the U.S. government of the Israel regime initiated the trend that guaranteed almost continuous support by the U.S. government for Israel’s mounting crimes. Made in America Baruch Goldstein, in his murderous rampage, set the stage for continuous murders of Palestinians and for the made in America bombs that extinguished the life of Hezbollah Secretary General, Hassan Nasrallah.

The constant drumming of arranged epithets and twists of reality, where an Israel committed atrocity becomes an Israel sacrifice, continues to manipulate minds. Hezbollah and its deceased leader, Hassan Nasrallah, are not portrayed as fighting to prevent the genocide of the Palestinian people by the terrorist Israeli government; they are labelled as terrorist Hezbollah and terrorist Nasrallah urging genocide of nuclear-armed Israel and as individuals who deserve the ultimate fate.

In his speech to the United Nations (UN), Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, displayed the deranged and manipulative mind that governs Israel’s actions. He said “more resolutions have been passed by the General Assembly against Israel in the last decade than against the rest of the world’s countries,” and accused the UN of being a “house of darkness” and a “swamp of antisemitic bile.” The avalanche of UN resolutions condemning Israel’s genocidal actions prove that Israel is a “house of darkness,” a nation that has no regard for international law, and has leaders who feed upon hating other peoples. In his purposeful upside-down world, Netanyahu attempted to use valid condemnation of Israel’s actions by those who have been trusted to safeguard the world against criminal actions to prove Israel is a “shining light on the hill.”

From Netanyahu,

Hezbollah is the quintessential terror organization in the world today. It has tentacles that span all continents. It has murdered more Americans and more Frenchmen than any group except Bin Laden. It’s murdered the citizens of many countries represented in this room.

Netanyahu alludes to one incident, the 40 year-old 1983 bombings of French and American barracks in Beirut. On October 23, 1983, a suicide bomber drove a truck filled with explosives into the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut and killed 241 U.S. military personnel. That same morning, another suicide attack killed 58 French soldiers in their barracks. The barracks were components of contingents of U.S. Marines and French forces that arrived in Lebanon as part of a peacekeeping mission. After the Sabra and Shatila massacres, which killed between “1,300 and 3,500 civilians, mostly Palestinians and Lebanese Shias,” and French and U.S. naval bombardments of the Shouf hills, Lebanese militants perceived the French and U.S. presences in their land as intruding forces that protected Israel’s invasion. The militants wanted these forces to leave, and, not too long after the bombings, they left. No confirmed information is available of who authorized and carried out the bombings. A formal Hezbollah did not exist at that time.

There is definite information that Israeli air force jet fighter aircraft and navy motor torpedo boats attacked the USS Liberty on 8 June 1967, during the Six-Day War, killed 34 and wounded 171 crew members. Many Americans have been arbitrarily murdered by Israeli forces and settlers in the West Bank and Gaza, about ½ dozen this year.

Heart breaking to learn that Turkish-American woman, Aysenur Eygi, who radiates beauty, was shot and killed while protesting near Nablus. Disturbing to know the U.S. government does not hold Israeli officials responsible. Pulverizing to understand that Israel uses slaughter to send a message ─ come to Israel to help the Palestinians and you will be killed — young, old, man, woman, or child. Her life should not be forgotten, and her image should appear on every protest mechanism.

Apply Netanyahu’s statement to situations that caused U.S. casualties, and we have, “Israel is the quintessential terror organization in the world today. It has tentacles that span all continents. It has murdered more Americans than any group except Bin Laden. It’s murdered the citizens of many countries represented at the UN.”

Reality, truth, and facts are rarely considered by Israel’s puppets. Reading a paper placed before him, US President Joe Biden says the same as his leader.

Hassan Nasrallah and the terrorist group he led, Hezbollah, were responsible for killing hundreds of Americans over a four-decade reign of terror. His death from an Israeli airstrike is a measure of justice for his many victims, including thousands of Americans, Israelis, and Lebanese civilians.”

“Hundreds of Americans,” and “thousands of Americans, Israelis, and Lebanese civilians?” Some Israeli civilians have been killed in the tit-for-tat hostilities, a minute number compared to Lebanese civilians and UN workers killed by Israel. Ex-president Joseph Biden, please name one American proven to be killed by Hezbollah since it became an official organization in 1985.

The Israeli Prime Minister, who believes that the function of the peoples of the world is to make certain Israeli Jews live and survive well, regardless of the murders of others, recites,

After generations in which our people were slaughtered, remorselessly butchered, and no one raised a finger in our defense, we now have a state. We now have a brave army, an army of incomparable courage, and we are defending ourselves.

An insolent and degrading insult to all those who fought and died in World War II. The United States, Soviet Union, and their allies fought bravely to defeat the Nazi state in World War II. They raised more than their fingers; they sacrificed themselves in defense of all the European peoples. If there was a strategy to liberate anyone from the camps and secure their lives — Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, gypsies, political opponents of the Nazi regime, and Jews — they would have implemented the strategy.

In war and immediate post-war years, communication and access to news, including firsthand knowledge was limited — no Internet, no 100 channels of television, no electronic mail, no You Tube, no digital cameras, no smart phones, no Facetime, no WhatsApp, and no social media. The ubiquitous, daily, and on site images of the violence we see today were not available to stir the mind to action. Unbelievable, that despite the enormous information that describes the genocide in Gaza, the world remains relatively passive and little effort is being applied to prevent the genocide. Just the opposite is occurring; societies are helping and encouraging it. Mr. Netanyahu, nobody encouraged the Holocaust; Mr. Netanyahu stand up and tell us why you are encouraging the genocide, requesting the Western world to contribute to your gruesome cause, and are ready to extend it to Lebanon?

The unwary world, still unable to confront its malaise, has allowed the Israeli Jews to judge who lives and who dies, slaughtering others with impunity and without redress. Netanyahu has said it with bravado, vowing to destroy anyone in the world who harms an Israeli citizen. Recent events indicate nobody is safe from the Zionist Jews who murder with ease, without remorse, and without facing justice. Give it perspective by citing a few examples.

The goat and sheepherders in the South Hebron Hills live a simple and basic life on semi-desert land, which is barely sufficient to feed their small herds. They don’t ask anything from anybody, don’t harm anybody, and just want to do their daily chores. Settlers from Brooklyn, New York, who never saw a goat or sheep in their life, have suddenly become herders who need room and land for their pet goats. Simple way to get it ─ forcibly evict these simple people and ruin their lives by telling them the land is now a closed “firing zone.” If they protest, well, just shoot them. A video (scroll down) shows a settler arguing with a Palestinian herder on the herder’s land in the village of al-Tawani and arbitrarily shooting him. Israeli soldiers nonchalantly regard the incident and nobody detains the assailant.

Gaza has its daily atrocities. Israeli snipers and soldiers wantonly murder men, women, and especially children. In one episode, Israeli soldiers search a building, going from apartment to apartment. They enter an apartment and order several men to strip and then execute them. No reason and no concern for the killings. Go to “The Night Won’t End,” a film that investigates civilian killings in Gaza. View from 1:00.01 to 1:04.50 and be prepared to witness a horror.

In the West Bank town of Qabatiya, soldiers murder several Palestinians and then commit a gruesome act — treat the lifeless bodies as rubbish and throw them off the roof into the street below.  

The New York Times reports,

According to Wafa (Palestine News Agency), seven Palestinians were killed by the Israeli military during a 10-hour raid into Qabatiya, south of the city of Jenin, on Thursday. Among them, Wafa said, were the three people — believed to be men — captured in the video.

Wafa reported that, after being thrown from the building, the bodies were mutilated on the ground by the claw of an Israeli excavator before being taken away by the military.

In describing the exploding pagers that killed about 10 people and injured several thousand in Lebanon, media, as usual, inserts a description of Hezbollah as the “terror group.” Here we have one of the most horrific terror attacks in recorded history, with innocent civilians suddenly blinded while doing their daily activities and the victims are called the terrorists.

Biggest atrocity

The greatest atrocity has been done to Jewish people. Since its inception, Israel Jews have been used as pawns to oppress and subjugate others and been subjected to constant attacks. Thanks to Netanyahu and his compatriots, the Jews have become the most hated people in the world. Not just animosity or mild disapproval; venomous hatred of not wanting to associate and wishing disappearance. World Jewry may not realize it but this animosity comes from democratic, freedom loving, and liberal persons, people fighting for human rights who now express belief that Zionist Jews are inhuman. Many decent and well-meaning people are following the suggestion by Palestinian poet Remi Kanazi.

Do not cower to Zionists. Shame them. Do not welcome them in your spaces. Why should these genocide loving fascists be treated any different than any other flat out racist.

Can the world confront its malaise? Activists should keep doing what they are doing and try to overcome the Zionists and their worldwide conspirators who find antidotes by converting protests against their malevolent actions into malevolent protests by the protestors. The latest trickery has the New York Times, Sept. 4, 2024, publish, “Across the United States this spring, Iran also used social media to stoke student-organized protests against Israel’s war in Gaza, with operatives providing financial assistance and posing as students, according to American intelligence assessments.” What nonsense.

Well known that Israeli operatives flood social media with derogatory information on campus protestors and flattering information on their counter protestors, and hundreds of millions of dollars of donations are used to shape college presidents’ and government officials’ decisions. The Iranian agents, if they existed, probably could not buy a government or college official a cup of coffee.

Mentioning the atrocities committed by Israel leads to the question, “What can be done to stop Israel?” Arguments to the eventual demise of the Zionist nightmare are more wish fulfillment than reality.

The Times of Israel (TOI) features an article, “Derelict economy could sink ‘Titanic’ Israel, experts warn,” which relates, “New research paints worrying picture of decades of neglected national priorities leaving the country without the resources to face existential threats.” TOI is perspicacious, Intel has halted expansion of its facilities in Israel, delaying construction of a $25 billion factory for chip production. This pessimism gives optimism to those who believe that a disastrous economy will not be able to support a strong military. After Israel’s military decimates Hezbollah as a fighting force, Israel will no longer need a world class military to protect it from fulfilling its self-guided mission. This mission does not have a high-flying economy as its prominent feature; the Israel economy will always receive assistance from its benefactors — United States, Germany, and Jewish billionaires around the world. The salient feature of the Zionist mission is Irredentism ─ uniting of Jews around the world, physically or morally, in a supposedly united Biblical kingdom of Judah and Israel. That mission is almost completed and only enforcers composed of a small military and a large settler population will be needed to contain the Palestinians on the plantation. The shrinking labor force, due to emigrating Israelis, will be filled by the slave labor of compliant Palestinians.

Another argument for defeating Israel treats collapse of its principal supporter, the United States of America. Accomplishing that internally does not seem plausible. A possible solution to Israel’s maddening of the civilized world lays with leaders of several nations. A world realignment of blocs, those contending American hegemony and those blindly supporting it, is occurring. The U.S. faces economic decline from Chinese competition. If a substantial number of nations are convinced that moving away from the United States and aligning with China is less dangerous than allowing the modern Israelites and their Joshua leader to continue the revival of the Biblical Conquest, slay the inhabitants of the “promised Land,” and lead the world to continuous conflagrations, they could take action and give the U.S. an offer it cannot refuse ─ stop aiding Israel or we start aiding China. Successful rearrangement of the contending blocs requires a three-way endeavor.

• Gravitation to use of the Yuan as international currency will sink the dollar, substantially raise the price of U.S. imports, and cause a national inflation. This will be offset by lowering the cost of U.S. labor for exports and foreign investment.
• Tariffs will have to be imposed by foreign nations to offset the reduced prices and increased competitiveness of U.S. exports
• Nations will have to be assured they are not threatened by loss of U.S. security.

We have a complex subject that needs discussion beyond this article. Wait, there may be a solution on the way. I don’t recommend it but ex-President and future felon, Donald Trump, proposes weakening the dollar, increasing tariffs, and providing less security to other nations.

Will a Trump victory bring about the international realignment that forces the United States to compromise its protection of Israel to guarantee protection of its economy? What a dilemma!

Dan Lieberman publishes commentaries on foreign policy, economics, and politics at substack.com.  He is author of the non-fiction books A Third Party Can Succeed in America, Not until They Were Gone, Think Tanks of DC, The Artistry of a Dog, and a novel: The Victory (under a pen name, David L. McWellan). Read other articles by Dan.