The question is against whom will these deadly weapons be used? Against ordinary, disarmed, helpless people — just about surviving in the open, in the freezing cold. Who else?
By Amit Sengupta
Joe Biden has a fortnight left of his discredited and lacklustre tenure at the White House in Washington DC. And, predictably, heartless and cold-blooded, he has done it again. While his deputy, Kamala Harris, with her crocodile tears on the Genocide in Gaza, is as mum as ever, after Donald Trump squarely defeated her at the hustings.
The Biden administration has notified Congress of a another huge $8bn arms sale to Israel, according to media reports, even as Gaza is being bombed every day, and people are being killed amid mass starvation and epidemics in the refugee camps, in a terrible and harsh winter. This Holocaust and extermination of the imagined enemy, continues, like the gas chambers of Adolf Hitler, while the world still watches in shock and stark silence. The latest is that Israel Defense Force (IDF) has killed a teenager — now in the West Bank, where the Hamas never really had a presence.
So what about the ‘socialists’ and the ‘Squad’ of Left-Liberals (Alexendra Ocasia Cortez, Ilhan Omer, Rashida Tlaib, etc,) all followers of Bernie Sanders, with his high moral ground. Will they still continue to bang their heads inside the Democratic Party, looking for ‘greener pastures’ and a ticket to the power establishment, while eternally using Leftist rhetoric? Or, will they, for once, stand up against the arms shipment?
Al Jazeera reports (January 5, 2024) that the weapons will include 500-pound (226kg) warheads, precision-guided munitions, artillery shells, missiles for jets and attack helicopters, and bomb fuses, along with air-to-air missiles to intercept projectiles. In total, around 18 billion has been pumped in since the Hamas attack on Israel in early October 2023, which killed 1200 Israeli citizens, among others.
The question is against whom will these deadly weapons be used?
Against ordinary, disarmed, helpless people — just about surviving in the open, in the freezing cold. Who else?
This is wilful mass murder by design in which both the US and its Nazi stooge in the Middle East, Israel, are openly accomplices. Since they can’t get the undeground Hamas, they will yet again murder ordinary folks, women and children, mostly, after having butchered 46,000 plus innocent people since October 7, 2023.
There are media reports that even after concerted attacks on the Hamas, 40 tunnels are still intact. While thousands of youngsters have decided to join the underground army. Indeed, mothers are saying that their teenage sons are suddenly leaving home, or disappearing, some saying a final goodbye –because they are all going underground to fight Israel.
Hence, after this mass extermination, and the brand new projects of more mass exterminations of Palestinians in Gaza, with American bombs and ammunition, will this genocide ever end? Will Israel ever win this damned one-sided war? Will it be able to exterminate the 2 million people in Gaza and completely occupy this land? Will the world allow it?
Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher, reporting from Washington, DC, said the sale was likely to be approved by Congress. “We’ve already heard from Mike Johnson, the new Speaker in the House, who said one of his priorities is to make sure Israel, their friend and ally, feels supported by the US. To block it, you’d need two-thirds votes in both houses, and that’s simply not going to happen,” he said.
“The weapons are continuing to be sent to Israel even though a number of Democratic lawmakers have expressed their concern that the US continues to provide weapons when the Israeli military does not do enough to combat the humanitarian crisis in Gaza,” he added.
Seasoned journalist, Chris Hedges, who has covered the Middle East and Gaza on the ground for years and has worked with The New York Times for 15 years, writes in a recent article (Christ Hedges Report, January 6, 2025):
“Mass extermination takes time. It is also expensive. Fortunately for Israel, its lobby in the US, has a stranglehold on Congress, our electoral process and the media narrative. Americans, although 61 per cent support ending weapons shipments to Israel, will pay for it. And those that express dissent will be frog-marched into Zionist black holes where their voices are silenced and their careers jeopardized or destroyed. Donald Trump and the Republicans have an open disdain for democracy, but so do the Democrats and Joe Biden….
… Are we surprised we are hated? Terror begets terror. We saw this in New Orleans where a man who was allegedly inspired by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) killed 14 people when he drove his pickup truck into a crowd on New Year’s Day. We will see more of it. But, let’s be clear. We started it. The moral void of the suicide bomber is birthed from our moral void…
… Shamsud-Din Jabbar, the 42-year-old US military veteran who plowed his pick-up truck into a crowd of New Year’s revellers in New Orleans killing 14 people and injuring 35 others, spoke to us in the language we use to speak to the Arab world. Indiscriminate death. The targeting of innocents. The callous indifference to life. The thirst for revenge. The demonization of others. The belief that fate or God or western civilization has decreed that we have a right to impose our vision of the world with violence. Jabbar, who posted videos online in which he professed his support for the Islamic State, is our murderous doppelgänger. He will not be the last…”
Meanwhile, Jerusalem Bureau Chief of the Jerusalem Despatch, Lubna Maswara, has reported a stunning news which the Western media seems to have missed, and which has been being spoken about by some journalists earlier. Considering the fact that as many as almost 200 journalists have been murdered by the IDF in Gaza, including by snipers which clearly appear to be targeted assassinations, and the fact that no international journalist can enter and report from Gaza, the news from West Bank has shocked many supporters of Palestine.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) runs the West Bank. It is led by a discredited and ageing president, Mohammad Abbas, who is considered a stooge of Israel, which actually calls the shots in West Bank. Apparently the PA has gone on a fierce crackdown in the occupied West Bank.
Lubna Maswara reports that the PA security service snipers shot dead Shatha Sabbagh, a 21-year-old intrepid reporter who has been documenting the PA’s deadly campaign against armed groups in Jenin.
“It was clear that she was a woman with children,” her brother Musab al-Sabbagh told Middle East Eye.
“Despite this, the sniper targeted her head the moment she left the door of the house.”
Masarwa reports: “For several weeks now, the PA has been carrying out raids in Jenin, a restive city some 100km north of Jerusalem, with the aim of targeting ‘outlaws’ and ‘militants’ who it says have taken control of the (refugee) camp. Pretty much anyone protesting the deadly incursions, which have seen at least 16 people killed since mid-December, have found themselves in the cross-hairs. A Palestinian columnist told me that PA security forces had hauled in five people after they wrote social media comments under one of his articles that were supportive of resistance groups. The atmosphere has been so tense that some of my journalist friends have started publishing stories anonymously.”
She writes, “For many Palestinians, living and working under the PA was always tough, but I don’t think anyone envisaged that the level of killings and arrests would reach such great heights. It feels like the PA has found themselves a new enemy, and it’s not Israeli forces or illegal settlers. One Palestinian activist told me bluntly: ‘They [the PA], are not interested in any resistance, and they are arresting anyone who is politically active or critical of the PA. It’s all done under the pressure of the US and Israel. Any post on social media against either the PA or what they are doing in Jenin could see you arrested immediately.’”
Even some Fatah members and leaders seem to be wary of the administration. Fatah is the ruling party. “Whichever way the PA has tried to spin it, the campaign has proved so divisive that a figure from Fatah — the main secular political party in the PA — that I spoke to, said he was fundamentally at odds with the way the Palestinian leadership was treating the Palestinian people. The PA doesn’t care about the Palestinian people — the only thing they want is to convince the Israelis and the Americans that they can achieve security in the West Bank,” she writes.
She writes that even Al Jazeera’s broadcasts in the West Bank has been suspended, as Israel has blocked all independent media. “If it really wants to win the battle for hearts and minds in Jenin’s refugee camps — they need to stop the killings and collaborations with Israel.”