The best reference for understanding the Palestine-Israel crisis is a book by Dan Kovalik. The Case for Palestine: Why It Matters and Why You Should Care is a carefully researched, meticulously documented, scholarly analysis of the longstanding confrontation, presenting a detailed account of the conflict’s history.
I confront the bottomless depths of despair and uncontrollable weeping when I think about the horrors currently unfolding in Gaza. Therefore, I’ll try to keep this brief, without avoiding the ugly realities of the barbaric campaign by Israel to ethnically cleanse “Greater Israel” of the Palestinian people.
Zionist propaganda — which is all we get from mainstream Western media — would have us believe that the Israeli destruction of Gaza is a reaction to the terrorist acts of Hamas on October 7, 2023. History didn’t start on that date. The Hamas attack on Israel was a reaction to the brutality and oppression of the Palestinian people by Israel without pause for 75 years.
It began in 1948 with what the Palestinians call the ‘Nakba’. Translation: the Catastrophe. For decades prior to 1948, Zionists had been buying up land in Palestine. “[But] by 1948, the Jewish settlers constituted only one-third of the population of Palestine (and the vast majority of these were European settlers who were newcomers immigrating after 1917) and owned less than 6 percent of the land. And yet, the United Nations, in General Assembly Resolution 181 — the result of the intense lobbying by the Zionists as well as the guilt the Europeans rightly felt from the Holocaust — allocated 56 percent of the land, and the very best land, for the creation of the new Jewish state.”
Now it was time for the settlers to get serious about taking over the region. The Nakba was the way. Palestinians were thrown off the land they had owned and occupied for centuries. 800,000 were quickly uprooted, and 532 Palestinian villages were destroyed. The indigenous population was sent packing. Killings and rape occurred not infrequently. This was the beginning of the terror campaign by Israel with the explicit intention of cleansing Palestine of its native population.
What has happened since, including the October 7 reaction by Hamas, is the direct consequence of this policy. Israel’s intent to drive the Palestinians from their homeland and create a purely Jewish Greater Israel has now expanded into a full-blown genocide.
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It is very difficult to determine the exact number of casualties — which include women and children — resulting from Israel’s unrelenting bombardment of Gaza, and the military operation daily unfolding there. Official numbers of dead are compiled from those delivered to the morgue. But tens of thousands are buried under the rubble, unaccounted for. Additionally, people are dying every day from starvation and lack of medical treatment. Israel has barred food and other aid from entering the conflict zone.
But the official number of deaths, as I’m writing this, exceeds 58,000.
The real death toll, by some estimates, is more than three times that, or nearly 8 percent of Gaza’s pre-October 7th population.
A substantial number of Israeli citizens make no secret of the fact that they consider the Palestinians sub-human, insects, mere animals, and their presence in Greater Israel is not welcome. They are to be eliminated by whatever method is required. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have herded Palestinians into “safe” tent encampments, then bombed them in their tents. The IDF attacks schools, mosques, and has destroyed every hospital in Gaza. Hundreds of videos are circulating social media showing children mangled, mutilated, or in advanced stages of starvation; whole families killed by the bombing; horrifying scenes reminiscent of the Holocaust which Jews are so fond of citing as evidence of their own victimhood, of people being burned alive, victims of incendiary weaponry dropped on the homes and apartments of innocent civilians; journalists, doctors and other medical professionals, and aid workers, have been targeted for assassination.
None of this is rumor or propaganda. Hundreds of credible eyewitnesses have fully corroborated it — many of them working for humanitarian organizations and human rights groups, including UNICEF, WHO, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), the World Food Programme, the Red Cross, the Red Crescent, Doctors Without Borders, and Amnesty International.
Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, has spoken out, and her message is loud and clear: Israel’s assault on Gaza is the “shame of the century”.
The latest Israeli gambit is to announce the availability of food, drive the food truck to a designated spot, and, when emaciated, desperate Palestinians show up for what scraps they can get, to gun them down in cold blood. Mercenaries from the U.S. are participating in this.
The horror show in Gaza is being referred to as the first genocide in history to be televised. Just a few clicks on a computer mouse or swipes on your smartphone, and you can watch the slaughter unfold as it happens.
As a relevant aside, Israelis are at the same time continuing their longstanding efforts to rid the West Bank of Palestinians, demolishing homes and entire communities, evicting Palestinians from property they’ve owned for generations. Forcing Palestinians to leave and stealing their land has always been the official policy of Israel, though it has for decades been hidden under a shroud of hypocritical blather. The apartheid state established by Israel in the West Bank has made life miserable, often completely intolerable for Palestinians.
Make no mistake about it …
The U.S. is fully complicit in this savagery. The pro-Zionist Congress, administration, and mainstream media all parrot the Israeli propaganda claim that the slaughter of the Palestinian people and wholesale destruction of Gaza reflect Israel’s “right to defend itself”. Anyone who has the integrity and basic decency to object to the carnage inflicted by the IDF is subject to penalties and prosecution. The U.S. is providing all the weaponry Israel is using in its genocidal campaign. From October 7, the date of Hamas’ attack on Israel, till January of this year, $22 billion in military equipment and ordnance has been given to Israel by America. The U.S. military also provides logistical support, conducts rigorous surveillance, and shares intelligence data, which facilitates identifying targets for bombing and Israeli troop assaults.
President Trump has even explicitly stated his full, unwavering support for the entirety of Israel’s agenda, specifically stipulating relocating the Palestinians from Gaza.
This is by far the cruelest, sickest, most inhumane, barbaric, and criminal official action by state actors — in this case, Israel and the U.S. — I’ve witnessed in my lifetime. That the U.S. is not fully, unhesitatingly, forcefully condemning it is disheartening and distressing. That, in fact, our tax dollars as U.S. citizens are being used literally to pay for a campaign engineered to uproot and destroy a people is appalling and unconscionable.
As U.S. citizens, we’re paying the tab for a genocide.
As U.S. citizens, we all bear the shame for this new holocaust.
As U.S. citizens, it’s our duty to remove from power any individual who supports such heinous war crimes and any foreign entity or leader who is responsible for this monstrous slaughter.
As U.S. citizens, it’s up to us to reclaim our country and demand America return to the values we believe reflect the true goodness, courage, and moral character of everyday citizens.
[ This is an excerpt from my upcoming book, “America’s Hijacked Peace Dividend”, available late October or November at fine bookstores across the globe. ]
The post The Case for Palestine first appeared on Dissident Voice.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John Rachel.