Joe Biden’s inner circle of strategists for the Middle East Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan and Brett McGurk have little understanding of the Muslim world and a deep animus towards Islamic resistance movements. They see Europe, the United States and Israel as involved in a clash of civilizations between the enlightened West and a barbaric Middle East.
Genocide is not a political problem. It is a moral one. We cannot support those who commit or are accomplices to genocide. Genocide is the crime of all crimes. We must stand unequivocally with Palestinians and the jurists from South Africa. We must demand justice. We must hold Biden accountable for the genocide in Gaza.
The Holocaust was weaponized from almost the moment Israel was founded. It was bastardized to serve the apartheid state. If we forget the lessons of the Holocaust, we forget who we are and what we are capable of becoming. We seek our moral worth in the past, rather than the present. We condemn others, including the Palestinians, to an endless cycle of slaughter.
Israel is a pariah state. This was publicly on display on December 12 when 153 member states at the UN General Assembly voted for a ceasefire, with only 10 abstaining. Israel’s campaign in Gaza means there will be no peace. There will be no two state solution. Apartheid and genocide will define Israel. This presages a long conflict, one Israel cannot win.
The savagery of the air strikes and indiscriminate attacks, the cutting off of food, water and medicine, the genocidal rhetoric of the Israeli government, make this a war whose sole objective is revenge. This will not be good for Israel or the Palestinians. It will fuel a conflagration throughout the Middle East. This war is not over. It has not even begun.