RANT: ROUND AND ROUND AND

 

I THINK ALL OF US have seen the video or read accounts of the death of U.S. Air Force senior airman 25-year-old Aaron Bushnell in Washington, D.C. last Sunday. He committed suicide in protest of his country’s involvement in the military actions currently being carried out by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) in Gaza. He live-streamed his “extreme act of protest” in front of the Israeli embassy, stating he would “no longer be complicit in genocide.” Moments later he doused himself with gasoline and set himself afire. He succumbed to his injuries later in hospital.

IN A POST made earlier on social media, Aaron made a short statement:

 

“Many of us would like to ask ourselves what would I do if I was alive during slavery or the Jim Crow south, or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide? And the answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.”

 

HIS ACT of self-immolation* was the supreme sacrifice. He gave his life to shock us from our moral lethargy, to make us see the ongoing bombardment of the Gaza Strip by Israel for what it is—a war crime, one the International Court of Justice (ICJ) states “could amount to genocide”. And over the coming months, and perhaps years, the World Court, as the UN institution is also called, will adjudicate on this charge brought forward by South Africa last December. Meanwhile, the genocide of Palestinians continues.

 

👉Over 30,000 have died and 70,000 injured since Israel began its military operation in Gaza on 8 October 2023. Thousands more are dead under the rubble, their remains yet to be recovered.

 

👉More than 80% of the Palestinian population has been internally displaced by Israeli forces with 1.9 million Gazans crowded into the south Gaza city of Rafah alongside the Egyptian border. Nearly 50% of all structures in Gaza have been destroyed by Israeli bombardments, of those nearly 65% are residential buildings.

Israel is making the Palestinians homeless, their urban centers are turned to rubble, all manner of infrastructure is destroyed, their lands made unlivable, and soon they will be stateless if Israel gets its way (and that seems likely), forcing 2.3 million Gazans into the walled refugee zone being constructed on the Egyptian side of the border.

 

👉Ethnic cleansing, deliberate starvation, bombing civilian populations, these are war crimes. How else can we describe them? The violence Israel has unleashed against the Palestinians in response to the 7 October attacks by Hamas on the nearby kibbutzim and Israeli military stations is so disproportionate that calling it genocidal seems appropriate.  

 

👉Israeli claims that a half-dozen UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) staff out of 12,000 in Gaza were involved with Hamas during the 7 October raids into Israel. No evidence of any merit was forthcoming, yet several Western countries, including the U.S., Germany, the EU, and Canada, (among others) took the claim made by Israeli officials at face value and immediately suspended funding for the relief agency before a proper investigation could be launched. This will cause UNRWA to shortly be unable to provide food, medicine, and supplies to the besieged population. It is the largest and most experienced relief organization in Gaza, and plays a critical role in food distribution. Already, over 500,000 Gazans face “catastrophic hunger”. The Gaza Health Ministry reports that six children in northern Gaza have died from dehydration and malnutrition. Several hundred thousand Palestinians remain in the destroyed north with little food or access to potable water.

 

👉Since its founding in 1948, Israel has received 158-billion-dollars from the United States in economic and military aid. In its recent MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) with the United States, dated 2019 through to 2028, Israel will receive over three billion dollars annually plus an additional five billion in missile stocks replenishment. Since the outbreak of hostilities last October, $14.1 billion in further aid has been pledged to shore up Israel’s stockpile of weapons, though this tranche of monies is waiting for congressional approval.

TO BE CLEAR, without U.S. support, Israel could not maintain its siege of Gaza nor undertake military operations in northern Israel against Hezbollah. Israel depends on the U.S. to maintain its military dominance in the region.  Joe Biden could stop the bloodshed and establish a ceasefire with a phone call.

Canada, it should be noted, has not cancelled its own unspecified military exports to Israel, post-October 7, though PM Trudeau says they are military equipment of the “non-lethal” variety. So...that’s okay. I guess?

 

👉The National Council of Muslim Canadians has sent a memo to all sitting MPs stating they will not be welcome in their mosques “until they call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, demand restoration of funding for the UN's aid agency, and condemn what they call Israel's "war crimes." So, there will be no campaigning or speechifying for Canadian federal politicians (including PM Trudeau) in Muslim places of worship until they collectively grow a pair, say "no!" to genocide, and act how 21^st Century parliamentarians should act. 😂[Don’t hold your breath. Ed.]

 

👉The Muslim holy month of Ramadan starts soon (March 10 to April 9). Israeli cabinet minister and former defense minister Benny Gantz said earlier this month that if the Israeli hostages were not freed by the start of Ramadan, Rafah will be invaded in full force. Where will the Palestinians go when the bombs start falling, again?

 

Aaron Bushnell died an American patriot. He sacrificed the long years of life that could have been. No longer able to condone America's role in providing military aid to a country that was patently committing genocide upon a subject people, he could not look away, and what he saw broke his heart. He saw the carnage his country's bombs and missiles inflicted daily upon the Palestinians. He saw also how those same bombs and missiles wounded the soul of his nation and the spirit of his people. And so, he chose a different road, a harder one, a road that few of us would dare journey on. In doing so he has made our journeying that much easier.

 

Cheers, Jake. ___________________________________________

 

Incidentally, I wasn't going to put in this in because airman Bushnell's sacrifice is  so terrible and ennobling that I didn't want to detract from it, but it's part and parcel of the scene Aaron live-streamed  last Sunday. As he was burning and yelling (his last words before he began to scream in pain were "Free Palestine!"), two guards from the consulate rushed to the scene. In the video, one appears to be trying to put out the flames with a fire extinguisher while another guard (or Washington police officer) points a gun at Aaron as he is engulfed in flames. The first guard is reported to have said "I don't need guns, I need fire extinguishers!" I assume the second guard was in shock and just didn't know what else to do. But the irony on display as we witness a guard point a gun at a dying, burning man who is seen by the guard only as a security threat, is utterly breathtaking.

 

* In December, last year, a woman with a Palestinian flag set herself on fire in front of the Israeli consulate in Atlanta, Georgia.  The consul general responded with what I thought was a rather churlish comment:

 

"We are saddened to learn of the self-immolation at the entrance to the office building," the consul general of Israel to the southeastern U.S., Anat Sultan-Dadon, told ABC News. "It is tragic to see the hate and incitement toward Israel expressed in such a horrific way. The sanctity of life is our highest value."

 

She assumes the protestor (who suffered third-degree burns but lived) was full of hate towards Israel. I don’t know about that. If you were full of hate, you’d be more likely to throw Molotov cocktails at the consulate doors rather than douse yourself with gasoline and lighting a match. I guess if Sultan-Dadon showed an ounce of compassion for the protestor, she might be forced to reevaluate her own feelings about the people of Gaza and what her government is doing to them. 

[Jake can't discuss the "sanctity of life" comment made by Sultan-Dadon because he's maxed out his irony quotient for this post. Ed.]

 

 

SAIGON, VIETNAM, 1963

 

 

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