Op/Ed
Letter to the editor: Netanyahu makes pitch amid carnage in Gaza
On Wednesday, the day before this issue of the Addison Independent came out, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was scheduled to address the joint houses of Congress.
He will again stress the decades-long friendship and alliances with the U.S. Netanyahu will defend Israel’s war on Gaza and will chastise his friend, President Joe Biden, for questioning Israel’s motives in the war against Palestinians. He will dismiss the ICC’s charges of starvation as merely more anti-Semitic rhetoric against a nation who has known genocide. He will also remind Congress that continued U.S. support is crucial to U.S. interests in the world arena by providing the U.S. with an ally against China, Iran and all potential hostile Arab states.
Benjamin Netanyahu will be here at the invitation of Mike Johnson, Republican Speaker of the House.
As Israel refuses to accept any peace plan that would give any autonomy to the Palestinian people, the outcomes of this war are indisputable: over 39,000 Palestinians of Gaza killed with 15,000 of them being children; 89,000 injured, 10,000 missing in the rubble that was once homes, schools, hospitals, community centers, UN refuge centers. And in the occupied West Bank: 600 people killed with 150 of them children, 5,500 injured.
As Israel denies any wrongdoing and as the U.S. and other nations of the world are finding it more difficult to defend Israel’s genocidal actions, the savage war continues. Throughout this war Israel has condoned its bombing of civilian areas by stating that it drops leaflets before an assault (land and air) warning people to evacuate their homes and to move to so-called “safe zones.”
Once they move, usually by foot or by donkey, they are bombed in the safe zones. And this happens over and over again. Some people report having to move six different places in a 12-hour period. Yousef Aljamal, a spokesperson for The American Service Committee in Gaza, calls this practice of giving evacuation orders repeatedly in a short period of time and then bombing targeted areas that the Israeli army instructed Palestinians to move to, as psychological warfare tactics. For those who decide not to move, their homes become their graves.
Displacement, evacuations, bombings, starvation, diseases from the sewerage, psychological warfare, dismembering huge numbers of children, burning and shredding of huge numbers of children, sniper shots to the heads of children by some of the world’s most skilled marksmen, the killing of whole generations of family members, the slow and painful deaths of civilians denied access to basic medical supplies. These are the stories of Palestinians living through this hell.
And amidst this suffering and carnage, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rallies members of Congress for its continued military support to carry out its mission against “Hamas.”
Linda Brown
Bristol
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