Netanyahu’s bloodlust

IDF officials expressed disappointment after video was leaked of a man tied to the bonnet of a jeep after being shot

Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza continued over the weekend with an attack on an aid distribution centre outside Rafah. The attack killed at least 25 people and was dangerously close to a known Red Cross field hospital, and just in case Israel tries to use its stock excuse of a ‘mistake’ or misfire, victims even said the Israelis fired a second volley that killed people fleeing the first.

A day earlier, IDF officials expressed disappointment after the video was leaked of a man tied to the bonnet of a jeep after being shot and thrashed by troops. While the IDF said it was investigating and that “the conduct of the forces in the video of the incident does not conform to the values”, it has not even suspended or taken other interim action against the soldiers in the jeep, even though the action is not just illegal, but almost certainly a war crime.

Add to this the dozens more men, women and children dying of malnutrition and disease every day, and it is easy to draw a picture of Israel’s total disregard for the laws of war, human rights treaties and basic human decency. Unfortunately, Israel’s all-weather friends in the US are not interested and are happily continuing to support genocide at US taxpayers’ expense. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has the blood of over 15,000 children on his hands, is addressing the US Congress instead of being sanctioned as a war criminal, even as political analysts the world over agree that the only reason the war is continuing is to let him avoid prosecution on an unrelated corruption trial that will likely lead him into a jail cell. For good measure, Netanyahu has been sabre-rattling at Lebanon to ensure he has a backup war, just in case he needs to pause the Gaza genocide.

Even a US federal judge, while dismissing a case calling for the US to end support to Israel because doing so would overstep constitutional separation of powers, wrote in his decision that “[t]here is strong evidence that Israel’s military siege in Gaza is intended to eradicate a whole people and therefore plausibly falls within the international prohibition against genocide.”

But for President Joe Biden and the overwhelming majority of US Congress, even the blood of 37,000 Palestinians cannot paint a line red enough to force them to do the right thing.