The media is pretending the West’s efforts to secure a ceasefire are serious. But a different script has clearly been written in advance.
Smoke and flames billow after Israeli forces struck a high-rise tower in Gaza City, Oct. 7, 2023. (Palestinian News & Information Agency, Wafa, in contract with APAimages, CC BY-SA 3.0)
By Jonathan Cook
Jonathan-Cook.net
One does not need to be a fortune-teller to understand that the Israel-U.S. game plan for Gaza runs something like this:
-
In public, Biden appears “tough” on Netanyahu, urging him not to “invade” Rafah and pressuring him to allow more “humanitarian aid” into Gaza.
-
But already the White House is preparing the ground to subvert its own messaging. It insists that Israel has offered an “extraordinarily generous” deal to Hamas – one that, Washington suggests, amounts to a ceasefire. It doesn’t. According to reports, the best Israel has offered is an undefined “period of sustained calm”. Even that promise can’t be trusted.
-
If Hamas accepts the “deal” and agrees to return some of the hostages, the bombing eases for a short while but the famine intensifies, justified by Israel’s determination for “total victory” against Hamas – something that is impossible to achieve. This will simply delay, for a matter of days or weeks, Israel’s move to step 5 below.
-
If, as seems more likely, Hamas rejects the “deal”, it will be painted as the intransigent party and blamed for seeking to continue the “war”. (Note: This was never a war. Only the West pretends either that you can be at war with a territory you’ve been occupying for decades, or that Hamas “started the war” with its October 7 attack when Israel has been blockading the enclave, creating despair and incremental malnutrition there, for 17 years.)
-
Blinken meets Netanyahu in Tel Aviv in November 2023. (Israeli Government Press Office)
Last night US Secretary of State Antony Blinken moved this script on by stating Hamas was “the only thing standing between the people of Gaza and a ceasefire… They have to decide and they have to decide quickly”.
The U.S. will announce that Israel has devised a humanitarian plan that satisfies the conditions Biden laid down for an attack on Rafah to begin.
-
This will give the U.S., Europe and the region the pretext to stand back as Israel launches the long-awaited assault – an attack Biden has previously asserted would be a “red line”, leading to mass civilian casualties. All that will be forgotten.
-
As Middle East Eye reports, Israel is building a ring of checkpoints around Rafah. Netanyahu will suggest, falsely, that these guarantee its attack meets the conditions laid down in international humanitarian law. Women and children will be allowed out – if they can reach a checkpoint before Israel’s carpet bombing kills them along the way.
-
All men in Rafah, and any women and children who remain, will be treated as armed combatants. If they are not killed by the bombing or falling rubble, they will be either summarily executed or dragged off to Israel’s torture chambers. No one will mention that any Hamas fighters who were in Rafah were able to leave through the tunnels.
-
Rafah will be destroyed, leaving the entire strip in ruins, and the Israeli-induced famine will worsen. The West will throw up its hands, say Hamas brought this on Gaza, agonise over what to do, and press third countries – especially Arab countries – for a “humanitarian plan” that relocates the survivors out of Gaza.
-
The western media will continue describing Israel’s genocide in Gaza in purely humanitarian terms, as though this “disaster” was an act of God.
-
Under U.S. pressure, the International Court of Justice, or World Court, will be in no hurry to issue a definitive ruling on whether South Africa’s case that Israel is committing a genocide – which it has already found “plausible” – is proved.
-
Whatever the World Court eventually decides, and it is almost impossible to imagine it won’t determine that Israel carried out a genocide, it will be too late. The western political and media class will have moved on, leaving it to the historians to decide what it all meant.
-
Meanwhile, Israel is already using the precedents it has created in Gaza, and its erosion of the long-established principles of international law, as the blueprint for the West Bank. Saying Hamas has not been completely routed in Gaza but is using this other Palestinian enclave as its base, Israel will gradually intensify the pressures on the West Bank with another blockade. Rinse and repeat.
That’s the likely plan. Our job is to do everything in our power to stop them making it a reality.
Jonathan Cook is an award-winning British journalist. He was based in Nazareth, Israel, for 20 years. He returned to the U.K. in 2021.He is the author of three books on the Israel-Palestine conflict: Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish State (2006), Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (2008) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (2008). If you appreciate his articles, please consider offering your financial support.
This article was first published on Jonathan Cook’s Substack.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
Client state of the U.S. is Israel. Part of it all is the propaganda, the good-cop bad-cop Cooke mentions, a component of war that is levied on mass scale broadcasts. To expect a better deal is normal as other authors do, but current status is a war-time executive in place. For reelection, that is about the most ideal condition. So decry the absolute worse status quo condition, but that is what it is. Bad or good deals, maybe outcomes of an ending of war are not relevant, nor is the outcome of November very important either. I hope the student movements succeed, but media just needs the two sides at each other, what we got today, drives up the capitalism of the politics… Think everything media is like that, driving two sides at each other, so, more competition in that industry should be implemented even called for else a mediative collectivism will result, already has resulted.
Cook is right. Benjamin Netanyahu’s father, Professor Benzoin Netanyahu, taught that Israel should withhold food from Palestinians “by force” so “They won’t be able to exist, and they will run away from here” (hxxps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Netanyahu). The heavenly father of both Netanyahus, the God of The Bible, commanded his chosen people to annihilate all non-Jews in Israel (hxxps://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=deut+20&version=NET). Accordingly, when Benjamin Netanyahu starves Palestinians in Gaza he is following orders from his earthly father, and when he bombs Palestinians in Gaza, he is following orders from his heavenly father.
If Peewee Herman and Mike Tyson stepped into a boxing ring, would you call it a fight? This is not a war between Israel and Hamas. This is a massacre to make Gaza part of Greater Israel. If Netanyahu remains in office, the West Bank will be next, and it may be annexed by 2029 if Israel can get Trump re-elected. Netanyahu announced that he has a date for attacking Rafah. The death toll for Palestinians will be between 50 and 100 thousand by the time Israel destroys Rafah. Then the death rate will plateau at a lower level for a longer time, until Israel’s mission is accomplished.
Biblical Zionism is a vicious beast, but biblical Zionists are made of the same stuff as the rest of us. So how could they perpetrate so much evil? For a look into the belly of the beast, please watch: “Thou Shalt Not Kill … Whom?” at: hxxps://youtu.be/7uOIimFxMac
Blinken should have said “the only thing standing between the people of Gaza and a ceasefire… is us, the US”.
The extreme lunatic Israeli Zionists are running just about everything pertaining to Gaza; ergo it’s a bit misleading for many commentators and talking heads to refer to the Gaza genocide as a joint Israeli-U.S. game plan.
Yes, the U.S. is handing the sadistic and creepy Zionist freaks the weaponry and cash but that’s solely because the murderous and demonic pro-Israel psychopaths control Congress by being the top campaign funders of both mainstream political parties in Washington.
Israel’s a racist state that uses Nazi like tactics against the Palestinians.
This empire along with Israel needs to be put out of its misery. We need truly massive protests to fill the streets until they relent. This can’t continue.
Ah, the Investors, Architects and Cheerleaders of US American “democracy”:
First they established a slave state and called it a “democracy”,
But the people woke up to that — and paid in blood to make amends.
Now Investors, Architects and Cheerleaders are fashioning a fascist state
And calling it a “democracy”.
But the people will someday wake up to that, too:
At a terribly heavy price, however.
What is disturbing is that Monday, May 6th is Holocaust Remembrance Day – how can we possibly honor that without realizing that Zionists are perpetuating genocide against Palestinians in Gaza right now?
I’ve often thought that the great “crime” of the Palestinians is that they have not been as easy to exterminate as tbe American Indians. Biden and many want the P.’s to disappear and be forgotten.
Thanks for the casual prejudice and implied racism of “easy to exterminate,” “disappeared and forgotten.”
First of all, the greatest damage was caused by diseases for which there was little immunity nor any established methods of treatment by shamans or herbalists. But after this devastation, native peoples did regroup.
Historical work that does more than accept conqueror attitudes at face value shows a different reality. Read //Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America// (2022) by Pekka Hamalainen. Look at the evidence–the maps alone a great visual as to who controlled what. Only in limited patchwork fashion slowly becoming colonized. The cultural exchange wasn’t one way, either. To survive, colonists had to learn from peoples with millennia of experience how best to live in a given locale. Including as cooperative…democratic, even. See //Debating Democracy// (1998) Bruce Johansen, ed.
“disappeared and forgotten” is an extremely sore spot for indigenes. WE’RE STILL HERE! Cultures have revived; traditional ceremonies are practiced, traditional lands reclaimed. If invisible to you, then take off the blinkers and go look. Or at least do some easy reading such as “Native News Online” which has reports on everything of interest to 1st Nations/Indians/Native Americans from tribal government to social issues to ceremonies to the arts to small businesses. You know, as if for actual contemporary living people. Watch live or cable FNX, “First Nations Experience,” mostly North American content, especially Canadian since they have decent funding, but also from indigenous peoples globally. Ways of understanding that have affected the so-called dominant cultures around them.
PS: I’d bet anyone of Armenian descent has something similar to add.
America was the last country supporting apartheid South Africa. I doubt there’ll be any ‘truth and reconciliation’ hearings with any Israelite, but America is with them until the end. For both of them, the world won’t miss either of them.
While South Africa was shunned by most of the civilized world and crippled by sanctions Israel was trading with it. They sold/traded weapons to that apartheid state and in return surreptitiously sold S.A. goods on the world market. It is rather delicious irony that South Africa, long liberated from the shackles of apartheid, has brought charges of Israeli genocide to the International Court of Justice.
Jill Stein for president.
Israel’s a racist state that uses Nazi like tactics against the Palestinians.
Let me repeat that: the Zionist project is racist to the core and extremely Nazi like in its exclusivity, use of violence and hegemonic designs.
Sincerely,
Drew Hunkins
Madison, WI
It’s long been a Western practice to take because they can. They have gold, let’s take it. They have land we want, let’s kill all the men, women and children and take it; Middle East has tons of oil, let’s take it because we can or we think we can.
I sincerely hope that there will be a very rude awakening for the current administrations in the western countries supporting this genocide. Our government does NOT represent the majority of the American people, but it the American people who will suffer for their inexcusable lack of diplomacy in the world and a lack or morality and ethics in its conduct towards other nations and other peoples.
Let’s build a National Citizen’s Union. Ditch the Business Party. Hire Sean Fain and Chris Smalls to help us organize.Central task: serve the interests and needs of the citizenry, especially the workers. Use nationwide work stoppages to de-corporatize government. Any legislation benefiting the corporate at the expense (short changing the citizenry/workers) meets nationwide work stoppages. No millionaire nor billionaire may run for public office unless they divest wealth at $700,000 threshold.
“On the side of their oppressors there was power,
and there was no one to comfort them” (Ecclesiastes:
4.1).
A must read for a full understanding of the “Dalet Plan”
is your book: Blood and Religion: “The Unmasking of the
Jewish and Democratic State” (2006).
So a decadent, sociopathic neocon administration is leading the United States of America into complicity with genocide. They are a clever bunch. However, even after they are gone, this is America from now on. It’s hard to fathom the damage that Biden and the Democratic Party have done. I doubt that Humpty Dumpty will ever be whole again. Next, watch American society unravel. After all, what do laws actually mean in the face of this?
The choice was simple. Either America lives up to its purported ideals and stops this unconscionable genocidal horror, or it doesn’t and becomes a full partner. Apparently it is the rest of the world, outside of the West, that is civilized. This is simply a fact from now on. What more proof is needed?
I agree with everything you said but would point out that Republicans are largely silent on the catastrophe in Gaza. Their silence means complicity. Republicans are happy to let the Democrats take the heat for something they would support fully, if one of their own was in the White House.
>>> Note: This was never a war.
Or that you can wage a ‘war’ against hundreds of thousands of unarmed civilians
Members of this administration shouldn’t go a single day without having to consider 18 U.S. Code § 1091 the law that brought the genocide convention into US law. this statute in their faces, up front and center at every protest at every meeting, press conference, briefing, and trips home and abroad.
They may feel they are immune now, but let’s get them considering what is possible when they leave office, given they have set the precedent of charging former presidents. They should have visions of prison all the days of their lives.
And maybe the propagandists in the Mainstream Media need to be encouraged to think about their culpability as well.
Let us find the way.
There must be an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Pope Francis has said what is needed, now he must do what is needed by going to Gaza and standing for peace, justice and freedom.
Please sign the petition and share widely.
hxxps://chng.it/CRQ7qw4Gzn
Code pink
hxxps://www.codepink.org/cnngaza?utm_campaign=12_15_pali_update_alert_3&utm_medium=email&utm_source=codepink
Let us also support UNRWA. If our governments won’t act in accordance with humanity, then we will. hxxps://www.unrwausa.org/ Let us do it to honor Aaron Bushnell, or in memory of Hind Rajab.
Let us call for a No Fly-Zone over Gaza!
These are a few small things we can do. If we can do more, let us do more.
Jonathan has such extensive experience in this issue and the situation deteriorates all the time. In 2008/9 I had no computer and used one every 2 weeks in our village, printing some articles which I have kept.
President Shimon Peres was worried that Israel would not survive 15 more years and insisted on the two State solution against the US plan.
Blaming Hamas, stealing West Bank land, vicious limits on Gaza supply, all that we see now and Jonathan has written of for years, shows the mockery of any decency, humanity or hint of fairness by whoever is in charge of a country never following the accepted rules for legitimacy. We keep repeating the obvious but the lies win.
Palestinians at last now are being heard and supported. L
Let us hope it is not too late.
And how does Johnathan expect any of us to stop this barbarism?
The student protests in the US, though very admirable, are only annoying the establishment forces arrayed against them.
Someone will eventually have to draw a sword…
I don’t believe anything that Blinken says—and Biden is just as sad. Trump is a horror too, and I have no idea where the sane people are in this government. : (
The ever present Anglo/Saxon hypocrisy is utterly SICKENING!!! Our future looks more like the depths of an abyss.
Its 2024 … by this time, what sort of idiot is paying attention to “the media”?
The plan is obvious, and has been unfolding in a media age where information travels at light speed. Anyone can see what is going on. The only requirement is open eyes.
The media are owned by corporations. The news is for the profit of the owners. The owners put Bosses in charge to make sure of this. Any Employee must do what the Boss says. That’s a basic rule of capitalism. Why on earth is there this ‘fantasy’ that the ‘media’ will somehow be different? That there is something about ‘media’ that defies all of the the Laws of Capitalism? Why do people expect things like Fairness and Honesty from capitalists?
So, what does Hezbollah and Nasrallah do if the US and Israel go ahead with thier mass murder plan?
Bad cop, good cop, is a well-known western psychological strategy to achieve their goals. EU was often the good cop and US the bad cop, both had the same goal, force others to submission and, above all, achieve military/economic dominance. Now US is good cop, Israel bad cop, both with the same goal to bring Muslim countries to their knee and eradicate Palestine, to have total control over a very strategic area and rich in energy resources.
Failure is another feature that those countries shares, and while in the past their wealth and uncontested dominance allowed them to fail but survive, it is no longer the case. Today’s western’s failure has an immense price, and behind the fake smile there is a huge fear and concern for the west survival. Had Russia capitulated it would have given the west oxygen to stay alive, now Ukraine and Israel are sucking all the oxygen remaining in the room of failures and inefficiencies.
“Our job is to do everything in our power to stop them making it a reality.”
How do we stop it? Nothing seems to work. Just look at what’s happening with the students in UCLA. They couldn’t care less what we do. We are facing an EVIL of great proportions.
Well-documented, Jonathan Cook. Everything we have allowed to happen in the world over the last 85 years (and only to the advantage of our own hubris) is being codified by this genocide into a new world order. That’s why our leaders whine on and on about the “rules-based order.” They’re going to change it, and fast. Fortunately, if the protests in this country reach the level of 9% of our population in active resistance, there will be no more means to support this “fake empire” left to follow. But before that happens, expect the worst from those trying to “save our Democracy.” Inverted totalitarianism is the flag flying over us today.
The ICJ was quick to issue an arrest warrant for Putin when he rescued the Ukrainian orphans but are hesitant to issue arrest warrants for Nuttyyahoo and his generals for openly committing war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. And no arrest warrant for Biden for supplying the bombs.
It was the ICC, not the ICJ, that issued arrest warrants. The ICJ has no such power.
“Last night US Secretary of State Antony Blinken moved this script on by stating Hamas was “the only thing standing between the people of Gaza and a ceasefire… They have to decide and they have to decide quickly”.
This disclosure undercuts the Goebbelsian narrative that the “collateral damage” so far (i.e. the massacre) was unfortunate but due to a Hamas hidden beneath every resident, including infants, being used as “human shields.” But, no, then, these are two separate entities after all, with innocents revealed as singled out for brutal savagery. The coming chaos and murdering from this lunatic “humanitarian” plan will lead to more rage and increasing violence.
Genocide Joe going to lose but I don’t see how that will help the Palestinians. Trump and Young Kennedy are just as bad. How did these awful people get to the top of the food chain?
Apparently because they are the most media-worthy, i.e. commodities of The System. Listen to Jill Stein as an alternative candidate who was arrested a couple of days ago. She is what we need but won’t bring in the shekels for news-as-commerce and mainstream, as it has become.