by Vijaya Chandrasoma

War does not determine who is right. Only who is left. Bertrand Russel

Saturday, October 7, 2023 was yet another Day that will live in Infamy, like December 7, 1941, when US President Roosevelt coined the phrase after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, which paved the way for America’s involvement in World War II.

Prime Minister of Israel, Bibi Netanyahu, in a telephone call with President Biden before his proposed visit, said that the Hamas attack represented “savagery I can say we have not seen since the Holocaust”. Rightly so. That one day, when 2,000 Hamas terrorists butchered 700 innocent Israeli civilians and wounded hundreds more, was indeed eerily reminiscent of the atrocities committed by the Nazis against innocent Jews, men, women and children during the Holocaust.

The difference is that the Holocaust against Jews continued for least a decade, or more than 3,650 consecutive days, day after day of incredible cruelty, of torture and death. Atrocities by Nazis, not for any crime committed by Jews, but out of historic, inherent racial and religious hatred.

The Jews never forcibly tried to take possession of any land that was the homeland of Germans or any other Europeans. They simply wanted to live in peace and integrate with the Germans, and with the citizens of nations of Russia and Europe. This in spite of the regular eruption of pogroms (ethnic massacres) they endured for centuries.

During the mid-1930s, there was a significant anti-Semitic movement in the USA, which overtly endorsed Hitler’s atrocities. In fact, American national hero, Charles Lindbergh, once considered by the right wing of the Republican Party as a potential Presidential candidate in 1940, had a close relationship with Hitler and actively worked for the anti-interventionist cause. At that time, more than 80% of the American public shared his views, opposing any involvement in the European conflict. The question of going to the aid of the Jews was never on the American table.

This was until the end of the war, when the atrocities committed by the Germans, with the massacre of six million Jews and five million Europeans of “impure blood”, gassed and baked in ovens and gas chambers, were exposed to a horrified, disgusted world. Until Europeans, Americans, even some Germans felt the extreme shame of not going to the aid of these innocent victims, even though they well knew exactly what was happening in these Nazi concentration camps.

The Nazi’s “Jewish Problem” then became, out of guilt, the British and Americans’ “Jewish Problem”. They took the easy way out. They stole the land of the Palestinians by Divine Order, after which it became the Palestinians’ “Jewish Problem”.

As Pablo Casals, famed Puerto Rican cellist and conductor said, “The world is in greater peril from those who tolerate or encourage evil than those who actually commit it”.

There have been pro-Palestinian protests in cities around the world, including America, against the continuing Israeli attacks on Gaza in revenge for the Hamas atrocities on October 7. Students of prominent educational institutions in America, including Harvard, are joining worldwide protests against the injustice of land being stolen from the people of Palestine.

A historic and mostly forgotten irony has been erased from the minds of these students at Harvard University, and most Americans. They are protesting the stealing of Palestinian land by the Israelis, unaware that they are standing on land stolen by their ancestors from native Americans.

Harvard students are protesting the annexation of Palestinian land by the Israelis, so doing on land stolen from the original native American tribe of Massachusetts. A tribe that exists no longer, but endures in memory only in the name of the state.

But I digress. Going back to the gift that kept on giving, also known as the Balfour Declaration of 1917, the British committed Palestine, a country where Arabic culture, traditions and language were dominant, “to the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people”.

The Jewish people accepted the twice-promised land, gifted by both the British and the Bible (the most sacred of title deeds), and emigrated to Palestine in their thousands, fleeing centuries of European persecution.

The Divine Gift of the Promised Land proved to be fruitful. Today, 3.5 million Palestinians are confined to the narrow, 140 sq. miles of the Gaza Strip, and share the West Bank of the Jordan River in dots of settlements amongst hostile Jewish settlers. The rest of the land of Palestine, now Israel, is under the military control and occupation of the Chosen People.

The map at the top of the essay shows the progressive and illegal Israeli annexation of Palestinian land since 1947.

A Two-State solution, proposed earlier by the United Nations, seemed to be the only equitable way to end this conflict, with equitably divided sovereign states, possibly according to pre-1967 borders. Jews and Palestinians living in peace in lands neighboring each other may be an impossible dream.

The virtual genocide and displacement of the Palestinian people and the complete annexation of Palestinian land, with American assistance, is almost a fait accompli. Today, Jews, with a population of 9.7 million outnumbering 3.5 million Palestinians, occupy the major part of the “Holy Land”. So where is the Israeli need for a Two-State solution? The Jewish State, as foretold in the Bible is a virtual reality.

President Biden visited Israel last Wednesday, in a display of American solidarity with Israel. He had three major missions for this historic visit: to make possible the release of 250 hostages, including about 20 Americans, held by Hamas in Gaza; to warn other actors in the region, like Hezbollah and Iran, not to escalate the conflict; and to ensure that Israel does not imperil the human rights of innocent Palestinians in their stated motive of exacting revenge for the atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7.

The bombing of a hospital in Gaza, which killed hundreds of Palestinian civilians and patients, a war crime, changed the trajectory of Biden’s short visit even before his arrival in Tel Aviv.

The Israelis first said the hospital bombing was an airstrike targeting Hamas that went wrong; then they accused terrorists operating in Gaza, Islamic Jihad, of bombing their own hospital. The hospital bombing occurred during Israel’s intense and continuing airstrikes on North Gaza for 11 days after the Hamas attack on October 7.

As expected, Biden stands with Israel Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. On meeting Bibi, Biden hugged him and said he believes the Israeli version of the Gaza hospital bombing, that it was done by “the other team, not you”. The American propaganda machine is busily gathering questionable satellite evidence to absolve their allies of this dastardly attack. No Arab will accept such evidence, doctored or not.

The Israelis’ stated intention of targeting only Hamas in their strikes in Gaza is as ridiculous as it is perfidious. Hamas operatives live with Palestinian civilians, they do not wear a Scarlet Letter T on their foreheads to identify themselves as terrorists. Collective murder of innocent Palestinians in the Israeli quest for revenge is inevitable. The Israeli blockade of food, water and medical supplies in Gaza is aimed at all Palestinians, not just Hamas terrorists. The relentless bombing by the Israeli Defense Forces of the area refutes their claim that the Gaza hospital bombing was done by a stray Hamas rocket.

Finger pointing is to no avail. The damage is done. The protests of Arabs throughout the Middle-East resulting from this atrocity led to the cancellation of the scheduled summit in Jordan for President Biden with Arab leaders in the region.

Biden left Israel, with little to show for his courageous though risky visit to a war zone. He said the Americans have learnt from past mistakes; grave mistakes, when they failed to intervene as Hitler was carrying out genocide of the Jews in Germany in the 1930s; and when America overreacted after 9/11, embroiling America in an illegal war for 15 years against the wrong enemy, with enormous cost to life, property and credibility.

Biden had limited success when he persuaded Israel to temporarily open the Egyptian border and allow American humanitarian aid to reach the Palestinians in North Gaza, desperately in need of such aid of medical supplies, water and food. One million Palestinian civilians under siege to be supplied 20 trucks of emergency provisions, sufficient for maybe a few days. Whether more trucks will be allowed access is anyone’s guess.

But while Biden condemned the terrorism of Hamas, he did not demand any assurances from Netanyahu of the cessation of retaliation against innocent Palestinians in North Gaza. Nearly two weeks of airstrikes and bombings, blockage of essential supplies, which have already claimed the lives of over 4,000 innocent Palestinian men, women and children. The hostages have still not been released. He received no assurance from Netanyahu of the suspension of the imminent ground offensive in North Gaza which will endanger the lives of nearly a million Palestinian civilians. Their strategy seems to drop thousands of bombs on North Gaza, destroy everything, and follow though with a ground invasion. What is their endgame – genocide?

The Israeli offensive if allowed to take place, will escalate exponentially the risk of the conflict spreading to other regions.

In that sense, Biden’s visit was a complete failure. But a complete success for Netanyahu, who got everything for Israel and gave away almost nothing.

President Biden is making a speech to the American people from the Oval Office, as I am writing this. A moving speech, emphasizing American values, determination to support democracy wherever it is under threat. He reiterated his steadfast support of both Ukraine and Israel, valued and loyal allies. He made a request from Congress for a funding package of $100 billion to help these allies in their wars against, as he said, aggressors who threaten their very existence as sovereign nations. He is asking for funding to help them in providing weaponry for their self-defense. He has no plans of having American boots on the ground in either of these arenas.

At first and admittedly ill-considered analysis, it has to be agreed that Americans must aid their allies. However, these two allies, Ukraine and Israel, are fighting their wars in different roles. One, Ukraine, in defense of their sovereignty against the aggressor, Russia. The other, Israel, is the aggressor, putting the finishing touch on targeted genocide, completion of the annexation of the land of an erstwhile sovereign nation, Palestine. An annexation in which Americans have been complicit since the end of World War II.

One ally is the defender, the other the aggressor. But helping both, morality and justice notwithstanding, is in the best interests of the Americans. That has always been the prime American motive in all the numerous wars they have involved themselves in since World War II.

Does the fate that befell the native American tribes centuries ago, when their lands were violently stolen and they were systematically and brutally “eliminated” by Europeans, await the Palestinians? History seems to favor that ultimate outcome, in the not too distant future.

Fifty years ago, Prime Minister of Israel, Golda Meir is reputed to have told then Senator Biden on a visit to that embattled region, “You know, Senator. We have a secret weapon here, in Israel. We have no place else to go”.

The tables certainly have turned. Today, the Palestinians have been almost completely defeated in their almost century-long struggle to hold on to their land against impossible odds. They are facing imminent genocide, displacement and extinction. Neighboring Arab nations are not, as a rule, prepared to accept them as refugees. They have no secret weapon in Palestine. They have no place else to go.