The Annihilation of Gaza.

by Marjorie Prince

When my brother and I were children and arguing about who started it, our mother always said: “two wrongs don’t make a right.” Surely this concept applies to Hamas and Israel. The Hamas October 7 attack on Israeli civilians is deplorable. The Israeli genocide of over 29,000 civilians (as of Feb 19, 2024) including thousands of children as reported by the Hamas Health Ministry is an unwarranted brutal act of revenge. Worse yet, the U.S. government is funding this genocide by supplying Israel with weapons of mass destruction (e.g. two-thousand pound bombs). President Joe Biden can tell Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to limit the revenge assault on Gazans, but words have no effect on Netanyahu. Cutting off our taxpayer money to supply Israel with military weapons would save more Gazan lives and halt the expulsion of Palestinians from their ancestral lands. An immediate ceasefire is necessary.

Netanyahu seeks elimination of all Palestinians in order to assume control of the entire region. Although the Palestinian/Israeli conflict is popularly portrayed as a dispute between Jews and Muslims, religion is a cover for a struggle to control land and resources. This struggle underlies most conflicts. Look at Russia’s invasion of the “breadbasket” Ukraine or Venezuela claiming part of Guyana after oil was discovered in that area.

For 75 years Palestinians have been waiting for a two-state solution to the territory. No progress has been made as Israel has been allowed to usurp more and more land and resources by demolishing Palestinian homes and establishing illegal “settlements” in the West Bank, leaving little contiguous land for Palestinians. A two-state solution now seems impossible.

The U.S. providing more weapons of war only intensifies the suffering of both Palestinians and Israelis. If freeing the hostages still held by Hamas were really a priority, Netanyahu and Biden would call for an immediate ceasefire. There are no real winners in war – only too many lives lost, habitat destroyed, climate change hastened, and enormous sums of money needed to rebuild wasted. Many Americans are still fighting our Civil War and enacting racist laws that overturn all the legislation making us a more equitable and inclusive country. I am very afraid that Biden’s unconditional support of Israel, no matter what it does, will cost him at the polls in 2024. If Trump is re-elected, we can kiss democracy good-by.

Addendum by John M Repp

I became curious about why the United States is giving support to the state of Israel in its massacre in Gaza. I had always heard that AIPAC, American Israel Public Affairs Committee, was a powerful lobbying organization. I took a look at the website Open Secrets: Following the Money in Politics. To my surprise AIPAC ranks 214th out of 9,458 lobbying organizations. It is true that AIPAC is a very wealthy organization, ranking 20th out of 26, 562 organizations in the amount of its contributions. Can you believe the number of organizations involved in lobbying and contributing to candidates? No wonder our democratic process is so compromised!

So, the reason for the Biden administration giving diplomatic and military support to the Netanyahu government is not just the wealth of AIPAC. The Biden Administration must think there are good geopolitical reasons for supporting Israel. Most of the world thinks they are wrong. We await the decision of the International Court of Justice (ICJ). South Africa has filed a brief there charging Israel with genocide. Cases before the court take a long time to be decided and the court has no enforcement mechanism.

More than 29,000 Palestinians have been killed as of February 19, 2024, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. 69, 000 have been injured.   1.9 million Palestinians have been displaced. 250,000 housing units have been damaged.