Global Research

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

We are witnessing by any and all accounts a massive massacre of Palestinian civilians who for the past 16 years have been imprisoned on the Gaza Strip – blockaded and controlled by Israel. This massacre is being carried out as if ordained in the Old Testament. This stems from the conviction on the part of the very influential, fundamentalist part of Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition in some God-given right to occupy and control “Greater Israel,” which includes all of Palestine.   

Netanyahu was recently recorded citing 1 Samuel 15:3 in a clip that has gone viral.

“Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”

Victims of this massacre are the direct descendants of the Palestinians forcibly expelled from their homes upon the creation of Israel in 1948, the deadly expulsion known as the Nakba. The next stage is described in Jimmy Carter’s book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid published in 2007. From Amazon’s book review:  

“Pulling no punches, Carter prescribes steps that must be taken for the two states to share the Holy Land without a system of apartheid or the constant fear of terrorism. 

“The general parameters of a long-term, two-state agreement are well known, the president writes. There will be no substantive and permanent peace for any peoples in this troubled region as long as Israel is violating key UN resolutions, official American policy, and the international ‘road map’ for peace by occupying Arab lands and oppressing the Palestinians. Except for mutually agreeable negotiated modifications, Israel’s official pre-1967 borders must be honored.” 

There have been more than 80 resolutions passed by the U.N. Security Council or the U.N. General Assembly against Israeli policy, most of them close to unanimous, many of them condemning Israel’s disregard of the pre-1967 borders by encroachments in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.  

For example, on Dec. 14, 2022, the General Assembly passed 159 to 8 a resolution directed against “the widespread destruction caused by Israel, the occupying Power, to vital infrastructure, including water pipelines, sewage networks and electricity networks, in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, in particular in the Gaza Strip …” and calls upon Israel “to cease its demolition and confiscation of Palestinian homes, agricultural lands and water wells … particularly Israeli settlement activities …” The current settler movement with the support of the Israeli government continues to forcibly expel Palestinians from their homes in the West Bank (they have lived there for generations) over the objection even of President Biden.  

Israel’s current alternative to the two-state solution amounts to a Final Solution – all Palestinians either expelled or murdered. 

I deplore terrorism. I do not know the extent of the terrorism perpetrated by Hamas on Oct. 7. Practically the first thing we heard was the hoax that Hamas had decapitated 40 babies. This was claimed by the Israeli government and rapidly adopted by President Biden who lied when he said he had seen an authenticated photo of this.

Surfaced now in Israeli media are accounts of Israeli survivors of the Oct. 7 attacks in which they testify that they were treated “humanely” by Hamas and that many of the Israeli victims were killed in Israeli crossfire.  An Israeli survivor named Yasmin Porat, referring to Israeli special forces: “They eliminated everyone, including the hostages.” 

Tuval Escapa, a member of the security team for Kibbutz Be’eri, told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz:

“The commanders in the field made difficult decisions – including shelling houses on their occupants in order to eliminate the terrorists along with the hostages.”

A separate report published in Haaretz noted that the Israeli military on Oct. 7 was

“compelled to request an aerial strike” against its own facility filled with Israeli Civil Administration officers and soldiers inside the Erez Crossing to Gaza “in order to repulse the terrorists.”    

The Israeli government claims 1400 Israelis died on Oct. 7, the figure repeated by the Associated Press on a daily basis. This number has yet to be substantiated. No matter how accurate this number, and no matter how many of these deaths were caused by Hamas or Israeli crossfire, this cannot possibly justify or excuse genocide. 

The Associated Press daily refers to the attack of Oct. 7 as “brutal,” but never thus describes the ongoing relentless bombardment of Gaza. 

More on terrorism: Is dropping one-ton bombs on a civilian population literally trapped in the Gaza Strip, half of them children, on hospitals, mosques, schools, United Nations refugee shelters, residential blocks — is that also terrorism? “Terrorist” is a slur that the big army uses to describe the little army.  

More on terrorism: Israel’s founding fathers, its national heroes, many later elected to the position of Prime Minister, were terrorists.  

Image: Shimon Peres

Shimon Peres joined the Haganah in 1947, the militia primarily responsible for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian villages in 1947-49, during the Nakba. From Time Magazine on Peres: “His whole history was devoted to establishing and then developing a state founded on dispossession and the ethnic cleansing of [the Palestinians].” Peres was elected Prime Minister from 1984 to 1986 and from 1995 to 1996, as well as President from 2007 to 2014.   

Image: Menachem Begin  

Menachem Begin was the leader of the Irgun, a para-military force that carried out the 1946 terrorist attack on The King David Hotel in which 91 were killed as well as the 1948 Deir Yassin Massacre that wiped out an Arab-populated town, killing over 100 people including women and children. The British put Begin on top of their most-wanted list of terrorists. Begin was elected Prime Minister from 1977 to 1983. 

Image: Yitzhak Shamir

Yitzhak Shamir was the leader of Lehi, a terrorist group also known as the “Stern Gang,” which joined with Begin’s Irgun to perpetrate the Deir Yassin Massacre. Shamir was elected Prime Minister from 1986 to 1992. 

Image: Ariel Sharon

Ariel Sharon orchestrated the 1953 massacre of 69 Palestinian civilians in Qibya, mostly women and children, while leading “Unit 101,” an infamous Israeli army unit. In 1982, Sharon led the invasion of Lebanon, shelling and besieging Beirut. It was during this campaign that Sharon invited the Lebanese Phalange militia into the refugee camps known as Sabra and Shatila on the outskirts of Beirut, resulting in the massacre of approximately 3,000 Palestinian and Lebanese men, women and children. In 2000, Sharon led a phalanx of more than 1000 troops in a desecration of the al-Aqsa mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem, Islam’s third holiest site, thus provoking the Second Intifada. According to the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, this led into ten years of conflict in which “Israeli security forces killed 6371 Palestinians, of whom 1317 were minors,” while “Palestinians killed 1083 Israelis … of whom 124 were minors.” Sharon was elected Prime Minister from 2001 to 2006. 

It was the 2023 Israeli desecration of this same al-Aqsa mosque which precipitated the Hamas attack of Oct. 7 named Operation Al-Aqsa Storm.

Image: Ehud Barak

In 1998, Ehud Barak, former Israeli special forces commando, Israeli Defense Force Chief of Staff, and Minister of Foreign Affairs, stated: “If I were a Palestinian of the right age, I would join, at some point, one of the terrorist groups.” Barak was elected Prime Minister from 1999 to 2001.  

In the above-mentioned votes on U.N. resolutions condemning Israeli policy, the United States generally is one of very few countries that votes with Israel. (Similarly, in votes condemning the U.S. blockade of Cuba, Israel joins with the U.S. in opposition. For example, in November, 2022, when the U.N. for the thirtieth time passed a resolution condemning this embargo, 185 countries voted in favor, with only the U.S. and Israel opposed.) 

On Oct. 27, 2023, 120 countries passed a U.N. resolution calling for “an immediate, durable and sustained humanitarian truce leading to a cessation of hostilities” and the demand for “the immediate, continuous, sufficient and unhindered provision of essential goods and services to civilians throughout the Gaza Strip, including but not limited to water, food, medical supplies, fuel and electricity,” and “stresses the need to urgently establish a mechanism to ensure the protection of the Palestinian civilian population” and “reaffirms that a just and lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can only be achieved … on the basis of the two-State solution.”   

Meanwhile, the U.S. with a massive deployment of military force in the Mediterranean is now serving to protect Israel from any interference in its ongoing perpetration of genocide, daring anyone to intervene. 

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Barry Kissin is a retired attorney, dedicated peace activist and columnist who resides in Frederick, Maryland, home of Fort Detrick, headquarters of the American biodefense/bioweapons program. He is regularly published in his local newspaper, The Frederick News-Post, as well as in alternative media, including Global Research, Consortium News, Op-ed News and International Clearing House.