NoW UPDATES: GAZA.

 

I SHOULD BE SURPRISED, even shocked by the report, but sadly, I am not. Over the past nine months, as Israel’s destruction of the Gaza Strip continued apace and as the number of Palestinians killed by the Jewish state’s bombs and missiles climbed into the tens of thousands, the official death toll was tabulated through the Gaza Health Ministry. Today, that number is more than 38,000, with ten-thousand or more dead under the rubble. [And over 70,000 wounded and injured because of the conflict. Ed.] Over 62% of Gazan homes have been destroyed along with critical infrastructure like water, sewage and electrical services, educational centres, mosques, churches and other public buildings and businesses, and shockingly 82% of Gaza’s hospitals. Over one-third of all the buildings in Gaza have been destroyed, and eighty percent of its people have been internally displaced from their homes, sequestered in poorly sited and serviced, and often unsafe, refugee camps that are regularly attacked by the IDF. We see what’s happening every day there on our phones so it’s not hard to see why the ICJ (International Court of Justice) in The Hague is adjudicating a charge of genocide against the state of Israel and the ICC (International Criminal Court) is formulating a charge of war crimes against Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, though the ICC is so politicized that it may fail to issue international arrest warrants for the two. We’ll know soon enough.

BUT more to the point: Are the casualty figures from the Gaza Health Ministry accurate? Gazan health authorities use recorded hospital deaths and burials to compile their figures, but due to the massive destruction within the enclave, accurate statistics are difficult to come by. Over these terrible nine months, the death toll in Gaza rose, but seemed not to be commensurate with the amount of destruction we were witnessing. Still, those figures are the ones relied on by the UN and WHO (World Health Organization) and most media organizations in reporting the cost in human lives resulting from Israel’s genocidal rampage in Gaza. Those numbers held until 5 July.

 

THAT WAS the day the prestigious British medical journal, The Lancet, published what it calls a “correspondence” or “letter” entitled: “Counting the dead in Gaza: difficult but essential”. The submission to The Lancet by R. Khatib, M. McKee and S. Yusuf, is referred to as a letter because it is not peer reviewed but is nevertheless published in the medical journal's “correspondence section” as an essay worthy of debate and contemplation. The letter’s authors relied on a 2020 study for their source data to come up with a casualty figure that is truly staggering. They note that, given the level of destruction, the official death count is probably an underestimate, with many more buried under the rubble of collapsed high rises and homes than had previously been thought. As well, and importantly, deaths from a lack of medical care, from disease, malnutrition, etc., termed “indirect” deaths resulting from the conflict, need to be considered to present an accurate picture of projected Palestinian deaths since 7 Oct.

 

“Armed conflicts have indirect health implications beyond the direct harm from violence. Even if the conflict ends immediately, there will continue to be many indirect deaths in the coming months and years from causes such as reproductive, communicable, and non-communicable diseases. The total death toll is expected to be large given the intensity of this conflict; destroyed health-care infrastructure; severe shortages of food, water, and shelter; the population's inability to flee to safe places; and the loss of funding to UNRWA, one of the very few humanitarian organizations still active in the Gaza Strip.” (The Lancet, 5 July.)

 

The letter states that in the above-mentioned 2020 study of conflicts in 193 countries between 1993 and 2017, and published in BMC Medicine, indirect deaths were recorded in ratios varying from 3 to 15 times the number of direct deaths. July's Lancet “correspondence” by Khatib et al uses a conservative ratio of 4 to 1. That is: For every direct death (from bombing, gunfire, etc.) four more indirect deaths can be expected* both during the invasion and in its immediate aftermath. The correspondence concludes that “…it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186, 000 [Italics mine] or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict.” This death toll, if The Lancet's estimate holds true, will account for seven to eight percent of the total Gazan population of 2.3 million, most of which is now sequestered in the southern third of the enclave. Time will tell if Khatib et al's figures are accurate.

 

👉NOTE that on 24 July, war criminal extraordinaire, Israel's PM Benjamin Netanyahu will address the American Congress in what will no doubt be a massive jerk-fest of love and adulation. It will be interesting to witness how many standing ovations this scoundrel receives as he speaks before legislators from both the House and Senate, with only a handful saying they will boycott Netanyahu’s speech because of his actions in Gaza. The rest will cheer and clap this scumbag until their hands are sore. Will he present a peace proposal that will see Palestinians and Jews living together in harmony and mutual respect. Not a chance. But he will probably scold the U.S. and its cuck president for not providing Israel with more weapons, bigger bombs and sacks of cash to help fight his genocidal war against the Palestinian people so that "Greater Israel" can at last be born from the river to the sea. And all those members of congress will sit there while the Israeli leader takes a dump on them. But it's clap, clap, clap, and “no worries!” Their cheques are in the mail from the AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) lobby and its rich Zionist funders.¹

 

👉CURRENTLY, it is unclear whether Netanyahu intends to expand the war by launching an offensive in the north against Lebanon’s Hezbollah militias. It would be in character for the wily politician to announce the start of such an offensive while he speaks before the American Congress later this month. More than sixty-thousand Israeli citizens who lived in the north have been displaced to central Israel, many staying in hotels at the government’s expense. They want to return home. Now. Meanwhile, their towns and infrastructure continue to be targeted by Hezbollah's missiles and drones as the Lebanese militia acts in solidarity with the Palestinians. Netanyahu has few choices.  Either he curtails or minimizes operations in Gaza, to transfer more troops to the northern border, or he bombards southern Lebanon, provoking a major response from Hezbollah, in the hope that the Americans enter the fray with their aircraft and missile batteries. The Israeli PM's goal is to push Hezbollah back to the Latini River and create a buffer zone so that displaced Israelis can return to their homes.

At the same time, Netanyahu doesn’t want to ease up on his Gazan operation because any kind of peace deal with Hamas might see him more readily removed from office to face prosecution for a string of financial crimes he is charged with. He doesn’t want to go to jail and that’s one reason why he set in motion the longest military campaign in Israel’s history. Most populations are generally more reluctant to depose their leaders in a time of war. And, in Israel, the vast majority of the population supports Netanyahu's campaign in Gaza, even if they are highly critical of his domestic policies, for example, his handling of the economy, legal reforms, and of course, charges of corruption, etc.

 

👉With respect to Gaza, Israel's armed forces are not trained in the type of combat they encounter there—a war of attrition and close-quarter combat. In the past, IDF forces usually attacked Hamas (and other groups) with superior air power, followed with a quick mopping-up operation by ground troops, “a short, sharp shock.”

 

 

SOME commentators suggest the conflict will end with a truce of some sort and the Palestinian question kicked down the road until the next uprising. Netanyahu, meanwhile, may gain favour with extremist elements in Israeli society as someone who opened up the Gaza Strip for Jewish settlers and whittled down Palestinian numbers through his clearly genocidal policies in conducting the war and through forced emigration. [I think he'll dump all 2.3-million Palestinians into the Sinai by hook or by crook. Ed.] 

ON the other hand, some pundits suggest the conflict may expand into a larger, regional war if Syria, Jordon, even Turkey and, of course, Hezbollah (and possibly Iran) decide to challenge Israeli hegemony. 

👉If the IDF should fail in prosecuting its war plans and if Israel were seriously threatened by its neighbours it is good for all to remember that Israel is a nuclear weapons state ('undeclared') with an estimated stockpile of 200-300 nuclear warheads. It also has in its policy papers a nuclear weapons  protocol called the Sampson Option.  And if it should ever be evoked, then all bets are off.

 

 

I ALWAYS liked the idea of Israel. It was portrayed as a beacon of light in the desert. Israelis were a strong and creative people given a safe harbour after the depredations and horrors suffered under last century’s German Naziism. The biblical setting in the Levant seemed an ideal place for them to be safe and free, and many east European Jews migrated there after the war to establish the “only democracy in the Middle East”. Liberalism had a beachhead fronting the regressive, tribal forces of Arabic and Muslim populations. And naturally, it would encounter, from time to time, blowback and discord as it established itself in the Levant. It was a David versus Goliath tale, a real-life replay of the biblical story. But, in the end, it was more like a fairy tale only children would believe.

I JUST DIDN'T pay enough attention or really looked at what was happening in Palestine. My first glimpse 'behind the curtain', as it were, was in 2014 when Israel bombed several locations in Gaza City killing over 2,000 Palestinians and destroying thousands of homes, which at the time I thought was excessive and crossed a line.

PERIODICALLY, there would be this or that riot, or uprising, or suicide bombing, assassination, kidnapping, etc., and I assumed such outbreaks and reprisals were the price democracy and freedom must pay, and Israel’s periodic “mowing the grass” counterattacks were an ugly necessity. But the 2018 “March of Return”, where Palestinians peacefully marched to the border fences with Israel demanding the right to return to their homes in occupied Palestine and during which Israeli snipers shot protesters, infamously ‘kneecapping’ many, made me wonder whether the IDF was out of control. But Israel as a whole was a force for good in the world. Wasn’t it? The pot continued to bubble away on the back burner.

POINT IS, I ignored Palestine and what had really happened there since WWII (and earlier). The Israeli reprisals following the Palestinian raid on 7 October 2023 ripped the band-aid off, so to speak. Israel, once a gleaming jewel of democracy in the Middle east, its military all powerful, I now see its reality: It is a settler-colonial, apartheid state that from its founding stole land and subjugated the people living there. And today it is guilty of committing war crimes, including genocide.

👉I view Israel as a psychologically ill society² that, as it is currently configured, should not continue to exist. By stealing more and more land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem it has put the kibosh to any realistic two-state solution. The image of friendly kibbutzim, healthy communal living and making the land bloom, has been replaced with angry settlers destroying aid cargoes and carrying AK-47s.

I assume Israel's aim will be to take two-thirds of the Gaza Strip and begin constructing settler enclaves there like they’ve done throughout the West Bank and occupied Palestine. Gazans—over two million of them—will be left to live in squalor in a permanent refugee camp along the Egyptian border. Perhaps they will cross over into the Sinai somehow or emigrate elsewhere in the Palestinian diaspora. Or perhaps they will die from disease, despair or hunger, with their families, their communities, their futures in ruins. Netanyahu and his fascist cabal could care less. And, I am sad to say, a majority of Israel's citizens feel the same. For me, for the first time, I feel that the state of Israel is no longer necessary. Judaism can exist in the world without a land designated exclusively for Jews.  

👉ISRAEL is a failed political project on the downward slope. It is a Potemkin village writ large, except people actually live there. Will it ever become a truly liberal democracy, with Jews and Palestinians living side-by-side as equals. That’s probably a pipe-dream, right up there with the “two-state” solution. But that is its only hope for survival, because a "Jewish" state, a theocracy in other words, is incompatible with a democracy. You can't be both. And a Jewish theocracy, with  millions of its citizens living unequal, subjugated lives, or else a Jewish state with non-Jews expelled and surrounded by hostile Arabic and Muslim countries is not a recipe for longevity either.

And, worryingly, Israel becoming a smoldering ‘ashtray’ is another possibility best not even imagined. Time will tell.  

 

 Cheers, Jake._____________________________________

 

* NOTE: the "letter" is an estimate of cumulative deaths recorded in Gaza as well as an estimate of indirect deaths that are occurring and will occur in the war’s immediate aftermath from a variety of factors. The letter’s authors are not saying that 186,000 deaths have occurred, but rather that figure, or one considerably higher, is what we can expect to find when this bloody conflict is over, if mortality rates in past wars are to be any judge.

 

1. AIPAC is a Washington-based Israeli lobby group that channels millions of dollars into the coffers of legislators and political parties to ensure legislation favorable to Israel makes it through the American Congress. It even provides a staffer for each congressional member to ‘splain how they should vote when the issue of Israel/American relations are concerned. We hear lots these days about “election interference” and accusations of “foreign meddling” in domestic affairs by Russia or China, but their handiwork pales in comparison to AIPAC’s lobbying efforts, so much so that some political commentators are calling it a case of ‘the tail wagging the dog’, in other words that Israel, through its powerful lobby in Washington, has been very successful, up until now, in commanding legislation favorable to Israel.

Q: How is it advantageous to the U.S. to keep sending armaments and money to a regime (Israel) that is seen to be committing war crimes daily? How is it advantageous for the U.S. to continue supporting an apartheid state that stands accused by the world’s highest court (International Court of Justice) of committing genocide?  

A: It's not to America’s advantage. None of it. America’s reputation is being dragged through the mud as it arms and finances Israel's genocide that is on display daily for the world see on social media. [That includes the reputations of all the Western cucks and toadies, including Canada for the most part, who follow in lockstep American foreign policy. Ed.] Israel is not an ally of the United States, it's an albatross around its neck and it needs to be brought to heel or discarded.  For sure, Joe Biden could halt Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza with a phone call. If America would only would use the extraordinary leverage it holds over Israel—namely cutting off weapon supplies and money, that would bring the carnage in Gaza to a screeching halt. But legislators in Washington don’t do this because the Israel lobby is too powerful. It has too much cash to spread around numerous political campaigns of pro-Israel legislators, or to launch primary attacks against recalcitrants who refuse to go along. 

 

CRITICS say the U.S. Congress is bought and paid for by AIPAC, and voting records speak for themselves. They show bipartisan agreement, and near unanimous votes in favour of sending Israel billions in dollars and weaponry every year. And, inviting PM Netanyahu,  a leader accused of genocide, to speak before the assembled Congress in a couple of weeks, no doubt giving him numerous standing ovations, will be the icing on Israeli's cake. The American Congress is a troop of trained seals clap, clap, clapping for the war criminal Netanyahu! Shameful….

 

 2. Recall that Israel has as an unwritten, though previously enacted, doctrine known as the "Hannibal Directive". It states that any Israeli soldier, or citizen for that matter, are to be killed if they are in danger of being taken prisoner and held for ransom by an opposing force. This, surely, is an example of a dysfunctional state, one that is insular, paranoid, and given to extremes. The Hannibal Directive was evoked during the 7 October Hamas attacks, with perhaps half of the deaths recorded that day caused by 'friendly fire.'

 

👉Another point to consider--Israel's destruction of Gaza and becoming a pariah state in the eyes of the world: In terms of antisemitism globally, how does Israel's actions in Gaza make Jews outside Israel safer? I would be gobsmacked to learn that incidents of antisemitism did not have a significant uptick as the world watches Israel's atrocious behaviour in the Palestinian enclave. And, for Jews living inside Israel, things seem to be much less safe than before. Those Israelis who can afford it are leaving the country. Emigration numbers since the Gaza war began speak for themselves.