I know we don’t expect good faith commitments from Israel, but believe or not, we have other options. The Biden administration charged CIA Director Bill Burns with negotiating a ceasefire in Gaza between Israel and Hamas. Wonder of wonders, he succeeded. In cooperation with the Qatari and Egyptian mediation teams, and in communication with the Israeli and Hamas negotiating teams he finally concluded a detailed settlement that was submitted to both sides.
Now before I go any further, do you think that Director Burns, representing Israel’s staunchest ally, would create a ceasefire agreement that is unacceptable to the Israeli negotiating team? But it was Hamas that responded first, with complete approval. Take a look at what Burns and the other teams – including the Israeli team – created, and which Hamas approved. Does it look unreasonable to you?
https://www.workers.org/2024/06/79033/
And what was Israel’s response? It invaded Rafah within hours of the Hamas acceptance, seized and closed the only remaining crossing for humanitarian relief supplies, and rejected the agreement that had been negotiated on their behalf. What is the definition of perfidious?
Israel has made its choice. No ceasefire. Level Gaza to the ground. Slaughter the civilian population and deny them food, water, medical care and everything needed to sustain life until they are gone, one way or another.
That’s Israel’s criminal choice, as ruled by the International Court of Justice, with whose injunction to cease and desist Israel has not made the slightest attempt to comply. As long as Israel has the US on its side, enabling, aiding and abetting its genocide with massive arms and economic aid as well as direct participation through military and intelligence advice and expertise, Israel feels no need to comply. It’s a choice that the post-WWII Nuremberg trials were supposed to prevent and deter forever.
But what about the US choice? If we want a ceasefire, do we not have the power to make it happen? Why can’t we just shove it down Israel’s throats by cutting off every penny of every type of aid that we are giving them? It worked for Eisenhower in 1956.
You know as well as I do why not. It’s because Eisenhower was a strong, widely respected leader who made decisions that could be enforced. Biden is a ridiculous figure that is at best a thug, relying on other other thugs like the Israel Lobby, the military-industrial complex (about which Eisenhower warned) and the oil industry to prop him up. These thugs have our politicians (not to say our entire country) by the bowls. They rule for their own pleasure. Biden and the Democrats can’t budge without their permission, and neither can Trump and the Republicans.
Absolute monarch Louis XIV of France is reported to have said, “l’état, c’est moi” (the state, that’s me”). Apparently, today, the state is the Israel Lobby. No one dares to defy it. Ask those who lost their political careers trying to do so. Ask Cynthia McKinney. Ask Earl Hilliard. Ask Paul Findley. Ask Dennis Kucinich.
Is that our destiny? To be under the thumb of fanatics willing to commit genocide against millions of people who have only been trying to have their own sovereign country on their own land for the last hundred years? Are we destined to be governed by a foreign power rather than our own will? If so, perhaps it’s time for the American people to pick up their torches and pitchforks and head for their own Bastille (which may be in Tel Aviv), and get themselves free.