American Bombs, Israeli Slaughter – OpEd

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Congressmen Bernie Sanders Tells Joe Biden ‘You Can Stop This War’ right now, just don’t provide Israel with any more weapons. 

Congressmen Bernie Sanders said the US government needs to stop financing the government of Benjamin Netanyahu. He was speaking on the X platform, stressing the fact there are thousands of children who are being starved in Gaza.

He told CNN the weapons used by the Israeli army in the latest “flour massacre” that killed 112 people and upwards to more than 700 people through Israeli snipers and tanks, was paid from the pockets of the American taxpayer. He stressed Washington needs to stop financing the Israeli army. 

Sanders, a US Senator for Vermont, is one of the strongest critics of the stand of the American government supporting Israel and he is not a lone voice in America.

Washington has been the main financier and military supplier in this Israeli war against Gaza. At the start of the third month of the war on Gaza, the US already supplied Israel with 10,000 tons worth of arms to Israel through 200 cargo planes. Today, and six-month into the war, the military supply chain is still going strong with more of the same. 

In the initial stages of the war following 7 October 2000 so-called military “advisors” were sent to Israel with US warships – USS Gerald Ford USS Dwight D. Eisenhower – scurrying to the east Mediterranean Sea. Today, these advisors are being beefed up by US mercenaries.

An American war

It would appear that most of the bombs dropped on Gaza are US made. In addition to the bunk busters which borrow deep into the ground before exploding turning Gaza into a graveyard, Washington has allowed itself to be an active participant in this war by supplying different types of bombs and shells that are too numerous to mention and name like the MK 82, MK 84 bombs, dumb bombs, air-to-surface munitions as well as thousands and thousands of ammunitions. 

In terms of mass destruction Israel has been dropping two- three- and even four-ton bombs on Gaza. This has never been the case even when the US has been bombing ISIS-strong holds in Syria and even Afghanistan. The devastation of 2000-pound-bombs dropped have been analyzed on CNN

This is certainly an American war on Gaza, but throughout this conflict, Washington has also tried to look reasonable. While supplying weapons to Israel through the White House and bypassing the US Congress, US President Joe Biden and his team have said they are for the status quo in Gaza, against the expulsion of the Palestinians into neighboring Sinai and want to see the revival of a two-state solution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

But this has fallen on deaf ears despite the daily contact between US and Israeli officials. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long ignored such utterances and even recently introduced a draft law against the two-state solution that was passed by the Knesset making such recognition of a two-state solution as a illegal. This is seen as an snub to the American administration that refuses to increase pressure on Israel despite the mass onslaught and the “plausible genocide” as termed by the International Court of Justice that is being committed by Israel in Gaza.

Israel is riding roughshod on the Americans precisely because of the fact Biden keeps reiterating the fact he is a committed “Zionist” and refuses to stop the flow of weapons into Israel while the US Congress continues to support Israel with direct aid and monies even though a sizable group in the Democratic Party are criticizing the actions of the American president. 

‘You can’t beat the resistance’

Meanwhile the American president continues to watch the murderous actions of the Israeli army and the refusal of Netanyahu to stop the war against Gaza and his insistence on eliminating Hamas. But in his heart, Netanyahu must feel, as everyone else, including the US administration he can’t do that, after six months of bombing the living day light out of Gaza. 

What the Israeli army is doing now, is continuing to kill civilians on the ground – the figure dubbed currently at over 30,000 with more than 70,000 injured. As well, rather than combing Gaza from the north to the south and working, Israeli soldiers are finding out that Gaza is a tough series of battles. 

Instead of concentrating in the south which they have promised to do in the stages they planned, they are bogged in below-center areas like Khan Younis and are having to go and fight in northern areas like Al Zaytoun neighborhood in Gaza City, Jabalia and Biet Lahia where the Palestinian resistance is putting up stiff resistance and where Israeli tanks are dying by the die in their thousands and their tanks continue to be destroyed in their hundreds. 

Ninety percent for instance, of the underground tunnels are intact. These Hamas and Jihad fighters are still below ground and keep come up for the kill and battle despite the fact Israeli politicians and military keep saying they are destroying the “terror infrastructure.” But by their own admission also, Palestinian resistance fighters keep coming up and destroying. 

Meanwhile, bombs and munitions in a constant stream, continues to be provided by the Americans as they talk of the necessity of peace to all good men and satisfying themselves with making the first American food airdrop on Gaza whilst determined not to be outwitted by other countries like Jordan, Egypt, France and Italy. But rather than moaning about Netanyahu, America can stop this war rather than be engaged in this new campaign to attempt to save Gaza from starvation imposed by its very good friend and strategic partner Benjamin Netanyahu who fears jail if he stops bombing Gaza because of his corruption accusations. 

Everyone is hoping still there would be some kind of a ceasefire come the Muslim month of Ramadan shortly. If Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are not convinced, the blood bath will likely continue because of the expected onslaught on Rafah and with the Israeli hostages held in Hamas tunnels be ever more in peril. Their number, originally thought at 136 are down much lower according to Hamas spokesman Abu Obeida who says at least 70 of them have been killed so far by Israeli bombs. 

Will they be any left by the time the war is put to an end?

Dr. Marwan Asmar

Dr. Marwan Asmar holds a PhD from Leeds University and is a freelance writer specializing on the Middle East. He has worked as a journalist since the early 1990s in Jordan and the Gulf countries, and been widely published, including at Albawaba, Gulf News, Al Ghad, World Press Review and others.

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