by Margaret Kimberley, published on Black Agenda Report, October 2, 2024
The maniacal alliance between the U.S. and Israel has exposed the sham of western democracy and the illusion of international law.
Iran’s missile attacks on Israeli military targets were the result of a year of provocation. Months of restraint ended when Israel escalated its war on the rest of the region in Lebanon. Showing that its willingness to commit cruel acts knows no bounds, Israel detonated hundreds of electronic pagers and handheld radios to kill and injure thousands of people. The atrocity was followed by the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah which also killed hundreds of civilians.
While Iran’s leadership is portrayed as a group of deranged terrorists, it is Israel and the U.S. who worked together to ethnically cleanse Gaza before turning their attention to Lebanon. It is Iran which showed restraint before undertaking any military action. Ultimately the U.S. is responsible for the loss of life and for the destruction of all norms of international law.
Operation Al-Aqsa Flood began on October 7, 2023. The act of resistance was met by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) who killed hundreds of their own people in incidents of so-called friendly fire or even the Hannibal Directive , which requires the killing of Israelis in danger of being taken captive. But the world was told only that the anti-zionist resistance were terrorists who acted out of hatred of Jewish people. Lurid and now debunked stories of mass rape and killings of children were used to generate support for Israel.
The U.S. reacted predictably with president Joe Biden even traveling to Israel in person to deliver his blank check to prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This past year has been a second Nakba, a catastrophe for the Palestinian people as the IDF have killed an estimated 186,000 people. The U.S. and its allies have been steadfast in supporting Israeli war crimes and in censoring those who are in opposition.
As the slaughter continued the international bodies that are tasked with preventing and punishing war crimes and genocide have proven themselves to be mere stooges of the United States. The International Criminal Court (ICC) is controlled by the United States and so refuses to act under its mandate and issue arrest warrants for Israeli officials. Likewise the International Court of Justice (ICJ), tasked with enforcing international law, has also proven itself to be useless. South Africa stepped up when no other nation would and charged Israel with genocide but the ICJ, like the ICC, excels only in delay and foot dragging when it should be acting as its charter demands and uphold the precepts of international law.
Although millions of people around the world have registered their outrage in mass protest, the slaughter continues. Israel acts with impunity because the United States is its enforcer and accomplice.
The United States political duopoly has outdone itself in a display of spineless servility. The Biden administration and bipartisan leadership invited Netanyahu to address congress for the fourth time and acted as if they were held hostage with endless standing ovations and applause for his every word. Presidents of Ivy League universities were set up in a congressional show trial to be made examples of. The presidents of Harvard, Columbia, and the University of Pennsylvania have all resigned their positions despite their willingness to succumb to Zionist demands. College students engaged in peaceful protest and were met with force as wealthy donors and craven administrators demanded that they be arrested, expelled, harassed, and denied employment opportunities .
The nations of the collective West have exposed themselves. Any pretense of democracy and freedom of thought or action are just shams. The weakness of the international order has been laid bare. Israel has assassinated resistance leaders with whom they claimed to be negotiating and scuttled negotiations to free the hostages it claims to care so much about.
Like bullies everywhere, Israel is emboldened by displays of weakness and gleefully targets journalists and their families for assassination, uses starvation as a weapon of war, and torture and sexual assault are quite literally celebrated and defended. All of these crimes are well documented, and are defined as war crimes by the Geneva Conventions yet they go unpunished.
Having gotten away with mass murder in Gaza, Israel turned to Lebanon as the site of ever-increasing criminality and the expansion of a war it has sought for decades. Booby traps such as the exploding pagers are also forbidden by international law, as are any methods of collective punishment of civilian populations. But without any force willing to take action the escalation continued unabated.
Israel dropped 2,000 pound bombs on apartment buildings in order to assassinate Hassan Nasrallah, daring Iran to respond and providing a pretext for destroying that country. Even worse, Netanyahu gave the orders for these attacks while in the United Nations Headquarters in New York. If the United Nations followed its charter Israel would have been expelled from that body long ago.
Israel has no fear of repercussions or consequences. Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Donald Trump have all pledged loyalty. Regardless of the election day outcome, Israel can be sure that the US president and Congress will give it free reign to do as it pleases. It is possible that Netanyahu favors Donald Trump as the next president, making Biden’s acquiescence not just criminal, but incompetent as well. It is likely that Iran’s response was expected and Israel will press for and get U.S. permission for some other act of aggression.
A presidential election will take place in just five weeks, as corporate media coverup for Biden and fail to provide any meaningful information about these crises. Millions of people are being asked to make a decision while both parties argue over which one is more supportive of Israel.
A different world must emerge after this year from hell. The United States cannot be allowed to run roughshod over humanity and bring the planet to the brink of disaster. Confronting the super power is no small task but the world’s survival depends upon it.
*Featured Image: Hassan Nasrallah, in 2015. Anwar Amro/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Margaret Kimberley is the author of Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents . You can support her work on Patreon and also find it on the Twitter , Bluesky , and Telegram platforms. She can be reached via email at .