Standing With Israel

After the attack on Israel by Hamas, I honestly didn’t know what to say. For years I thought — and still think — Benjamin Netanyahu’s brutal policy of stealing the West Bank from the Palestinians was a crime against humanity. And every one of those Jewish settlers is an accomplice.

But then Hamas stormed across the frontier separating Israel and Gaza, killing men and women and children, young and old, indiscriminately with a barbarism unseen in modern times. Not since the Holocaust have so many Jews been murdered and mutilated in one day — one morning.

Babies hacked up and burned alive, women beaten and raped, men beaten, many of them beaten to death. Over 1,400 Israelis and foreign nationals murdered by Hamas.

Of course Israel has mounted a response that has all but leveled the Gaza Strip. Israel is delivering vengeance upon the Palestinians that hide and live with Hamas. Two weeks after the attack by Hamas, with about 200 people being held hostage by Hamas in Gaza, Israel’s vengeance has been bloody and indiscriminate. They have dropped leaflets telling Palestinians to leave the northern part of the Gaza Strip, but that’s probably for the rest of the world so Netanyahu can say they are taking steps to avoid hurting or killing non-combatants. I say forget it Israel, Just go in there and start wiping out Palestinians until someone gives up the locations of the hostages.

Ever since a hospital in Gaza City was bombed people have demanded Israel be disciplined for the attack, without ever knowing the truth. Israel has evidence some Jihadist group is responsible for the bombing. The theory is these jihadists shot off a dud that landed on the hospital. I tend to believe that story because Joe Biden believes it and he isn’t the type to countenance things like this.

But this is what bugs the shit out of me: All the people saying Israel needs to show restraint. Really? Where are the people publicly calling for Hamas — and Hezbollah — to show restraint? Where are they? Thanks to the Iron Dome missile defense that Israel uses, very few of the missiles fired by Hamas and Hezbollah land in Israel, but those two terrorist groups haven’t shown any restraint when attacking Israel.

This is just my opinion, but I know it is shared by other warriors and former warriors: Hamas has declared an all-out, total war on Israel and the Israelis have every right to respond in kind.

What is “total war”? There’s no mercy for non-combatants caught up in the maelstrom of total war. From Dictionary.com:

total war
/ˌtōd(ə)l ˈwôr/
noun
noun: total war; plural noun: total wars

1. a war that is unrestricted in terms of the weapons used, the territory or combatants involved, or the objectives pursued, especially one in which the laws of war are disregarded.
2. Total war is “… one in which the laws of war are disregarded.”

Laws of war … the term itself is a joke because prosecutions of so-called war crimes won’t be pursued evenly, with blind justice touching upon all the guilty parties. That doesn’t happen — ever. Look who was held responsible for the crimes committed at Abu Ghraib prison, in Iraq. All the low level enlisted personnel involved and the woman general who was in command of Abu Ghraib prison when it all happened. All those criminals deserved what they got, but the people who gave this behavior a greenlight with a wink and a nod — and a memo written by John Yoo — that gave them permission to torture were not prosecuted.

Why wasn’t Yoo, President George W. Bush, V.P. Dick Cheney, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and flag and junior officers up and down the chain of command — why weren’t any of them held responsible? That’s a rhetorical question.

Then there was My Lai in South Vietnam. Some soldiers decided to go total war on the village. Read the history of that horror.

The idea of “laws of war” does not exist in total war. The Geneva Conventions get pushed out of the way so the combatants can get busy killing off each other, from the oldest to the youngest caught in the war. There’s no such thing as showing restraint in total war.

We have engaged in total war before: in World Wars I and II, annihilating Germans and Japanese civilians as we carpet bombed both nations. The firestorm in Tokyo was unimaginable and the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki basically said “we don’t recognize the rules of war and we will not show any restraint.” We fire bombed Dresden, Berlin and other German cities. Without any considerations for the civilians.

There’s no such thing as war crimes in total war. Everyone is a target and can be killed or wounded as this total war drags on.

We shouldn’t get into any wars, avoid wars whenever possible because the only winner of war is the Military-Industrial Complex which provides the weapons and other material used in wars. That would be companies such as Halliburton, Raytheon, Boeing and many others. This is the same M-I-C that is telling us we need both the F-22 stealth fighter and the F-35 joint strike fighter. The two programs will cost the U.S. hundreds of billions of dollars; for what? A possibly hot war with China?

But I digress.

Hamas wants total war, so Israel should give the terrorists what they want.  Israel has the power and will to crush the life out of the Palestinians in Gaza and Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon. Kill them all and don’t worry about rules and showing restraint.

Some will be appalled by the idea of total war. We should be appalled, appalled enough to stay out of wars, to tell our leaders not to get into hot wars. That’s when our leaders should show some restraint, not when the tanks are rolling in after several barrages of mortars and missiles. Level as many buildings as possible regardless of any people that might be in those buildings.

Unfortunately for Israel and the U.S., terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah will never be totally stamped out. For every Hamas or Hezbollah fighter we kill, ten more are being trained to step up and terrorize Israel and all of its allies, especially the U.S. of A. Total war will, accidentally, take out the younger generations that would become future Jihadists. That bit of collateral damage has a bright side, or so it seems. Any killing will give others the idea to step up and make the Israelis pay for killing women and children.

It’s a never ending cycle of violence and revenge.

On The Beat with Ari Melber Pal Ambassador Majed Bamya was speaking with Melber about condemning all bloody murder of children on both sides of the Israel-Gaza border, the killing of all innocent people in Israel and the Gaza Strip.

Bamya was very disciplined in his answers to Melber’s questions. He never gets too far from his number one message. the thousands of “innocent” Palestinians that have been killed in Gaza. It’s a good point to know and remember. I put the word “innocent” in quotation marks because I gotta ask, “How innocent are the people living in the Gaza Strip? The babies and small children, no doubt, but anyone else?” It’s a rhetorical question.

Children begin their indoctrination very early in life. Not just Palestinian and/or Muslim children, but in every conflicted area that is split behind religious or ethnic lines. And some where the conflict hasn’t churned itself into a hot civil war. We do it here in the U.S. of A. Yep, in nearly every public school kindergartners and first graders are being taught the pseudo-Christian version of the Pledge of Allegiance: “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

Those two bullshit words, ‘under God” were not added to the Pledge until 1954 when the Jihadist Christians in Congress wanted to show everyone the U.S. of A. was a Christian nation, unlike the United Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) which was officially a godless, heathen den of iniquity.

Man! If that’s true I wanna’ go there! But of course that isn’t true. The Orthodox Christian and Jewish religions were thriving to some extent during the 70-plus years of the USSR. Uncle Joe Stalin wasn’t very open to wanton sexual glee — unless he was a part of it. Actually I don’t know that at all, but it sounds funny.

The American indoctrination continues when we are force-feed the National Anthem, forcing people to stand at sporting events when it is played. Then most athletes tell us, when interviewed, they owe all their glory to god.

Kids are fed a version of American history the excludes all the messy parts, like the Trail of Tears and a true account of slavery. Some places don’t want to call it slavery anymore..

On Friday Hamas released two of the hostages; a mother and daughter from Illinois. Maybe Hamas is rethinking its total war ideas. In total war the side with more and bigger weapons wins. Especially a side with a global super power in its corner.. President Biden flew to Israel earlier in the week and said the U.S. of A. stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the only democracy in the Middle East.

Much to the horror and disgust of Republicans in Congress Biden has tied more aid to Israel to more aid for Ukraine. I remember when the GOP was pro-democracy and eager to give foreign aid to adversaries of Russia and the U.S.S.R. before that.

Many people think we got into Afghanistan in 2001 right after the terror attacks on New York’s World Trade Center, the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. and the plane that was forced down in Pennsylvania. Not so. Jimmy Carter got our Afghan adventurism started in the summer of 1979 when his National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski told him supplying the Afghan Mujahideen — six months before the Soviets invaded.
After the Soviets invaded Afghanistan the U.S. kept pouring money into the anti-Soviet forces, the Mujahideen, and once the U.S.S.R. left that central Asian nation the Mujahideen morphed into the Taliban It should also be noted some of our tax dollars helped fund one particular anti-Soviet Jihadist — Usama bin Laden.

Our adventurism came back to bite us on our collective ass. Then there as our friendship with Manuel Noriega in Panama — until he wasn’t our friend. Same with Saddam Hussein. He was anti-Iran so he was our friend when war between Iraq and Iran broke out. Then Hussein wasn’t our friend after he invaded Kuwait. Hussein was threatening the world’s supply of oil and we can’t have that.

All of this matters, all of it is connected. One of the constants through all of this is our friendship with Israel. The Israelis stood beside us, sometimes less enthusiastically than other times, but despite our differences in opinions, the United States and Israel have remained close friends and allies. No one in the U.S. government has ever seriously questioned the aid we have been giving Israel for the past 75 years. For example: the Israeli air force currently flies the F-16 fighting Falcon, F-15 Eagle and the F-35 Lightning II. And that’s just the fighter and attack aircraft.

Anyway, here we are standing side-by-side with Israel. There are idiot students at Harvard University who believe this is all Israel’s fault, that the deaths of more than 1.400 Israelis and 4-5,000 Gazans is all Israel’s fault. Believing that somehow Israel is an apartheid nation. Those Harvard students — and any other student bodies around America that believe the same B.S. as Harvard’s poorly educated student body — haven’t a clue what apartheid is/was.

Is Israel completely blameless? No. Their West Bank policy is appalling. But there is no justification for the mass murder and kidnapping that took place on October 7 of this year.

I stand with Israel on this, especially if they engage in the total war that Hamas chose when it invaded Israel and killed the largest number of Jews since the Holocaust. Kill every last member of Hamas and don’t sweat the civilian deaths.

Does a severely scarred and crying baby look terrible when they are on the news? Yes, whether it is an Israeli baby or Palestinian.  No one wants to see nations at war because the humans who bare most of the scars are children.

For the most part I am against war, all wars. The lies that started the war in Iraq is one big reason. President Lyndon B. Johnson used lies to escalate the war in Vietnam, on the side of South Vietnam. Why? To increase the wealth, strength and influence of the Military-Industrial Complex. There’s no doubt the M.I.C.is getting even richer off this latest war. That’s enough information to give me pause, but that doesn’t change what Hamas did on October 7.

There are some “experts” on TV talking about how Iran is fighting proxy wars against Israel, as if Iran is the only country to ever do that. The list of proxy wars this country has engaged in is too long to post here

When I first sat down to write I had no intention of going on about this latest war in the Middle East. That changed because I just got tired of listening to, or reading about, people bashing Israel. There’s no reason, no excuse for blaming Israel for the October 7 attack and the actions Israel has taken in retaliation. We should stand with our strongest and best friends and partners in the Middle East.