SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
military budget
The Live-Streamed Genocide in Gaza Exposes US Complicity for All to See
The spiritual death of the United States has been a long time coming. It’s not just the murder and destruction—it’s the arrogance and hypocrisy of it all.
Sep 10, 2024
With a military budget greater than the next 10 countries combined, the U.S. naturally remains an international hegemon.
But it’s not the benevolent empire it once sold itself as to the globe. Now, as it transitions from post-9/11 forever wars, yet continues to engage in, finance and manufacture the weapons of a genocide, America’s decades-long spiritual decline has hit rock bottom.
Recently, a man approached me after a lecture, asking: “What makes Gaza different?” He was referring to the simultaneous international attention and inaction on the occupation’s barbarity in Gaza.
Of course, there are religious implications—Muslims naturally revere Palestine as a holy land, as do Jews and Christians.
There are historical implications, too, including an extensive history of over seven decades of Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, the continuous building of illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, as well as an ever-growing list of Israeli human rights abuses.
But the biggest difference that came to mind was that every detail of this genocide is being broadcast. It’s a “live-streamed genocide”, as Blinne Ni Ghralaigh, an adviser to the South Africa team at the International Court of Justice, put it.
It’s televised on your phone, your computer screen, your social media. A healthy conscience can’t simply ignore the mutilated bodies of tens of thousands of dead Palestinian children.
“It’s the first genocide in history where its victims are broadcasting their own destruction in real time,” she said.
It’s televised on your phone, your computer screen, your social media. A healthy conscience can’t simply ignore the mutilated bodies of tens of thousands of dead Palestinian children.
Arrogance and hypocrisy
But this isn’t the first time the U.S. has been complicit in the murder of thousands of innocent civilians.
What if the victims of the American military machine in Afghanistan and, later, Iraq were able to livestream their own death and destruction?
How many massacres has the U.S. been proxy to or carried out itself? How many victims will never be mentioned?
In 2020, under the Freedom of Information Act, the The New Yorkersued the Navy, the Marine Corps and the U.S. Central Command in an effort to obtain images from the Haditha massacre of 2005, a civilian slaughter in which US Marines killed 24 Iraqi men, women and children.
The Haditha massacre is a microcosm of not just the U.S. occupation of Iraq, but the West’s brutal attempt to engineer artificial change, secure national security interests at the expense of local populations and impose its will in the Muslim world.
The youngest victims included a three-year-old girl and a four-year-old boy named Abdullah, shot in the head from six feet away.
After a long fight lasting four years, in March, the US military apparatus released the images of the bloodbath. The perpetrators remain unpunished.
The Haditha massacre is a microcosm of not just the U.S. occupation of Iraq, but the West’s brutal attempt to engineer artificial change, secure national security interests at the expense of local populations and impose its will in the Muslim world.
In an interview with Al Jazeera’s Centre Stage last week, Middle East Eye's editor-in-chief, David Hearst, blasted the western world order amidst its complicity in Gaza.
“Nothing that the western [liberal] alliance has done in the last three decades has worked, and yet it’s still going on,” he said.
The Gaza genocide is an American one, and it is high time Americans came to terms with their government’s complicity.
From forever wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, to Barack Obama’s "no boots on the ground" that fuelled a drone-strike heavy policy in Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia, the US’s spiritual death has been a long time coming.
And it’s not just the murder and destruction—it’s the arrogance and hypocrisy of it all.
Sinister defence
“They’re using extremely illiberal means to protect their liberalism, and they’re using it against Muslims," Hearst added in his interview with Al Jazeera. "They wouldn’t dare to use that against Jews or synagogues.”
It is largely American bombs that have been dropped on the hospitals, mosques, churches and over 500 schools of Gaza.
It is an American backing of Israeli war crimes and human rights abuses that allows the occupation to continue its ongoing genocide, and it is this sinister defense of Israeli terror—often at the expense of its own citizens—that is putting the final nail in the coffin of America’s spiritual death.
For decades, Washington has remained silent and dismissive of Israel’s murder of American citizens, going to bat at State Department and White House briefings for the occupation against their own citizens.
It is an American backing of Israeli war crimes and human rights abuses that allows the occupation to continue its ongoing genocide...
In 2003, Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old American activist, was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza. The bulldozer was an American one, sold to Israel through a Defense Department program.
In 2022, Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American Al Jazeera journalist, was killed by Israeli snipers in the West Bank in 2022.
Just this week, Israeli forces shot dead 26-year-old Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, a Turkish-American taking part in protests against illegal Israeli settlements south of Nablus. Israeli officials stated they “would look into it,” a dismal response echoed for decades.
And the U.S. response will remain the same: a shoulder shrug, a disapproval devoid of consequence.
The U.S. is not a negotiator, arbitrator or by any means an objective voice vis-a-vis the Israeli occupation of Palestine. It is the raison d'etre.
The Gaza genocide is an American one, and it is high time Americans came to terms with their government’s complicity in the type of war crimes they so often associate with historical hegemonic rivals.
Keep ReadingShow Less
What Does It Really Mean to Say Israel Has the Right to Defend Itself?
If Israel wants to be safe and secure, step one—Kamala, I’m certain you know this!—is to value Palestinians as fully human, talk to them, and listen.
Sep 07, 2024
“As I said then, I say today, Israel had a right—has a right to defend itself.”
This is militarism set in stone. The words are those of U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, of course, in her extensive CNN interview last week—quick words that lead the charge and spew the glory, no matter how blatantly false they are.
Oh, and by the way: “Far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed.”
She had to add some vague, paradoxical empathy, apparently, just because the nation she hopes to lead—USA! USA!—is kind of growing up, at least a little bit, and a certain (inconvenient) segment of its voters now maintain skepticism about the effectiveness, not to mention the moral sanity, of militarism. Harris, alas, had no intention of addressing the issue with intelligence, nor does the media push her to: What, in fact, does self-defense mean? Does it always, unquestionably, require violence?
The violence in Palestine—in Gaza and also the West Bank—goes on and on, to what end? Nothing I write here is new, but what I want to do is push the matter beyond the realm of glorious, media-certified abstraction. Israel has the right to defend itself. What does that actually look like? Here’s a brief, recent example from the Drop Site:
For nearly a week, the Israeli military has been laying siege to hospitals in Jenin and other cities in the northern part of the occupied West Bank, severely restricting access to medical care, targeting medical workers and ambulances, and cutting off water and electricity, as part of a massive military offensive in the occupied West Bank, the largest operation in the Palestinian territory in over two decades.
...The move mirrors tactics by the Israeli military in Gaza, where every hospital has been targeted and only a fraction are partially functioning, leaving the healthcare system in ruins.
And the Palestine Red Crescent noted that “Israeli troops have ‘directly targeted’ ambulances, injuring two medical workers and a volunteer doctor. ‘Our teams have been prevented from transporting various casualties, patients, and elderly suffering from chronic diseases, and women in labor. The further marginalization of already vulnerable communities renders the area uninhabitable.’”
But Israel has the right to defend itself! Just imagine if the mainstream media refused to report on war—on “self-defense”—as an abstraction, especially when hospitals are being targeted, ambulances are being targeted, refugee camps are being bombed. Even if there’s a justification of some sort for any particular action, this is what self-defense looks like. Real journalism will not quietly look away from it.
Nor will it take events out of context for the purpose of creating a “good guy/bad guy” narrative. Maybe creating such a narrative is part of the game of politics, but honest journalism refuses to submit to it. For instance, as per the website Decolonize Palestine:
Framing is important. Being able to dictate the narrative, to be given the freedom to explain events in a way sympathetic to your worldview, can be an incredibly powerful tool. As many studies have shown, there has been an empirically proven bias toward the Zionist and Israeli narrative in U.S. media. This means that Israelis have had enormous advantages in framing what is happening in Palestine.
In other words, the Hamas attack of October 7 stands all by itself: a shocking act of barbaric violence perpetrated (for no reason except hatred) on innocent Israelis. But in fact, horrific as the act was, it happened within a context: seven decades of Israeli occupation, Gaza turned into an open-air concentration camp, Palestinians living without freedom and dignity.
Ignoring this is the equivalent, let us say, of a Hollywood-constructed brutal Indian attack on a wagon train of American settlers. The white guys are the victims! They have a right to defend themselves.
But this is just the starting point. Journalism is supposed to speak truth to power. This is easy to say, but truth is not necessarily simple—let alone simplistic.
Israel has the right to defend itself. Let me take a moment here to agree with would-be President Harris. Yes, Israel has the right to defend itself. But what does that actually mean? Self-defense is far, far more than an us-vs.-them standoff. If Israel wants to be safe and secure, step one—Kamala, I’m certain you know this!—is to value Palestinians as fully human, talk to them, and listen. And of course, this truth goes in all directions.
Anyone who isn’t aware of this is... deeply ignorant? Or do I simply mean part of both parties’ voting base? I listen to Harris triumphantly declare that the United States has the most lethal military force on the planet, followed by a resonating cheer from the voters, and it all sounds as phony as the worst movie script I can imagine. But apparently we remain trapped in our military budget.
As I wrote a few months ago: “We will not enter the future with closed minds. We will not find security—we will not evolve—if we choose to remain subservient to linear, us-vs.-them thinking. We will not become our fullest selves or have access to our own collective human consciousness if we choose to stay caged in our own righteous certainty.”
And yes, Israel has a right to defend itself. So does Palestine. So do all of us—we have the right to defend ourselves from our own militarism.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Tax Day and War Resistance, Philip Berrigan Style
As April 15 approaches, we can reflect on the life and work of Berrigan and undertake our own ministry of risk for peace—to ease the suffering, to restore human dignity, and to challenge our doomed policy of warmaking.
Apr 02, 2024
Each year Americans forfeit a sizable slice of their income to the United States Treasury to fund the government. Tax Day is dreaded. No one likes surrendering their hard-earned cash. But rather than a resigned shrug, Americans should look closely at what they are getting for their money when it comes to government services and policy.
In fiscal year 2023, the Pentagon received $858 billion for the preparation of war. This doesn’t include hidden costs for intelligence services, veterans’ benefits, Homeland Security, or the Department of Energy, which oversees the nation’s nuclear arsenal. All totaled, over $1 trillion a year is allotted for warmaking. By comparison, the 2023 budget for the U.S. Department of State, this nation’s department tasked with making peace across the globe, was a relatively miniscule $63 billion.
One way to register resistance to this profligate spending on warmaking is that of renowned peace activist and Catholic priest Philip Berrigan. During the Vietnam War, Phil initiated the destruction of U.S. military draft files in Baltimore and Catonsville, Maryland, to save the lives of both Vietnamese and Americans, actions for which he received lengthy prison sentences.
Whether it be gold, fruit, rubber, or sugar in Latin America; oil in the Middle East; or rare earth minerals in Africa, the U.S. taxpayer has long funded the corporate theft of natural resources from Indigenous lands for the benefit of U.S corporations and their wealthy shareholders.
These draft file actions by Phil initiated a new form of resistance to the Vietnam War, since no copies were kept of the draft files. Hundreds of similar actions followed at draft board offices across the country with hundreds of thousands of draft files destroyed, all stopping young men from being conscripted to kill or be killed.
In 1980, Phil initiated the Plowshares movement—which continues to this day—as he and others entered the General Electric nuclear weapons facility in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, pouring blood on weapons blueprints and symbolically hammering on the nosecones of missiles, “Beating swords into plowshares.” A Christian metaphor indeed, but a universal message. Since that first action, there have been over 70 Plowshares actions around the world.
Phil strongly objected to the notion that U.S. citizens should fund needless death and destruction abroad through their taxes, or possibly fund their own destruction by nuclear war. He repeated nonviolent actions time and again, serving a total of 11 years in prison to stop the slaughter of innocents and protest the use of U.S. tax dollars for arms proliferation, nuclear warmaking, and endless wars of choice.
For U.S. citizens, the well-known waste and fraud of the Pentagon should be one outrage. The Pentagon remains the only federal department to never pass a required federal audit. The Pentagon cannot account for 63% of the tax money it receives. That’s our money. Gone. Unaccounted for. Lining the pockets of weapons manufacturers.
But the more pressing concern with these war dollars is their use to initiate wars of choice, often against impoverished countries, because those countries have natural resources beneath the soil that the U.S seems to think belong to them. The cruel joke is, “How dare they put their country over our oil.” And so, we take it. With extreme violence and death.
The U.S. currently has soldiers in northern Syria where massive quantities of oil is extracted for Western fossil fuel companies. The war in Iraq was for oil. We are building new bases in Somalia where oil fields have been found. These wars for corporate profit have gone on for over a century. As decorated war hero Smedley Butler said in the 1930s about his many years in the U.S. military, “I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism... Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints.”
Whether it be gold, fruit, rubber, or sugar in Latin America; oil in the Middle East; or rare earth minerals in Africa, the U.S. taxpayer has long funded the corporate theft of natural resources from Indigenous lands for the benefit of U.S corporations and their wealthy shareholders. Innocents in foreign lands die as a result, while U.S. taxpayers struggle to pay mortgages, rent, healthcare bills, and food costs.
According to Brown University’s Costs of War Project, the United States spent some $8 trillion in the last 23 years for the Wars on Terror. Four-and-a-half to 4.7 million people in foreign lands died because of those wars, most of them innocent civilians. Mothers and fathers and children.
And so, as this Tax Day approaches, perhaps we can reflect on the life and work of Philip Berrigan and undertake our own ministry of risk for peace in whatever form that may take, to ease the suffering, to restore human dignity, to challenge our doomed policy of warmaking. Only in this way can we reconcile ourselves with justice and democracy. Only in this way can we save ourselves, our country, and perhaps the world.
As Phil said, “These blind leading the blind have done more than threaten us with doomsday scenarios. They have, with a devilish ingenuity, convinced us that we ought to pay, through taxes, for our own destruction.”
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular