Have a look (transcript below video) at this: "Genocide": Top U.N. Craig Mokhiber Official Resigns, Denounces Israeli Assault on Gaza. The resignation letter can be read there, too (or here). I agree with its characterization of this assault as genocide—certainly, it’s a vicious, illegal collective punishment. If they keep up the total siege, it’ll become genocide if it isn’t already.
On genocide, incidentally, read the following:
PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: [translated] You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember, and we are fighting. Our brave troops and combatants, who are now in Gaza or around Gaza and in all other regions in Israel, are joining this chain of Jewish heroes, a chain that has started 3,000 years ago, from Joshua ben Nun until the heroes of 1948, the Six-Day War, the ’73 October War and all other wars in this country. Our hero troops, they have one supreme main goal: to completely defeat the murderous enemy and to guarantee our existence in this country. We have always said, “Never again.” Never again is now.
“What the hell is ‘Amalek,’” you understandably ask? Read on, my pets:
17 “Remember what Amalek did to you on the way as you were coming out of Egypt, 18 how he met you on the way and attacked your rear ranks, all the stragglers at your rear, when you were tired and weary; and he did not fear God. 19 Therefore it shall be, when the Lord your God has given you rest from your enemies all around, in the land which the Lord your God is giving you to possess as an inheritance, that you will blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven. You shall not forget.
Not good enough? Try this:
Samuel said to Saul, “I am the one whom the Lord sent to anoint you king of his people Israel. Now listen to what the Lord Almighty says. 2 He is going to punish the people of Amalek because their ancestors opposed the Israelites when they were coming from Egypt. 3 Go and attack the Amalekites and completely destroy everything they have. Don't leave a thing; kill all the men, women, children, and babies; the cattle, sheep, camels, and donkeys.”
4 Saul called his forces together and inspected them at Telem: there were 200,000 soldiers from Israel and 10,000 from Judah. 5 Then he and his men went to the city of Amalek and waited in ambush in a dry riverbed. 6 He sent a warning to the Kenites, a people whose ancestors had been kind to the Israelites when they came from Egypt: “Go away and leave the Amalekites, so that I won't kill you along with them.” So the Kenites left.
7 Saul defeated the Amalekites, fighting all the way from Havilah to Shur, east of Egypt; 8 he captured King Agag of Amalek alive and killed all the people. 9 But Saul and his men spared Agag's life and did not kill the best sheep and cattle, the best calves and lambs,[a] or anything else that was good; they destroyed only what was useless or worthless.[b]
If you heard a head of a Muslim state saying something like this quoting the Koran, you’d instantly conclude that that a far-right fundamentalist state was calling for genocide. You’d be right.
We should demand a cease fire and a two-state settlement. If Israel refuses, cut them off entirely. We won’t; we’ll just fully back genocide. And when the blowback terror hits here, maybe just in time to elect Trump and seal our fascist fate, you’ll hear, “Well, what can you expect from subhuman Arab/Muslim animals?”
Hamas of course had choices. Could have hit only military targets. Could have smashed the wall down and led people out, nonviolently. They didn’t. Israel has choices. Like not starving 2.3m people to death, effectively cutting off all fuel, water and medical supplies; bombing indiscriminately, and so on. Which is what they’re doing, having long ago chosen expansion and occupation over security.
There’s always a context, yes, but choices were and are being made. I see mirror images: “It’s all Israel’s fault Hamas perpetrated a vicious pogrom”; “It’s all Hamas’ fault that Israel is bombing the shit out of civilians under an effectively total siege.” I don’t buy either. But there are two and only two types of people: those who mindlessly parrot propagandistic, emotionally charged, narcissistically targeted, oversimplified, mutually exclusive binaries designed to manufacture consent—and those who don’t.
I don’t agree with the letter’s abandonment of the two-state settlement, though I don’t think Israel will allow it without massive US pressure, which seems unlikely, given that most Americans couldn’t care less about the Palestinians despite recent improvement. Now possibly destroyed by Hamas’ vicious pogrom—but don’t count out Israel effectively obliterating sympathy, post-9/11-like, if they kill hundreds of thousands of people.
In any event, Israel will absolutely never allow an immediate one-state settlement; in fact, the only way to get there (or to a no-state settlement; even better and not just for that region) is via the institutional and legal framework for two states, none of which exists for one state. Then one could hope for a longer-term integration a la the EU, which ended a thousand years of intra-European warfare up to the horrors of the world wars.
Of course, the overarching irony is that this crime is occurring inside the immensely greater one of conscious species suicide via carbon, and no doubt eventually plutonium. There is no longer-term future.
Have a good look at Gaza: it’s the not-too-distant future for us all, the poor before the rich, as carbon increasingly bites.