Dear Editor,
Western governments, most noticeably ours, have openly facilitated some of the worst crimes of our age but I don’t think the empire is ever going to recover from this Gaza genocide. Violence is democracy, and voting is not, we learn from watching ‘our free press’ these days, depending on who is wielding it.
A gathering of black malcontents is commonly called a gang. Italians gathering the same way gets called a mob, while a similar group of jews is called a coincidence. That old saw is a clue to why ‘our’ government stands with the crimes of Israel for the last seventy five years but this Gaza genocide is way beyond all defense. Some fish just don’t belong in the same aquarium as others.
War occurs between separate countries. Hamas is a resistance organization in an occupied land. Its an armed revolt just as the Warsaw uprising was. It’s a recognized legal right for citizens of an occupied nation to resist however they can. Gaza is an open air prison in which the inmates are allowed no freedom of movement beyond the walls that surround them. Don’t like it? Can’t leave anyway, at least officially. This has been the case for a very long time with no solution in sight. Imagine what you’d do under such an open ended prison sentence for being born into a race that some powerful group decided was born to loose.
Mass movement: communism, nazism, zionism, and I suspect, any other ism attract the same sort of people performing the same sort of insidious actions. We have some of those types here in positions of power that misuse it.
Why is ‘our free press’ obsessively reheating five-month-old unproven allegations against Hamas so reluctant to focus on Israel’s current, horrifying atrocities? Hostages tortured to death. Parents executed in front of their children. Doctors beaten, murdered. Babies murdered. Sexual assault weaponized. No, not Hamas crimes. This is part of an ever-growing list of documented atrocities committed by Israel in the five months since 10/7 quite separate from the carpet bombing of 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza and a famine induced by Israel’s obstruction of aid.
Without extensive narrative manipulation, it would never occur to anyone that Israel should be able to inflict violence and abuse upon the Palestinian population for generations without ever receiving any violence in return. It would never occur to any thinking human that Israel should use their army to murder civilians in a military campaign is something that can be blamed on Hamas. That’s why we’ve been seeing such extensive narrative manipulation, from ‘our news’ media, from ‘our’ government officials, and from Israel apologists on social media.
The scale of the atrocities in Gaza is certainly on par with nazi treatment of the Jews. The world stands in awe as the “People of the Book”, the “Chosen of God” and the “Light Unto Nations” phosphorus bombs Gaza’s hospitals, refugee camps, and neighborhoods, obliterating Palestinians like they were Navajos, or Sioux.
The PR campaign for Israel’s destruction of Gaza encourages everyone to focus on Israel’s side instead of focusing on facts and evidence which you won’t see on the ‘nightly news’. The Israeli hostages deserve less attention than the hundreds of thousands of Gazans who are being starved and murdered now or the thousands of hostages the Israeli’s hold. The only way to believe otherwise is to believe Israeli lives are worth more than Palestinian lives in which case everyone’s lives are devalued. We have all too many historical examples in which one group believed that they are a better sort than the one demonized.
We are witnessing situational convictions. The rule of law and blind justice has been removed by politicians. You can see the results everywhere. Law is being used as a political weapon against the orange man and any who support the orange man unfortunate enough to be noticed by the federalies while others run free without consequence for similar actions.
Realizing the corruption and huge human suffering the empire is responsible for creates an opportunity to respond to this perception with horror and begin resisting it , but it’s only an opportunity. Its possible for someone to realize that we’re not being told the truth about what’s happening in the world, but decide to play along with the lies anyway, either because the existing world order works for them, because they ideologically support Israel, because they’re afraid of the changes and upheaval that would come with an overturning of the status quo, or because they are intellectually and morally lazy.
Some of ‘our’ various wars have been on concepts in such a way that there’s no way to measure any success, failure or methods and it results in more controls on us in the same vague name. Climate change, terrorism, poverty, and how many more can you name. Virtually all of these pursuits are organized and led by those who profit from it at our expense. The war on Hamas is the same, as that organization has become an idea just as the IRA in Ireland or the VC in Vietnam. You can’t defeat an idea whose time has come.
We allow ourselves to be ruled by puppiticians, corrupt politicians who obviously don’t work for us, and its been taking us nowhere useful or healthy.
Written by: Craig Dudley, Blowing Rock