THE BRUTE HYPOCRISY OF EMPIRE
In October, Texas cities from Dallas to Houston, voiced condemnation of Hamas’ brutal attack on Israel that killed around 1,100. City councils in Dallas, Fort Worth, and San Antonio passed resolutions in support of Israel. Greg Abbott, our beloved Gov, vowed unwavering support.
But by December, two months later, the picture had shifted a little. By then, roughly 70% of housing in Gaza was gone--flattened--by Israel’s aerial bombardment and ground invasion. 1.9 million had fled their homes. 20,000 were dead.
Now, it is February, the body count nudging toward 30,000, more than half of whom are women and children. This is only a rough estimate; untold numbers are buried under the rubble.
Meanwhile, out of 35 hospitals, only a handful are functioning—barely. Most schools are lying in ruins. Hundreds of teachers and students are dead. Not one university is left standing.
Thus far in this so-called war, some 12,000 infants and children have died, more than the combined total of children killed in all the current wars in the world.
Perhaps it is time to acknowledge what we all can see—if our eyes are open.
In early February, a federal judge in Oakland, California, heard a case brought against the Biden Administration for complicity in the crime of genocide. Dismissed on jurisdictional grounds, the judge nevertheless concluded that “it is plausible that Israel’s conduct amounts to genocide.”
Katherine Gallager, Senior Staff Attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, which brought the case in behalf of humanitarian groups, stated that the court affirmed the Palestinian population in Gaza is enduring “a campaign to eradicate a whole people. . .” She cited the U.S.’ “unflagging support” for Israel with its money and weapons as responsible for killing tens of thousands.
The Oakland court’s opinion, which relied on the testimony of genocide and Holocaust scholars, echoes the finding of the International Court Of Justice, handed down on January 26. Thus far, both Israel and the U.S. are ignoring the legalities. No surprise there. Both countries are old hands when it comes to violating international law.
How nice it would be if Americans bothered to learn something of the countries we invade or whose crimes of ethnic cleansing or genocide we support with our weapons and boodle.
Though the crimes against humanity Israel has committed in Gaza predate the Hamas attack by scores of years, initial coverage of the attack gave the impression that it simply occurred out of the blue, free of context or history.
No mention, for example, of Israel’s takeover of Palestinian lands in 1948—the Nakba—in which Zionist militias killed or expelled some 750,000 from their homes and villages. Nothing of the illegal occupation or Israel’s crime of apartheid. Nothing about the long-standing blockade, the expansion of illegal settlements, nothing about the periodic premeditated attacks by the Israeli army, jocularly referred to by its leaders as “mowing the lawn.”
According to US professor Norman Finkelstein, “mowing the lawn” means: “You go in, and you kill a thousand people, destroy everything in sight. . .” --to keep the Palestinians of Gaza from flourishing.
No, nor any mention of the repeated raids on the Al Aqsa Mosque by Israeli settlers and police, including the arrests and assaults of worshippers over the years. The most recent was on September 17, a full twenty days before the Hamas attack.
Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu called what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians “an abomination.” That was sixteen years ago.
I suppose it is hard to imagine how a people who had it done to them could so easily turn and do the same to others. Given that no one, with few exceptions, has any problem comprehending who the criminals were then, the question is why so few can see who they are, now.
Even people in my immediate sphere, whom I’ve known all my life, seem to come very near choking on the flimsiest expressions of sympathy for the Palestinians, slaughtered by tens of thousands before their eyes.
In recent days, the Chicago City Council joined almost 70 other US cities calling for a ceasefire.
And what, pray-tell, is the response of our cities in Texas—Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, San Antonio, Houston? What was it in November. . .in December. . .then January. . .as the body count in Gaza rose by tens-of-thousands?
What will it be by the end of February and March? If the Hamas attack that killed 1,l00 is accorded a crime against humanity, and our support of Israel was therefore just and proper, what say you now?
What will you say when the body count in Gaza surpasses 30,000? 40,000?
So far, the answer is disturbingly simple. Dead silence.
Is this who we really are? Is this the side of history on which we wish to be counted?
Perhaps profit has something to do with our reluctance. In the case of Fort Worth, there may be a hesitancy to buck some very powerful interests in their midst. Israel is the only country in the Middle East to have F-35’s in its arsenal. The world’s most advanced fighter jet—the one that drops 2,000 pound bombs that can spray metal fragments thousands of yards—is made in Lockheed’s Fort Worth plant. The Israeli Air Force calls it by its Hebrew name, “Adir”—“Mighty.”
From here on, of course, we can count on famine and disease to do the work of bombs.
Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges tells us: “The genocide carried out during the Holocaust is not an historical relic. It lives, lurking in the shadows, waiting to ignite its vicious contagion.”
Perhaps we should remind our fellow Texans that if our fine-sounding principles of freedom, justice, the “right to exist,” do not apply equally to everyone, then they are little more than a sham.