by Eric S. Margolis 2024

March 4, 2024

Good work, Mr. President Biden. You have managed to do what America’s
enemies have not – creating widespread hatred for the United States
around the globe. Your destruction of the Gaza refugee camps has
inflamed antisemitism everywhere.

There is widespread disgust and anger at the US government over your
decision to give Israel’s new far right government carte blanche to
massacre rebellious Palestinians in the open prison of the Gaza Strip.
The death toll is now over 31,000 killed and at least 70,000 seriously
injured, not counting the long-term effects of malnutrition and even
starvation. Most victims are women and children.

All of Gaza’s hospitals have been wrecked by Israeli bombs and tank
fire. The Biden administration has thoughtfully rushed tank shells to
Israel’s armored forces. Large stores of arms and supplies, supposedly
provided by the US to Israel for an emergency situation, have been
offered up to Israel to continue its massacre of Gaza. Such action
violates US law – which bars the use of US-supplied arms against
civilians. Dropping 2,000 lbs bombs on residential buildings is,
according to Israeli spin doctors, ‘counterterrorism.’ The rest of the
world does not think so.

Except of course the US, Canada and Britain, where the media is
totally dominated by supporters of Israel’s now governing far right.
And Washington, which is paralyzed by pre-election fever. Palestinian
‘terrorists’ are purposely running into Israeli tanks, shells and
bombs just to discredit Israel. Big money financial donors are
terrorizing major US and British educational institutions. Writers who
dare challenge Israel’s party line on Gaza are blacklisted. Those
honorable Jews who denounce Israel’s brutal policies in Gaza are
denounced as ‘self-hating Jews.’

We are not told that Gaza’s terrified civilians originally came from
areas around Gaza and Galilee from whence they were driven into the
prison camp of Gaza from their historic homes by ethnic cleansing and
massacres after 1948. Their lands were seized by the Israeli
government or far-right settlers, many from the US.

As yet, we know little about the alleged massacre of some 1,000
Israelis attending a music festival on former Arab lands. I know this
region fairly well after visiting the kibbutz of Nahal Oz in the
1950’s to meet relatives and see how Israel was allegedly making once
supposedly barren lands flower and blossom. There were no such people
as Palestinians, according to Israel’s then prime minister, who
herself hailed from Ukraine.

Israel’s governing far right – was described by the late, great
Israeli writer Uri Avnery as ‘Jewish fascists.’ They clearly intend to
grind Gaza and its people into dust. There are large numbers of
Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, some of whom were gunned down
this week. The objective of Israel’s far right is to expel these Arabs
from the entire West Bank that Israel seized in the 1967 War and shove
them into the arid Jordanian desert. Israel has long had its eye on
southern Lebanon and its Litani River waters.

‘Don’t worry what Washington will say,’ said the architect of this
mess, the late General Ariel Sharon. ‘I control Washington.’ True
enough, as Biden and his party are showing. Wall Street donors have
become more important than America’s geopolitical interests.

Interestingly, the likely winner of the upcoming US presidential
election, Donald Trump, is an even stauncher supporter of Israel. But
even many Democrats don’t trust his fidelity to Israel even though he
openly dislikes Arabs and Muslims. Trump appears to have a clearer
idea of where America’s interests lie – he may not allow Israel to
lead America around by the nose.

Israel’s North American partisans keep running old films about the
Holocaust to help justify their laying waste to Gaza. We ought to
remember there were less than half the numbers of Jews in the besieged
Warsaw Ghetto than there are today Palestinians in Gaza.

Americans should be ashamed of Biden. His administration, infiltrated
and directed by far-right neocons, does not represent America’s values
or traditions. Gaza will remain a major crime as well as a dark stain
in America’s honor.