WHILE THE US APPROVES $14 BILLION MILITARY FUNDING FOR ISRAEL

by Vijaya Chandrasoma

It cannot be stressed strongly or often enough that the brutal actions by Hamas terrorists, against Israeli civilians, slaughtering 1,400 men, raping and killing women and beheading and burning children was an indefensible war crime. The terrorists have also taken 240 hostages, including over 20 Americans, who are still being held captive in Gaza.

This was an atrocity committed on October 7, over a month ago.

It cannot also be stressed strongly or often enough that from October 8, the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), on the instructions of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with the “rock solid” support of President Biden and the majority of the American people, have been wreaking, as Netanyahu vowed, “mighty vengeance” against Hamas in Gaza. For over a month.

The terrorist group of Hamas, numbering about 25,000 operatives, has been committed to the destruction of Israel since its establishment in the 1980s. Hamas attacks against Israel from 2000 were met with Israeli incursions into Gaza and the West Bank, exacting a heavy death toll on Palestinians. As the violence gradually wound down, the Israelis unilaterally withdrew its soldiers and about 8,000 Jewish settlers from Gaza in 2005, though they maintained tight control over access to the enclave by land, air and sea.

Hamas claimed the Israeli withdrawal as vindication of its violent policies against the Israelis, and gained a landslide victory over the Palestinian Authority in Gaza elections held in 2007. Hamas has been acting as the de facto military government of the Gaza Strip since then.

Hamas terrorists live in Gaza, among a population of over two million Palestinian civilians. There is no way that the IDF could identify the specific locations of the terrorists, the hostages or their stocks of military equipment, hidden as they are in a labyrinth of underground tunnels and surface areas also occupied by civilians, schools and hospitals.

So those tens of thousands Palestine civilians, men, women and children, living in peace in Gaza, are slain, maimed and justified as “collateral damage” in Netanyahu’s thirst for revenge against Hamas terrorists. These are continuing war crimes committed daily for over a month, as revenge for atrocities committed by Hamas on one day, October 7, which show no sign of abating. Gaza City is completely ravaged, and Palestinians are forced to flee south, taking whatever they can carry, though there are constant Israeli airstrikes in South Gaza also. There is little safety for Palestinian civilians anywhere in Gaza. The scenes of innocent people, men, women, children and elders, fleeing certain death, carrying whatever they can in their arms, is a plight that should not be suffered by any human being.

According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), 70% of people in Gaza have been “forcibly displaced”, 60% of all medical facilities have been destroyed, over 11,000 civilians, men women and children killed and tens of thousands wounded. Women, children and elders constitute over 70% of those slain and wounded.

At least 240 hostages, including over 20 Americans are still in Hamas custody, location and condition unknown. Netanyahu refuses any abatement of Israeli attacks until all these hostages are released, unharmed.

As Queen Riana of Jordan said during a recent interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour., on October 25:

“In the last couple of weeks, we have seen a serious double standard in the world. When October 7 happened, the world immediately and unequivocally stood by Israel and its right to defend itself and condemned the attack that happened – but what we’re seeing in the last couple of weeks, we’re seeing silence in the world. Israel has declared a complete siege on Gaza….which has resulted in relentless airstrikes on densely-inhabited Gaza, and a blockade on vital supplies, including food and water, to the isolated strip’s entire population.

“Are we being told that it is wrong to kill a family, an entire family, at gunpoint, but it’s okay to shell them (other families) to death? I mean, there’s a glaring double standard here, the silence of the Western world is deafening and it makes them complicit”.

At last, perhaps a month too late, the UN and several aid agencies are now calling for a ceasefire and the free movement of humanitarian aid to the increasing devastation faced by Palestinians in Gaza. Demands which have been rejected by Netanyahu, on the grounds that a ceasefire would only enable Hamas to regroup, and strike again. The murder of thousands of innocent Palestinians continues relentlessly and without respite.

US National Security Council Coordinator, John Kirby said, “Israel has a right to defend themselves, we’re going to keep supporting them and giving them more security assistance”. US Secretary of State Blinken acknowledged the humanitarian disaster in Gaza, saying that “humanitarian pauses” should be considered. He avoided the use of the word “ceasefire” lest that would incur the wrath of Netanyahu, whose ultimate goal is the genocide of the Palestinians.

Requesting a “humanitarian pause” while providing military funding of billions of dollars to Israel is irony that is largely understood only by the majority of the American people, whose support of Israel remains rock solid. It is a concept beyond comprehension to the UN and the rest of the world.

Giving an AK-47 assault rifle to a murderer, while offering heartfelt thoughts and prayers to the victim, is the height of hypocrisy, a sanctimonious trait which has been the hallmark of the Americans over the years, if not centuries.

The questions which are relevant today are:

What will be the fate of Gaza tomorrow, or whenever this one-sided war ends, with Hamas wiped out, along with tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians? Who will then govern Gaza, who will provide educational facilities for the children, medical facilities for the wounded and the sick? Who will rebuild the infrastructure bombed to devastation by the Israelis. Simply put, who will provide the essentials to enable the Palestinians, who have survived the Israeli onslaught, to stay alive in a destroyed land?

These questions are impossible to answer only by those who do not study history. Netanyahu recently stated, “The first mistake was made by Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion in 1947”, when he could have gotten rid of all the Palestinians from the Jewish State of Israel with the support of the western powers, who were rulers of the world at that time. Netanyahu is merely correcting Ben-Gurion’s grievous error, by taking over Gaza from the Palestinians, as the Israelis took over the West Bank from the Palestinians and the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967, with the complicity of today’s rulers of the world.

Palestinians left in Gaza and the West Bank after the war will face either ethnic cleansing and genocide. The lucky ones will be able to flee to foreign countries willing to, reluctantly, accommodate them as refugees, never to be allowed to return to their homeland.

As far as Netanyahu and the Israeli hawks are concerned, Mission Accomplished.