This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.
It couldn't have been less complicated. As a start, the Israelis experienced a crime of the first order at the hands of Hamas militants who broke through their border fortifications and killed not just soldiers but civilians of every sort (including children), while taking other civilians (including children) hostage. That certainly is the definition of war crimes.
The response to those grim acts has been all too grim in its own right. While bombing the Gaza Strip in a devastating fashion, Israel also promptly cut off the electricity, fuel, food, and water supplies that had previously kept Gazans going in that strip of land, barely twice the size of Washington, D.C., jammed with over two million people, half of whom are 18 or younger. Thousands of them are now dead, while hundreds of thousands have fled their homes with, in essence, nowhere really to go. And staggering numbers of them, at present, lack water, food, fuel, or even the means of communicating.
Of course, that, too, is the definition of a crime (or set of acts), as is using starvation or a lack of drinking water, especially in relation to children, as a weapon of war. And this is exactly what my own country is supporting, as the Biden administration ratchets up U.S. military power in the Middle East (something that may, in the end, prove distinctly negative for President Biden in the 2024 election).
With all of that in mind, TomDispatch regular Liz Theoharis, co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign, considers just how American financial and military power is being deployed at this moment and what that may mean, especially for the poorest Americans. Tom
Roses Dressed in Black
America's War Economy and the Urgent Call for Peace in the Middle East
On September 19, 2001, eight days after 9/11, as the leaders of both parties were already pounding a frenzied drumbeat of war, a diverse group of concerned Americans released a warning about the long-term consequences of a military response. Among them were veteran civil rights activists, faith leaders, and public intellectuals, including Rosa Parks, Harry Belafonte, and Palestinian-American Edward Said. Rare public opponents of the drive to war at the time, they wrote with level-headed clarity:
"We foresee that a military response would not end the terror. Rather, it would spark a cycle of escalating violence, the loss of innocent lives, and new acts of terrorism" Our best chance for preventing such devastating acts of terror is to act decisively and cooperatively as part of a community of nations within the framework of international law" and work for justice at home and abroad."
Twenty-three years and more than two wars later, this statement reads as a tragic footnote to America's Global War on Terror that left an entire region of the planet immiserated. It contributed to the direct and indirect deaths of close to 4.5 million people, while costing Americans almost $9 trillion and counting.
The situation is certainly different today. Still, over the last few weeks, those prophetic words, now 22 years old, have been haunting me, as the U.S. war machine kicks into ever higher gear following the horrific Hamas massacre of Israeli civilians and the brutal intensification of the decades-long Israeli siege of civilians in Gaza. Sadly, the words and actions of our nation's leaders have revealed a staggering, even willful, historical amnesia about the disastrous repercussions of America's twenty-first-century war-mongering.
Case in point: recently, the United States was the only nation to veto the U.N. Security Council resolution calling for "humanitarian pauses" to deliver life-saving aid to Palestinians in Gaza. Instead, all but a few members of Congress are lining up to support billions more in military aid for Israel and the further mobilization of our armed forces in the Middle East. These moves, experts say, may only accelerate wider regional conflict (something we are already seeing glimmers of vis--vis Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen) at a time of increasingly profound global instability. In the last few weeks, the U.S. Navy has "assembled one of the greatest concentrations of power in the Eastern Mediterranean in 40 years," while the Department of Defense is readying thousands of troops for possible deployment. Meanwhile, college administrators are suggesting student-reservists be prepared in case they get called up in the coming weeks.
Amid this frenzy of American bluster and brawn, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees reports that Gaza is "fast becoming a hell hole," riddled with death, disease, starvation, thirst, and displacement. Hundreds of scholars of international law and conflict studies have warned that the Israeli military may already have launched a "potential genocide" of Gazans. At the same time, within Israel, citizen-militias, armed by the far-right minister of national security, have escalated violent attacks on Palestinians, only worsened by the acts of armed Israeli settlers on the West Bank protected by that very military.
Finally allowing a tiny amount of aid across the Egypt-Gaza border, after shutting down all food, water, and fuel for Gaza, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant made it clear just how much power the United States wields over this unfolding humanitarian crisis. "The Americans insisted," he reported, "and we are not in a place where we can refuse them. We rely on them for planes and military equipment. What are we supposed to do? Tell them no?"
As Gallant implied, the U.S. could use its influence not only to demand far more aid for Gazans, but to compel quite a different course of action. There should, after all, be no contradiction between condemning Hamas for its heinous slaughter in the south of Israel and denouncing Israel for its decades-old dispossession and oppression of the Palestinian people and its now-indiscriminate killing and destruction in Gaza. There need be no contradiction between decrying terrorism and demanding diplomacy over violence. In truth, the Biden administration could use every non-military tool at its disposal to pressure both Hamas and Israel to pursue an immediate ceasefire, the full release of all hostages, and whatever humanitarian assistance is now needed.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
