Monday, December 11, 2023

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https://scheerpost.com/2023/12/08/ralph-nader-on-israeli-governments-war-crimes-enabled-defended-by-biden-congress/

Ralph Nader on Israeli Government’s War Crimes – Enabled & Defended by Biden & Congress

The humiliation of the U.S. government, which is actively complicit in providing the weaponry, funding, and UN vetoes backing the Israeli government’s attack on the civilian Palestinians/Arabs in tiny Gaza, is in plain view daily. All in the name of the unasked American people and taxpayers.

Earlier this week, at a House of Representatives’ hearing, Trump toady Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) repeatedly assailed three University presidents with the question of would they discipline students calling for the genocide of Jews, without any evidence that this hateful speech is prevalent on campus.

Pursuing her fulminations, Stefanik was cruelly oblivious to the real ongoing genocide in Gaza with her support of unconditional shipment of American F-16s, 155mm. missiles and other weapons of mass destruction used to kill children, women and the elderly who had nothing to do with the preventable October 7th Hamas violence.

Meanwhile, a State Department spokesman continues to say that the Israeli government does not intentionally target civilians. With U.S. drones over Gaza daily, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has visual proof that the overwhelming bombing on civilian structures is killing innocent civilians.

The evidence is in the rubble of hospitals, health clinics, ambulances, schools, libraries, places of worship, marketplaces, water mains, homes, apartment buildings, and piles of unburied corpses being eaten by stray dogs.  All this information is in the possession of bomber Biden’s regime.

The Bidenites and their bloodthirsty cohorts in Congress were forewarned when the Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant and other Israeli officials on October 8th shouted these chilling genocidal orders to their army: “No electricity, no food, no fuel, no water.… We are fighting human animals and will act accordingly.” (See, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide). Add an already illegal 16-year Israeli blockade of 2.3 Palestinians suffering from dire poverty, with 40% of their children down with anemia.

Now, about half of Gaza’s population are children, 85% of the entire population is homeless, wandering helplessly into nowhere, afflicted with pending starvation, sickened by spreading infectious diseases and dirty drinking water.  There is little or no medicines for diabetics and cancer patients. No surgery, no anesthesia, no emergency transport, no shelter from cold weather, only American-made bombs and missiles blowing up Palestinians into bits with Israeli snipers everywhere.

The Palestinians cannot flee from their open-air prison.  They cannot surrender – the Israeli government wants them gone. Bear in mind, the population that is not yet blown up is sick and dying, denied needed outside humanitarian aid. Defying feeble Biden’s wishes, Netanyahu only allows a trickle of aid trucks to enter Gaza, and those that do enter can scarcely reach their destinations.

All this raises the issue of the gross undercount of casualties. The Hamas Health Authority has restricted its count to the names of the deceased and injured supplied by hospitals and morgues. These locations are now largely rubble or inoperative. Bodies under the rubble, many of them children, can’t be counted. Thousands of missing people cannot be counted. The Ministry’s suspended count is over 17,000 fatalities, plus 45,000 injuries. With the far larger carnage unable to be tabulated, the actual fatality toll may reach 100,000 soon.

Nonetheless, about two weeks ago, the New York Times reported the death undercount of children in Gaza in two months was ten times greater than the deaths of Ukrainian children in nearly two years of Russian bombings. One of its headlines – “Smoldering Gaza Becomes a Graveyard for Children.”

There are about 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza and about 5,500 of them are due to give birth. Where are they going to do that? How can they be cared for and be nurtured? These mothers are sick and starving. Add the babies to the terrorists toll.

Gaza’s area is about the size of Philadelphia. How many dead, injured, and dying people would there be if 20,000 bombs were dropped on civilians and civilian structures in Philadelphia? Philadelphians trapped without food, water, medicine or any escape route. Imagine 85% of 1.5 million residents homeless, wandering in the streets and alleys. And with virtually no humanitarian aid coming from outside the city. There wouldn’t be any fire trucks or water to extinguish spreading fires.

Over a nine-week period there would have to be over 200,000 deaths and many more permanently disabled for life.

There are courageous Jewish groups (e.g., Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now) and rabbis calling for an end to the slaughter, demanding a ceasefire. There are protestors at all of Biden’s public events/trips reminding him of next November.

Veterans for Peace and other veteran groups are engaged in non-violent civil disobedience in front of the Scranton, Pennsylvania factory producing 155mm missiles for Israel. (Scranton is Biden’s hometown.) Public opinion is turning against the Biden/Israel war without limits on the Palestinians.

Biden wouldn’t want to poll the American people about his $14.3 billion genocide tax, charging American taxpayers to further prosperous Israel’s war of extermination in Gaza. They’ll likely tell Biden that poor children, unaffordable health facilities and other necessities in America need that money first.

There are some 30 Democratic Senators demanding that this Biden bill contain conditions and safeguards so that the money is not used to blow up more Palestinian children and women. But what else are these funds for other than to expand Israel’s military budget? The Israeli extremist ruling coalition under Netanyahu has made no secret of wanting to take over all of remaining Palestine as part of their “Greater Israel” mission to include what they call Judea and Samaria. As Israel’s Founder, David Ben-Gurion, frankly declared referring to the Palestinians, “We have taken their country.” (As quoted in The Jewish Paradox(1978) by Nahum Goldmann.)

It is a cruel irony of history that Israeli state terrorism is producing a Palestinian Holocaust. Netanyahu’s regime has killed over 60 journalists—three of them Israelis—120 United Nations relief workers and instituted total blackouts to keep the grisly events in Gaza out of the news in real time. Netanyahu, to shield his colossal failure to defend Israel on October 7thand to keep his job, is making sure that his country joins the world community of savage, slaughtering regimes, exemplified by the Bush/Cheney unlawful criminal destruction of Iraq and Afghanistan, followed by Hillary Clinton toppling Libya into permanent violence and chaos since 2011. (Obama later called his conceding to Hillary’s demands as his worst foreign policy decision).

Capitol Hill and the White House don’t wait for any blood-guilt to be recognized. That will surely come later with the judgment of history and the nightmarish visions of innocents being vaporized because of Washington’s unconditional backing of the Israeli blitzkrieg against what the Israeli newspaper Haaretz has repeatedly called the “totally defenseless people” of Gaza.

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https://informationclearinghouse.blog/2023/12/10/how-israel-has-grown-up-as-the-spoiled-boy-of-the-world/

How Israel has grown up as the spoiled boy of the world

President Joe Biden once said, “If there were no Israel, the US would have to invent one.” When he first made the comment as Senator, back in 1986, he explained that it is in America’s interest to support Israel in this vital region of the world which produces over 31 per cent of oil, for which the United States is always thirsty, as it imports an estimated 12 per cent of its total imports from the Middle East. Clearly, the US still needs to be present in the region, if only for its energy needs. That is closer to reality than the next claim he recently made.

In a comment he made on 24 October this year, Joe Biden, the President this time, said that the US supports Israel based on “our principles, ideals, [and] values. They are the same values.” Here; he is not talking about interests, but about values and ideals, giving the wrong impression that the US and Israel share the noble ideals and principles of freedom and equally value democracy, where human rights and law are highly regarded. This is a far from reality comment, and it makes him, as President, complicit in what Israel is doing in the Gaza Strip and to Gazans.

When Hamas Resistance fighters attacked Israel, Mr. Biden made it his sacred mission to step up his support for Israel by offering the Occupation State unprecedented financial, political and expertise support. He first announced, and got Congress approval for $14.5bn. The colossal sum of money gives the impression that tiny Israel is fighting another superpower, not “terrorists”, as it calls Hamas. Of course, this is aside from the annual $3.1bn that Israel gets in military aid from the American taxpayers. Some of the extra windfall came in the form of military equipment, including the top line bombs that are being used by Israel to kill, maim and displace Palestinians across the Gaza Strip.

The idea of “shared” values between Tel Aviv and Washington raises one question: what is the grandeur, shared noble values that both capitals have in common? Furthermore and, in line with Mr. Biden’s comment, what US interests compel it to support Israel? What is the single US interest in the death of more than 15,000 Palestinians and what kind of US interest is served by repeatedly displacing over 1 million Palestinians after denying them food, medicine, water, medical care and safe shelter? Difficult to find one!

Over the last 75 years of its bloody history, Israel has not only enjoyed, to use Mr. Biden’s words, “iron-clad” military commitment of the US, but its political protection on any international stage wherever Israel is called out, for whatever disaster it has committed – as it never stops committing the kind of ugliness unimaginable in the 21 century, like what it is doing in Gaza.

By being nurtured, coddled, hugged and financed by the US, Israel has grown up just like a badly behaved child and over-spoiled kid who knows what is right and what is wrong, but insists on doing the very wrong thing and always repeating it, counting on “mother America’s” help.

Over the years, this kid has become an embarrassment to its protector, the US and others, a shameful affront to the entire human race and a machine of lies, death, fake news and collective punishment.

Despite being America’s spoiled boy, Israel does not hesitate to insult it and harm its interests whenever it serves its own interests. It has spied on the US, betrayed its trust, killed its soldiers, murdered its citizens, broken its internal laws and dragged it to become a war-monger and a symbol of state sponsored terrorism and, yet still, remains the spoiled kid of Washington.

This is because spoiled children, at one point, no longer respect the values and principles of their guardians and grow up to mock them, while they define their own twisted principles and values and attempt to impose them back on those closest to them. This is where Israel and the US are today, despite all the niceties repeatedly said by Washington about shared principles and values.

Over the years this “bastard” child, Israel, has grown to become a force to be reckoned with, inside America itself. Any American politician could end his political career by a slip of the tongue if it is perceived as critical of Israel. In business, it could also mean the immediate firing of any CEO if, by bad luck, prompted him to say, for example, “Israel has killed too many children’, which is a fact. Even former officials aspiring to go back to the government payroll do their best to boast about their support for Israel.

OPINION: Israel legitimises killing Gazans by comparing Hamas to Nazis, says Israel Professor

Here is a good example: Jimmy Carter, US’ former president who brokered the first and biggest peace deal for Israel, was called a “bigot” by Israel just because he met a Hamas leader in 2008. In more recent times, Democrat Congresswoman,  Rashida Tlaib, was censored simply for calling for a free Palestine.

Back to Mr. Biden, the Vice President, this time. In 2010, during his visit to Israel, he was openly humiliated by Netanyahu who chose to announce settlement expansion while Biden was in town specifically calling for a freeze on them.

Antony Blinken, Biden’s Secretary of State, has been visiting Israel almost every week over the last month or so, pleading with all Israeli officials to kill fewer Gazan civilians. Despite everything he did for Israel, he was rebuffed and sent home disappointed, by this over-spoiled kid called Israel, who has grown beyond any blame or even reprimand.

Mr. Biden was made to lie by Netanyahu, who told him that Hamas fighters beheaded babies. Because of his fear of the Zionist lobby inside the US itself, the man, who is expected at such an age to be wiser and very sensitive, became desensitised over the Gaza tragedy. He not only questioned the death and injury tolls announced by Gazan authorities and quoted by all UN agencies, but went further by vindicating Israel from bombing hospitals, when he accused Hamas of using tunnels under Al-Shifa Hospital.

He became morally bankrupt to the point of attempting to rationalise the bombing of hospitals, cutting off power in their neonatal wards, shutting off the water supply to dialysis rooms and snipers spraying bullets in their oncology wards.

And, again, the coddled kid called Israel never really appreciates any of it by rewarding him, for example, by a mere promise to murder fewer Palestinians in the West Bank or destroying fewer homes in Gaza Strip—the typical behaviour of an over-parented child!.

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https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2023/12/11/israel-supporters-would-defend-literally-any-israeli-atrocity/

Israel Supporters Would Defend Literally Any Israeli Atrocity

Israel supporters are like, “No no you don’t understand, the side that’s killing babies and incinerating families and assassinating journalists and starving civilians and bombing cultural heritage sites and carpet bombing entire neighborhoods and driving an indigenous people off their land are the GOOD guys.”

There is literally nothing Israel could do that its supporters wouldn’t defend. Try to fill in the blank in “Israel could _______ and people would defend it” with something that wouldn’t be true. Most of the insanely evil things you could put in that space are already actually being done. Genocide? They’re already doing that. Murdering babies? They’re already doing that. Killing thousands of children? Already doing that. Deliberately targeting and assassinating journalists, artists and scholars? Already doing that.

Israel supporters will defend any evil — literally any evil — as long as it is being perpetrated by their favorite regime. There are zero constraints of any kind, because Israel supporters are completely uninterested in morality. If they were, they wouldn’t be supporting one of the most immoral governments on this planet even after all it has done in the last two months.

Part of the problem is the widespread consensus that October 7 means Israel is justified in doing literally anything in response, no matter how heinous. Israel could exterminate the entire population of Gaza and its supporters would still be saying “WHAT ABOUT OCTOBER 7??”

A new Israelis study found that Israel is killing civilians in Gaza at a significantly higher rate than civilians were killed in the world wars of the 20th century. Military analysts have said that the destruction in northern Gaza is comparable to the most aggressive World War II bombing campaigns in places like Dresden, Hamburg and Cologne.

US officials were reportedly shocked when Israeli officials indicated they were preparing to inflict civilian casualties in Gaza that would be reminiscent of world war horrors, and then, in typical Israeli fashion, they went and did even worse.

Biden killing Ukraine peace negotiations and backing a genocide in Gaza are both worse than anything Donald Trump has ever done.

Israel apologists often cite the fact that the majority of Jews support Israel to substantiate their ridiculous position that opposition to Israel is anti-semitic, but that statistic is not actually morally relevant or logically interesting. Any population that’s sufficiently saturated with propaganda and indoctrination will wind up mostly supporting the thing they’re being propagandized and indoctrinated into supporting; that’s the purpose of propaganda and indoctrination.

The majority of westerners subscribe to the mainstream worldview which supports western imperialism for exactly the same reason — because they were propagandized and indoctrinated into that worldview. This doesn’t mean western imperialism shouldn’t be ferociously opposed; it absolutely must be. Even if that puts you standing against the indoctrinated majority.

The funny thing about the claim that anti-Zionism is anti-semitism is that most Zionists aren’t even Jewish. The majority of them are Christians who hope all Jewish people go to Israel so that Jesus will return, then Jewish people get to either repent and convert to Christianity or go to hell. 

What that means is, in a very real and quantifiable way, most Zionists are actual anti-semites.

It’s so surreal to get called the worst thing in the world for opposing the worst thing in the world. You oppose children being murdered by the thousands in Gaza and you’ll get accused of harboring the same prejudices that led to the Holocaust. It makes you feel you’re going mad.

The US is sponsoring a relentless genocidal massacre that’s killing, crippling and tormenting innocents in the most horrific ways imaginable, and Americans are being persuaded to focus instead on a completely fictional epidemic of genocidal rhetoric against Jews at universities. 

And I do mean completely fictional — nothing of the sort is happening. It’s like pointing to a clip of Darth Vader destroying a planet in Star Wars to distract from the actual real life atrocities in Gaza.

The fake epidemic of genocidal chants on campus reminds me of the fake epidemic of Russian propaganda, when “Russian propaganda” was defined as “any criticism of US foreign policy”. Falsely define common pro-Palestine chants as calls to genocide Jews and you can then declare an epidemic of genocidal rhetoric.

It goes like this:

Step 1: Arbitrarily declare that common innocuous pro-Palestine chants are actually calls for genocide.

Step 2: Pretend there’s an emergency epidemic of university students calling for genocide on campus because they use those chants.

Step 3: Kill pro-Palestine speech on campus.

Just spitballing here but maybe the most efficient way to prevent western youth from becoming radicalized against Israel is not to censor the internet and kill free speech at universities but to make Israel stop murdering thousands of innocent people.

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https://www.globalresearch.ca/what-romans-thinking-they-watched-rome-collapse/5842865

What Were Romans Thinking as They Watched Rome Collapse?

I have often wondered what Roman citizens thought as they watched the Roman Empire fall apart culturally, politically, morally, and militarily. Cicero, quaestor, praetor and Counsel of Rome, tried to save the Roman Republic. For his efforts he was chased down and murdered. As Cicero was, perhaps, the most famous Roman, his murder stopped efforts to prevent Rome’s descent into tyranny. 

The same thing is happening today to those who attempt to arouse us to our danger. Julian Assange, for example, has been imprisoned contrary to every known US and UK law for a decade without conviction for simply doing his duty as a journalist and reporting the crimes of our rulers, the crimes of the corrupt vermin we continue to return to office and power over us. No one has done anything about it, not even his fellow journalists.

When truth is punished, a country dies.

Rome survived for centuries after its essence had departed, because her enemies were weak in comparison. Rome destroyed itself. As many or more Romans died in civil wars fighting one another than died repelling barbarian invasions, Roman military might ended in self-destruction.  

The enemies Washington has created for America are not weak. Russia alone, China alone, perhaps even Iran alone, is a match or more for America. The three together constitute a vast over-match of US military capability. Yet Washington continues to increase hostilities with these countries. The mindlessness of my government is unbearable. Such utter stupidity.

Once the moronic Biden regime’s economic sanctions and the US loss of the reserve currency role finish off the US dollar, America is finished. We will be a third world country, and the rest of the world will punish us for the sins of our government.

Try to tell this to an American. 

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