XPost: soc.culture.israel, talk.politics.misc, talk.politics.guns
XPost: alt.politics.elections

The International Criminal CourtÆs (ICJ) January finding of a
ôplausible genocideö in Gaza, and subsequent ruling that Israel is
responsible for an apartheid system in the West Bank and East
Jerusalem would not have surprised former Presidents Truman,
Eisenhower, Johnson, Carter, or indeed Reagan, who famously denounced
IsraelÆs 1982 levelling of West Beirut to Prime Minister Menachem
Begin as a ôholocaustö.

Israel is the only US ally that has been exercising such oppression
and terror for a lifetime. For many years, consecutive American administrations, both Democratic and Republican, condemned IsraelÆs
recurring practice of terror. Today, however, the Biden-Harris
administration has been supporting these practices to the extreme.

Harry S Truman recognised Israel in May 1948, yet once re-elected in
November, wrote of his ôdisgustö over how ôthe Jews are approaching
the refugee problemö. Then his successor, Dwight Eisenhower, joined
Winston Churchill, whoÆd returned as the UKÆs prime minister, to
censure Israel in the UN Security Council in November 1953.

Paratroopers under Colonel Ariel Sharon, a future Israeli prime
minister, had ôshot every man, woman and child they could find,ö in
the Jordanian-controlled West Bank village of Qibya, according to Time magazine, leaving 69 dead. Prime Minister Ben-Gurion cried
ôanti-Semitism.ö

Eisenhower had Israel censured twice more: In March 1955, after a self-described Israeli ôterror unitö bombed US consulate libraries in
Cairo and Alexandria, seeking to blame Egypt, followed by an attack on Egyptian-controlled Gaza that killed 38; and in March 1956 over a
so-called ôretaliationö against Syria that killed 56 soldiers and
civilians.

ôUpward of 2,700 Arab infiltrators, and perhaps as many as 5,000, were
killed by the [Israeli military], police, and civilians along IsraelÆs
borders between 1949 and 1956,ö writes Israeli historian Benny Morris,
ôthe vast majority of those killed were unarmed.ö They were shepherds,
farmers, Bedouins, and refugees.

Eisenhower was unpersuaded by Israeli ambassador Abba EbanÆs claims of self-defence, and Israel would keep inflicting vastly asymmetric
episodes of terror for decades.

In October 1956, after killing some 49 civilians in the village of
Kafir Qasim near Tel Aviv, Israel invaded Egypt and immediately began massacring refugees in Khan Younis and Rafah. Eisenhower responded by
declaring that the US would ôapply sanctionsö on Israel. When Israel
still refused to withdraw from Gaza and Sharm El Sheikh, the US
president threatened to block its access to US financial markets. The
Israeli retreat followed.

In November 1966, Lyndon Johnson once again put ôthe Palestine
Questionö on the UN agenda to condemn Israel, this time after a
massive attack on Jordan involving more than 3,000 soldiers. ôThe
Israelis have done a great deal of damage to our interests and to
their own,ö concluded his National Security Adviser W W Rostow, adding
that ôtheyÆve wrecked a good system of tacit cooperation.ö

All-out war followed in 1967, after which Israel occupied the West
Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. The martial law imposed on the Arab
population in Israel since the founding of the state was lifted in
1966, but Jimmy Carter described the conditions imposed on
Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory after the beginning
of illegal Israeli settlement there as ôapartheidö.

With nothing resolved by 1982, Prime Minister Begin, a former Irgun
terrorist against British authorities, vowed to ôdestroyö the
Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). He oversaw then-Defence
Minister Ariel SharonÆs killing of some 18,000 Palestinians and
Lebanese, overwhelmingly civilians, in Beirut. Belatedly, Reagan
stopped the slaughter with a phone call, given IsraelÆs dependence. It
was then that he described the Israeli onslaught as a ôholocaustö.

Despite using a word with such weight, however, the White House did
not demand the UN censure Israel. The US had not attempted to sanction
Israel even over its illegal settlements which spawned from the 1967
war. Israeli Ambassador to the US Michael Oren explained why in his
2007 book, Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East 1776
to the Present. In the mid-1970s, he wrote, IsraelÆs supporters began
to achieve ôthe financial and political clout necessary to sway
congressional opinionö û meaning that they had acquired enough power
to impede US official opposition to Israel at the UN or elsewhere.
Ever since, Israel has taken US backing for granted, no matter the
record of wildly disproportionate atrocities.

In 1991, Israeli Prime Minister Itzhak Shamir, who had approved the
murder of UN negotiator Folke Bernadotte, tried to explain why
terrorism was ôacceptableö for Jews, but not Arabs: Palestinians are
ôfighting for land that is not theirs. This is the land of the people
of Israel.ö

HamasÆs October 7 attack on Israel was distinct. It was the only time
that Palestinian resistance groups were able to react to decades of
Israeli terror on a similar scale. In response to the attack, Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu simply doubled down on IsraelÆs
recurring massacre-making, now backed by starvation and disease. The
US administration took no meaningful action to stop ôplausible
genocide.ö

At this time, Israel has also become the only entity in the world that Washington allows to kill US citizens with impunity. The ever-growing
list from the West Bank includes Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, Mohammad Khdour,
and Shireen Abu Akleh û each killed with a shot to the head. No
sanctions or renditions followed their deaths. The White House simply
suggested the sniper-killings were ônot acceptableö and asked Israel
to ôinvestigateö itself. The issue was swiftly dismissed.

As GazaÆs torment enters its second year, IsraelÆs killing has reached unprecedented levels in the West Bank, and Lebanon once again becomes
a target of IsraelÆs self-described retaliation. More is needed from
IsraelÆs patron than mutterings to perhaps halt some arms shipments.
Washington should not only stop upholding Israeli brutality, which
includes apartheid but, like the UK, it can support the pending
International Criminal Court indictments which are to, finally,
include an Israeli prime minister.

Past US presidents had tried to reign in Israeli behaviour of the sort
that statesman Abba Eban came to describe, during IsraelÆs previous
bombing of Beirut, as ôwantonly inflicting every possible measure of
death and anguish on civilian populations.ö Time is overdue for
WashingtonÆs decisionmakers to follow those presidentsÆ examples, and
to rescind diplomatic protection as well as weapons exports for
Israel.


https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/10/11/israels-forgotten-terror

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