The funny thing about Henry Kissinger dying at age 100, as Caitlin Johnstone reminds us, “is that he lived long enough to become one of the least crazy warmongers in the DC swamp — not because he got saner, but because the US empire has gotten so much crazier. Almost everyone running the US government today is a worse warmonger than Kissinger was at the end of his life.”
And even though what Caitlin Johnstone says about Henry Kissinger is true, it’s also true that in our world of social media your ability to genocide is more limited. Today’s social media environment poses a problem for would be genociders who face instantaneous exposure. For instance, Israel’s western allies keep being confronted with the problem that they’ve been framing Israel all these years as a free democracy with liberal values, yet it keeps acting just like the “rogue states” the US is always trying to regime-change.
Speaking of rogue states. Everything the almost-entirely-Jewish Biden Administration did was calculated to encourage Israel to launch a genocide. And while Israel is the one pulling the trigger, so to speak, all of the genocidal devastation would not be possible without the fulsome support of America, as this quote made last month by a retired Israeli major general named Yitzhak Brick about the ongoing IDF assault on Gaza makes crystal clear. “All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it’s all from the U.S.,” Brick said. “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.”
The ongoing destruction overseen by the genocide duo has caused a dissonance between what Israel is seen doing and what Israel is presented as by the US and its western allies and its own PR, and now that dissonance has soared to unprecedented heights. This dilemma is not made any better by the pronouncements of US and Israeli leaders.
US Senator Tom Cotton loves war crimes and wants more of them: “In the Spring of 1945, we did much, much worse in Dresden and Tokyo than anything Israel has done in Gaza—and it was justified,” he pronounced.
And by now it’s well-known what Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on October 9th declaring a complete siege on Gaza, cutting off water, food, fuel, stating that “We’re fighting human animals,” and we will react “accordingly.” He also said that “We will eliminate everything.” They’re not even shy about their genocidal policies. The damage is being increasingly broadcast, justified and celebrated. Israeli army spokesperson Daniel Hagari, for example, acknowledged wanton destruction and said explicitly, “The emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy.”
Israeli 972 Magazine reports that “the killing of civilians was all calculated and intentional.” Their investigation is “based on conversations with seven current and former members of Israel’s intelligence community — including military intelligence and air force personnel who were involved in Israeli operations in the besieged Strip — in addition to Palestinian testimonies, data, and documentation from the Gaza Strip, and official statements by the IDF Spokesperson and other Israeli state institutions.
What the investigation reveals is that “the Israeli army has files on the vast majority of potential targets in Gaza — including homes — which stipulate the number of civilians who are likely to be killed in an attack on a particular target. This number is calculated and known in advance to the army’s intelligence units, who also know shortly before carrying out an attack roughly how many civilians are certain to be killed.” One source told them: “Nothing happens by accident. When a 3-year-old girl is killed in a home in Gaza, it’s because someone in the army decided it wasn’t a big deal for her to be killed — that it was a price worth paying in order to hit [another] target. We are not Hamas. These are not random rockets. Everything is intentional. We know exactly how much collateral damage there is in every home.”
Even more creepy and dystopian is that a lot of the targets are identified by AI: for instance they “use of a system called “Habsora” (“The Gospel”), which is largely built on artificial intelligence and can generate’ targets almost automatically at a rate that far exceeds what was previously possible. This AI system, as described by a former intelligence officer, essentially facilitates a “mass assassination factory.” According to the sources, the increasing use of AI-based systems like Habsora “allows the army to carry out strikes on residential homes where a single Hamas member lives on a massive scale, even those who are junior Hamas operatives.”
It’s worth asking why has the American and European leadership class been falling all over itself competing to see who can move to the head of the line of genocidal war criminals? Can’t they see that the global majority is appalled by the wholesale Zionist atrocities and sides with Palestine? Don’t they realize that the US and West is hastening its own demise, and ensuring the rise of a non-Western-led world order, by undermining its pretense of concern for international law and human rights?
The corporate media bears a huge part of the blame as they bleat “anti-semitism” at anyone who decries the ongoing genocide. Then there’s the Ivy League colleges, where Jewish students complain of a hostile environment. Incidents on campus have become a flashpoint in the debate over protests and freedom of speech. Pro-Palestinian demonstrations feature chants calling for “intifada” or uprising, which has also been sprayed as graffiti across campus, alongside “Avenge Gaza.”
In response professors, administrators and students are being accused of anti-semitism for protesting the slaughter in Gaza of woman and children by Israel.
US officials, wealthy investors and the corporate media might be able to label these protests anti-semitism and punish the participants but the hypocrisy has consequences. By enthusiastically participating in the Gaza genocide, the US and the EU, starting with its media and political elites, has completely discredited itself in the eyes of the world.
The majority of the Earth’s population can now see that anything would be better than allowing these genocidal monsters to continue to dominate this planet.
Israel killed Prof. Refaat al-Areer, one of Gaza’s most prominent writers, poets & activists who spent his life trying to get Gaza’s voice to the outside world.
He was killed in a targeted airstrike on his sister’s home that also killed his brother, sister & her 4 kids…
camelotkidd 