Americans are being inundated with news coverage of Israelis killed, wounded, or taken hostage in the October 7 raid on Israel by Hamas (see previous coverage at revcom.us.). The media is putting special emphasis on dead and missing Americans, as if American lives are more important than anyone else’s. To be clear, Hamas’s wanton murders of non-combatants, including children, were war crimes and cannot in any way be upheld. But now the suffering in Israel, and the crimes of Hamas,1 are being used to “justify,” and program people in this country to go along with, what is already a far greater genocidal slaughter of the entire population of two plus million people in Gaza who for 15 years have been locked down in an outdoor prison, deprived of the means to survive, and subjected to repeated massacres by Israel. And to be complicit with much worse that Israel is threatening to unleash at any moment against two million plus terrorized, desperately suffering, defenseless non-combatant Palestinians in Gaza.
It is urgent that this reality be confronted—and vigorously and actively opposed—by anyone with a shred of humanity.
Escalating Terror, Mass Murder, Baby Killing – By ISRAEL in Gaza
One week after the Hamas raid, James Elder, a spokesman for the United Nations Children’s Fund, reports that 2,215 Palestinians have been killed in one week of Israeli bombing of Gaza. The number of deaths in Gaza is already double that reported in Israel. And the death toll reported in Gaza (where Israeli bombs have devastated or destroyed Gaza’s fragile civil infrastructure and even ability to count the dead) includes more than 700 children.
"The images and stories are clear,” Elder said. Those children, those stories are not on your news. But stop, listen, visualize and feel what Elder describes next: “[C]hildren with horrendous burns, mortar wounds, and lost limbs. And hospitals are utterly overwhelmed to treat them." Imagine, and feel, the terror, the pain. The heartbreaking sorrow of their families.
Elder’s report continues: “Children and families in Gaza have practically run out of food, water, electricity, medicine and safe access to hospitals, following days of air strikes and cuts to all supply routes.” And “Gaza’s sole power plant ran out of fuel Wednesday afternoon, shutting down electricity, water and wastewater treatment. Most residents can no longer get drinking water from service providers or household water through pipelines.”
Israel is not just relying on choking off all water, food, fuel and electricity by prohibiting any of that from getting into Gaza (which is dependent entirely on Israel). Elder reports that “At least six water wells, three water pumping stations, one water reservoir, and one desalination plant serving more than 1 million people have been damaged by airstrikes.”
Israel told people to evacuate northern Gaza and then bombed a convoy of 70 civilians — mostly women and children — trying to do that.
There is nothing “collateral” about these civilian deaths. This is consciously genocidal mass murder by Israel, enabled financially and militarily by U.S. imperialism and justified by every major figure in the U.S. ruling class, war-criminal Democrats and fascist Republicans alike.
And all this comes after 15 years of periodic slaughter (see graph) by Israel, and a brutal, sadistic U.S.-backed Israeli (and Egyptian) blockade that has choked off food, water, construction supplies, fuel, electricity, and medical supplies, leaving the vast majority of people in Gaza dependent on meager food rations from international agencies.
Again, pause here and think about this. Two million people are being starved to death. And the United States government is enabling and endorsing this.
Map: Google
Channeling the NAZIs
The target of the Israeli bombing and blockade is the entire population of Gaza who the Israeli government does not consider to be human beings.
That is not hyperbole. It is not “propaganda” from the “Palestinian perspective.” And not just drawing the obvious conclusion from the fact that Israel is depriving two million plus Palestinians of the essentials of life. It is the “on record” statement of Israel’s Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant as the reasoning behind Israel’s siege of Gaza.
Two days into Israel’s blockade, Gallant announced a “complete siege” of Gaza and justified it by saying “We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly.” To the extent this got reported in U.S. media, there were attempts to spin it as if maybe Gallant was only talking about Hamas being “animals.” But Gallant made it clear who were the targets, and who he was talking about: “We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza,” Gallant said. “There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything will be closed.” And this is not the ranting of a minor or second-level figure in the fascist Netanyahu government. This is Israel’s “Defense” Minister.
Biden, From The Democratic Party of Massive War Crimes2, Oversees the Slaughter
After the Hamas attack, Biden declared “In this moment, we must be crystal clear: We stand with Israel. We stand with Israel.” And, that “[W]e will make sure Israel has what it needs to take care of its citizens, defend itself and respond to this attack.” Biden told Netanyahu the U.S. will maintain “unwavering U.S. support for Israel.”
Palestinians inspect the rubble of the Yassin Mosque, destroyed after it was hit by an Israeli airstrike at Shati refugee camp in Gaza City, October 9, 2023. Photo: AP
With the Israeli bombing of Gaza, and threats to invade, Biden endorsed a “swift, decisive, and overwhelming” response to October 7 by Israel. And as the world watched (to the extent it made it into the news) unbearable devastation in Gaza, day after day Biden has repeated the mantra “We stand with Israel, we stand with Israel.” Channeling a made-up report on Fox “News,” Biden told a pro-Zionist group of Jews that, “I never really thought that I would see and have confirmed pictures of terrorists beheading children.” (The story Biden spread from Fox, that 40 Israeli children were beheaded, remains on Fox. It originated from Israeli sources, and continues to be spread throughout social media even though, despite efforts of Israel and pro-Israel sources to produce it, there is no evidence that anything like that happened. The White House later admitted that Biden had seen no such photographs and no other evidence that the incident happened.)
USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group, shown carrying an F/A-18F Super Hornet, is being sent to the Eastern Mediterranean. Photo: AP
Immediately, as Israel began a vengeful assault on Gaza, Biden sent at least two shipments of munitions to Israel in the week since October 7. Those weapons include interceptors for Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system that allows Israel to engage in overwhelmingly one-sided missile “exchanges” with Hamas. It includes cluster bombs (banned by over 120 countries, but not the U.S. or Israel, because they are weapons of indiscriminate mass killing and maiming3 ). Those cluster bombs are mounted on precision-guided bombs that allow for precise targeting to make mass murder more effective.
Since the October 7 attack, Biden’s Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has been in nearly daily contact with Israel’s military head and has directed the rapid and massive shift of U.S. ships, intelligence support and other military assets to Israel and the region. This includes a “Strike Group” of ships with guided missiles, military aircraft, massive amounts of ammunition, squadrons of fighter aircraft, and “intelligence” technology to guide Israel’s slaughter. This level of military presence is enough to destroy everything in Gaza many times over. But even beyond that, it is being positioned in the event that the current crisis explodes into a regional war, or spirals out even further.4
There are news reports that the U.S. is providing detailed information (which would mean at least a significant amount of direction) to the ground invasion that Israel is preparing to launch into Gaza.
In his all-out backing for Israel’s slaughter Biden is “carrying the torch” for the Democratic Party as a party of massive war crimes and crimes against humanity. That record reaches from incinerating some 150,000 Japanese civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to mass murder of civilians (yes including babies) in Vietnam, to Obama’s backing of the deadly blockade Israel imposed on Gaza after its 2008-2009 massacre, and the 2014 massacre of the people of Gaza.
Unconditional Support for an Irreplaceable Asset for the U.S. Empire
If there is one thing you can say about the “free world” Biden claims to be defending, it is this: no crime is too obscene, or too horrific, to be excused if it serves the interests of the U.S. empire. And that applies in spades to Israel. Why ? Because Israel is an irreplaceable strategic asset for the U.S. empire in a part of the world crucially important to their imperialist interests.
The current genocidal siege of Gaza comes on top of 75 years of ongoing and escalating apartheid-style discrimination,5 dehumanization, terror, and genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza, and throughout what is now Israel and the Palestinian territories it occupies illegally. Living under a brutal Israeli blockade, before the current siege, 45 percent of the population of Gaza was unemployed and 80 percent dependent on international food aid to avoid starvation, according to Palestinian and U.N. data.
And no, the U.S. is not backing Israel in all this because “the Jews” or “the Zionists” (where that is being used to describe Jewish people) control the U.S. or the world. It is because Israel is a unique and irreplaceable “asset” for the rulers of the U.S., in a world where U.S. capitalism-imperialism is clashing with rival imperialists in Russia and China, and regional rivals like Iran over who will dominate a world of exploitation, oppression, environmental devastation and madness.6
There has been an Israel lobby that wields tremendous influence on particular policy questions. But the tail does not wag the dog here. In other words, the “Israel lobby” has this kind of influence in the first place because Israel’s role is not just useful but essential to the strategic posture of U.S. imperialism. And this remains true, even as the contradictions bound up in that reliance on Israel have increasingly come to the fore in recent years. (For more background on the nature and role of Israel and the oppression of the entire Palestinian people see Bastion of Enlightenment…or Enforcer for Imperialism: The Case of ISRAEL, a special issue of Revolution at revcom.us).
No More Nakbas!
Israel was created and exists on the blood and bones of Palestinian people driven from their homeland in the Nakba (Arabic for catastrophe) in 1948.
As this is being written, Israel appears on the verge of a land invasion of Gaza. In advance, Israel has demanded that half the population of Gaza, deprived of food, water, fuel, or medical care, somehow flee the northern half of the country to the south, where conditions are just as desperate. With the explicit threat that when Israel invades, the policy will be to shoot anything that moves.
In an op-ed piece in the New York Times, Rashid Khalidi, a professor of modern Arab studies at Columbia University, poses that the logic of what official Israeli mouthpieces have declared their objective, may point to a second Nakba. He quotes statements including one from a reservist major general, Giora Eiland, who wrote in an Israeli newspaper: “Creating a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza is a necessary means to achieve the goal.” Eiland added, “Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist.” And a declaration from Israeli Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian that in Gaza, “There will be no electricity and no water. There will only be destruction. You wanted hell; you will get hell.”
And, Khalidi writes, that in the event of a second Nakba, “The United States would thereby be a partner with Israel in creating a future for the Palestinians that offers only periodic death, destruction and dispossession and permanent subjugation or expulsion.”
Points to Confront and Act on:
The reality is that any war waged by Israel will inevitably be defined by the fact that Israel was built on, and exists on, the blood and bones of the Palestinian people, and can only continue to exist as a Zionist state by imposing an endlessly escalating state of terror and death on the Palestinian population as a whole. And, thus, be a war against the entire Palestinian population.
The rulers of this country cannot be allowed to do this, and not in our name. People of conscience (or people who can be struggled with to grow a conscience) must take to the streets and denounce what Israel is doing. They must learn all they can about the history of this oppression and the source of it, including what is it about the essential nature of this country that drives U.S. support for Israel.
There are many people raising their heads, many people wanting to act in a way that goes against the oppression of the Palestinian people and this terrible genocide now being visited upon them. That anguish and righteous anger must be given direction in a way that is based on the actual problem and solution. People in struggle must be united with, and where necessary (when wrong pathways are put forward) struggled with, with the aim of actually STOPPING this horror now going on.
This all must be infused with the understanding that only a real, total revolution, that uproots this whole system and replaces it with something entirely different and much better, can address what this country does to the world in any meaningful way. That revolution would fundamentally, on Day One, set about dismantling the U.S. empire and stopping the horrific crimes it commits, supports, sponsors—whether openly or under the table. And, that revolution would back REAL revolution against imperialism and REAL emancipation for the masses of people in every corner of this suffering planet.
Bob Avakian on Revenge vs. the Emancipation of ALL Humanity
Lay the Blame on Powerless Palestinian Masses to Legitimize Their Slaughter
Israeli president Isaac Herzog, celebrated by the rulers of the U.S. as a voice of reason and the so-called moral conscience of Israel, declared, “It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true. They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’etat.” And, “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible.” With the obvious corollary that “an entire nation” must be the target of Israel’s slaughter.
On CNN, former U.S. General Wesley Clark (who was at one time a candidate for the nomination of the Democratic Party for president, and is politically aligned with the Democrats) was asked, “You know a potential ground invasion is coming after there have been multiple strikes from the air. How do you deal with this on the ground? If you're a civilian? What does this mean in a place that is perhaps one of the most populated, densely populated areas in the world?”
Clark’s answer: “This [the October 7 attack by Hamas] was a terrorist act. It was a slaughter last Saturday. It was done deliberately to provoke what the Israelis have no choice but to do. They can't live with this. They can't let this threat persist on the border of their country. So everybody knew what was going to happen, especially Hamas knew. So I think the condemnation starts with the condemnation of Hamas. This is an organization that was created with the express purpose of eliminating Israel. So the people that voted for Hamas knew what they were voting for.”
In other words, the people of Gaza asked to, and deserve to, be slaughtered. And by the way: Wesley Clark, you mass murdering commander of baby-killing U.S. troops in Vietnam, are you including the 700 children already killed by Israel among those who knew what they were asking for when their lives were crushed by Israeli bombs?
This “logic”—that people in Gaza voted for Hamas so “they deserve what’s coming”—is an explicit justification for genocidal mass murder of civilians, including children who are dying now, because some people in Gaza voted for Hamas in an Israeli-sponsored election 15 years ago! (For background, see What Is Hamas.)
And this logic, not-so-by-the-way, is the logic invoked by Osama Bin Laden when he justified the terrorist attacks by Islamic fundamentalists that killed civilians in the U.S. on September 11, 2001. Bin Laden, in justifying those attacks, claimed that since people in the U.S. elected people who backed Israel’s crimes and other crimes against Muslims, they all were legitimate targets.7
Leading Republicans have said the same, without bothering to frame their calls for genocide in anything but American interests.
Nikki Haley, a leading contender for the Republican nomination for president if Trump should somehow be out of the picture, posted, “This is not just an attack on Israel—this was an attack on America. Finish them, @Netanyahu.”
Powerful Republican senator Lindsey Graham plagiarized Hamas, declaring, "[W]e are in a religious war here.”8 Only applying that Dark Ages lunacy to the interests of the U.S. empire, adding, “I am with Israel. Whatever the hell you have to do to defend yourselves; level the place."
Biden Spokesperson Polices the Liberals Who Didn’t Get the Message: “There Are No Two Sides Here”
The role of the Democrats in generating and enforcing unquestioning support for Israel’s crimes was illustrated in a memo to State Department spokespeople, exposed in the Huffington Post, that commanded them, in statements they issue to shape public opinion, to avoid using terms that refer to “de-escalation/ceasefire,” “end to violence/bloodshed” or “restoring calm.”
Stop here. In the face of massive bloodshed, terror, and traumatic chaos, you can’t even use the phrases “de-escalation/ceasefire,” “end to violence/bloodshed” or “restoring calm. If that directive came from Putin in relation to Ukraine, imagine the outrage from the very same U.S. State Department. But it is acceptable to ban any reference to “ending bloodshed” because… it is a U.S. ally carrying out the bloodshed.
Tame expressions of concern for conditions in Gaza by "the Squad" (a handful of “progressive” Democrats in Congress) were immediately shot down by the Biden Administration. Representative Rashida Tlaib made a statement saying, “The failure to recognize the violent reality of living under siege, occupation, and apartheid makes no one safer. No person, no child anywhere should have to suffer or live in fear of violence. We cannot ignore the humanity in each other.” And, “As long as our country provides billions in unconditional funding to support the apartheid government, this heartbreaking cycle of violence will continue.”
That statement probably represents the sentiments of a large section of the base of the Democratic Party. And it hardly challenges the nature and role of Israel and the ultimate responsibility of the U.S. for the crimes it commits. But in wording that evoked George W. Bush’s press secretary’s threat that people opposed to the Iraq War should “watch what they say,” Biden’s press spokesperson, Karine Jean-Pierre, lashed out at this (and similar statements by Representative Cori Bush), calling them, “repugnant” and “disgraceful.” And she warned anyone engaging in public debate over Israel’s crimes, “There are no two sides here. There are no two sides.”