Though South Africa is to be congratulated for giving this philosophical debate over Israel’s war crimes the proper international arena it deserves, the time for talk is over.
“If Israel were attacking indiscriminately or targeting civilians — it’s not — that would indeed constitute a war crime”. So runs the lead story in Newsweek’s 12th January 2024 edition, which dismisses criticisms of the turkey shoot the Israeli Defence Forces, the world’s most moral serial killers, are currently conducting in Gaza.
Israel, it tells us, “is focused on conduct — each individual strike and its compliance with the requirements of international law — while Washington is focused on results, which means the state of Gaza overall as a result of strikes. It is a philosophical disagreement that helps explain the nature of Israel’s attacks and the ferocity of the public debate”.
What this philosophical disagreement means is the United States would have gone about things differently and, if we regard Gaza as a small lake, then the Yanks would have done an Iraq and bombed, mined and poisoned the entire lake on day one. The Israelis, in contrast, are being more methodical, starting on the northern shores of that lake and murdering, mining and pillaging their way southwards, a piece at a time to ensure nothing and no one, fish or foul, young or old, male or female, escapes their wrath. Less Iraq’s shock and awe and more an Einsantzgruppen re-enactment society with Erika and other Wehrmacht favourites being replaced by Yiddish pop as they drive the pint-sized orphans of Gaza southward to Egypt’s fenced-off Rafah Crossing their political leaders back in Tel Aviv and Washington wish to seal off so they can really get stuck into those who have so far survived.
But all that is by the way. Beyond that “philosophical disagreement,” there is nothing to see. Senior American army sources cited by Newsweek tell us that “Israel has been precise in its bombing and has caused enormous civilian damage” and “an IDF Air Force officer who agreed to speak off the record says the number of civilian deaths is ‘minimal’ given the nature of the conflict”, which is something more than a Junior Common Room “philosophical disagreement” between black and white, good versus evil, or a slug fest between the extended families of Holocaust survivors and “the other”.
Although Israel has its critics, “the IDF says that it has done more than any military in history to minimize civilian harm” and few would argue with that if they wish to stay in gainful employment. As regards the blood libel that Israel is targeting women and children, “Israel is not targeting civilians or civilian objects,” agrees the senior U.S. Air Force officer Newsweek consulted. As another retired U.S. military officer Newsweek cites explains: “The IDF has a different culture than exists in the U.S. or in NATO, and it fights with a different ferocity. Just because the numbers might be higher than what we are used to seeing does not mean they are excessive.” Just too bad for those tens of thousands of murdered women and children but shit happens, especially if you are an Arab, right?
Framing: Blessed Are NATO’s Peacemakers
Thus has Newsweek and, by extension, NATO, framed the question as to how we can best eviscerate the Palestinians and, indeed, Arabs in general to protect valiant, democratic Israel. It is within the confines of that philosophical debate that war criminal Anthony Blinken, who was one of the primary movers of NATO’s Iraqi extermination campaign, is flitting about the Middle East flogging this dead horse to America’s client states. Blinken, whose family are Ukrainian Yiddish writers on one side and Hungarian Jews who apparently escaped the Holocaust by the skin of their teeth on the other, is obviously fixated on this philosophical debate and will not be sidetracked into red herrings as to whether Palestinians, Iraqis and other Arabs have the right to even a semblance of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in their homelands, in which their families have lived since the dawn of time.
Though Blinken has informed MI6’s BBC that perhaps, just perhaps, too many Palestinian children are being killed too quickly in this philosophical disagreement, he doesn’t deny that Palestinian children, or Iraqi, Lebanese, Libyan or Syrian children for that matter, deserve to die. As Israel’s humanitarian mission works itself out to its final, desired solution, who could?
Not Britain’s chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, who enthuses about the crimes against humanity being perpetrated in Gaza by what he calls “our heroic soldiers”. And who gloats that his son, Danny, is among these Israeli soldiers marauding Gaza. Mirvis is “immensely proud” of what these soldiers are doing in Gaza and concludes: “What Israel is doing is the most outstanding possible thing that a decent, responsible country can do for its citizens.” Who, in conscience, could disagree?
Not Ireland’s chief rabbi, who is concerned with “language that’s being used to talk about the conflict: speaking about Israel committing a genocide or taking revenge against the Palestinian people when this is not what is happening at all,” as “we feel tremendous pain and anguish over every Palestinian innocent civilian life that’s been lost. In Israel and amongst the Jewish communities worldwide, these are discussions that we’re constantly having: how do we minimise civilian casualties to the greatest extent possible? But the way it’s portrayed in the media does not reflect that at all.”
In that, this bum is on the same page as Israeli President Isaac Herzog, whose conniving grandfather was previously Ireland’s chief rabbi and who, whilst meeting with fellow Zionist zealot U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, disparaged South Africa’s lawsuit against Israel over the Gaza Holocaust as “preposterous” because Israel, so Herzog explains, is entitled to slaughter whomsoever they wish “under international humanitarian law.”
British Foreign Minister David Cameron broadly leans towards the Israeli perspective in this “philosophical disagreement”. Instead of looking at Israel’s crimes as an integrated whole, he believes, as with his own long litany of abuses in Libya and elsewhere, that we must look at each and every isolated Israeli “incident” and decide if one or two of those incidents might have been just a little too close to the ethical line. “Philosophical disagreements” apart, that is precisely the line the United States itself adopted in countries as diverse as Vietnam, the Philippines, Nicaragua and Iraq, where its soldier philosophers regularly gang raped young girls and slaughtered their entire families.
Alan Baker, Israel’s former ambassador to Canada, speaks for most of his compatriots and their enablers when he says that South Africa’s genocide charges against Israel are a cynical abuse of the ICJ. The very idea that this most moral of armies that films itself committing the most egregious of crimes has a case to answer is, so the perpetrators’ legions of enablers parrot, preposterous.
Marx on Feuerbach
When Karl Marx remarked that, though the philosophers had only interpreted the world in accordance with their own prejudices but that the point was to change it, he had a point relevant to Israel’s war crimes and those rabbis, Newsweek hacks and sundry NATO lackeys who use puerile sophistry to green light those crimes.
Israel has carte blanche to do as it pleases, to film themselves murdering as many journalists, babies, UN workers and medics, as well as their families, as they see fit and all without any consequences. NATO, which belongs in the dock with Israel, has allowed a genocidal society to murder as it pleases without any consequences, condemnations or repercussions.
Still, never mind. If you are Palestinian, you can submit testimony to the International Criminal Court at this link and perhaps your testimony might, in time, be heard in court, along with that of South Africa. If you are a Catholic, you can comfort yourself with knowing that the Pope has belatedly come to the realisation that “civilian victims are not collateral damage. They are men and women with names and surnames,” even if they no longer have addresses as their homes and neighbourhoods have been reduced to rubble.
That said, we are not talking about the random killings of “men and women with names and surnames.” We are talking about the mass slaughter of entire peoples that we have previously witnessed in Iraq, Syria and Libya orchestrated by the self same actors and we demand restorative justice.
Vengeance Is Mine, Sayeth the Lord
Although Deuterononomy 32:35 and Romans 12:17-19 tell us that the Lord will settle accounts on our behalf, that ship has long ago sailed for Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthi, whose consciences will no longer afford them time for these parlour room “philosophical disagreements” between the serial killers of the United States and Israel.
They are not alone. Here, in a scene that could be taken from Star Wars, is former USMC officer Scott Ritter addressing some 25,000 very serious looking Chechens, who are more renowned for their martial skills than their mastery of sophistry, philosophy and flower arranging. Ramzan Kadirov, their leader, wants his horse back from the Czechs who stole it as part of NATO’s sanctions swindle.
But he and his stormtroopers want much more back than that horse. They and storm troopers like them in Lebanon, Yemen and elsewhere are sick to their back teeth of Haaretz justifying the Gazan genocide because its “ugly” architecture offends their aesthetic tastes. As they listen to Blinken flit from one client state to the next and Biden (Joe, not Hunter) goof up one speech after the next, they take note of the massive 2000 lb American made bombs with which Israel peppers Gaza’s schools, mosques and play centres. And they are not happy campers.
And nor are tens of thousands of other equally serious folk in diverse locations all across the Fertile Crescent, the Axis of Resistance and far beyond it as well. Though South Africa is to be congratulated for giving this philosophical debate over Israel’s war crimes the proper international arena it deserves, the time for talk is over. The time for war without mercy or quarter is at hand.
By Declan Hayes