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https://informationclearinghouse.blog/2023/12/12/heart-of-darkness/

Heart Of Darkness

In Conrad’s masterful novella, Kurtz, the central figure, becomes a monster.  He is driven to madness by the futile effort to inflict his arrogant Western dominance on the uncontrollable mystery of primordial Africa and, in the end, he abandons his own morality and descends into cruelty and murder.  The point, for Conrad, was that the inflexible arrogance of Western racist prejudice, immersed in alien, indigenous reality, had to produce disaster.

The creation and evolution of Zionist Israel has, similarly, driven that evil, illegitimate, apartheid state to madness in its genocidal assault on the Palestinian people of Gaza.  The Zionist program, facilitated by cowardly, amoral England was, from its inception, to violently dispossess and eradicate the Semitic people whose ancestors had lived in Palestine for hundreds of years. 

Psychology has long known that when a subject is intentionally injured, the abuser will try to justify its evil by blaming the victim.  So it has been with Zionist Israel from its beginning with the Nakba in 1947-8.  As with South Africa, Israel’s vicious cruelty has become undeniable and unconcealable to the world.  Their shameless bleating of anti-Semitism in defense of murderous infamy has failed, since what they are and what they do, is obvious, and profoundly offensive to all religious and ethical Jews.  Judaism is a religion; Zionism is a Nazi political scheme.

Nations watch passively as Palestinian innocents are butchered, terrified into complacency by the threat of massive regional and perhaps even world war should they militarily intervene.  Whether this stasis can hold is doubtful as the strain of inaction in the face of racial murder increases.  The United States’ posture as chief backer of Israel’s evil, makes it the determining factor in enabling Palestinian genocide.  This will have consequences at home.

As America has degenerated morally, and decomposed for the profit of bloody Capitalism, our government, such as it is, has followed the fixed trajectory of empires.  It is now as totally indifferent to the welfare of its people as Rome was, or Stalin’s USSR.  Like all empires, its vast powers exploit its subjects and their resources for the obscene enrichment of its ruling Money Oligarchy.  The aspirations and the needs of its disempowered citizenry are routinely, contemptuously spurned, and because The Empire knows how deeply it has indoctrinated them, it has lost all fear of its torpid people.  If its full bore backing of Zionist genocide continues, it will be forced to re-assess this position.

For generations, but increasingly since WWII, America was able, through financial and military dominance, and with its cultural eminence based on victory over the Axis powers and enormous commercial output, to urge, bully, and coerce the world to bow to its might and obey.  Its status as sole dominator and absolute hegemon in world affairs has eroded and been dismantled over the last twenty years by a long series of astonishingly inept and spectacular failures of force and will which have cumulatively reduced its status in the world and bared the unchallengeable reality that The American Empire is not only in decline, but is already an egregious, obvious disaster desperate to retain a semblance of what it is not, and can no longer ever be.

Along with its monumental pratfalls in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria, and its proxy war in Nazi Ukraine that has resulted in the bloody obliteration of that sink of corruption, the floundering, feckless Imperial elite has elevated a series of grotesque, lackey incompetents.  In the next Presidential election, Americans are given the choice between a vulgar, bellowing, criminal Mussolini, and a sleazy, fatuous, criminal simpleton, long gone in senility.  One of these specimens will be the face of The Empire and its exalted “leader”, and quite possibly the last one.  The nation is so blind, cruel, conflicted, and bankrupt morally and financially that cataclysmic meltdown is likely and even probable.

Two dangerous, ultimately ruinous lines of policy are certain to be implemented regardless of which of the subhuman monstrosities is placed as hood ornament on the Imperial Clown Car.  

In the international sphere The Empire will embark on ever more  perilous lunatic adventures, based entirely on inflamed ego and total incomprehension of strategic realities, that will dramatically increase the chances of triggering a world war from which only its catastrophic, crushing destruction can result.  

In the national context, inevitable resistance to tyrannical political control will augment and enforce a punishing, pervasive and savage repression and domination of the people, and the brutal stifling and cancellation of Constitutional rights that have already been viciously curtailed, to be justified by our ruling criminals as higher patriotism to preserve their unravelling, moribund system.

These psychotic Hail Marys will bring nothing to The Empire but prompt and immanent disaster, and yet their implementation is now certain and unavoidable. The Empire will have its way.

Zionist Israel, an illegal, rogue state from its beginning, founded on the bodies, blood, and lands of its invaded victims, is living out the role of conquering abuser, as Kurtz did in Conrad’s novel, following the same ineluctable vector into madness.  

The United States, though even more vicious and imperial in its origin and growth, had no inevitable role in the horror in Palestine but chose to play it.  By nurturing, supporting and sustaining Nazi Israel, it is partaking electively, as it is in Ukraine, of madness by proxy.  To any mind alive in the last century, this is no surprise.

America pioneered the Heart of Darkness. 

Comment to article:

" Israel, white supremacy, Nazis, mafia, whatever the Jews are called in whatever context is correct for their situation in the moment. They are chameleons capable of changing their modus operandi to fit any situation. Born about 600 AD they have become very adept at criminal activities and getting away with being criminals. Today their typical battle cry is “you are an anti-Semite”, or “we are victims” as they go merrily on their way committing genocide, theft, torture or any other anti-human rights activities with impunity. Of course, for saying the aforementioned I would be called “anti-Semite” and evil. How is it that I’m an anti-Semite and evil for saying the truth unless truth is evil. How did the Jews manage to steal land from the Palestinians, torture and murder them in one of the worst holocausts to ever happen on this planet with impunity? Even more frustrating is that somehow the Israeli Jews have switched places with the Palestinians turning the Palestinians into “terrorists”, murderers, and illegitimate people who have no rights while the while white Israeli Jews are squeaky-clean God-fearing people who must commit genocide because as they say, “Israel has the right to exist”. If you are a US citizen or most anyplace else don’t ever say the truth about the Jews because you will be labeled as an “anti-Semite” (whatever that is). Simply for using the word “Jew” in the context of having committed a holocaust upon the Palestinians I am considered to be an “anti-Semite”. So, for hasbara folks who may be reading what I have just written, please tell me what I am supposed to call you and be safe from placing you into your victimhood mode or calling me an anti-Semite and I’ll certainly use your choice of words."

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https://informationclearinghouse.blog/2023/12/12/have-we-no-decency/

Have WE No Decency?

Death and Destruction in Gaza

I do not believe that anything I say about what is happening in Gaza will affect Israeli or American policy in that conflict. But I want to be on record so that when historians look back on this moral calamity, they will see that some Americans were on the right side of history.

What Israel is doing in Gaza to the Palestinian civilian population – with the support of the Biden administration – is a crime against humanity that serves no meaningful military purpose. As J-Street, an important  organization in the Israel lobby, puts it, “The scope of the unfolding humanitarian disaster and civilian casualties is nearly unfathomable.”^[1]

Let me elaborate.

First, Israel is purposely massacring huge number of civilians, roughly 70 percent of whom are children and women. The claim that Israel is going to great lengths to minimize civilian casualties is belied by statements from high level Israeli officials. For example, the IDF spokesman said on 10 October 2023 that “the emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy.” That same day, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced: “I have lowered all the restraints – we will kill everyone we fight against; we will use every means.”^[2]

Moreover, it is clear from the results of the bombing campaign that Israel is indiscriminately killing civilians. Two detailed studies of the IDF’s bombing campaign – both published in Israeli outlets – explain in detail how Israel is murdering huge numbers of civilians. It is worth quoting the titles of the two pieces, which succinctly capture what each has to say:

“‘A Mass Assassination Factory’: Inside Israel’s Calculated Bombing of Gaza”[3]

“The Israeli Army Has Dropped the Restraint in Gaza, and the Data Shows Unprecedented Killing.”[4]

Similarly, the New York Times published an article in late November 2023 titled: “Gaza Civilians, Under Israeli Barrage, Are Being Killed at Historic Pace.”[5] Thus, it is hardly surprising that the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, said that “We are witnessing a killing of civilians that is unparalleled and unprecedented in any conflict since” his appointment in January 2017.[6]

Second, Israel is purposely starving the desperate Palestinian population by greatly limiting the amount of food, fuel, cooking gas, medicine, and water that can be brought into Gaza. Moreover, medical care is extremely hard to come by for a population that now includes approximately 50,000 wounded civilians. Not only has Israel greatly limited the supply of fuel into Gaza, which hospitals need to function, but it has targeted hospitals, ambulances, and first aid stations.

Defense Minister Gallant’s comment on 9 October captures Israeli policy: “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.”[7] Israel has been forced to allow minimal supplies into Gaza, but the amounts are so small that a senior UN official reports that “half of Gaza’s population is starving.” He goes on to report that, “Nine out of 10 families in some areas are spending ‘a full day and night without any food at all’.”[8]

Third, Israeli leaders talk about Palestinians and what they would like to do in Gaza in shocking terms, especially when you consider that some of these leaders also talk incessantly about the horrors of the Holocaust. Indeed, their rhetoric has led Omar Bartov, a prominent Israeli-born scholar of the Holocaust, to conclude that Israel has “genocidal intent.”[9] Other scholars in Holocaust and genocide studies have offered a similar warning.[10]

To be more specific, it is commonplace for Israeli leaders to refer to Palestinians as “human animals, ”human beasts,” and “horrible inhuman animals.”[11] And as Israeli President Isaac Herzog makes clear, those leaders are referring to all Palestinians, not just Hamas: In his words, “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible.”[12] Unsurprisingly, as the New York Times reports, it is part of normal Israeli discourse to call for Gaza to be “flattened,” “erased,” or “destroyed.”[13] One retired IDF general, who proclaimed that “Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist,” also makes the case that “severe epidemics in the south of the Gaza Strip will bring victory closer.”[14] Going even further, a minister in the Israeli government suggested dropping a nuclear weapon on Gaza.[15] These statements are not being made by isolated extremists, but by senior members of Israel’s government.

Of course, there is also much talk of ethnically cleansing Gaza (and the West Bank), in effect, producing another Nakba.^[16] To quote Israel’s Agriculture Minister, “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba.”^[17]Perhaps the most shocking evidence of the depths to which Israeli society has sunk is a video of very young children singing a blood-curdling song celebrating Israel’s destruction of Gaza: “Within a year we will annihilate everyone, and then we will return to plow our fields.”^[18]

Fourth, Israel is not just killing, wounding, and starving huge numbers of Palestinians, it is also systematically destroying their homes as well as critical infrastructure – to include mosques, schools, heritage sites, libraries, key government buildings, and hospitals.^[19] As of 1 December 2023, the IDF had damaged or destroyed almost 100,000 buildings, including entire neighborhoods that have been reduced to rubble.^[20] Consequently, a stunning 90 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians have been displaced from their homes.^[21] Moreover, Israel is making a concerted effort to destroy Gaza’s cultural heritage; as NPR reports, “more than 100 Gaza heritage sites have been damaged or destroyed by Israeli attacks.”^[22]

Fifth, Israel is not just terrorizing and killing Palestinians, it is also publicly humiliating many of their men who have been rounded up by the IDF in routine searches. Israeli soldiers strip them down to their underwear, blindfold them, and display them in a public way in their neighborhoods – sitting them down in large groups in the middle of the street, for example, or parading them through the streets – before taking them away in trucks to detention camps. In most cases, the detainees are then released as they are not Hamas fighters.^[23]

Sixth, although the Israelis are doing the slaughtering, they could not do it without the Biden administration’s support. Not only was the United States the only country to vote against a recent UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, but it has also been providing Israel with the weaponry necessary to wage this massacre.^[24] As one Israeli general (Yitzhak Brick) recently made clear: “All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it’s all from the U.S. The minute they turn off the tap, you can’t keep fighting. You have no capability.… Everyone understands that we can’t fight this war without the United States. Period.”^[25] Remarkably, the Biden administration has sought to expedite sending Israel additional ammunition, by-passing the normal procedures of the Arms Export Control Act.^[26] 

Seventh, while most of the focus is now on Gaza, it is important not to lose sight of what is simultaneously going on in the West Bank. Israeli settlers, working closely with the IDF, continue to kill innocent Palestinians and steal their land. In an excellent article in the New York Review of Books describing these horrors, David Shulman relates a conversation he had with a settler, which clearly reflects the moral dimension of Israeli behavior toward the Palestinians. “What we are doing to these people is actually inhuman,” the settler freely admits, “But if you think about it clearly, it all follows inevitably from the fact that God promised this land to the Jews, and only to them.”^[27] Along with its assault on Gaza, the Israel government has markedly increased the number of arbitrary arrests in the West Bank. According to Amnesty International, there is considerable evidence that these prisoners have been tortured and subjected to degrading treatment.^[28]

As I watch this catastrophe for the Palestinians unfold, I am left with one simple question for Israel’s leaders, their American defenders, and the Biden administration: have you no decency?