Israel - USA Has To Call Time

As I’ve noted previously, time was when the state of Israel got a free pass, whatever its armed forces and security agencies got up to. A small country with so many hostile neighbours, who would rather it did not exist at all. So it was when the IDF fired first in the Six Day War; likewise the retaliation to the Yom Kippur attacks. But the free pass no longer holds.

So when the response to October 2023’s Hamas attack went way beyond going after the perpetrators, protests began in earnest. They have not ceased since, as most of Gaza has been reduced to a rubble-strewn wasteland, with indiscriminate bombing, rocketing and shelling of civilians continuing round the clock, for apparently no more than shits and giggles.

But those who could stop the killing, the maiming, and the destruction of health and even water supplies, with little or no aid getting through to those in need, did nothing. This included Governments in North America and throughout Europe, the chief culprit being that in Washington, DC. Israel gets away with it, it carries on killing. It gets away with it again, so carries on again.

The Biden administration could call time on what has become a rogue state, whose defenders howl down those of inconvenient thought by smearing them as anti-Semites, attempting to have them removed from jobs, or deselected from being able to run for re-election. But here a problem enters: the people are not listening to their leaders’ attempts to smear those showing empathy.

And the people are in no mood to let pass the horrifying litany of armed forces using tens of thousands of human beings for target practice. So exporting lethal weaponry to Israel so that it can be used to blow people to bits, incinerate hospital patients, and bury many more under the remains of collapsed buildings is generating growing and sincere opposition.

What fuels the opposition in ever-growing amounts is the way those acting on behalf of the Israeli state, after getting away with shelling, bombing and rocketing defenceless civilians, push the boundaries a bit further, hence the shelling, bombing and rocketing moving on to helpless hospital patients. And they got away with that. So now the offensive has moved to Lebanon.

Yes, to another sovereign country. Not the occupied territories, although that was unforgivable enough. Now, entire suburbs of Beirut, populated once again by defenceless civilians, are being levelled, while the leaders of the supposedly civilised West do nothing. Those leaders do not even say Boo in response to the latest, and probably lamest, Israeli excuse note.

Levelling apartment blocks in Beirut was because of a bank. As the BBC has reported, “At least 16 airstrikes were recorded across Lebanon against buildings with Al-Qard al-Hassan (AQAH) branches, Lebanon’s state media reports, including two strikes close to Beirut airport”. Yeah, right.

Let’s just stop and think for a moment. If someone were to take out a couple of dozen branches of Barclays, NatWest, RBS, Lloyds, or whoever, would that have any effect on the capacity of those banks to make loans or provide other financial services? In any case, AQAH has said “there was no cash at branches to be destroyed by Israeli strikes”. This is yet another lame excuse for terrorising civilians. And it’s high time it was stopped.

Some bemoan the fracturing of political allegiance, with Tories losing ground to the more forthright bigotry of Reform UK, and Labour leaking the support it took for granted to Independents, the Greens and others. Still our Government blethers about Israel having the right to defend itself. But this went beyond self-defence long ago. This is genocidal action with intent.

And it is action which that supposedly civilised West is enabling by sitting there and doing nothing. What happens next? Bombing, shelling and rocketing a bit more of Beirut? Trashing the city’s international airport? Destroying the port facilities? Massacring some UN peacekeepers?

The USA contributes the most to the Israeli war machine. So it’s the USA that has to tell the Israeli Government to desist. Sooner rather than later.

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