Paul J. Balles looks at how unconditional American backing for Israel, engineered through the Zionist stranglehold over the US political process, has enabled Israel to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity with impunity.
"The Israelis control the policy in the congress and the senate." (Senator Fullbright, Chair of Senate Foreign Relations Committee)
What kind of thinking explains why it is so easy for Israelis to slaughter 3500 civilians in Gaza, 40 per cent of whom were children? The Israeli murderers were fully aware of their incomparably strong armaments. They launched at least 2500 air-raids on Gaza, dropping more than 1000 tons of explosives, including phosphorous bombs, against a relatively helpless population.
According to the AFP news agency, Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights group, said that Israel’s chief military Rabbi distributed pamphlets to soldiers “urging them to show no mercy to their enemies” (the people of Gaza). Yesh Din said that the pamphlet borders "on incitement and racism against the Palestinian people". The rights group also said “these messages can be interpreted as a call to act outside of the confines of international laws of war".
It's not only a single rabbi or officer advocating genocide for the Palestinians. Brainwashing of leading Israeli scholars has prompted the most insane self-justification and rationalization for the atrocities committed against the innocent victims in Gaza.
Israeli educators, scholars and politicians openly advocate the annihilation of all Palestinians. Dr. Nachum Rakover, a legal scholar, opined "They voted for killers and sent them to kill us. To call them [civilians] innocent is a tragic comedy... [C]ivilians are partners of the killers."
Many other politicians called for the need for "wiping off Gaza from the face of earth", and "annihilating of every moving thing there." The right-wing Israeli politician Avigdor Lieberman proposed nuking Gaza following the US example when it dropped the atomic bomb on Japan during World War II.
"All of the Palestinians must be killed; men, women, infants, and even their beasts," cries the religious opinion of Rabbi Yisrael Rosen, the director of the long-established Tsomet Religious Institute.
Zionists have few reservations about expressing their disdain for Palestinians, whether they’re in Gaza or the West Bank. Largely, their open contempt comes from what James Petras refers to as the control of American politics through the Zionist Power Configuration (ZPC).
In his latest book on Zionism, Militarism and the Decline of US Power, Petras notes: “ZPC power is exercised directly on political, academic and cultural decision-makers to make sure their policies back pro-Israel, pro-Zionist interests.”
According to Petras, one of the mechanisms used to exercise indirect power is:
Parleying influence over a small group of Congressmen into a large majority. For example, AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee] wrote up the bill, presented by Senator Lieberman, co-signed by Senator Kyl, labelling the Iranian Revolutionary Guards as “terrorists” which paved the way for Bush to launch an attack. It was passed by 80 per cent of Congress.
With this kind of control over decision-makers in America, Israel’s hawks show little if any constraint when it comes to their slaughtering of Palestinians. As William A Cook has noted:
Israel systematically engineered the execution of more than 1300 people and wounded or maimed for life more than 5000, people locked inside a cage unable to protect themselves even by running away, for there was no place to run that the Israeli military could not see or destroy. Indeed, Israel’s foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, simply categorized Gazan civilians as “fighters” and their towns and villages “military bases”, thus enabling the IDF [so-called “Israel Defence Forces”] to continue its indiscriminate slaughter.
Apparently, little can be done to persuade sadistic Israelis that Palestinians are anything more than disposable goyim. However, decent Americans need to reconsider their willing support of Israel’s pathological murderers currently in control of America.
Paul J. Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years. For more information, see http://www.pballes.com.
