From Roots Action
Israel destoys Gaza, including media
(Image by Wikipedia (commons.wikimedia.org), Author: diario fotográfico 'desde Palestina', photographer) Details Source DMCA
For people who care about truth, that's outrageous. For the Israeli government, that's terrific.
The AP president, Gary Pruitt, said "we are shocked and horrified that the Israeli military would target and destroy the building housing AP's bureau and other news organizations in Gaza."
There's ample reason to be horrified. But not shocked.
The approach is a mix of deception and brutality. Blow up the cameras so the world won't see as many pictures of the atrocities.
Of course, there's no need to interfere with journalists documenting the also awful -- while relatively few -- deaths of Israelis due to rockets fired by Hamas. In recent days the Israeli government has spotlighted such visuals, some of them grimly authentic, others fake.
The suffering in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is tragically real on both sides, while vastly asymmetrical. During the last 10 days, as reported by the BBC, 219 people have been killed in Gaza. In Israel, the number was 10. In Gaza, at least 63 of the dead were children. In Israel, two.
In the midst of all this, shamefully, President Biden is pushing ahead to sell $735 million worth of weapons to Israel, a move akin to selling more whips and thumbscrews to torturers while they're hard at work tormenting their victims.
On Wednesday, a few members of Congress introduced a bill that seeks to do what the Israeli targeting of media seeks to prevent -- the galvanizing of well-informed outrage. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib and Mark Pocan introduced a resolution opposing the sale of those weapons.
"For decades, the U.S. has sold billions of dollars in weaponry to Israel without ever requiring them to respect basic Palestinian rights. In so doing, we have directly contributed to the death, displacement and disenfranchisement of millions," Ocasio-Cortez pointed out.
Tlaib, the only Palestinian-American in Congress, said: "The harsh truth is that these weapons are being sold by the United States to Israel with the clear understanding that the vast majority of them will be used to bomb Gaza. Approving this sale now, while failing to even try to use it as leverage for a ceasefire, sends a clear message to the world -- the U.S. is not interested in peace, and does not care about the human rights and lives of Palestinians."
As usual, Israel's latest killing spree can avail itself of deep pockets provided by U.S. taxpayers, currently $3.8 billion a year in military assistance. An article published last week by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace makes a strong case that the massive subsidy is legally dubious and morally indefensible.
Not many members of Congress can be heard calling for an end to doling out huge sums to the Israeli government. But some progress is evident.
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