Michel Moushabeck
Truthout / October 7, 2024
Israel and the US have spent 365 days trying normalize civilian slaughter. We must fight for another future.
Today is a difficult day. Israel’s U.S.-sponsored war on Gaza has been relentlessly raging on for a whole year — with no end in sight.
On October 7, 2023, Hamas and other resistance fighters broke through their open-air prison wall and launched a massive assault that killed 1,140 Israelis. They also took 250 hostages, of whom 101 remain in custody awaiting an elusive ceasefire and hostage deal that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has continuously thwarted and refuses to conclude. Since then, Israel’s genocidal assault over the past 12 months on Gaza has killed more than 41,638 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, with 16,859 of these being children. The Lancet, a respected British medical journal, calculated that the real death toll, including those missing under the rubble and “indirect” deaths from malnutrition, disease, and other conditions brought on by the conflict, could be around 186,000 people. Health care workers who have visited Gaza have repeatedly said the real number of deaths is likely far higher than the official count.
Over 100,000 Palestinians have been injured; at least 280 humanitarian aid workers, nearly 500 health care workers and 130 journalists have been killed; 399 schools have been destroyed; all 12 universities in Gaza have been flattened; 31 out of 36 hospitals in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed; and countless children have died from malnutrition, diseases or lack of medical help.
In the West Bank, Israeli occupation forces have devastated civilian infrastructure with D-9 bulldozers, armoured personnel carriers and armoured jeeps in Jenin, Nablus, Tulkarem, and other towns as a form of collective punishment. And armed Israeli settlers continue to ravage villages and terrorize Palestinians in an effort to drive them out of their homeland. Since October 7, 2023, according to the Health Ministry, the death toll in the West Bank is 650. According to the Prisoners’ Affairs Authority, the Prisoners’ Club and the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, more than 9,000 Palestinian detainees are languishing in Israeli jails.
Last month, Israel fully expanded its war into Lebanon. Advisers in the Biden-Harris administration reportedly encouraged Israel to pursue this escalation, risking a wider regional war with even more devastating consequences. Israel’s ferocious bombing campaign in Lebanon has rained death and destruction on innocent civilians. It has so far displaced over 1 million people, maimed and wounded thousands of people, and killed more than 2,000 people.
France’s President Emmanuel Macron called for a halt of weapons deliveries to Israel, which triggered an angry response from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A statement issued by his office said: “As Israel fights the forces of barbarism led by Iran, all civilized countries should be standing firmly by Israel’s side. Yet, President Macron and other Western leaders are now calling for arms embargoes against Israel. Shame on them.”
At present, there are more than 40,000 U.S. troops stationed in the Middle East. In August, the U.S. Department of Defense said, “More defensive military capabilities were deployed to the Middle East to bolster force protection for U.S. troops in the region and to defend Israel.” The Biden administration announced even more troops would head to the Middle East again later in September, as Israel prepared for its ground invasion of Lebanon, in addition to bombing Syria and Yemen.
When will this nightmare end? When will the unimaginable suffering being inflicted every minute of every day on the Palestinian and Lebanese people come to an end? And how did the world descend into such an abyss where the killing of innocent civilians has become the new normal?
My thoughts are with Palestine and Lebanon — with every breath and every heartbeat. In the face of an unrelenting military aggression that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, telling our story becomes a need.
Netanyahu and his extremist allies are using the pretext of the October 7 Hamas attack to fundamentally reshape Gaza and ethnically cleanse it of Palestinians.
Israel is not defending itself
I am a descendant of Palestinian parents — Nakba survivors who were displaced from their homeland and made refugees in 1948. I was born and grew up in Lebanon. I have family and friends in Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem as well as in Beirut and southern Lebanon. Some have recently been killed by Israel’s indiscriminate bombardment of residential neighbourhoods and many have been displaced from their homes and are now in danger of being killed by Israeli bombs, airstrikes or starvation. I’ve known and witnessed Israeli aggression and terror throughout my teenage life — long before Hamas or Hezbollah were established. So, when U.S. government talking heads and U.S. corporate media tell you that the devastation Israel has wrought is all because of October 7, 2023, I beg you to think again.
Unlike the framing put forth by our political leaders and mainstream media outlets — a framing that refuses to provide any meaningful context and instead cover up and conceal the truth in the service of war profiteers — it is not complicated, as they would have you believe. It is not “an age-old religious feud.” And, it is not “a conflict by extremists on both sides.”
Israel is a settler-colonial nuclear-armed regional power backed diplomatically, politically, militarily and economically by the U.S. It is waging war against an Indigenous people’s struggle for freedom, equality and an end to occupation. A war against such a cause is not one that can be defeated through military might. Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and in the diaspora — with the global support of people of conscience — are determined to continue their struggle until liberation.
What we are seeing in Lebanon today is what we have been seeing live-streamed from Gaza over the last 12 months, and what Palestinians have endured over the past 76 years. Do not be fooled: Israel is not defending itself; it is defending its occupation and is now attempting to renew one in southern Lebanon.
Netanyahu and his extremist allies are using the pretext of the October 7 Hamas attack to fundamentally reshape Gaza and ethnically cleanse it of Palestinians. The coming weeks and months will show us if Israel has similar designs for southern Lebanon. History has shown how Palestinian and Lebanese people might resist such a threat.
The resistance movement Hamas — whose former leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated by Israel in July during a visit to Tehran — was established in 1987 amid the First Intifada as a direct result of the brutality of Israeli occupation, oppression and its regime of apartheid. It was born out of Palestinian hopelessness, desperation and years of false promises from Israel and the U.S. Israeli military assaults have only served to deepen resentment among the Palestinian civilian population — who bear the brunt of the attacks — and drive recruitment for the resistance. Israel’s 17 year total siege of Gaza only bolstered Palestinians’ resolve to fight back and end the blockade and suffering of 2.2 million residents of Gaza — nearly 70 percent of whom only live in the Strip because they were displaced from their homes in 1948 and 1967.
Hezbollah was established after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 — which included the horrific Sabra and Shatila massacre of thousands of women and children — in order to defend Lebanon from future Israeli attacks. Israel has assassinated Hezbollah leaders before; in 1992 it killed then-Secretary General Abbas Al-Musawi. Israel has also occupied southern Lebanon before, from 1982 until 2000, when the Lebanese resistance drove the Israeli occupation forces out of the south in defeat (except for the Shebaa Farms area). In 2006, Israel invaded Lebanon again, killing scores of people before it was pushed out by Hezbollah fighters.
On September 27, Israel assassinated Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s secretary general, in a carpet-bombing attack using 2,000-pound U.S.-made bombs that levelled an entire neighbourhood in Beirut’s southern Dahiya district. Israel’s ground invasion of Lebanon that began soon afterwards is employing the same lethal tactics it unleashed on the people of Gaza this past year.
Speaking on Israeli TV last week, the country’s education minister called for Lebanon to be destroyed in its entirety. “There is no difference between Hezbollah and Lebanon. Lebanon will be annihilated. It will cease to exist,” said Yoav Kisch.
Lebanon has of late faced political paralysis and one financial crisis after another. Its hospitals and medical facilities are finding it difficult to cope with the magnitude of Israel’s latest assault. Like the Palestinians in Gaza, the Lebanese have nowhere to go.
Israel has a responsibility to end the violence
On September 22, The Times of Israel reported that Netanyahu told Israeli lawmakers he is considering the so-called “generals’ plan.” That plan was presented by retired Maj. Gen. Giora Eiland to lay total siege to northern Gaza and expel all its Palestinian residents. Eiland, the former director of the National Security Council and former head of the Planning Department of the Israeli military said: “We have to tell the residents of north Gaza that they have one week to evacuate the territory, which then becomes a military zone, [a zone] in which every figure is a target and, most importantly, no supplies enter this territory.”
Israel’s unlawful occupation of Palestine and its continuous theft of Palestinian lands — as well as its occupation of parts of Lebanon and its annexation of Syria’s Golan Heights — are the root causes of the so-called “conflict in the Middle East.” There will be no end to the violence in the region until Israel ends its siege on Gaza and its illegal occupation, as demanded by the United Nations, the ruling of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and a vast majority of countries in the world.
In a UN General Assembly (UNGA) vote on September 18, 124 countries — more the two-thirds of the world — supported a resolution demanding Israel’s military end its illegal occupation and withdraw from the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. It affirmed the ICJ’s findings that stated that “the State of Israel’s continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is unlawful” and that “Israel is under an obligation to bring to an end its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as rapidly as possible.” The resolution also orders Israel to dismantle the illegal settlements and return the land to the Palestinians as well as giving reparations. It demands an end to its system of apartheid within 12 months and the delivery of a report from the UN secretary general within three months’ time on the implementation of the resolution.
Supplying Israel with weapons of mass destruction makes the genocide in Gaza and the war on Lebanon as much a U.S. war as it is an Israeli one.
There is no doubt that this will be ignored by Israel. But the significance of the UNGA resolution, the ICJ findings, the recognition of the State of Palestine by 146 UN member countries, the isolation of Israel and the U.S., the extensive reports of human rights organizations that detail Israeli apartheid, and the unprecedented and growing global movement in solidarity with Palestinians — especially among the younger generation — may usher in a new period of transformative changes in the struggle for Palestinian rights.
The sheer cruelty of Israel’s assault on Gaza and its forced, intentional starvation campaign and blockage of hundreds of trucks of food and aid from reaching the people has sparked protests and encampments on university campuses in the U.S. and around the world. Students — including the majority of young American Jews — are no longer looking away and are demanding that their institutions divest from companies that profit from Israel’s apartheid and genocide. Despite the brutal crackdown by riot police and the numerous arrests of protesters on U.S. campuses, the fearless students are inspiring others around the world and are teaching their college administrators a lesson about freedom of expression and the right to protest — a lesson that should be taught on university campuses by those who are attempting to silence the students and criminalize their dissent.
The U.S. is enabling the nightmare
As President Joe Biden approaches his final months in office, changes in his administration’s reckless foreign policy decisions regarding Israel and the rest of the Middle East are unlikely. No one should expect a ceasefire and hostage release deal in Gaza despite all the promises and statements about how both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are working “tirelessly” and “around-the-clock” to stop the carnage.
Over and over again we’ve heard their insincere rhetorical support of a “two-state solution,” but their unconditional support of Israel — and the billions in arms deals to Israel — makes that impossible. It is helping Israel displace Palestinians and grab more land in order to achieve its endgame of the “out-of-state” solution, emptying Gaza of Palestinians and continuing its ethnic cleansing of the West Bank and East Jerusalem in order to realize its ultimate goal of a Jewish ethnostate.
Despite a year of protests, student arrests and encampments, massive rallies and calls for a ceasefire and arms embargo, the Biden-Harris administration has chosen to ignore the demands of the vast majority of Americans and maintain its complicity in and support of Israel’s war crimes and human rights violations. It does so despite the fact that it knows all too well that an arms embargo is the only way to end Israel’s aggressions in Palestine and Lebanon. Without U.S. military assistance and the U.S.’s endless supply of weapons — and no doubt its intelligence and surveillance capabilities — Israel would not be in a position to sustain its attacks on multiple fronts.
After facing no red line in Gaza or the West Bank over the past year, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has been emboldened to expand his violent campaign in Lebanon.
Supplying Israel with weapons of mass destruction, including 2000-pound bunker buster bombs that incinerate civilians, level apartment buildings and raze entire neighbourhoods to the ground — in violation of both U.S. and international law — and shielding Israel from accountability with its UN veto power, makes the genocide in Gaza and the war on Lebanon as much a U.S. war as it is an Israeli one.
ProPublica revealed on September 24, that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken knew that the Israeli government had deliberately blocked humanitarian aid to Gaza, but lied about it to Congress. Experts from multiple state agencies shared plentiful evidence about Israel’s actions and called for a pause on arms transfers in order to comply with U.S. law — which mandates cutting off weapons to governments that block U.S. humanitarian assistance.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin vowed in September that the U.S. would continue arming Israel. After concluding a deal that gives Israel $8.7 billion in military aid, he said: “We’ve been committed from the very beginning to help Israel, provide the things that are necessary for them to be able to protect their sovereign territory and that hasn’t changed and won’t change in the future.”
We live in a world where military power is king and the UN — the world body that is expected to keep world peace — has become an ineffective chamber where representatives from around the world meet and pass resolutions only to find them vetoed by the U.S. and other great powers as in the case with Israel’s genocidal practices in Gaza, its illegal settlements and its unlawful occupation of Palestinian lands.
The future we are being shown through the window of Gaza — and now Lebanon — is bleak. Gaza asks us all a vital question about what kind of future we want for ourselves and for our children and grandchildren — and whether we will fight for it. We are being asked whether to accept what is happening — the endless wars, the horror, the lies, the injustice, the loss, the unspeakable suffering and the endgame of 76 years of terror in Palestine. Gaza is offering us a moment to determine that future. Do we speak up and stand together for change or we will let Israel and the U.S. slide the world into the abyss of hatred and endless wars?
Michel Moushabeck is a Palestinian American writer, editor, translator and musician
