By Jim Miles
There have been many achievements by Israel in the last four months of their genocidal attacks on Gaza. After reading and watching many websites the following achievements are notable.
First is the uniting of the Arab community against the occupation, settlement, and ethnic cleansing/genocide of the Palestinian people. The people of the street are forcing their respective governments to align with Hamas and Gaza, and now that the last refuge in Rafah is threatened with military slaughter, there is increased risk/momentum towards a wider regional war.
Another big achievement, bigger perhaps in a global perspective, is the highlighting of the U.S.’ racist and militaristic policy in supporting the genocide. For decades the U.S. has doled out (sure, think of it as welfare for the Zionist settlers) billions of dollars a year, and are now proposing many billions of dollars more in support, most of which goes to the military. Beyond that the U.S. donates huge quantities of military equipment and ordinance in order to sustain the bloody cleansing, money the U.S. taxpayer could well use at home.
But beyond the U.S., it is the global community being shown in much detail through modern media that the U.S. cares nothing at all about the lives of women, children, and men being able to live their lives in peace and security. The Middle East has lived this for decades, even before 9/11, and now the world can see it all at its best attempts to retain its global hegemony through “supreme spectrum dominance” – the mantra of the U.S. establishment.
Freedom and democracy? Hogwash, malarkey, balderdash and many terms I refuse to print – it is all about dominance and control through the U.S. military for the sake of the U.S. oligarchy.
The military in itself is shown to be rather ineffective (along with the highly touted IOF) as the navy sits offshore, threatening the Houthis while the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb are avoided by many global marine shippers. Sure they can bomb the sand dunes and villages of an already much assaulted region, but against the irregular forces of the Houthis, they are very much sitting ducks should the war escalate.
A similarly large achievement for Israeli Zionists has been to highlight for the world its hatred and racism for all people other than those anointed by self-proclamation to be the only possessors of the land.
The pictures of detainees, stripped, bound, and held under illegal conditions are bad enough, but the pictures of wounded and murdered children and women, killed without remorse – more than likely with psychopathic glee – churn the stomach and fray the nerves. The recently highlighted murder of Hind Raja speaks volumes about the cruelty of the IOF presenting itself far outside the bounds of anything moral. The attempted humiliation of another Palestinian, Hamza Abu Halima – now given the moniker of the “Lion of Gaza” – clearly shows the pride, defiance and sumud of the Palestinian people against an immoral, self-righteous, intolerant Zionist fanaticism.
I shudder to think what further achievements might come from Israel’s aggression in the Middle East. With over thirty thousand killed and missing, and the millions of displaced Palestinians now huddled near the Egyptian border, what kind of slaughter have they conceived next?
The ethnic cleansing of Palestine is their ultimate goal, to be achieved by murder and slaughter and/or by push and shove across international borders. Allow that this “achievement” will be marked by failure before too much more damage has been achieved.
Jim Miles is a Canadian educator
13 February 2024
Source: countercurrents.org