The Current Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Is Not What It Seems
It is apparent that Israel, backed by the US, is doing all it can to provoke other Arab countries in the Middle East to enter the “war.” But this is not a true war, but rather a series of war crimes against innocent civilians, first committed by Hamas militants against innocent Israeli civilians on October 7th, and since then by the Israeli military against Palestinian civilians. Their intentions to draw in more countries are too clear to deny. Why would the Israeli Defense Forces (the IDF) be bombing hospitals, refugee camps, schools, and mosques — in effect, targeting innocent civilians? Why would they knowingly be killing journalists (actually targeting them by many credible accounts), UN workers, and the workers of other NGOs in Gaza? Why would the Israelis be destroying a great percentage of the buildings in Gaza so far, using high-impact bombs? I’d like to know where this massive military force the IDF seems to be fighting for Israel’s life is.
The motivations are also clear. Only a few short months ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the UN and held up a map of Israel to the UN General Assembly that showed Gaza and the West Bank as part of Israel.[i] Much, but not nearly enough, was made of this in the press.
Since the Hamas attacks, there have been numerous statements made by Netanyahu and other high-level Israeli government officials exhorting the IDF to have no mercy for the Palestinians in Gaza, to exterminate them, and to push them out of Gaza. These aspirations did not just surface as a result of the Hamas attacks. They were there long before that day. As the US used the 9/11 attacks to justify its killing of millions of Arabs, a great percentage of whom were innocent civilians, in “war” after “war” against the omnipresent, bloodthirsty terrorists (if you believed the mainstream media), but in reality, to bring to heel powerful governments in the Middle East; so the Israelis have been using the October 7th attacks in a similar way.
It seems evident that there are three distinct goals of this “war,” none of which is being talked about much, if at all, in public by the leaders of the governments of Israel or the US. The first is for Israel to get a big green light to annex all of the Palestinian Territories that the Palestinians were left with (and not the best slices of their country) after the 1968 Nakba. Since then, Israeli settlers have been stealing this land, house by house and farm by farm, over the past few years, and killing mostly rock-throwing teenage boys who have been trying to defend them.
The second goal is to extend the unconstitutional spying programs the US government’s intelligence agencies have been engaging in since September 11, 2001, some of whose authorizations have or will soon come to an end — plus some new ones. One of the new unconstitutional laws violates constitutional checks and balances. This one would allow the US executive and military branches to keep transfers of US weapons to Israel secret. This is particularly ominous. What kind of weapons does the Biden administration want to deliver to Israel? And how much of them?
The third and last goal, to all appearances, is for the US government to gain American support for the military base in Israel that it is currently building. The US will use this base, most definitely, as a launch pad for any military operations it would like to engage in over the Middle Eastern lands in order to maintain and expand its political and economic influence in the Middle East. Could stocking this base to its rafters be the reason that the Biden administration wishes to keep transfers of military equipment to Israel secret?
US interest in the Middle East began in a big way before WWII because of its proximity to Communist Russia, and because of the oil there. After WWII, the US was enticed by Britain to participate in the overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected President Mohammed Mossadegh, in order to protect British oil interests in Iran. Since then, US interests and its military presence there have just kept expanding. One example of the expanding US interests in the Middle East comes from what General Wesley Clark said during an interview in 2003 about the seven countries that the US was planning to invade, which he’d heard about from a friend in the US military in 2001: Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan.[ii] It makes sense that, in view of such grand plans, the US could use a dependable launch pad in the Middle East for its military operations.
The Israeli military’s Armageddon being unleased on Gaza and the West Bank (less so in the West Bank, but it is there also) cannot be justified by the Hamas attacks. The orchestration of the propaganda campaign is a bit too obvious. For example, the Israelis were quick to announce to the world that the Hamas attacks were “our 9/11.” Thus, they laid the foundation for their argument that they had the right to inflict massive damage on the terrorists in order to safeguard their people. This argument tugs at the heartstrings of Americans who remember the tragedy of that day, and were propagandized to believe that the “evil, bloodthirsty Muslims” were everywhere, trying to kill innocent Americans. If they were anywhere, they were mostly nurtured in their early days by the US. For example, the US intervened during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the early 1990s, and nurtured the Taliban, which helped to oust the Russian occupiers.
The reality is, just as the US nurtured and grew the Taliban early on to counter the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan[iii], the Israeli government nurtured the radical Hamas early on, in order to defeat the more moderate leaders of the Palestinians, and thereby deny them fair treatment in the settlement negotiations. They could point to Hamas and say, “Look who we are dealing with. We cannot trust them.” Also, the Israelis and Americans are aware that Hamas was elected in 2006 and not by a majority of Palestinians, but by only 44% of those voting.[iv] Furthermore, since 2006, there have been no new elections. Israel is killing thousands upon thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians based on terrorist attacks committed by Hamas.
The Israelis have a right to be angry about the Hamas attacks. They also have a right to defend themselves. But it does not sit well with me that many of the Israeli top government officials have seemingly gone mad with vengeance and are actually quoting Biblical passages that were written thousands of years ago. In any case, all of the rational, as well as rabid, raging indignation of the Israeli government’s leading officials will never justify the slaughter of so many thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians and the destruction of the buildings that house and support Gaza’s two million residents. This is not to mention the murder of Palestinians in the West Bank by Israeli settlers and the taking of their homes and farms — which is just an escalation of this pattern that has been going on for years.
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) are an advanced military and are carrying out this Armageddon with the most advanced jet fighters and weaponry in the world, provided by its sponsors, the US and Europe — mostly the US. Meanwhile, the Hamas militants have no air force nor airplanes, no tanks, no massive, organized army, and have only a very limited cache of weapons. The truth is, the IDF is killing almost exclusively Palestinian civilians — most of whom are children and women — and only a very small number of Hamas militants.
If Israel succeeds, through its brutality and slaughter of so many innocents, in instigating any additional Arab countries to enter the conflict, then it will seem more justified in expanding its boundaries. Also, the Biden administration and the US national security agencies are much more likely to get what they want: a free pass to extend their unconstitutional spying programs against the American people — as it did after the 9/11 attacks — and permission to keep transfers of military equipment to Israel secret. This would also dredge up support for the US military base in Israel, whose construction began before October 7th.
These are extremely controversial goals. However, in the mass hysteria of a 9/11-style attack and 9/11-style propaganda campaigns, they seem to make sense to people. Yet even if they were not controversial goals, at what cost to bring about their success? How many thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians must be killed? The IDF “war” against the civilian population of Gaza is approaching genocide. We live in the age of the Internet. No matter how hard the mainstream media pushes the narrative that Israel’s causes are good and that those of the Palestinians are bad; that Israelis are good, peace-loving people, and that the Palestinians are bloodthirsty “animals” and “vermin” (as some Israeli government officials have characterized them), most people around the world know the truth.
We know enough about the context in which the Hamas attacks of October 7th took place. We know about the “Nakba,” the denial of rights to the Palestinian people by Israel, the “open-air prison” conditions of the two million people who live in Gaza, and the ongoing annexations of Palestinian land by Israeli settlers and the subsequent killing of mostly youths trying to defend against them. We know that the IDF is killing innocent civilians and destroying their homes, buildings, and infrastructure.
Sixty-eight percent of Americans support a ceasefire — not humanitarian pauses. Most likely, something close to that number, or greater, would, if asked, oppose the expansion of the US military in Israel. They would be aware that it would only be a tripwire to drag the US into more wars and a staging ground for more atrocities against Arabs and Muslims. And most Americans would be opposed to the expansion of Israeli territory, and the expansion of unconstitutional spying on the US citizens and secrecy surrounding transfers of weapons to Israel.
We live in dangerous times. We are being told that the dangers come from outside the borders of the United States, and the Israelis are being told that the dangers they face come from outside their borders. I, for one, believe that the greater dangers we Americans face come from within our borders, and that those of the Israelis come from within their borders. And I believe that in both cases, these dangers are very great.
[i] The Times of Israel. 2022, Sept. 22. Netanyahu brandishes map of Israel that includes West Bank and Gaza at UN speech. https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/netanyahu-brandishes-map-of-israel-that-includes-west-bank-and-gaza-at-un-speech/ (Accessed 11/18/2023)
[ii] Aljazeera. 2003, Sept. 22. US ‘plans to attack seven Muslim states’. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2003/9/22/us-plans-to-attack-seven-muslim-states (Accessed 11/18/2023)
[iii] Sabic-El-Rayess, Amra. (2021, Nov. 2). The US did more to radicalise Afghanistan than Osama bin Laden. Aljazeera. https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/11/2/the-us-did-more-to-radicalise-afghanistan-than-bin-laden (Accessed 11/18/2023)
[iv] Tharoor, Ishaan. (2023, Oct. 24). The election that led to Hamas taking over Gaza. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/24/gaza-election-hamas-2006-palestine-israel/ (Accessed 11/18/2023)