Opinion | Israel normalizes terror as a weapon

By Philip Yeung, university teacher

PKY480@gmail.com

Judging by the horrendous death toll alone, one country would fit four-square into the definition of a terrorist state. That country is Israel. In the month of July, the Israeli army has targeted 10 schools in Gaza. In the latest attack, over a hundred women, children and the elderly were pulverized by an Israeli missile, while kneeling in prayer. Body parts went flying everywhere. This atrocity was swiftly condemned by the UN, as an International Court of Justice arrest warrant still hangs over Netanyahu's head, but he knows he is untouchable. He is emboldened by his hero's welcome in Congress. Jewish donor money has kept him safe.

Israel alleges that Hamas combatants were hiding in the school. But this logic won't wash. Even if they are trying to eliminate hostage-takers, surely the safety of innocent bystanders should be their first consideration. Israel's answer leaves no doubt that it has a callous disregard for Palestinian lives. Would they have launched the missiles if Jews were in the school? To them, only Jewish lives matter. Palestinian ones don't.

It is open knowledge that Netanyahu is sabotaging peace talks and deliberately prolonging the war to save his own political skin. Over 75% of Israelis want a new leader, as their prime minister faces criminal charges for corruption. He needs a war to keep him in power and out of jail.

His is a cabinet of ultra-hawks. His finance minister Bezalel Smotrich has outrageously declared that the starvation of millions of Palestinians is moral and justifiable. He has put the money where his mouth is, budgeting some US $800 million to build roads to serve illegal settlements on the West Bank whose takeover he favors.

Netanyahu's dark plot is clear enough: he has masterminded a multi-pronged subjugation of Palestinians by decimation, demolition and starvation. If bombs don't drive out the Gazans, the bulldozers will. His government has fast-tracked building permits for illegal settlers while refusing 95% of Palestinian applications. This way, he will "create facts on the ground" that will give Israel de facto control of Palestinian land.

By reducing Gaza to rubble and making it uninhabitable, 2.3 million Palestinians have been displaced, time and time again. They face being driven permanently out of their homeland  and turned into a flood of refugees. This is death by a thousand cuts, Netanyahu style. He is evil incarnate.

One thing is indisputable: Netanyahu cannot stomach a two-state solution. He is doing everything he can to prevent such an eventuality. At this rate, Palestinians face extinction. The extermination and displacement of Gazans is systematic, brutal and utterly relentless.

Had another country committed these horrific crimes, howls of protest would have been followed by crippling sanctions. But this is Israel, America's number one client state. As Israel's major weapons supplier and financial backer, the US has chosen to sit on its hands, turned a deaf ear and a blind eye to the humanitarian disaster sweeping across Gaza.

Sadly, for Palestinians, this conflict has erupted during a hotly contested US election. Deep-pocketed Jewish donors wield enormous power to keep critics of Israel at bay and keep office runners in line. American silence is deafening. We now know that, at the end of the day, US moral values take a back seat to political expediency. America is the home of hypocrisy.

But a political reckoning is looming. If Harris is saddled with Biden's Israeli baggage, young Americans who see the Democratic Party as their natural home, may abandon her in droves, disgusted by US indifference to Israeli atrocities and Palestinian suffering.

Israel may gain on the battleground, but it has exploded the myth that Jews are God's chosen people. Chosen people are noble, and not war criminals. The Jews may have a political state, but their leaders are morally bankrupt and their people morally adrift. Forget the lies about Xinjiang. Dead Palestinian women and children are living accusers against their butchers. Gaza will forever be Israel's crime scene for genocide.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.

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