The U.S. and Israel loudly declare they’re liberal democracies adhering to international law and the civilized “norms of humanity.” They contrast themselves to forces like Hamas, which they condemn for “practicing a barbarism that has no place in the modern world.” As Israel’s bombs continue to fall, Israeli officials continue to repeat the hollow lie that they don’t target civilians but only Hamas. 

The intolerable level of Palestinian deaths is creating big cracks in the façade that Israel and the U.S. are forces for enlightenment and good in the world. So are the increasingly open and loud calls from within Israel for the ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestinians. These calls aren’t just coming from a few fanatics, but from the highest levels of government.  

The U.S. continues to back Israel’s war in Gaza. But a very sharp debate is also taking place among Israel’s rulers and between Israel and the U.S. rulers over the conduct and objectives of the war in Gaza—and beyond that, what to do with the seven million Palestinians living in Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel. 

The exact outcome of this debate and of the Israeli-U.S. war on Gaza is far from clear. But the calls for genocide reveal a lot about the real nature of Israel as an illegitimate, settler-colonial state, an outpost of imperialism based on the dispossession and attempted destruction of the Palestinian people. Here are some chilling and ominous examples:

• Israeli officials have been trying to build international support for expelling several hundred thousand Gazans to Egypt. This would supposedly be just while the war is going on. One prominent legislator said this would give Israel more maneuvering room during its ground invasion, including to avoid civilian casualties. Other right-wingers have called for expelling all Gazans to Egypt permanently.
• On October 10, the head of the Israeli Army’s coordinator of government activities in the territories (Gaza and the West Bank) sent this message to the people of Gaza in Arabic: “Human animals must be treated as such... There will be no electricity and no water. There will only be destruction. You wanted hell, you will get hell.”
• The same day, a retired general wrote, “Creating a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza is a necessary means to achieving the goal.” In another article, he wrote that “Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist.” 
• On October 28, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cited Deuteronomy from the Bible: “You must remember what Amalek did to you.” He was referring to its call to “kill alike men and women, infants and sucklings” in revenge for the attack by Amalek. (Many Israelis are familiar with this parable.) 
• On November 5, Amichai Eliyahu, a minister in the Israeli government, stated on the radio that “one way” of dealing with the threat from Hamas was dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza and killing everyone there. He also said “there was no such thing as noncombatants in Gaza.” 

These are expressions of the extremely horrendous direction things are heading under Israel and their U.S. imperialist backers.   

The U.S.: Sticking by, and Stuck with, Israel 

Throughout Israel’s genocidal slaughter in Gaza, Biden and the U.S. has been standing firmly behind Israel (for more on the role Israel plays for U.S. imperialism, go here). Biden went to Israel and hugged its fascist Prime Minister Netanyahu. Biden has affirmed Israel’s “right” to carry out this slaughter and destroy Hamas in the name of “defending” itself. Biden and the U.S. rulers have supported Israel’s rejection of any ceasefire. 

The U.S. has also continued to supply the weapons of death and destruction Israel is using in Gaza, including its planes and bombs. Biden and Congress have called for another $14 billion in military aid for Israel. More recently, the U.S. State Department approved a $320 million sale of “kits” for turning unguided bombs into GPS-guided bombs. The U.S. had already sold Israel $403 million worth of these kits, which Israel has been using in its Gaza bombing campaign.

The widely publicized four-hour “humanitarian pauses” in Israel’s attacks, pushed by U.S. Secretary Blinken, went into effect this week. So have some shipments of humanitarian aid that he also called for. 

These do nothing to change the criminal, genocidal nature of Israel’s war, or how Israel carries it out. These are face-saving moves for the U.S. and Israel to blunt the growing rage their war has ignited across the Middle East. They are also cynically aimed at buying Israel more time and room to carry out its military campaign, without hindering it in any significant way.  

At the same time, the contradictions between the U.S. and Israel have also sharpened as the war’s toll on civilians has skyrocketed and Israel’s government has become more openly genocidal.

The U.S. rulers are gravely concerned that Israel’s current government is endangering the future of the Zionist state itself. They worry about the fallout from Israel’s war and its threats to reoccupy Gaza or expel Palestinians. These could destroy any lingering possibility of an imperialist-backed “two state solution” to the Palestinian issue. They are also seriously damaging the image U.S. rulers want to project worldwide as a champion of human rights and democracy—an image crucial to U.S. global power and diplomacy. 

Israel’s U.S.-backed war and the rage it has stoked have created huge problems for loyal U.S. clients in the Middle East like Jordan and Egypt. The war in Gaza could trigger a wider war threatening America’s grip on the region. All this at a time when the U.S. is also compelled to focus on defeating Russia in Ukraine and ramping up its global contention with China, two imperialist rivals challenging U.S. domination.

The Crucial Responsibility of All Living in the Belly of the Imperialist Beast

The gut-wrenching nightmare in Gaza and the role of the U.S. imperialists in fueling this genocidal slaughter underscore the special role and responsibility for people in the U.S. to oppose the crimes of our “own” rulers. And it highlights the urgency of Bob Avakian’s (BA) statement:

We, the people of the world, can no longer afford to allow these imperialists to continue to dominate the world and determine the destiny of humanity. They need to be overthrown as quickly as possible. And it is a scientific fact that we do not have to live this way.

So get with BA and the revcoms. NOW. There is not a moment to waste.

Sources:

Bob Avakian, Some Basic Truths About the U.S.-Supported Israeli War Against Palestine, revcom.us, October 20, 2023

Israel Quietly Pushed for Egypt to Admit Large Numbers of Gazans, New York Times, November 7

Netanyahu suspends a minister who said that dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza was an option, New York Times, November 5

The State Department Approves $320 Million Sale of Guided Bomb Equipment to Israel, New York Times, November 6

Israeli Forces Have Limited Time in Gaza, U.S. Officials Say, New York Times, November 9

Arab States Intensify Pleas for Gaza Cease-fire as Public Anger Mounts, New York Times, November 7

Will Israel’s ‘humanitarian pauses’ mean much for Gaza? No, say experts, Al Jazeera, November 10

Omer Bartov, What I Believe as a Historian of Genocide, New York Times, November 10

Israel Raises Alarms by Suggesting ‘Indefinite’ Role in Gaza, New York Times, November 8

Israel Plans to Control ‘Overall Security’ of Gaza After War, New York Times, November 7