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SAN FRANCISCO, USA, Oct 11 (IPS) – When Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations spoke outdoors the Safety Council on Sunday, he stated: “That is Israel’s 9/11. That is Israel’s 9/11.” In the meantime, in a PBS NewsHour interview, Israel’s ambassador to the USA stated: “That is, as somebody stated, our 9/11.”
Whereas the phrase may appear logical, “Israel’s 9/11” is already getting used as an enormous propaganda weapon by Israel’s authorities — now engaged in large warfare crimes towards civilians in Gaza, after mass homicide of Israelis by Hamas final weekend.
On the floor, an analogy between the atrocities simply suffered by Israelis and what occurred on Sept. 11, 2001 may appear to justify requires unequivocal solidarity with Israel. However horrific actions are in course of from an Israeli authorities that has lengthy maintained a system of apartheid whereas crushing fundamental human rights of Palestinian folks.
What may be very sinister about trumpeting “Israel’s 9/11” is what occurred after America’s 9/11. Carrying the shroud of sufferer, the USA proceeded to make use of the horrible tragedy suffered inside its personal borders as a license to kill huge numbers of individuals within the identify of retaliation, righteousness and, in fact, the “warfare on terror.”
It’s a playbook that the federal government of Benjamin Netanyahu is at present adapting and implementing with a vengeance. Now underway, Israel’s collective punishment of two.3 million folks in Gaza is an intensification of what Israel has been doing to Palestinians for many years.
However Israel’s extremism, greater than ever touting itself as a matter of self-defense, is at new racist depths of willingness to deal with human beings as appropriate for extermination.
On Monday, Israel’s Protection Minister Yoav Gallant described Palestinians as “beastly folks” and stated: “We’re combating animals and are performing accordingly.”
Indiscriminate bombing is now occurring together with a cutoff of meals, water, electrical energy and gasoline. Noting that “even earlier than the most recent restrictions, residents of Gaza already confronted widespread meals insecurity, restrictions on motion and water shortages,” the BBC reported {that a} UN official stated folks in Gaza “have been ‘terrified’ by the present state of affairs and nervous for his or her security — in addition to that of their youngsters and households.”
It is a horrible echo from the post-9/11 method of the U.S. authorities, which from the outset after Sept. 11, 2001 conferred advance absolution on itself for any and all of its future crimes towards humanity.
Within the identify of combating terrorism, the USA inflicted collective punishment on enormous numbers of people that had completely nothing to do with 9/11. The Prices of Struggle venture at Brown College calculates greater than 400,000 direct civilian deaths “within the violence of the U.S. post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere.”
Early within the “warfare on terror,” Protection Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had normal a template to offer approval for nearly any killing by the U.S. army. “We didn’t begin this warfare,” he stated at a information briefing in December 2001, two months into the Afghanistan warfare. “So, perceive, duty for each single casualty on this warfare, whether or not they’re harmless Afghans or harmless People, rests on the toes of the al Qaeda and the Taliban.”
Rumsfeld was showered with acclaim from the U.S. media institution, whereas he not solely insisted that the U.S. authorities had no duty for the deaths attributable to its armed forces; he additionally attested to the American army’s notable decency.
“The concentrating on capabilities, and the care that goes into concentrating on, to see that the exact targets are struck, and that different targets usually are not struck, is as spectacular as something anybody may see,” Rumsfeld stated. He lauded “the care that goes into it, the humanity that goes into it.”
Even earlier than its present high-tech assault on Gaza, Israel had amassed a protracted observe document of killing civilians there, whereas denying it each step of the best way. As an example, the United Nations discovered that in Israel’s 2014 “Operation Protecting Edge” assault, 1,462 Palestinian civilians died, together with 495 youngsters.
There’s no purpose to doubt that the civilian demise toll from the current Israeli army actions in Gaza will quickly climb far above the variety of folks killed by the Hamas assault days in the past. As within the aftermath of 9/11, official claims to be solely combating terrorism will proceed to function PR smokescreens for a authorities terrorizing and inflicting mass carnage on Palestinians.
Deserving solely unequivocal condemnation, Hamas’s killing and abduction of civilians set the stage for Israel’s slaughter of civilians now underway in Gaza.
Absent from the New York Occasions house web page Monday night time and relegated to web page 9 of the newspaper’s print version on Tuesday, a grisly information story started this manner: “Israeli airstrikes pounded Gaza on Monday, flattening mosques over the heads of worshipers, wiping away a busy market stuffed with consumers and killing whole households, witnesses and authorities in Gaza stated.”
“5 Israeli airstrikes ripped by {the marketplace} within the Jabaliya refugee camp, decreasing it to rubble and killing dozens, the authorities stated. Different strikes hit 4 mosques within the Shati refugee camp and killed folks worshiping inside, they stated. Witnesses stated boys had been enjoying soccer outdoors one of many mosques when it was struck.”
Together with releasing a assertion concerning the newest tragic flip of occasions, at RootsAction.org we’ve supplied supporters of a simply peace a fast means to electronic mail their members of Congress and President Biden. The gist of the message is that “the horrific cycle of violence within the Center East is not going to finish till the Israeli occupation ends — and an enormous impediment to ending the occupation has been the U.S. authorities.”
Norman Solomon is nationwide director of RootsAction.org and government director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He’s the writer of many books together with Struggle Made Simple. His newest ebook, Struggle Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Navy Machine, was printed in summer time 2023 by The New Press.
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