Coming under fierce attack for supporting genocide, the U.S. establishment has decided to blame it all on Benjamin Netanyahu to insulate itself from further condemnation.
Blinken meets Netanyahu in Tel Aviv during genocide. (Israeli Government Press Office)
By Caitlin Johnstone
Caitlin’s Newsletter
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
They’re really going to try to pin all the blame for the incineration of Gaza on Benjamin Netanyahu so that nothing has to change when this is over. The western empire has chosen a single scapegoat to carry away its sins so the status quo can march on unhindered by guilt or consequence.
They want everyone to pin all the blame for the Gaza genocide on Netanyahu, but this is not all the fault of Netanyahu. It’s the fault of the entire Israeli state. It’s the fault of Joe Biden. It’s the fault of the Democrats.
It’s the fault of all the Israel supporters on Capitol Hill. It’s the fault of the western press. It’s the fault of the Israel lobby. It’s the fault of the unelected empire managers in U.S. government agencies. It’s the fault of the entire U.S. empire and all its imperial member states like Australia, the U.K., the EU and Canada.
By trying to make this mass atrocity solely the fault of Netanyahu and not the giant, sprawling network of immensely powerful institutions which made it possible, they’re working to ensure that no changes will need to be made to any of those institutions.
It’s just like how they made a scapegoat of Judith Miller for the entire mass media’s war propaganda in the lead-up to the Iraq invasion and let all the blame for the war hang on Bush (before completely rehabilitating Bush’s image during the Trump administration and deciding he’s a pretty great guy after all).
No meaningful changes were ever made to ensure that the U.S. power alliance never repeats its horrible crimes after Iraq, which is why it keeps repeating horrible crimes.
How They Get Away With It
The trouble with Israel apologia on Gaza is that at first glance its talking points sound legit if you don’t know much about Israel-Palestine. “Israel has a right to defend itself;” “They need to get rid Hamas because of Oct. 7;” etc., would sound entirely reasonable if you didn’t know that Israel is a settler-colonialist apartheid state who has been murdering, abusing and stealing from the indigenous population of the land for generations.
The amount of energy needed to see through the talking points is far greater than the amount of energy needed to speak them — it’s one of those, “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth even gets its pants on” kind of deals.
Which is why it’s miraculous that so many people around the world are getting educated enough to see through the lies and support the Palestinians.
How are they getting educated enough? Mostly through online content which sums up the situation quickly and concisely enough for them to understand easily. That’s the only way the truth can move quickly enough to catch up with the lies.
And that’s the role TikTok has played here, which is why we’ve seen Israel lobbyists and the ADL shrieking their lungs out about it for months.
Well, Blaming TikTok Too
Saying TikTok must be suppressing pro-Israel content because pro-Palestine content is more popular is like saying they’re suppressing flat earth content because round earth content is more popular. Pro-Israel content is just less popular in general, which is why the gap is the same on Facebook and Instagram.
The U.S. government is like, “No no it’s not censorship, we’re just using state power to ensure that popular speech platforms are only allowed to exist if they can be controlled by U.S. government agencies.”
Forgotten in all this is the news that Israel literally tortured U.N. staff to extract false statements about UNRWA having Hamas connections.
They. Tortured. U.N. Staff. If we had anything remotely like objective news reporting in the western press, this would have been the top story everywhere for days.
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This article is from CaitlinJohnstone.com.au and re-published with permission.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
The perpetrators of the ongoing (since 1948) genocide in Palestine and their collaborators deserve the same treatment as the Nazi butchers of WWII. They should be hunted in every nation throughout the world, and brought to justice, until no trace of them remains.
Schumer plead, unconvincingly, for decorum, when it is the behavior of enabling, which he clearly endorses, which must be ended.
Then it will not matter who is at Israel’s helm, for it is U$ weapons, money, and approbation which facilitate the genocide.
In reply to Steve.
I don’t know from where you obtained your facts about all these “genocides” against the Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews, In one case, Algeria, which I visited in December of 1970, the predominantly Jewish village of Benni Yeni in the province of Tizi Ouzou, was still a thriving Jewish village of coral and silver artisans whose sales of beautiful jewelry were being facilitated by the government there for which the Jews of the village had only positive things to say.
As far as Morocco, the King there had pleaded with the country’s Jews, who lived quite well, to stay, but most largely fell for the Zionists’ false promises as a number of them described in an Israeli film from the Eighties in which they acknowledged having made a foolish decision. Curious, was it not, that the Zionists planning the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian Arabs from their land, were all European Ashkenazi, who excluded the Mizrahi and Sephardim (essentially Arab Jews), from plans that would radically change their lives? While the Ashkenazi had nothing that connected them to Palestine, from language to cuisine to dress except a book of fairy tales while BenGurion made every effort to stamp out their lingua franca, Yiddish from being spoken, hence the elimination of Yiddish theater as well as culture and cuisine while appropriating that as well as everything else from the Palestinian Arabs, while publicly doing whatever he could to de-Levanticize the Arab Jews who were needed for cheap labor.
It was not until Rabbi Meir Kahane came along, that the Ashkenazi (or Ashke-Nazi as a Mizrahi friend of mine, spelled it out on the walls of West Jerusalem, before taking off for New York), raised the “issue” of the Jews of the region (whose numbers have kept growing over the years) were ever mentioned and even Ha’aretz reported on the Mossad using bombs in Baghdad’s Jewish Quarter to encourage them to make aliyah and so become second class citizens. Conclusion: You are a Zionist troll.
Caitlin it is very heartening for me to read your stuff. You have this thing pegged!
In you last here the one thing I never got to address is what I feel was an attempt by you to wake Americans the hell up.
Everyone need to read the tweet of what the hell ever his name was who talked about BANANA REPUBLICS –
I see great activity generated by Israeli sympathizers to influence American Politics and I don’t like it one dogdamned bit.
Go to Israel and try to establish a lobby as powerful as AIPAC is there.
Dog give me strength.
Ungrateful right wing politicians leading Israel need to be put in their place, using a total boycott if that is what is needed.
You are doing a great job, our government seems content to let the Palestinians get butchered or die of thirst, famine and exposure. Still non of this explains the American public’s severe case of lock jaw.
Thanks you for the goodness in your heart and clarity of mind.
Thanks CN
Bravo, Caitlyn.
It seems the US pays Israel to take on the dirty work of genocide. The US provides arms; the Israelis provide kills and deniability. Israel becomes something of a lightning rod for blowback, softening a bit the wave due the United States.
In reply to Steve.
You need to read some Israeli history. Jews did live in Palestine and got along fine with their Muslim and Christian neighbors. Then wealthy GERMAN Jews escaped Germany through a deal with the Nazi Party and invaded Palestine. They are not the same people as the Jews who lived peacefully, they have no ethics or morals, they are just more of the same aggressive, colonizing Europeans who think it is their right to steal land and murder people. As George Galloway said to a Zionist who called his radio talk show, “Who gave Britain the right to give away someone else’s country?” After the fourth try at getting a straight answer, the dude finally said, “They did not have that right.”
You apparently subscribe to the now repudiated Vatican Doctrine of Discovery, as did Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the dirty old racist.
hxxps://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/vatican-formally-rejects-doctrine-of-discovery-after-indigenous-calls
A not so pretty example of the “pot calling the kettle black”!
Both Susan and Steve need to dig a little deeper into the mix to discover the foundational overall facts of the joint history to which they each refer.
“The truth shall set (us all) free” to compromise, with reciprocal compassion and consideration!
To paraphrase highly respected longtime international negotiator and peacemaker, Jeffrey Sachs, in good faith, negotiate, negotiate, negotiate, for the sake of us all!
”They are really going to pin on all the blame for the incineration of Gaza on Benjamin Netanyahu. So that nothing has changed when this is over.”
But of course the blood-letting and money will flow will continue as is normal (‘normal’ in the sense of abject barbarism). Have our rulers ever done anything more than inflict misery? Has it ever effected a progress without dragging individuals and peoples through blood and dirt, through misery and degradation. Of course not.
”The profound and inherent barbarism of bourgeois civilization lies unveiled before our eyes, turning from its home where assumes respectable forms, to the colonies where it goes naked.” (Karl Marx – The Future Results Of The British Rule In India -Published in New York Daily Tribune, No. 3840, August 8 1853)
No matter how draconian the narrative managers get, it’s too late to keep a lid on reality. The genie is out of the bottle. But they are so convinced in their own little minds of the righteousness of their cause, they will continue their crusade until they are finally driven from power.
“They. Tortured. U.N. Staff.”
They. Torture. Us. Every. Day. With. Their. Lies. And. Murder. Of. Innocent. Humans.
Yes, of course it’s the fault of the AngloAmerican Empire. But obviously no just the so-called democrats, it’s BIPARTISAN. Recall that DT bent over for Israel and moved the embassy to Jlem at their request, in violation of law. The entire US gov. is to blame. DT is a notorious racist/Zionist just like his buddy JB and the rest. Unconditional support for Israel is long-term bipartisan policy.
Caitlin – thank you for your honest, concise reporting. How the world watches this Genocide and does nothing is beyond comprehension –
Again thanks for your work, your voice.
How the world watches …. Genocide and does nothing is beyond comprehension — is a fundamental question!
Could it be that the human brain (CNT) has NOT evolved beyond its reptilian structure endowing so-called humanity with no more than animal instinct for its basic survival?
For there to be conscience, surely a higher state of mind must first exist; namely a more thoroughly developed consciousness overall!
I don’t have a dog in this hunt, and understand why folks are sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians and can even buy into the apartheid state claims being made against Israel and their repugnant settlement expansion. But I really don’t understand the settler-colonialist claims. Jews have at least as much historical claim to Israel as the Palestinians. There are records going back to the Roman Empire of Jews residing there. The Islamic conquest of the Levant in the 7th century doesn’t negate their claim to the land anymore than the British Mandate after WWI negated Palestinian claims to it.
Jews and Palestinians are BOTH the indigenous population of Israel. The Jews who moved there in the 20th century were returning to their ancestral homes after genocides in their adoptive homes in Europe, the Middle-East, and North Africa. Take a look at the census of any MENA country at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries and you will find genocide after genocide of Jewish enclaves that were forced to flee. There were 50K Jews in Algeria in 1900. By 2000 it was 0. There were over 100K Jews in Morrocco in 1900. By 2000, it was 2K. Where else would you have those Jews go if not to their ancestral homeland? Or would you condemn them to extinction?
In what way were the Palestinians responsible for the Holocaust? Why have they been targeted for elimination? They have lived under brutal occupation for 75 years. Are you justifying their occupation and ethnic cleansing? I suspect, the US and Europe who turned Jewish refugees from the Holocaust away at their shores, felt the need to absolve themselves by gifting them their own settler colonialist ethnostate by forcing the displacement via mass violence of the Palestinians. This is what a settler colonial final solution looks like. Genocide.
Yes! Exactly!
Precisely well said, Lois Gagnon.
DW
Israel is certainly not the only country in the world, or even one of only a handful of nation-states, where those of Jewish ethnicity can attain permanent citizenship and residency with fully equal status in a post-World War II world, especially in the twenty-first century, as the diaspora populations that remain almost entirely unmolested in a multitude of other global societies can attest.
Myself and many others would contend that the post-1948 situation (i.e., foundation of the State of Israel), or even arguably the post-1919 situation (i.e., failure of the Faisal-Weizmann Agreement in Mandatory Palestine following the Balfour Declaration), as it has existed in the southern Levant is unsustainable. At the same time, we do not think that Jews should be ethnically cleansed or expelled from that region any moreso than Palestinian Arabs should be (even though the former is an entirely hypothetical scenario at this stage, while the latter is an ongoing occurrence in the occupied Palestinian territories and even in Bedouin communities within recognized Israeli borders). I should add that the same goes for all of the other ethno-religious minorities (e.g., Bahá’ís and Druze) that arguably have benefitted from Israel’s presence in contrast to their more extensive persecution that they have endured in many other MENA societies, even if they are often still treated as second-class citizens in a Jewish-dominated order as well. I also decry the forced emigration of Jews from MENA states and other foreign countries inasmuch as it was not the product of a wholly voluntary aliyah.
As an analogy, though, imagine many Norwegians and other Scandinavians decided to move en masse to Newfoundland while displacing the Canadian citizens already inhabiting that territory (both indigenous and foreign descendants), founding a neo-Viking state on much of that land while establishing ever-encroaching settlements in the eastern portion of St. John’s and elsewhere using the legacy of L’Anse aux Meadows (and often certain interpretations of Nordic polytheism) as justification, with a minority of these hypothetical neo-Vikings purporting that all of the other people already there are just an amorphous mass of skrælingi without any historic common identity (along the lines of Joan Peters’s thesis in her 1984 book, “From Time Immemorial”).
Superb, spot on comment. Casey VanSise!
Although I might point out that recent speculations have held that the Vikings actually discovered and settled Ukraine. Which Ukrainians claim proves that they are not of Slavic origin.
Subtlety rules.
DW
Nice try equating “Jews” with “Zionists.” The Jewish people suffered the Holocaust, not the Zionists using eugenics to support their own inclusion in the the worst of the European recrudescence into “purity.” Any argument now being made (just like the one you are making) giving genocide legitimacy for the sake of historical equality is circuitous logic at best. The results are too tragic to make the argument which you are trying (and failing) to make ring true. I think that you really do “have a dog in this hunt,” and it isn’t any notion of humanity worthy of mention. Here’s a thought experiment: try making the same argument you are making, but first replace Palestinians and Zionists with “indigenous American people” and “white European colonialists.” I think you’ll find the history of the conflict you are pretending to describe to be a figment of your own imagination. A Zionist “manifest destiny” over Palestine is as stupid and destructive as America’s own manifest destiny over the western continent. A one state solution, religiously pursued, might give validity to your argument without also giving it credence as history.
You have asked valid questions; however, these are further questions you might want to consider:
1. The Jewish populations of Algeria and Morocco – were they all forcefully expelled or did many voluntarily and freely choose to migrate? The demographic statistics you provide, re: the Jewish populations in these countries, come without actual contexts (historical and socio-economic) for the dwindling population numbers from 1900 to 2000.
2. While people who identify as Jews can claim automatic right to citizenship of Israel (and in many cases, these people hold dual-citizenship), why is that – and as you have already pointed out, Palestinians are indeed indigenous people of the land – displaced Palestinians living in refugee camps (and as such are considered stateless) since 1948 have been denied their Right to Return to their ancestral homeland? As stateless people where else would you have those displaced Palestinians go if not to their ancestral homeland?
3. While you mention genocide of Jewish people – which no one in this forum denies – how would you describe the current ongoing genocide of Palestinian people in their native home, on their native land by the State of Israel? The deliberate starvation and premeditated murder of Palestinian children, including newborns. To condemn Palestinians to extinction.
The 21st century holocaust we are all witnesses to, in real time.