‘Nuther day, ‘nuther few morgue loads in Gaza. It has become almost boring, 25,000 dead and counting. Should we go for a record?
But questions do arise to reinvigorate flagging interest. What kind of human will intentionally bomb a hospital? Or a refugee camp? Is there nothing so foul that an Israeli pilot will not do it? What could be more cowardly? What would it take to get you, the reader, to bomb a hospital’
Of course it is not the scale of what Israel is doing, but the dogged, unrelenting coldbloodedness of it, its shamelessness. It would never occur to a military man, Israeli or otherwise, to say, “No, I won’t do that.” In my decades of covering the armed forces I found officers often to be long on physical courage but almost always to lack moral courage. Soldiers pride themselves on following orders and if the orders are to bomb a refugee camp, well, the pilot was just following orders. This is what Eichmann said, though he wasn’t a soldier. The cult of obedience removes all moral responsibility.
Note that Washington is as culpable as Israel for the slaughter in Gaza. Israel depends utterly for its survival on American support. If Washington told the Israelis to stand on their heads buck naked and sing Yankee Doodle in three-part harmony, or lose all American support, in two minutes they would be upside down and wailing. The killing continues because Washington wants it to continue.
The historically literate will note that the mass deliberate bombing of civilians is not particularly Israeli, but an invention largely made and certainly perfected by the United States. The British-American air war against Germany targeted civilians. Everyone knows about the firestorms in Hamburg and Dresden, and for that matter Hiroshima and Nagasaki, though countless other German cities were so targeted, with Tokyo being firebombed to burn thousands to death. Germans who lived through this tell of exactly the results seen in Gaza, rubble, fire, dead and dying children. Plus ca change, plus ca doesn’t.
The eternal cry of the Jew: “The whole world hates me. What’s wrong with the whole world?” Well, here is an answer that will serve for a few decades. Before Gaza, there was around the web the usual low-key hostility to Jews, like the 4K background radiation. Now nice liberals make venomous comments about how Hitler should have finished, etc. For all I know, ninety percent of American Jews may oppose the killing, and certainly many do, but this doesn’t seem to matter. Selling the Holocaust will be harder for a few years. It will make no practical difference.
It is easy to see why. A friend, conservative, by no means a milquetoast, for a while watched video from Gaza. He saw a little girl, horribly hurt, legs gone but still alive, with adults, apparently her family, going stark bugfuck crazy. The child would not live for more than a minute or two, massive femoral bleeding being of short duration. My friend began sobbing, not his style. Never an antisemite, he is now.
This is what America supports, does, is. Tell me why itg isn’t so. Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Ukraine, now Gaza, Yemen, shortly China.
The truculent buffoon in the White House and his ventriloquists speak of “American values.” But America, as distinct from Americans, has no values other than money, power, and empire. This is not dorm-room cynicism. It is fact. Individual Americans may believe in kindness, truth, human rights, and peace but to Washington these words are empty bottles to be filled with whatever meaning will best serve to shoo the sheep in the desired direction. And anyway Americans have no influence over what their country does.
In geopolitics, only the enforceable matters. Endless talk of violation of international law is merely tedious. Law is pointless if not enforced. It isn’t. Repetitive mooing about human rights equally is meaningless. - Any attempt to impose such rights would mean war with both Israel and the United States. Do you see any takers?
The “law of war” is equally a silly notion. No warring party will put itself at a disadvantage by declining to use some prohibited weapon, such as white phosphorous, or doing something disapproved, such as bombing civilians. The United States has never paid attention to the- law of war. Neither has Israel. Or, probably, anybody else. When I was in Marine infantry training at Camp Lejeune during Vietnam, we learned to use grenades of white-phosphorous, known colloquially as Willy Peter.
The United Nations has all the import of a high-school debate club in Arkansas but less backbone, producing much noise but no results. It is an obstacle to the most important things it is supposed to promote, and should be disbanded. It serves chiefly as a means of imposing American hegemony. For example, the entire planet except the US and Israel votes to end a pointless blockade of Cuba. Washington vetoed this. Most of the world wants a ceasefire in Gaza. America vetoes it. Instead of being a forum in which the nations of the world can decide on joint policies, it serves to prevent precisely this.
Perhaps history does repeat, like a slowly executing do-loop. In 1o099, the First Crusade took Jerusalem, establishing a Christian beachhead on the fringe of a sprawling Moslem world that hated them. The Christians depended crucially on Europe for men and support, and were finally vomited out after many years. Now Israel has established a Jewish beachhead on the fringes of a sprawling Moslem world that hates them, and depends crucially on the United States for support. {after the current killings, the Moslem world will hate the Jews for a very long time. They will not make a nice distinction between Zionists and Jews.
Perhaps the Jews will fare better than the Christians. It is not easy to see how. Israel’s population will always be minuscule in comparison with that of the Moslem world, or even of the nearby Moslem countries. bThe current Israeli pogrom will provide Moslem’s with the equivalent of the Holocaust, a multigenerational repository of hatred. This too will make no difference as long as the US supports Israel and, Congress being a subcommittee of the Knesset, this support is not in immediate danger.
But the Empire declines and Asia rises. In two decades the world will be a different place. And should local Moslem nations get the Bomb, whether by purchase or development, Israel’s options, as we say, will be limited. The two-state solution, now apparently forever impossible, may one seem to have been a good idea.
The Israeli approach hi geopolitics has been to do anything it wants, brazen it out, and rely on America for protection. The American approach is to do anything it wants and dare anyone to do anything about it. But America is now like the aging tough in a mountain bar who once said, “I can llickany man in this bar”. Now, getting on in years and putting on weight, he says, “I can lick everybody in the bar at once.” Iraq, Iran, Russia, China, Yemen, Syria. Maybe this will have a happy ending, but outside the bar. a cold wind is blowing.