Don’t blame Israel, blame a “weak” Washington
The prison break from Gaza was to be expected, as is the current Israeli campaign of genocide, and both are due to the perceived weakness of the Biden White House
In 2010, then UK Prime Minister David Cameron declared that Gaza was “an open-air prison”.
While speaking to a business group in Ankara, Turkey, Cameron said that “Gaza cannot and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp”.
“People in Gaza are living under constant attacks and pressure in an open-air prison”, he added.
Cameron’s remarks were precipitated by a military interception by Israel of a relief convoy two months earlier, in which the IDF murdered nine Turkish peace activists while they were trying to deliver badly needed humanitarian supplies to the blockaded Gaza strip.
The Turkish flotilla incident is demonstrative of the fiercely homicidal vigour with which the Israelis enforce their blockade of Gaza — a blockade that was imposed as collective punishment of the Gazans for having elected Hamas to power in 2006.
The British government’s policy had been to call for an end to the blockade, but never before has a British prime minister been so blunt, noted the BBC.
Still, despite the tough talk and the “official policy”, NOTHING HAPPENED. The Israelis eventually released the seized ship, and agreed to participate in an investigation, but nothing came of it.
An Israeli court later ruled that the soldiers were acting in self defense, and that, as they say, was that.
Why Gaza truly is a prison
For almost two decades, no one has been allowed to enter Gaza and no one has been allowed to leave Gaza. Visitors wishing to enter or Gazans wishing to leave must undergo a tortuous approval process by the Israeli authorities, and obtaining the necessary permit can take months or even years — if it comes at all.
Israel began to impose restrictions in the 1980’s via a system that required Palestinians in Gaza to get those near unobtainable permits to work or travel through Israel or access the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
A prison, or a concentration camp?
Many have argued that to call Gaza a prison does not do justice to the inherently evil nature of the overall situation. In a prison, one might expect to eventually be released when one has served the sentence, but for the Gazans, there is no hope of eventual release. Like the Nazi concentration camps of the holocaust, Gaza seems more to be a place where the “inmates” are slowly killed.
Moreover, when one thinks of a prison, one does not usually think of children. Fully half of Gaza’s population are children — children who have never known anything but captivity, never seen anything outside of Gaza, never known drinkable water, reliable electricity, anything other than a starvation diet. They were born into a world where the sky is alive with the constant buzzing of Israeli surveillance drones.
A seven-year old Gazan child has already witnessed three wars. They have had their little eardrums battered by the sound of bombs and rockets exploding. They have learned at an early age what the sound of gunfire is.
There is an entire generation of fighting age that has never knon anything but life in the Gaza prison.
But they are the lucky ones. Almost 3000 children have died in Gaza since 2008, and that number continues to skyrocket thanks to the genocide that Israel is perpetrating on the Palestinians.
Implacable: Likud’s goal to create “Greater Israel”
To understand the long-term goals of Bibi Netanyahu and his radical Zionist cohorts, we need to go back to when the State of Israel was founded.
The true long-term goal of the Zionists currently in power is the establishment (or re-establishment) of Eretz-Israel, or Greater Israel.
Further, we should remember that the first enemies of the Zionists were not the Arabs but rather the British. European Jews, in the aftermath of World War One, organised themselves into terrorist factions aimed at forcing the British out of Palestine. Among these were the Haganah, the Irgun, and the Lehi or Stern Gang. These were all “underground Jewish organisations” dedicated to creating Eretz-Israel — and starting with the violent expulsion of the British.
Beginning in 1920, with the founding of Haganah, this fight for Israel became increasingly violent, as the most violent factions of the Haganah broke off to create Irgun in 1931, due to the Irgun members’ dissatisfaction with Haganah leadership’s reluctance to kill British soldiers, diplomats and other personages. Avraham Stern then created Lehi in 1940 as an even MORE violent force to kill Brits.
In 1941, Lehi’s official organ, Bamahteret, published “The Principles of Renaissance” formulated by Stern, which constituted the ideological and political platform of Lehi:
“The Jewish people is a unique people.
“The Homeland is here in Eretz-Israel with its borders as defined in the Torah.
“Israel took Eretz-Israel by the sword. There it became a nation, only there will it be reborn”.
To realise these maximalist goals, the British had to be driven out of Eretz-Israel and the Arab Palestinians had to be exterminated or otherwise removed from the land.
Consequently, for example, two of the operations for which the Irgun is best known are the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem on 22 July 1946 and the Deir Yassin massacre that killed at least 107 Palestinian Arab villagers, including women and children, carried out together with Lehi on 9 April 1948.
The hotel bombing killed 91 people including dozens of British citizens.
It is also worthy of note that, in order to make sure their intentions were clear, the Irgun also bombed the British Embassy in Rome in 1946, and British Army HQ in Hotel Sacher in Vienna in 1947.
They also blew up the British Bevograd Officers Club in Jerusalem, killing another 20 Britons.
The Irgun and Lehi slaughter of British personnel continued all through the years 1940–1948. Hundreds of British and European (and American) people died and were injured.
So it is not true that the British had suddenly “taken to the Zionist movement”. They had Zionism forced upon them.
The killing only stopped when the Israeli state was declared — but even then messages were sent to the West to keep out of Palestine. The 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty, an American Navy surveillance vessel patrolling the eastern Mediterranean area to perform a signals intelligence collection mission in international waters during the Six Day War is one example. Over 30 American sailors perished. The message was received. Instead of retaliating, LBJ ordered the ship to leave the area.
Irgun lives on in the Likud
When dealing with modern-day Israel it is important to remember that the audacious — and merciless — arrogance of those original Zionist terrorists is alive and well in the current government.
Bibi Netanyahu’s Likud Party can trace its origins directly back to the Irgun
In fact, Bibi Netanyahu’s Likud Party can trace its origins directly back to the Irgun, and the Likudniks have carried on with Irgun’s philosophy of establishing a Greater Israel “by the sword” — regardless of what their western backers may think.
Indeed, just as the Israelis did not hesitate to blow up British military facilities and civilian hotels, or attack a US Navy ship in international waters, the Zionist fanatics of today will not shrink from committing the most outrageous acts, confident that their “allies” like the US and the UK will sit by and do nothing.
Propagandising the West is Israel’s greatest strength
The greatest weapon in Israel’s mighty arsenal is not the IDF. It is not even what is euphemistically called its “nuclear deterrent”.
It is Israel’s ability to promulgate pro-Zionist propaganda, or what the Israelis call hasbara.
Hasbara is extremely effective because of two factors: first, there is the “Israel Lobby” led by AIPAC, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, which wields the power to remove any elected official in Washington if they do not fall in line. Indeed, being perceived as “insufficiently pro-Israel” is a fear that drives the actions of virtually all US politicians — and especially Joe Biden.
Secondly, Israel has captured the media and the narrative in the West, to the point where every “news” outlet, every mainstream pundit, every commentator adopts reflexively a pro-Israel position on every topic that arises.
This narrative control is so complete that Israel is allowed to regularly commit massive war crimes and crimes against humanity, can flagrantly flout UN resolutions as well as world opinion — with utter and complete impunity.
In fact, the current conflict has seen the most blatant and outrageous use of hasbara ever seen, with fictitious accounts of “Hamas barbarity” that should be rejected prima facie for their ridiculousness, but instead are embraced, accepted, and spread by western media outlets — and western politicians like Biden.
This is because we in the West have been bombarded with Zionist propaganda all our lives.
I remember as a child hearing the familiar refrain: “A land without a people for a people without a land”. This slogan led us in the West to believe that no one was living in Palestine; that the place was deserted, and it was easy for the Jews to “peacefully” move in and settle in the “wilderness” that was Palestine.
The wilderness motif was further promulgated when we were also told over and over again that the brave, resourceful, hard-working Israelis “made the desert bloom”.
As former Israel Prime Minister Shimon Peres once said, “The country [Palestine] was mostly an empty desert, with only a few islands of Arab settlement; and Israel’s [cultivated] land today was indeed redeemed from swamp and wilderness.”
What hogwash. As if people had not been cultivating that land for millennia.
Al-Aqsa vs. Third Temple leads to … Armageddon?
It is thus not that difficult to understand the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It started in the last century when a band of fanatical, homicidal, bloodthirsty Zionist extremists set out to re-establish the ancient land of Eretz-Israel and building the Third Temple — to replace the current Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest place in Islam.
Indeed, Stern had called for building the Temple and destroying the Al-Aqsa Mosque 80 years ago, and it seems the Israelis are finally getting around to it.
Here is a Times of Israel article from July 2013:
“Minister calls for third Temple to be built”
The article explains:
“The statement from Housing and Construction Minister Uri Ariel (from the Jewish Home party) breaks a long-standing taboo on high-ranking government officials speaking about changing the fragile status quo on the holy and contested esplanade, and will likely draw ire from official Israeli circles and anger the Arab and Muslim world”.
They even have a virtual reality version of the Temple:
In fact, here is a Barron’s article from June 2023, just months before the Hamas operation:
“The Israelis Set For New Jewish Temple On Al-Aqsa Site”
The article begins:
“With imported sacrificial cows, ancient hymns and growing support, some nationalist Jews hope to rebuild their temple in Jerusalem’s Old City, at a site at the heart of Israeli-Palestinian tensions.”
No joking- these fanatics have already obtained the three red heifers to be sacrificed at the new Temple according to the ancient texts.
I think we can now say that the Times and others have severely underestimated the reaction to Israel’s open plans to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque and build the Third Temple in its place.
It is not a coincidence that Hamas named their latest operation against Israel “Al-Aqsa Flood”.
Why we cannot blame Israel
I know that many are saying that the blame for the genocide unfolding in Gaza lies squarely with Bibi Netanyahu and the Israeli government.
I disagree, and here’s why:
As I have explained above, the goal of the Zionist “founding fathers” of Israel was to establish Greater Israel based on biblical definitions and stories. For them, the “true” Jewish state would not be established until Jews controlled the entire area extending from the Jordan River to the Nile.
Remember, these were fanatics who were willing to conduct an international terror campaign against the British Empire as well as execute massacres against the Arab population in order to realise their goals.
But despite all the wars and the bloodshed, the carpet bombings, starvation campaigns, despite the forced relocations, Israel has not yet been able to establish a Jewish state — and a Jewish population — that encompasses the ancient (and perhaps more than a little bit mythical) land of Eretz-Israel.
This means, in practical terms, that the Zionist Israelis are indeed implacable. They will NEVER allow a two state solution, they willnever grant rights to Palestinians. For them, the ONLY solution is to establish the Jewish state of Greater Israel — as God ordained.
To paraphrase the Blues Brothers, the Israelis are LITERALLY “on a mission from God”.
Furthermore, as God’s chosen people, the Israelis do not have to obey the laws of men. Their complete disdain for international and humanitarian law and the various resolutions of the United Nations, proves that Zionist Israelis, like Conservative Christian fundamentalists, are governed by God’s law and adhere to that divine law exclusively.
And, as the great Zionist Avraham Stern wrote in 1941, God has told them to take their land from the Palestinians “by the sword”.
So we cannot and should not expect Israel to do anything other than kill or drive off Palestinians and steal their land. The people who inhabit Gaza have already been dispossessed of their land, but they refuse to leave. That means they need to be eliminated “by other means” (such as bombing) so that Jews can set up beachfront communities in what is currently the Gaza Strip.
Because that is what God wants.
In the West bank, the illegal settlement activity is proceeding apace, and the settlers themselves are becoming more violent. The goal is to have over 1 million Jewish settlers in the West Bank by 2030, and to help things along, Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir is personally handing out weapons to illegal Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank.
Ben-Gvir, a leader of the extreme right Jewish Power party, was convicted of incitement to racism against Arabs and supporting a terrorist organization in 2007 but became National Security Minister in the Netanyahu government in 2022.
Indeed, the Financial Times explained that Ben-Gvir is “a disciple of Meir Kahane, a rabbi who wanted to strip Arab-Israelis of citizenship and whose party was designated a terrorist organization by the US”.
However, in recent years “Kahanism” has entered the Jewish mainstream, so much so that the US — no doubt under pressure from Tel Aviv — removed his organisation from the terrorist blacklist in 2022.
After the Hamas attack, there is nothing to stop the settlers who, under the watchful gaze of the IDF, violently evict or even kill Palestinians and occupy the rest of the land.
Because that is what God wants.
So PLEASE, do not act like Israel is a normal country and subject to international law. Do not act as if the “court of public opinion” matters to the decision makers in Tel Aviv. What does the opinion of non-Jews matter to God’s chosen? Nothing, because they are doing God’s will.
The ultra-extreme Zionists are running the show now. They will eliminate or eradicate the Arabs from the land of Israel; they will establish the Third Temple in place of the Al-Aqsa mosque; they will take their land “by the sword”, ignoring all calls for restraint, compromise, peace or accommodation.
Because that is what God wants.
Where the blame lies is in the West
So if we cannot expect the Israelis to act any differently, whom can we blame?
The real people we should blame are in the corridors of Western power. As mentioned above, the backers of Israel — specifically the US and the UK, are failing to do anything to “rein in” Israel as they have done in the past. US Presidents from Nixon to Obama have at times found it necessary to “put their foot down” and leverage the financial and geostrategic sway that Washington holds over Tel Aviv.
In fact, it is widely acknowledged that it has ALWAYS been the United States, and ONLY the United States, with its “unbreakable bond” with Israel, that has been able to stop the Israelis from going full-scale genocidal on the Palestinians when provoked.
Indeed, the brakes that Washington can apply have always worked — UNTIL NOW.
The US gives Israel $3 billion every year. We basically underwrite the IDF so that every Israeli can have free education and free health care. If the US had threatened to withhold that funding, Bibi would almost certainly have backed down. Instead, we promised Israel an additional $14 billion to buy more (US made) bombs to drop on Palestinian heads.
To put it bluntly, Bibi has made Biden his bitch.
The Zionist extremists who are in power now in Israel sense the waning of American power. They have prepared the sacrificial red cows; they have set in motion the wheels of genocide to cleanse the land of Israel of the Arabs, the “human beasts” that cannot be allowed to exist there.
They know that now is the time to press forward with their plans to establish Eretz-Israel, because no one with any power will oppose them. They have calculated that, just as no one wanted to start WWIII over Ukraine, no one will risk a greater conflagration over a few million dispossessed Palestinians.
And at the end of this one last bloody campaign, Greater Israel will finally be “reborn” — just as Avraham Stern foretold 82 years ago.
#End.
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Thank you for your great reporting. It's amazing how far down the pro genocide rabbit hole the US has fallen... Perhaps Biden wants Bibi's help genociding unwanted people in the US.