Don't Forget Gaza and the Palestinians
Israel is using the illegal war on Iran to continue to kill and starve Gaza, steal more Palestinian land, and restrict movement in the West Bank. Don't look away.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu couldn’t have appeared happier; he looked almost giddy. By launching an illegal attack on Iran with the United States, Netanyahu’s lifelong goal was achieved. He said as much. While standing on the rooftop of the Israeli military headquarters (Israel’s Pentagon), nestled among residential and commercial buildings in the heart of Tel Aviv, Netanyahu proclaimed, “This coalition of forces allows us to do what I have yearned to do for 40 years: smite the terror regime hip and thigh. This is what I promised – and this is what we shall do.”
Let’s leave aside the “40 years” comment for the moment – though it is clear that Israel has posed a threat to Iran for at least that time, given its years of attacks on the country and its allies. It’s the rest of the sentence that is equally disturbing. Just as Netanyahu made a Biblical reference to the tribe of Amalek – an enemy that must be completely wiped out – as a justification to slaughter Palestinians in Gaza, including children and infants, he is now invoking a phrase from the Old Testament’s Book of Judges in which Samson “smote them [the Philistines] hip and thigh,” to justify the war with Iran. In plain English, Samson attacked the Philistines mercilessly and viciously. Not coincidentally, Israel’s widely-reported nuclear deterrence strategy is known as the “Samson Option,” in which Israel will resort to using nuclear weapons if it deems necessary. By the way, unlike Iran, Israel has never submitted to international inspections, and Israel has refused to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty that 191 countries (including Iran) have signed.
This out-and-proud combination of unchecked military aggression, coupled with deranged Zionist biblical references, foretells what’s to come, but it also underscores what we’re already witnessing in Palestine, making it all the more important that we don’t look away from what Israel is doing in Gaza and the West Bank as the war in Iran rages on.
Just take Gaza, for instance.