Caitlin Johnstone

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

The Israeli government dropped thousands of leaflets on Gaza telling everyone who lives in the northern part of the strip that they have 24 hours to evacuate to the southern part, and then bombed the people who were trying to evacuate.

United Nations spokesman Stephane Dujarric denounced the evacuation order, saying the UN “considers it impossible for such a movement to take place without devastating humanitarian consequences.” Many Palestinians have said they’re going to stay where they are because they have nowhere safe to go, despite being told by Israel they must leave if they want to “save their lives”.

We’re about to see the death and destruction get much, much worse in Gaza, and it’s already very, very bad. As of this writing the official death toll from Israeli airstrikes in Gaza is speeding past 1,900, a number which includes 614 children. The primary job of Israel apologists in the coming days will be producing and circulating narratives explaining why this self-evidently terrible thing is actually perfectly fine and acceptable.

It’s so incredibly obvious what we’re looking at here. The only thing putting a wobble on people’s perception is the immense amount of propaganda distortion the media is churning out on this issue, plus the fact that the demographics look a bit different from what history has conditioned people to watch out for. If there were two million Jewish people trapped by Christians in a giant concentration camp and placed under total siege, being told that half of them had 24 hours to relocate into the other half or be killed, nobody would have any confusion about what they were witnessing.

SCOOP– Hours after Israel ordered an exodus in Gaza, State Department officials circulated internal warnings against 3 phrases:
"de-escalation/ceasefire"
"end to violence/bloodshed"
"restoring calm"
It's the latest sign the US won't urge Israeli restrainthttps://t.co/208jxoVP3e

— Akbar Shahid Ahmed (@AkbarSAhmed) October 13, 2023

And top-down commands are being issued within the US government to support this massacre unconditionally. 

The Huffington Post reports that the State Department has been circulating internal emails telling staff to avoid calls for peace, instructing them to refrain from using phrases like “de-escalation/ceasefire,” “end to violence/bloodshed” and “restoring calm.”

Asked about progressive congressional members calling for a ceasefire, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, “we believe they are wrong, we believe they’re repugnant, and we believe they’re disgraceful.”

On the question of whether there are any potential Israeli actions that the White House would not tolerate, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters “I’m not here to draw red lines or issue warnings or give lectures to anybody.”

So be perfectly clear, the US government is fully behind this massacre, and is just as culpable for everything that happens in Gaza as the Israeli government. These abuses are being perpetrated using US weapons, US funding and US consent. Washington could end this mass atrocity with a word, and instead they’re fully aligning themselves behind it. Israel’s crimes in Gaza are not meaningfully separate from the crimes of the US war machine.

This is just a continuation and extension of the violence and bloodshed the US government has been inflicting around the world for generations. There’s a clip of George W Bush going around from a California event on Tuesday in which, for some bizarre, unfathomable reason, the former president was asked to provide his opinion on what Israel should do in response to the Hamas attack on October 7.

Bush said pretty much what you’d expect him to say: “You’re dealing with cold-blooded killers,” “negotiating with killers is not an option,” “one side is guilty.” The same book he’s been reciting from since September 11, 2001. What I find much more interesting is, why is anyone asking the absolute worst person you could possibly ask about what should be done in response to such an attack?

I mean, Bush is literally the very last person in the entire world who anyone should be asking what to do in this situation. Literally dead last; there are eight billion people walking this earth right now who are infinitely more qualified to answer such questions than George W Bush. The agendas Bush set out to advance in the wake of 9/11 plunged the middle east into violence and chaos which wound up killing millions and displacing tens of millions, all supposedly in response to an attack which killed three thousand. What is this man doing holding a microphone and publicly opining on what Israel should do in response to the Hamas attack?

As we discussed earlier, 9/11 marked the beginning of some of the most deadly and catastrophic decisions ever made in US history. Israel has demonstrated that it is eager to repeat these profoundly depraved decisions to the furthest extent possible, and the US has demonstrated that it will fully support it in doing so.

The is because the United States never learned any moral lessons from its warmongering after 9/11 — if it had, George W Bush would be sitting in a prison cell, and the US wouldn’t be backing a mass atrocity in Gaza. The US-centralized empire is the most murderous and tyrannical power structure on earth, of which Israel’s criminality is just one component.

_______________

My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Featured image via Adobe Stock.