Israeli war crimes
Last month, South Africa filed a case in the United Nation’s highest court accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. I reacted by accusing South Africa of being a useful idiot.
I argued this was a blatant deflection, a smokescreen for the actual genocide – courtesy of its comrade Russia in Ukraine. I found the gaslighting at play unconscionable.
However, earlier this month, the New York Times dropped a bombshell: Israeli soldiers filming their war escapades in Gaza. The irony? Their social media posts turned into a trove of self-incriminating evidence, showcasing the very crimes against humanity South Africa delineated in its filing.
‘I stopped counting how many neighborhoods I’ve erased,’ the caption reads on the video posted to his personal TikTok, accompanied by a militaristic anthem.
The Times traced more than 50 videos back to Israel’s military combat engineering units, showing the use of bulldozers, excavators and explosives to destroy what appear to be houses, schools and other civilian buildings. Human rights experts have raised concerns about the scale of this type of destruction in areas under Israeli military control, noting that international standards of warfare require a clear military necessity to destroy civilian property.
(New York Times, February 6, 2024)
Executions and sexual assaults: an even grimmer picture emerges
Undoubtedly, this video evidence is damning. The sheer volume of these videos makes a mockery of the indignant denials the Israeli government spewed in response to South Africa’s accusations. Indeed, these videos indicate the government’s complicity or tacit approval, at the very least.
That may be why things have only gotten worse. This headline from yesterday’s edition of The Hill speaks volumes:
- UN experts condemn ‘credible’ reports of executions, sexual assault by Israeli soldiers
That report includes the following:
Specifically, the experts said they were shocked by reports of the ‘deliberate targeting and extrajudicial killing’ of Palestinian women and children in Gaza by Israeli soldiers, including those who were holding white cloth or fleeing.
That infamous incident where Israeli soldiers summarily killed three men wearing no shirts and waving white flags now makes sense. After all, if they routinely commit extrajudicial killings of Palestinian women and children, they would not hesitate to kill Palestinian men like that too. Only, in a cruel and fated irony, the three men turned out to be Israeli hostages who escaped their Hamas captors.
100 Abu Ghraibs
One scandalous incident at Abu Ghraib fatally undermined America’s mission to avenge the al-Qaeda attack of 9/11. The US government responded by court-martialing the soldiers involved.
Now, a spree of similar incidents is fatally undermining Israel’s mission to avenge the Hamas attack of 10/7. But the Israeli government doesn’t seem to care. So don’t hold your breath waiting for it to court-martial any of the soldiers involved in these crimes.
Indeed, forget Hamas because the Israelis are doing to Palestinians in Gaza what the Russians are doing to Ukrainians in Ukraine.
Frankly, never before in the history of man’s inhumanity to man has a nation squandered so much goodwill so quickly as Israel has since 10/7. That’s why Israel is becoming as much of a pariah on the world stage as Russia. Indeed, don’t be surprised if the IOC forces Israelis to join Russians in competing under a neutral flag at the Paris Olympics this summer.
‘Absolute immunity’
It’s as if Israel operates under the delusion that the Holocaust Germany committed against Jews gives it absolute immunity from any accusations of committing war crimes against Palestinians. Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu seems willing to kill every Palestinian in a vainglorious crusade to kill every Hamas terrorist.
Though, forebodingly, his real mission is to fight this war in Gaza for the rest of his life. Because he thinks no Israeli prosecutor would dare resume his criminal trial on a battery of corruption charges while he’s avenging the massacre of 10/7.
The irony of ironies is that US President Biden continues to be Netanyahu’s willing accomplice. Because the way Netanyahu is prolonging this war poses a direct threat to Biden’s reelection in November.
But, arguably, that’s Netanyahu’s backstabbing intent. Because it’s self-evident that he’d rather see Donald Trump reelected. You need only know that I’ve had cause to denounce him and Trump in many commentaries as birds of a feather. And that, like Trump, Netanyahu couldn’t care less if he loses the whole world, so long as he keeps his cult-like base.