Dispatch #113 White Lesbian Age 71 Considers: Israel Cites US Killing Civilians in Iraq to Justify Killing Thousands of Palestinians – Realpolitik Rules

Nov. 14th 2023  

997 Days Since Inauguration of First Woman Vice-President

98 Days Until the 2024 Presidential Primaries Begin 

508 Days Since Supreme Court Ruled Women Don’t Have Human Rights

Under Scrutiny Over Gaza, Israel Points to Civilian Toll of U.S. Wars

Israeli officials say it is impossible to defeat Hamas without killing innocents, a lesson they argue Americans and their allies should understand.  Israel dropped two 2000 lbs. bombs in one of the most densely populated area in Gaza trying to kill one Hamas commander. www.nytimes.com/2023/11/07/us/politics/israel-gaza-war-death-toll-civilians.htm 

At least 11,100 Palestinians – including at least 4,400 children – are killed in Gaza by Israel since 7 October.  At least 28,000 Palestinians are wounded and at least 2700 are missing including 1500 children. The number of dead Palestinians represents .5% of Gaza’s population. Comparable death toll for Israel’s population of 9.3M equals 46,500 Israelis.

At this moment, all hospitals in northern Gaza, including Al Shifa the largest hospital in Gaza, have stopped functioning due to Israeli bombing and blockade. At Al Shifa, incubators for 36 premature babies stopped working – 6 babies have died with more likely to follow. Patients in ICU, on ventilators and needing dialysis, will begin to die. Wounded Palestinians lie in the streets – no ambulances or EMTs are available. And even if they got to the hospitals, no medical care is available.  Doctors are operating on children without anesthesia and with light only from cell phones. Five thousand pregnant women are due to give birth this month – no food, no clean water, no shelter, no hospitals. Severely injured patients with burns, broken or lost limbs, head wounds will start to die. Gaza is on the verge of catastrophic public health epidemics. Israel’s war on Gaza continues apace.

In his New York Review of Books article ‘Let Us Not Hurry to Our Doom’ Seth Anziska begins with:

To work as a historian in a time of war comes with its own form of fear and grief, especially writing about massacres while new massacres are unfolding. In the days after presenting research on a book project about Israel’s 1982 war in Lebanon—exploring how the overreach of the invasion transformed regional politics, global perceptions of Zionism, and the Palestinian struggle for rights—I sit in my office and learn that Israel has inaugurated its ground operations in Gaza by cutting all communications from the Strip. 

Days later I leave the library after looking at archival photos of the bombing of the PLO Research Center in Beirut by an Israeli-backed militant group and glance at the news, which reports that Israel has bombed the Jabalia refugee camp and Palestinian residents are pulling scores of bodies from the wreckage. Historians are always trying to look backward to make sense of the present, but when do we sound the alarm? What can understanding the past achieve when there seems to be an insatiable drive to repeat it? www.nybooks.com/online/2023/11/09/let-us-not-hurry-to-our-doom-israel-gaza/

Anziska reminds that Israel used the same strategy to destroy Beirut in 1982 – indiscriminate saturation bombing along with blockade – and supported the Sabra and Shatila Massacre. Anziska notes that the US has shielded Israel from accountability for its decades-long illegal strategies to degrade Palestinian rights from illegal occupations to total blockage of Gaza to apartheid reign and illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.  In this moment the world watches as Israel continues its murderous vengeful rampage inflicting unimaginable suffering on 2.2M Palestinians living in Gaza, while the US -- fully complicit with these crimes against humanity – enforces impunity for Israel by sending two aircraft carriers, one nuclear powered submarine, and 100 fighter jets. Anziska concludes: 

Under circumstances like these, it is hardly surprising that our collective outrage and grief have left us begging politicians for an end to the killing and the immediate distribution of sufficient humanitarian aid. This instinct might be necessary, but it also reiterates our faith in the status quo. In addition to contending with the West’s sordid contributions to the violence in Palestine and Israel, we need to imagine alternative political arrangements rooted in values of equity and justice. The current crisis is as much a failure of politics as it is a failure of imagination.

No amount of historical understanding can prevent people from indulging their worst capacity for violence. But there is also the capacity for love. If we are to learn anything in a time of war, we must listen closely to members of the bereaved families: those just burying their mothers, fathers, and children in the south of Israel, and those still likely unable to find gravesites for theirs in Gaza. Among them are some of the only truth-tellers worth paying any attention to, those who call not for retribution but for a cessation of rage. In this frenzy of killing and death, we need to pause long enough to hear their voices. During the first Lebanon War the late Lebanese American artist and writer Etel Adnan wrote a poem called “Beirut 1982.” I have been trying to listen closely to one of its verses now:

Let us not hurry to our Doom

Let us stop and look at the Sea.

Listen to Israeli survivors: They don’t want revenge. Against the prevailing public mood, many survivors of the Oct. 7 massacres and relatives of those killed or kidnapped are opposing retribution on Gaza. www.972mag.com/israeli-survivors-hamas-massacre-revenge/ 

Israel’s assault on Gaza has obliterated a densely populated urban landscape: no water system, no sewer system, no electricity, no roads, no schools, no hospitals or health system; 50% of housing destroyed or damaged; 70% of Palestinians displaced from destroyed homes or forced to flee their homes. What is the plan for these 2M Palestinians crowded in terrible living conditions in southern Gaza?

The Government Encourages the Settlers to Attack and Gives Them Permission to Kill Us”

www.thenation.com/article/world/west-bank-israeli-settler-attacks-palestinians/

The Extreme Ambitions of West Bank Settlers Excerpts from New Yorker phone interview with Settler Leader Daniella Weiss conducted after 7 October and published on 11 November.  “We the Jews are the sovereigns in the state of Israel and in the Land of Israel. Palestinians have to accept it.”  “We want to close the option for a Palestinian state, and the world wants to leave the option open.” “We intend to repopulate Gaza with settlements.”  www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-extreme-ambitions-of-west-bank-settlers 

Does the brazen abrogation of International Law, International Humanitarian Principles and UN Resolutions by Israel with US protection and approval suggest that principles of justice, peace, and the universality of human rights will continue to be normatively abrogated to the politics of power, wealth, and weapons?

Palestinian Groups Ask ICC to Arrest Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu for War Crimes & Genocide in Gaza  www.democracynow.org/2023/11/10/icc_lawsuit  

Palestine’s Obituary A discerning discussion between Robert Scheer and Juan Cole in this Scheer Intelligence podcast.  www.juancole.com/2023/11/palestines-obituary.html

Historian Juan Cole minces no words in offering a grave and sobering account of the conflict in Palestine and Israel. In a comprehensive reflection of the history and current day situation in the Middle East, Cole uses his expertise as one of the leading historians of the region to paint a picture of the war. He asserts that in all definitions of the words, Israel is actively committing war crimes, like the United States in Iraq, a genocide and ethnic cleansing aimed at eliminating the Palestinian presence from their homeland.

Cole’s characterization of Netanyahu and his government as fascist immediately brings up the gross complicity at the hands of the U.S. and the politicians who have supported and continue to publicly stand by Israel. It’s worse when considering the high-ranking officials in Netanyahu’s cabinet. He brought into his government, when he came back to power late last year, the most extreme -- beyond fascism -- the most extreme parties in Israel. The religious Zionists and the Jewish power…these people are terrorists and some of them actually have been on the State Department terrorism watch list.

Cole soberly concludes that realpolitik will likely prevail.  Pointing out the individuals with a real hand in the situation, who have the money to lobby for Israel’s interests, Cole says, “[the power] lies with the people that are most comfortable with seeing the Palestinians simply ethnically cleansed.”