Netanyahu: Genocide in the White House

It’s February, 1941. Pres. Charles Lindbergh has been in office one month, after defeating Franklin Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential election.  Known for his isolationist, America First foreign policy, he’s moved from advocating neutrality in the conflict raging in Europe, to a more decidedly pro-German stance.  In fact, he’s invited the Nazi leader, Adolph Hitler to the White House to discuss a role the new president might play in negotiating a truce between the parties to the conflict.

US intelligence has warned the president that based on communications intercepts and HUMINT intelligence sources, Hitler has set in motion a massive plan to expel or exterminate the European Jews in countries he has occupied.  Lindbergh, caught up in a wave of nativist anti-Semitism, shares Hitler’s distaste for Jews and seeks to discuss the German approach, believing it might be a model for dealing with the massive influx of Jewish immigrants to the US from central and eastern Europe.

Lindbergh discounts the intelligence reports.  He doesn’t believe Hitler’s plan, even if it were genuine, would be practicable.  There is no technical ability developed to dispose of so many.  Besides, he believes that international pressure might not only stop implementation, but damage Germany’s reputation irreparably. Not to mention that Hitler himself has denied any such intention.  The president believes him to be sincere.

Lindbergh invites Hitler to the White House, a remarkable coup for the German leader, who’s been treated as a pariah in most of Europe. In doing so, he ties himself and America to a rising star in the ascendant world fascist movement.

Fast forward to Monday, April 7th. Pres. Trump has issued an invitation for Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House, where he will be feted with an official state visit.  It will be his 19th trip to the US since his first term as prime minister. Most of them were either state visits or discussions with senior administration officials.

Despite charges of genocide in Gaza and an ICC arrest warrant; despite the IDF summary execution of Palestinian emergency personnel on a rescue mission in Gaza; despite Netanyahu’s multiple looming corruption charges; despite his scandalous legislative proposals to destroy Israeli democracy–Trump will clap him on the back as a fellow-fascist leader in a world teeming with them.

Leaders of the Democratic opposition won’t raise a whisper against the visit.  After all, many of their candidates rely on the largess of pro-Israel billionaires to fund their campaigns.  Not even fierce critics like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Bernie Sanders have raised their voices against this moral schandeh.

In retrospect, a visit to the White House by Adolph Hitler seems preposterous.  While a similar visit tomorrow of a leader engaged in genocide to the seat of American power is a nonevent.  How times have changed. How we’ve normalized genocide; despite the international bodies created in the aftermath of the Holocaust to prevent such catastrophes and hold perpetrators accountable.

Eleanor Roosevelt, who was a key figure in creating the United Nations and International Criminal Court, seems a fleeting and distant memory.  Her vision of a community of nations governed by a rules based order lies tattered on the ground.  The country which championed the post-WWII institutions has not only flouted them; it has proudly embraced the type of genocidal leaders whom it once tried and executed  for crimes against humanity.

IDF summarily executes Gaza emergency medical workers

Despite the world’s understandable horror in the face of Israeli genocide in Gaza, it’s easy to overlook the 80-year history of Israeli mass murder and race hatred which foreshadowed today’s crimes.  We are justifiably outraged at the summary execution of 15 Palestinian emergency medical workers by IDF murderers in uniform.

But they are not unique events.  No one, especially not liberal Zionists, who’ve denied such crimes were possible given Israel’s “democratic,” “humane” values, can ignore that the seeds of such crimes against humanity were planted in the soil of Zionism from its inception: the Nakba, Mossad assassinations, the biological weapons attacks, ethnic cleansing, land theft.  All are part and parcel of the ideology that underpins the Israeli state.

Israel has committed wanton slaughter so many thousands of times in Gaza, the horror has become normalized.  Every day brings yet another desecration of the human spirit.  Yet one of the latest is particularly heinous.  Last week, Palestinian emergency vehicles including an ambulance and fire truck with lights flashing were ambushed by an IDF unit which fired hundreds of bullets at the convoy.  But they didn’t kill all 15 of the medical personnel initially.  They were captured, their hands tied, and bullets fired point blank, execution-style.

Then, the unit called in army bulldozers which tossed the corpses into a ditch and even buried all the vehicles, as if to try to erase the evidence.  When UN personnel began to inquire about the missing aid workers, the IDF professed no knowledge of them.  Only a week later did it reveal the location. Remarkably, they permitted Palestinians to excavate and remove the bodies without killing them as well.

At first, the IDF claimed its troops believed the vehicles to be potential terrorists. It added that their headlights and emergency flashers were turned off.  All of this was a lie, of course; disproved by a phone video recorded by one of the victims and retrieved from his grave.  It shows the vehicles under attack despite flashing emergency lights and headlights and disproves the army account.

Now, faced with video evidence (the only thing which ever forces the IDF to come clean about its crimes and tell something resembling to the truth), it admits there was “a mistake.”  As if the execution of 15 human beings is merely a mistake.  Yet still the IDF continues its lies, claiming six of those murdered had terrorist ties.  It never offers any proof for such charges.  It merely throws them up on the wall hoping they’ll stick like a strand of spaghetti.

Israel has become an obscenity.  Now, a war criminal with the blood of babies dripping from his fingers, will enter the White House as an esteemed guest of one of the most corrupt, vile presidents in US history. What have we have all done, what has the human race done to deserve this?

The murdered Palestinian medical personnel worked for the Palestinian Red Crescent. Please make a donation to support their work and proclaim to the world that we are not to be defined by this criminality.