Our Wednesday News Analysis | Israel's killing of aid workers is no accident. It's part of the plan to destroy Gaza

A displaced Palestinian man along with his belongings sits on a donkey cart amid the rubble of houses destroyed by Israeli bombardment in Hamad area, west of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on March 14, 2024.Credit: AFP

Israel has ripped up the most fundamental of the principles in international law: “distinction” - differentiating between combatants and civilians - and “proportionality” - only using the minimum amount of force needed to achieve legitimate military goals.

The rules of war are in tatters. The system of international humanitarian law is not under threat; it has collapsed.

Every Palestinian in Gaza now faces a death sentence. And with good reason - Israel assumes it is untouchable.

After six months - and many tens of thousands of dead and maimed Palestinian women and children later - western commentators are finally wondering whether something may be amiss with Israel’s actions in Gaza.

Israel crossed a red line when it killed a handful of foreign aid workers on 1 April, including three British security contractors.

Three missiles, fired over several minutes, struck vehicles in a World Central Kitchen (WCK) aid convoy heading up Gaza’s coast on one of the few roads still passable after Israel turned the enclave’s homes and streets into rubble. All the vehicles were clearly marked. All were on an approved, safe passage. And the Israeli military had been given the coordinates to track the convoy’s location.

With precise missile holes through the vehicle roofs making it impossible to blame Hamas for the strike, Israel was forced to admit responsibility. Its spokespeople claimed an armed figure had been seen entering the storage area from which the aid convoy had departed.

But even that feeble, formulaic response could not explain why the Israeli military hit cars in which it was known there were aid workers. So Israel hurriedly promised to investigate what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described as a “tragic incident”.

Presumably, it was a “tragic incident” just like the 15,000-plus other “tragic incidents” - the ones we know about - that Israel has committed against Palestinian children day after day for six months.

In those cases, of course, western commentators always managed to produce some rationalisation for the slaughter.

Not this time...

Read more: Israel's killing of aid workers is no accident. It's part of the plan to destroy Gaza

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Biden has no emotional attachment to Israel, it’s about politics

Source: Mondoweiss
https://mondoweiss.net/2024/04/biden-has-no-emotional-attachment-to-israel-its-about-politics/?utm_content=buffer28fbd&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=buffer

By Philip Weiss
Published April 8, 2024

The New Yorker asks, "Why is the most powerful country in human history essentially taking orders from a country that relies on it for aid?” and then avoids the most obvious answer.

WORKERS PUT THE FINISHING TOUCHES ON THE STAGE AT THE ANNUAL AMERICAN ISRAEL PUBLIC AFFAIRS CONFERENCE IN WASHINGTON IN MARCH 2015. (PHOTO: PETE MAROVICH/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY)

Follow the money.
Today, Biden sees Gaza genocide hurting the Democrats among voters
and maybe even costing him the election, as James Carville has warned.
But he can’t pivot on Israel because he needs cash from the lobby.
In the White House, Biden had a three-hour meeting
with megadonor Haim Saban last year. Saban pronounced him “pristine” on Israeli policy, and Saban recently hosted a big fundraiser for Biden in California.

The New Yorker asked Aaron David Miller, the longtime peace processor, why Joe Biden is going along with Israel’s war crimes, and Miller said it’s because Joe Biden has an emotional attachment to Israel.

“Joe Biden, alone among modern American Presidents, has an emotional relationship with the idea of Israel, the people of Israel, the security of Israel.”

This is the company line. Richard Haass, an Israel supporter and dean of foreign policy, said it on NPR this week too. “The administration is trying to balance support for Israel with its disagreements with Israeli policy. I think the president in particular feels an emotional bond to Israel.”

And it’s what Jeffrey Goldberg once said was lacking in Barack Obama. Jewish voters “worry about whether presidential candidates feel the importance of Israel in their kishkes, or guts.”

It’s a false test. Great politicians don’t have emotional attachments to foreign countries that get in the way of politics. Politicians learn to throw anyone under the bus.

Biden takes the position he has because he needs the Israel lobby in the 2024 election. And the power of the official Jewish community in enforcing Biden’s support for war crimes is something Chotiner and Miller are incapable of discussing.

The New Yorker interview is helpful as yet another marker of Israel’s collapse in the U.S. discourse. Chotiner insists on the barbaric character of Israel’s assault: “this country that we consider an ally and consider part of our shared democratic values” is “intentionally starving the Palestinian population.”

Read more: Biden has no emotional attachment to Israel, it’s about politics

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FOR THE DEFENDERS OF ISRAEL'S WAR ON GAZA, THE GAME IS UP

Source: Middle East Eye
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/war-gaza-israel-defenders-of-israel-game-up

By David Hearst
Published April 7, 2024

Staunch allies calling themselves friends of Israel are beginning to realise they are also friends of the murderers of western aid workers, friends of genocide and friends of fascism

A protestor holding a poster picturing Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom, who was killed by an Israeli air strike in Gaza, during a pro-Palestinian demonstration, in Melbourne, Australia on 3 April, 2024 (Reuters)

"It takes a lot to admit that a lifelong dream of a homeland for Jews in the Middle East is turning into a nightmare. But that is what is happening."

Six months on, the entire edifice that allowed Israeli forces to kill more than 33,000 Palestinians and wound another 75,000, displaces a population of over 2.3 million and then starves them, demolishes the north of Gaza, dismantle the health service and signal that it would do the same in Rafah for the next six months, is tumbling down.

Political leaders who framed this carnage as Israel’s right to defend itself, journalists who peddled fictional horror stories about beheaded babies and mass rape on 7 October, and editors who day in, day out ignored stories about aid convoys being targeted by Israeli forces are rushing for cover.

All the arguments they used to maintain this slaughter are crumbling in their hands - that this is a just war, that Israel must be allowed to finish the job, that the action taken is proportionate, that the legal process in the International Court of Justice hinders peace talks and can be ignored, that the UK and US can simultaneously admonish Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and continue to arm him.

The dam has burst. The Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron can no longer play cat and mouse with Foreign Affairs Select Committee chair Alicia Kearns, who revealed a few days ago that government lawyers knew that Israel had breached international humanitarian law.

More than 600 prominent lawyers, academics and former judges, including former Supreme Court president Lady Hale and two other former justices in the court, signed a letter warning the UK government that it was breaching international law by continuing to arm Israel...

Read more: For the defenders of Israel's war on Gaza, the game is up