XPost: alt.global-warming, edm.general, soc.culture.usa   
   XPost: or.politics   
   From: sharx35@telus.net   
      
   On 2024-11-25 9:21 p.m., NefeshBarYochai wrote:   
   > The International Criminal Court’s (ICJ) January finding of a   
   > “plausible genocide” in Gaza, and subsequent ruling that Israel is   
   > responsible for an apartheid system in the West Bank and East   
   > Jerusalem would not have surprised former Presidents Truman,   
   > Eisenhower, Johnson, Carter, or indeed Reagan, who famously denounced   
   > Israel’s 1982 levelling of West Beirut to Prime Minister Menachem   
   > Begin as a “holocaust”.   
   >   
   > Israel is the only US ally that has been exercising such oppression   
   > and terror for a lifetime. For many years, consecutive American   
   > administrations, both Democratic and Republican, condemned Israel’s   
   > recurring practice of terror.  Today, however, the Biden-Harris   
   > administration has been supporting these practices to the extreme.   
   >   
   > Harry S Truman recognised Israel in May 1948, yet once re-elected in   
   > November, wrote of his “disgust” over how “the Jews are approaching   
   > the refugee problem”. Then his successor, Dwight Eisenhower, joined   
   > Winston Churchill, who’d returned as the UK’s prime minister, to   
   > censure Israel in the UN Security Council in November 1953.   
   >   
   > Paratroopers under Colonel Ariel Sharon, a future Israeli prime   
   > minister, had “shot every man, woman and child they could find,” in   
   > the Jordanian-controlled West Bank village of Qibya, according to Time   
   > magazine, leaving 69 dead. Prime Minister Ben-Gurion cried   
   > “anti-Semitism.”   
   >   
   > Eisenhower had Israel censured twice more: In March 1955, after a   
   > self-described Israeli “terror unit” bombed US consulate libraries in   
   > Cairo and Alexandria, seeking to blame Egypt, followed by an attack on   
   > Egyptian-controlled Gaza that killed 38; and in March 1956 over a   
   > so-called “retaliation” against Syria that killed 56 soldiers and   
   > civilians.   
   >   
   > “Upward of 2,700 Arab infiltrators, and perhaps as many as 5,000, were   
   > killed by the [Israeli military], police, and civilians along Israel’s   
   > borders between 1949 and 1956,” writes Israeli historian Benny Morris,   
   > “the vast majority of those killed were unarmed.” They were shepherds,   
   > farmers, Bedouins, and refugees.   
   >   
   > Eisenhower was unpersuaded by Israeli ambassador Abba Eban’s claims of   
   > self-defence, and Israel would keep inflicting vastly asymmetric   
   > episodes of terror for decades.   
   >   
   > In October 1956, after killing some 49 civilians in the village of   
   > Kafir Qasim near Tel Aviv, Israel invaded Egypt and immediately began   
   > massacring refugees in Khan Younis and Rafah. Eisenhower responded by   
   > declaring that the US would “apply sanctions” on Israel.  When Israel   
   > still refused to withdraw from Gaza and Sharm El Sheikh, the US   
   > president threatened to block its access to US financial markets. The   
   > Israeli retreat followed.   
   >   
   > In November 1966, Lyndon Johnson once again put “the Palestine   
   > Question” on the UN agenda to condemn Israel, this time after a   
   > massive attack on Jordan involving more than 3,000 soldiers. “The   
   > Israelis have done a great deal of damage to our interests and to   
   > their own,” concluded his National Security Adviser W W Rostow, adding   
   > that “they’ve wrecked a good system of tacit cooperation.”   
   >   
   > All-out war followed in 1967, after which Israel occupied the West   
   > Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem.  The martial law imposed on the Arab   
   > population in Israel since the founding of the state was lifted in   
   > 1966, but Jimmy Carter described the conditions imposed on   
   > Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory after the beginning   
   > of illegal Israeli settlement there as “apartheid”.   
   >   
   > With nothing resolved by 1982, Prime Minister Begin, a former Irgun   
   > terrorist against British authorities, vowed to “destroy” the   
   > Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). He oversaw then-Defence   
   > Minister Ariel Sharon’s killing of some 18,000 Palestinians and   
   > Lebanese, overwhelmingly civilians, in Beirut. Belatedly, Reagan   
   > stopped the slaughter with a phone call, given Israel’s dependence. It   
   > was then that he described the Israeli onslaught as a “holocaust”.   
   >   
   > Despite using a word with such weight, however, the White House did   
   > not demand the UN censure Israel. The US had not attempted to sanction   
   > Israel even over its illegal settlements which spawned from the 1967   
   > war. Israeli Ambassador to the US Michael Oren explained why in his   
   > 2007 book, Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East 1776   
   > to the Present.  In the mid-1970s, he wrote, Israel’s supporters began   
   > to achieve “the financial and political clout necessary to sway   
   > congressional opinion” – meaning that they had acquired enough power   
   > to impede US official opposition to Israel at the UN or elsewhere.   
   > Ever since, Israel has taken US backing for granted, no matter the   
   > record of wildly disproportionate atrocities.   
   >   
   > In 1991, Israeli Prime Minister Itzhak Shamir, who had approved the   
   > murder of UN negotiator Folke Bernadotte, tried to explain why   
   > terrorism was “acceptable” for Jews, but not Arabs: Palestinians are   
   > “fighting for land that is not theirs. This is the land of the people   
   > of Israel.”   
   >   
   > Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel was distinct. It was the only time   
   > that Palestinian resistance groups were able to react to decades of   
   > Israeli terror on a similar scale. In response to the attack, Israeli   
   > Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu simply doubled down on Israel’s   
   > recurring massacre-making, now backed by starvation and disease.  The   
   > US administration took no meaningful action to stop “plausible   
   > genocide.”   
   >   
   > At this time, Israel has also become the only entity in the world that   
   > Washington allows to kill US citizens with impunity. The ever-growing   
   > list from the West Bank includes Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, Mohammad Khdour,   
   > and Shireen Abu Akleh – each killed with a shot to the head. No   
   > sanctions or renditions followed their deaths. The White House simply   
   > suggested the sniper-killings were “not acceptable” and asked Israel   
   > to “investigate” itself. The issue was swiftly dismissed.   
   >   
   > As Gaza’s torment enters its second year, Israel’s killing has reached   
   > unprecedented levels in the West Bank, and Lebanon once again becomes   
   > a target of Israel’s self-described retaliation. More is needed from   
   > Israel’s patron than mutterings to perhaps halt some arms shipments.   
   > Washington should not only stop upholding Israeli brutality, which   
      
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