Power & Market

The Evil of War

On April I, Israel launched an attack on an annex to the Iranian embassy in Damascus. The attack killed a leading Iranian general. In retaliation, Iran launched a missile attack on Israel the following Saturday night, going into Sunday morning. Although the US and Israel shot down most of the missiles, there is reason to think that the attack did more damage than has been reported in the mainstream press. If Israel answers back with another attack, especially a nuclear attack, this could lead to a thermonuclear war that could destroy the world.

I hope that you noticed an anomaly in the first paragraph. Why was the US involved in shooting down the Iranian missiles? Why are we financing the Israeli defense system, including the famous Iron Shield? Why are we giving massive military and economic aid to Israel? Doing this enables Israel to continue its savage and genocidal attack on Gaza. Instead, we should return to our traditional foreign policy of non-intervention, ably championed in our times by Murray Rothbard and Ron Paul.

First, let’s look at what Israel has done in Gaza. Eric Margolis describes some of the damage:

“There is widespread disgust and anger at the US government over your decision to give Israel’s new far right government carte blanche to massacre rebellious Palestinians in the open prison of the Gaza Strip. The death toll is now over 31,000 killed and at least 70,000 seriously injured, not counting the long-term effects of malnutrition and even starvation. Most victims are women and children.

All of Gaza’s hospitals have been wrecked by Israeli bombs and tank fire. The Biden administration has thoughtfully rushed tank shells to Israel’s armored forces. Large stores of arms and supplies, supposedly provided by the US to Israel for an emergency situation, have been offered up to Israel to continue its massacre of Gaza. Such action violates US law – which bars the use of US-supplied arms against civilians. Dropping 2,000 lbs bombs on residential buildings is, according to Israeli spin doctors, ‘counterterrorism.’ The rest of the world does not think so.

Except of course the US, Canada and Britain, where the media is totally dominated by supporters of Israel’s now governing far right. And Washington, which is paralysed by pre-election fever. Palestinian ‘terrorists’ are purposely running into Israeli tanks, shells and bombs just to discredit Israel. Big money financial donors are terrorising major US and British educational institutions. Writers who dare challenge Israel’s party line on Gaza are blacklisted. Those honorable Jews who denounce Israel’s brutal policies in Gaza are denounced as ‘self-hating Jews.’

We are not told that Gaza’s terrified civilians originally came from areas around Gaza and Galilee from whence they were driven into the prison camp of Gaza from their historic homes by ethnic cleansing and massacres after 1948. Their lands were seized by the Israeli government or far-right settlers, many from the US.

Israel’s governing far right – was described by the late, great Israeli writer Uri Avnery as ‘Jewish fascists.’ They clearly intend to grind Gaza and its people into dust. There are large numbers of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, some of whom were gunned down this week. The objective of Israel’s far right is to expel these Arabs from the entire West Bank that Israel seized in the 1967 War and shove them into the arid Jordanian desert. Israel has long had its eye on southern Lebanon and its Litani River waters.” See this.

But does this policy qualify as genocide? The great Ron Unz says that it does. Israel seems intent on destroying the civilian population in Gaza, and the amount of bombing on civilian targets has been horrendous.

“From the beginning I’ve been extremely reluctant to characterize the Israeli attack on Gaza as being a “genocide” because use of that term has become so wildly inflated and distorted in recent years, converted by dishonest Western governments and their mainstream media lackeys into a propaganda-weapon used to vilify countries whose governments they seek to undermine.

Read the full article at LewRockwell.com.

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