They invaded foreign lands, occupied them permanently, treated the inhabitants like subhumans. The latter revolted and killed 12 invaders. These returned with an armed expedition, burned the homes and killed 800 inhabitants, including 300 women and children.
This was in January 1599 in New Mexico, then occupied by Spain and its thugs in search of gold and precious metals, and this historical event was called the massacre of Acoma, after the name of the people who inhabited the region.
Four and a quarter centuries later, we find the same cruelty in the Middle East. The Israelis have not yet reached the same ratio of 12:800; they still have to kill some 60,000 Palestinians (i.e. 1269:84,600, the first figure being the number killed by Hamas on October 7), but they are well on the way, and, above all, they have largely exceeded the ratio of men/women-children. The Spaniards had reached 38% while the Israelis are between 60 and 70% of women-children killed in Gaza (i.e. 12,882 out of more than 21,000 as of December 22 ) [the figures should be interpreted as orders of magnitude – various sources, including: UN Women – Facts and figures: Women and girls during the war in Gaza, 22 December 2023]
“they want the land without Palestinians”
They also razed Gaza, which had been impossible for the Spanish in another desert – New Mexico’s – due to lack of machinery. At the beginning of this article is the photo of Al-Rashid Street in Gaza, which runs along the Mediterranean, before and after the passage of Israeli tanks and bulldozers. This photo of complete desolation “has circulated in Israel as an image of victory over Hamas [and] has been disseminated with pride, announcing that Palestinians can no longer walk along Al-Rashid Street in Gaza City, and more broadly cannot return to the Northern part of Gaza, which became a territory free of Palestinians.” [Boston Review, 8 December 2023]
In this respect, the Israeli army simply complements the work of Jewish settlers in the West Bank, who, established in illegal outposts under Israeli and international law, armed and threatening the Palestinians, are increasingly aggressive thanks to powerful and numerous ultraconservative and ultra-Orthodox allies in the Israeli government, such as Itamar Ben Gvir (himself an illegal settler), the national security minister, and Bezalel Smotrich (another illegal settler), the finance minister, who also is responsible for security in the West Bank. “They’re demolishing Palestinian villages, beating up Palestinian farmers, stealing their olives, trying to open a third front, an eastern front against the Palestinians in the West Bank. Why? Because they want the land without Palestinians,” says Nadav Weiman, who came to visit with the BBC the former Palestinian village of Khirbet Zanuta whose houses and school (funded by the European Union) were destroyed by a bulldozer. Weiman is a former Israeli special forces soldier, now an activist with “Breaking the Silence,” a group of Israeli veterans who campaign against Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories. [Israeli settler violence brings destruction and fear to West Bank as war rages, Jeremy Bowen, Dec. 6 2023, BBC]
Total destruction of the Palestinians by Israel. Signs of a country in a terminal phase of depravity. And standing with Israel, the United States of North America and its very faithful English poodle. We just learned that the latter are using their Royal Air Force base at Akrotiri on Cyprus to supply the Israelis secretly with “military personnel and equipment”.
“In an unprecedented move, the UK Ministry of Defense is blocking all parliamentary inquiries about activities at RAF Akrotiri, its air base in Cyprus […] Moreover, the UK‘s suppression of information extends to advising British media against reporting on UK special forces’ activities related to Gaza. […] The British government’s decision to block parliamentary questions is highly unusual. Typically, government departments may refuse to answer specific questions for security reasons, but a blanket ban on all inquiries appears to be unprecedented.” [Action on Armed Violence, an English non-profit investigating armed violence against civilians around the world]
England is secretly using its Air Force base on Cyprus to supply the Israelis with military equipment
This, of course, comes as no surprise. The West – including the politically insignificant European Union – is notorious for its hypocrisy and for forgetting its own tumultuous past. They are the real terrorists, not only for having ignored the occupation of Palestine and the inhumane treatment of the Palestinians for decades, but for having recently contributed to their isolation and the rejection by default of a Palestinian state. And it’s getting worse and worse. Increasing murders by Jewish settlers (there were more than 515 criminal justice actions against settlers for violence in 2008 alone), a far-right government in Israel since December 2022, a prime minister seeking by all means to remain in power and avoid being condemned for corruption and mismanagement, Trump’s moving the US embassy to Jerusalem in 2018, the Abraham agreements in 2020 on normalization with Arab countries. “Like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet, top U.S. officials appear to have assumed that there was nothing that any Palestinian group could do to derail or slow this process or draw attention back to their plight,” says Stephen M. Walt, professor of international relations at Harvard University.
This triggered the attack by Hamas, the only force resisting the Israeli occupation (as its full name indicates: Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya, Islamic Resistance Movement). In the highly respected US journal Foreign Policy, Walt lists five points detailing the responsibility of the United States – now solely obsessed with China’s advance in the Middle East and around the world – for the current chaos, and he concludes that “they lack the wisdom and objectivity to deliver positive results, not even for themselves.” [An expert’s point of view on a current event. America Is a Root Cause of Israel and Palestine’s Latest War. How 30 years of U.S. policy ended in disaster]
The public is even more lost and now focused on emotion and image, and on the latest facts without a historical context. There is therefore no reason to celebrate the New Year 2024. In any case, in the Western media, we have incitement to war. The Western propaganda machine has been running at full capacity since the US Congress (temporarily) blocked aid to Ukraine. The goal is to scare the Western population. Most recently, Lieutenant General Martin Wijnen, Commander-in-Chief of the Dutch Army (who will resign in 2024) said that “The Netherlands should be seriously afraid of war, and our society should prepare for it […] The Netherlands should not think our safety is guaranteed because we are 1,500 kilometers away (from the Russians – ed.)’, Wijnen said, adding that ‘civilians must have stocks of food and drinkable water for emergencies.’” This is reported by Ukrayinska Pravda, one of Ukraine’s two propaganda outlets along with the Kyiv Independent. [Dutch Commander-in-Chief call on Netherlands to prepare for war with Russia, Ukrainska Pravda, December 28, 2023]
“Biden’s legacy is going to be U.S. complicity in this historic slaughter”
The Germans and Poles – among the most pro-US countries – are not behind: “The German think tank DGAP has issued prior warnings to Western nations, suggesting that Russia might launch a direct attack against NATO in ‘as little as six to 10 years.’ While Poland‘s national security agency has expressed a more urgent concern, estimating that Russia could potentially attack NATO in less than 36 months.” [Bild: Russia may attempt to attack Europe next winter, European intelligence source says Dmytro Basmat, Kyiv Independent, December 23, 2023]
Finally, the Brits: their Defense Minister Grant Shapps declared to the Sunday Times that “the West ‘cannot afford’ to lose the war in Ukraine and that there would be ‘severe consequences’ if Russian dictator [sic] Vladimir Putin wins.” [UK defense minister warns of ‘severe consequences’ if Putin wins war in Ukraine, The Kyiv Independent, December 24, 2023]
For a long time, without it making any strategic sense, the specter of a Russian attack against Moldova, Finland, another NATO country, and now even the Netherlands has been raised. These incendiary and irresponsible remarks really risk igniting gunpowder.
Ironically, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg recently said that “Russia has lost Ukraine forever […] This is a big strategic defeat for Russia.” So, is Russia a threat to Europe or a crushed adversary?! It depends on what end they want to achieve with their propaganda. [NATO’s Stoltenberg: ‘Putin has lost Ukraine forever’, Deutsche Presse-Agentur, December 22, 2023]
“the United States cares about Israelis, cares about Ukrainians and really doesn’t care about brown people.”
Let us add one last call for war: by Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton, against Iran, this time reported by the ultra-conservative English newspaper The Telegraph.[Opinion – The West may now have no option but to attack Iran, John Bolton, December 28, 2023]
But the West sees its reputation tarnished and is fortunately in a clear loss of momentum. As Peter Beinart, editor of Jewish Currents, a progressive American magazine, said, Biden’s “legacy is going to be [North] American complicity in this historic slaughter and the destruction of the very international norms that [he] staked [his] presidency on.” This is reported by former Haiti correspondent for the New York Times Howard W. French, a professor at the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University in New York, who asks: “Do we really mean to say that they should not be able to resist against a miserable, constricting fate that has locked large numbers of their people into hopeless lives in Gaza, or that they should resolve themselves to seeing lands in the West Bank that they once controlled and lived on steadily annexed by Israel while they increasingly come under violent attack? Does it mean that the Palestinians of Gaza must resign themselves to being bombed and starved out of their territory?” [Defining Away Palestinians’ Right to Resist. What does it mean to say that rising up against injustice is impermissible? Howard W. French, Foreign Policy, Dec. 13, 2023]
Leslie Vinjamuri, director of the United States and Americas program at the Royal Institute of International Affairs – Chatham House – in London adds: “How it’s playing right now in the rest of the world is that the United States cares about Israelis, cares about Ukrainians and really doesn’t care about brown people.” [US sees new isolation from Israel support, Shaun Tandon, AFP, December 23, 2023]
Non-Western countries are starting to take control of the situation. Malaysia has banned all Israeli-owned and Israeli-flagged ships, as well as all ships bound for Israel, from docking at its ports. Turkey compared Netanyahu to Hitler. Pakistan has banned New Year celebrations to protest the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. South Africa – an unfortunate former victim of apartheid, just like the Palestinians – has just requested this Friday, Dec. 29, from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) an urgent injunction declaring that Israel has violated its obligations under the 1948 Convention on genocide which, ironically, was introduced in response to the Holocaust against the Jews in Nazi Germany. The tortured has now become the torturer.
And of course the vote of December 12 at the UN General Assembly where 153 countries voted in favor of an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, against 10 countries opposed and 23 abstentions including, unsurprisingly, England , Germany, the Netherlands, Ukraine and several Slavic countries, traditional clients of the United States.
