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My Heart Bleeds As My Blood Boils [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-11-09
The latest Republican scam is to give Israel $14 billion in additional funding in exchange for subtracting the same amount of funding from the I.R.S. This is a typical devil's bargain that we usually see from the Republican side. I see two things wrong with it. One. If Israel really needs this money, we should grant it and consider raising taxes to pay for it if we need to. Two. I don't believe Israel either needs or deserves this additional money (over and above the usual $3.8 billion we give them every year).
I say this even in acknowledgment of the Hamas terrorist attack which happened early last month. And I do call it a terrorist attack. And I thoroughly loath those professional academics who call it otherwise. They should know better. But this is as far as my sympathy for Israel goes.
Yeah. Call me anti-semantic if you want. I expect that. I expect that any criticism of Israel, no matter how mild, will garner this label for who ever speaks it. But speak it I will. Call me a holocaust denier too, if that suits your fancy. Yes. The holocaust did happen. And, during a period of slightly more than two and a half years, at least three out of four European Jews were rounded up and exterminated like cockroaches (by what was often used as an insecticide). This was a horrific crime carried out by a singularly evil regime, which overcome German democracy (don't look in the mirror right now and say it can't happen here. It already is).
What happened to well over a thousand Israeli citizens reminds me of what happened to some of my ancestors who were likely butchered in a similar fashion by raiding American Indians (never mind the fact that my ancestors were ever encroaching on their territory, destroying their way of life, and cheating them at every opportunity). I think it would be a moral mistake to say my ancestors got what was coming to them. Most of them were landless European settlers who were desperate to make a new life for themselves. And that is it. But they were pawns in a larger strategic game designed to enrich a powerful few and to, at one point, expand a European empire, and at another, expand a new American one. No. They didn't have it coming. But they should have expected such to happen due to the behavior of their leaders. I think the situation with the Israeli victims is almost the same thing, but it happening nearly two centuries later. Instead of being butchered by stone hatchets, clubs, and arrows, they were butchered by machine guns, grenades and even farm implements. And they were slaughtered in a wild, often gleeful way by their assailants.
This horrific act was almost immediately compare to the infamous 9/11 attack on the US in 2001.
I think this comparison is an apt one for reasons that those making it would not like to have discussed.
The comparison is made strictly to instil innocent victim hood on not just the victims of the attack, but on the nation-state it happened in. Sadly, back then, I took the bait. For at least two weeks, I felt that my government was justified in taking whatever revenge that it saw fit. But, three weeks later, I had my regrets (I still have them now). Now, I suspect that the 9/11 attack was not just carried out by a very clever adversary, who took advantage of “weaknesses in our intelligence services”. No. I think it goes deeper than that.
When thinking of it, I consider where President George W. Bush's popularity was before the attack, and where it was after it. It was like night and day. No. I'm not one of those “9/11 truthers” who think our government blew up our own buildings with planted explosives, covert missiles, and switched, explosive laden planes. I think such is absolute nonsense (likely put out by outfits like the C.I.A. to discredit any conspiracy theory whatsoever). The real conspiracy (if there was one) was to allow the attack to happen. Such a conspiracy would require as few as just two well-placed members of our government. They could well have killed an investigation that the F.B.I. was making into the suspicions of a flight school operator about a student. This student was from the Middle East. He was here on a student visa. And he was interested in only learning how to fly an airliner once it was in the air. He was not interested in learning how to take off in one. Nor was he interested in learning how to land one. Since learning how to take off and land are the two most important aspects of flying, such limited training would never get him a job in that field. Clearly, this student had something else in mind.
The FBI director at that time was a Democratic appointee.
He likely reported his agent's findings to the White House. Someone high up in the White House could well have told him to kill the investigation. Wanting to keep his job, and probably convinced that some other agency was looking into this, he was willing to comply (He will likely deny such a discussion up one side and down the other until the day he dies). In all fairness, the would-be conspirators probably had no idea of how severe the attack was going to be. They likely thought it would be a hijacking situation, which at its worst, would have meant a plane load of dead Americans. This, in their view (like the view of most who crave power for its own sake) was a small price to pay for preserving an administration that was deep trouble with public opinion, and useful for expanding its power exponentially. (As a side note, I doubt that President George W. Bush knew anything about this. The look of surprise on his face was all the more telling).
The similarities between that attack and the Hamas one are all the more chilling to me. Consider the position of the Israeli prime minister before the attack. He was not only accused of the crime of bribery, but he and his government were doing their level best to neuter the Israeli Supreme Court which could hold him accountable. This was bringing about home-grown protests of thousands of Israeli Jews, which, as far as I know, the likes of which has never been seen before. Are such protests going on now? I haven't heard of any.
Now, it is clear that Israel is engaged in what appears to be gleeful revenge. The vikings had a word for this. They called such a “berserking”. This is a wild, sprawling attack that doesn't have any real strategic value, other into instil terror into the heart of its victims and those of the same group. There doesn't appear to be any consideration at all for civilian casualties, both long term and short term. In other words, they are bombing the shit out of the Gaza strip. And, while they are at it, they are barring just about any means of escape for those that live there. This is similar to what the Nazis did to Warsaw when they invaded Poland in 1939.
In my paranoid little mind I can conjure the following scenario:
The Israeli government intentionally lets its guard down. According to a New York times article, there were plenty of signs an attack was coming. And in their customary fashion, they did their level best to cover for the Israeli government by making excuses for them. Like they were poor, innocent lambs. (Hamas was too weak to ever pull off such an attack. So all such warnings could be safely ignored).
Bullshit.
Hamas sees this weakness and takes the bait by attacking. And they do so with a gleeful berserking of their own.
This, for them, is a fatal mistake.
Israel gets the sympathy of just about the entire western world. President Biden flies to Israel to hug their prime minister, effectively promising US support for anything Israel wants to do at this point. Members of the US Congress quickly fall in line. That is most of them. All but a handful of them pledge their undying love and support for what has been for most of my life a shameless apartheid regime, even at its best. At its worst, it is a theocratic one, similar to Iran. I cannot ignore the similarities of what is being done to the Palestinians to what my ancestors did to the native Americans (AKA American Indians). This has the look of an “ethnic cleansing” at its best and a possible genocide at its worst. The Israeli Prime Minister probably always wanted to go after the Gaza strip. And by doing their horrific attack, Hamas gave them about the best excuse to do so imaginable.
Now. Here's my problem. Many of the bombs being dropped on the Gaza Strip are made in the USA. And many of them are literally paid for by US tax dollars. What this means, as far as I'm concerned, is that some of these bombs have my name on them.
AND THIS PISSES ME OFF.
When my ancestors chased the American Indians off their land, they did most of that as a sovereign nation. Such chasing, killing, and slaughtering was done by my country alone, and paid for exclusively out of its own purse. I think Israel should be expected to do the same thing. If they wish to subjugate, imprison, ethnically cleanse, or even exterminate those pesky Palestinians, they should be willing to pay for such on their very own, out of exclusively, their own tax dollars. They have no right to expect me (or the government I pay taxes to) to help pay for this malicious, evil, project.
And please. Don't dangle the mirage of a “two-state solution” in front of me any more. There is, there never will be, and there never was any such prospect. Israel is one country, with or without the Palestinians. It can be a “Jewish”, apartheid state only at the price of becoming a theocratic dictatorship (which it is well on the way of becoming).
For this reason, I want a divorce. I want no US tax dollars at all going to Israel.
And no. I don't believe for one minute that Israel would be immediately be taken over by a bunch of conquering ayatollahs. Israel has a nuclear arsenal. It is, for this reason, essentially unconquerable.
What would most likely happen is the cost of their evil schemes will hit the average Israeli hard in the pocket book. This would likely be because they would have to manufacture or otherwise purchase their own weapons. They are a very clever, resourceful people. I think they can handle it. And if they can't, I have to say right now, I really don't give damn.
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