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Biden Needs To Come To Israel’s – And His Own – Rescue
For now Israel seems to lose its war against the Palestinian resistance.
The October 7 attempt to gain hostages by Hamas and Islamic Jihad was successful. Israeli outrage about it should have been directed against the Israeli government and its army for their chaotic response. They likely killed more Israelis than Hamas did.
But outrage was instead instigated against the external enemy. In this case all Palestinians.
A united Israel urged its government to wage revenge. The government's announced aim is to remove Hamas. That however is impossible to do to a social movement with deep roots in its society. The real aim is to remove all Palestinians from Gaza, to either kill them or to dump them in some foreign land. This would be followed by an attempt to remove all Palestinians from the West Bank before capturing and annexing the south of Lebanon.
However no foreign country is likely to support such a genocide and to take up the burden of millions of unruly refugees.
The Israeli government still wants to satisfy its people but has no way to achieve that.
Meanwhile the resistance against Israel, which has been built by Iran over several decades, is increasing its response. It aims to press Israel into conceding defeat and to liberate the Palestinians from their Zionist occupiers.
Changing a society's mind requires a slow and long response. In the north Hezbullah is slowly escalating its tit-for tat war with the Israeli army. Some 100,000 Israeli civilians have fled from the border zone. The Ansar Islam movement in Yemen has blocked maritime traffic to Israel's Eilat port. The U.S. attempt to counter that has failed:
Despite the US calling the Red Sea tensions "an international challenge" requiring a united response, the initial coalition support was limited, with only 10 nations, including Bahrain as the sole Arab state. The Pentagon later announced that 20 countries had joined the coalition, with Greece and Australia among the new members.
In a setback to the US, France, Spain, and Italy have declined their participation in the alliance.
Local resistances in Iraq and Syria are attacking U.S. troops deployed in those countries. As long as its troops are there the U.S. can to nothing to prevent that.
There are also threats to Israel's Mediterranean coast line. Hezbollah has the ability to close down Haifa and and other Israeli ports. Missiles, cruise missiles and drones from Gaza, from Lebanon, Yemen and from resistance fighters in Iraq and Syria continue to target Israel day by day.
With more than 350,000 Israeli troops mobilized and Palestinian workers from the West Bank banned, Israel's economy is, for lack of workers, in deep trouble.
Its military forays into Palestinian cities in Gaza have so far achieved little results but incurred significant losses. All the army can do is to destroy those cities block by block. But Hamas continues to fight back, even in rubble.
The current plan is to make Palestinian life in Gaza so miserable that leaving it will be for them the only alternative to certain death. But leaving whereto when no one wants to take them?
That is a question Israel and its U.S. backers fail to answer.
With the war going into a prolonged, unsustainable phase the Israeli government needs to do something else, or fail.
It plans to open a new front in Lebanon against Hezbollah. But a repeat of the 2006 war, which Israel lost, can not be risked. To fight Hezbollah on the ground Israel needs active U.S. backing, not only by U.S. delivery of weapons, but by U.S. forces on the ground.
A new U.S. war in the Middle East against a well prepared enemy is the last thing President Biden needs for his re-election campaign.
Pictures of Israeli settlers and their army raiding Ramallah to steal money from Palestinian money exchanges also lead to more negative voter responses.
Hamas says it can fight the war for several months.
Biden needs to shut the war down.
Either he does that now or his chances of a reelection will decrease even further.
As the genocide against the people of Gaza in Palestine by the Zionists and US is entering into its fourth month, it’s good to see two testimonies from two different people: one is from an Israeli soldier with disability caused by operations he has conducted against the Palestinians; the other is from a 10-year-old Palestinian school girl who has been subjected to brutal genocidal operations and has lost her home, her school, and all her schoolmates.
The contrast between the two is noteworthy. The two spirits are on full display. I’ve put the links to the videos and believe watching them with attention and listing to them with care (even though one is in Arabic and the other in Hebrew) would be quite useful. The body language in both cases is something to be seen.
Transcript of the first video, a testimony by Avihai Levi, an Israeli soldier:
“I participated in several wars and operations, and as I hear this lady speaking falsely, you talk about the disabled in the army while the disable are sitting here, abandoned by you. You abandoned us, and I’m speaking about myself and him. You have abandoned us shamelessly. Our spilled blood places a duty on each one, of you, to take care of us. I’ll give you an example. I became paralyzed and extremely violent. I have debts of over 800,000 shekels. I’m restricted from all directions. This is my wife [turning back pointing to a woman behind him]. I almost killed her with my hands last year. I urinate on myself at night. I’m scared. I can’t sleep in the bedroom. If I don’t drink a whole bottle of alcohol every day, I can’t sleep at all. I’ve been waiting for any help from you for a year and a half. I’ve been waiting for a loan for a year and a half. Why should I declare bankruptcy? I’ve been pleading with you for a year and a half to get a loan in order not to declare my bankruptcy. Why don’t you take responsibility and get me out of this garbage we’re in? I struggle every day. I hit my wife every day. I urinate on myself. Understand, and you talk about weak people?! I have a head injury from an RPG [shouting]…I’m talking to you as if an RPG is hitting me, and I’m fighting. I smell the scent of corpses. I gathered the injured with my hands. Where are you?”
Transcript of the 2nd video, an interview by a reporter from Al-Alam with the Palestinian:
Palestinian Girl: All night, I couldn’t sleep. My eyes would keep closing and I would jump from sleep. Would close my eyes, I would wake up…I didn’t even understand how I fell asleep.
Reporter: What is your message for the world?
Palestinian Girl: I want to speak about my country and explain.
Reporter: Would you return to your home?
Palestinian Girl: Certainly. This is my homeland. I am steadfast in staying in my homeland to my last drop of blood, to my last breath. Until my breathing stops and I die. After that, too, I get buried in my homeland. I get buried in the agricultural land of my homeland. In the land where I’m buried, they will farm.
Reporter: Wouldn’t you like to leave your homeland?
Palestinian Girl: Never!
Reporter: Even with this cold, hunger, lack of medicine? Still, you don’t want to leave?
Palestinian Girl: No! We won’t go anywhere! We stay!
Reporter: Is that how much you love Palestine?
Palestinian Girl: Yes, I love it this much. Palestinian kids will not abandon Palestine.
Reporter: O, Arab and Muslim nations, and the world! These are the words of a child who has endured bitter cold and hunger. O, you, Zionist regime, you brought hunger to this kid, you destroyed her home, but she still tells you that I have Palestinian blood in my veins. Is it so?
Palestinian Girl: Yes! And I have message for Netanyahu and the enemy: God suffices me. God is my best support in facing you. We will teach you! O, those of you who has brought cold on us and destroyed hour homes, we will show you who is fighting you. Whether we win or die, this is not our end. We fight you and stand up to you generation after generation. England, Italy, and other world powers stand beside you; God, the Almighty, the Owner of universe, the Glorified, the Merciful, the Powerful is with us.
Reporter: Do you have any news about your home? Do you know whether it is still standing or has been destroyed?
Palestinian Girl: I know that it has been bombed and destroyed. I left all my toys. I will return there. I will set up a camp over it. I’ll put up a tent over the ruins, the rubbles of my home. The biggest tent! And this is how I will stand up to them and I will raise the Palestine flag.
Reporter: God Protect you. Do you go to school? What grade are you?
Palestinian Girl: I am in the 3rd grade.
Reporter: Do you know they have demolished the schools?
Palestinian Girl: I know that my school has been destroyed. I know all my girl classmates have been killed. They have been martyred and have gone to God.
Posted by: mt | Dec 29 2023 7:38 utc | 226
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