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Unveiling a Genocide

This Washington Report issue spotlights many of the attempts by Israel and its supporters to muzzle free speech and ban critical reporting on Gaza. As we go to press, more than seven months into Israel’s war on Gaza, vast swathes of Gaza are in ruins and Israel is pummeling Rafah, forcing refugees who fled there for safety to move their tents once again. No aid is entering Gaza from the Israelicontrolled Kerem Shalom crossing and on May 7 Israel closed the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and southern Gaza, preventing vital deliveries of food, clean water, medicine and fuel from entering the Strip. The humanitarian crisis has become a genocidal famine.

A woman holding a little girl searches for safety after Israeli airstrikes hit her Radwan neighborhood in Gaza City, on Oct. 23, 2023, the 17th day of Israel’s punishing attacks on Gaza. Ali Jadallah’s iconic photo captures the horror of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and inspired this issue’s cover.

South Africa Calls for an End to Genocide

Joined by Egypt and Türkiye, South Africa returned on May 16 to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague to demand Israel immediately withdraw and cease its military offensive in Rafah. In addition, South Africa called on Israel to “immediately take all effective measures to ensure and facilitate the unimpeded access to Gaza of United Nations and other officials engaged in the provision of humanitarian aid and assistance to the population of Gaza, as well as fact-finding missions, internationally mandated bodies or officials, investigators and journalists, in order to assess and record conditions on the ground in Gaza and enable the effective preservation and retention of evidence, and shall ensure that its military does not act to prevent such access, provision, preservation or retention.”

Israel Is Bulldozing Evidence of War Crimes

Vaughan Lowe, a British barrister and academic specializing in the field of international law, told the ICJ: “The key point today is that Israel’s declared aim of wiping Gaza from the map is about to be realized. Further, evidence of appalling crimes and atrocities is literally being destroyed and bulldozed, in effect wiping the slate clean for those who have committed these crimes and making a mockery of justice. The Court is not powerless, and South Africa submits, with respect, that it must do something to assert not only its own authority but the authority of international law.”

Gaza’s Impact on U.S. Elections

The ugly truth is that U.S. leaders concerned only with the 2024 elections are flouting international law and thwarting justice at every turn. Their craven decisions to starve Palestinians and send even more military weaponry to Israel will be remembered in history and will actually cost them the votes of Arab, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Black, young people and other pro-Palestinian Americans in the upcoming elections.

It’s the Money...

That makes our leaders defy the wishes of a growing number of constituents and at times verge into outright hostility to Palestinians and anti-Muslim bigotry. It’s because one-issue top billionaire donors like media mogul Haim Saban, mobile gaming pioneer Mark Pincus and LinkedIn co-founder and venture capitalist Reid Hoffman are pouring money into our leaders’ campaigns. See pp. 28-35 for a look at the money candi- dates reported to the Federal Election Commission by April 22, 2024. Dark money spent on party building, advertising and issue advocacy is unregulated but by looking at these charts, voters can surmise which candidates for public office are supported by pro-Israel donors. You can follow that money to see who is defending Israel vs who is defending the First Amendment (see p. 36-37).

Student Uprisings

When it’s money that controls the foreign policy crafted by our leaders, not to mention corporate media (see pp. 8-9), it can come as no surprise that students (pp. 1218) built encampments at their universities and protesters around the world (pp. 45-47) are taking to the streets to protest Israel’s genocide. Like Palestinians for the past 76 years, demonstrators are feeling silenced, ignored and disregarded. And we’re tired of our voices being “on mute,” like the woman in the mural on our cover, whose cry for help is not heard or is ignored in the West. We refuse to be used like a human shield for Israeli war crimes. As we send this issue to the printer, the last lines from a poem by Dylan Thomas inspire us: “Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” And like the students who have rekindled hope for peace in Palestinian hearts, as well as multiple generations of activists around the world, we will wear our keffiyehs when we vote and everywhere else as we go about our lives until Palestinians can live in peace and dignity.

Please double down and support the nonprofits which are trying to stop a genocide in Gaza. This magazine, as well as other alternative media, websites, TikTok and, in fact, the entire Internet are all under attack by our own government’s use of McCarthy era tactics. Keep contributing your talented voices to the cause, donating to the Washington Report, shopping at Middle East Books and More, reading and raging to...

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Executive Editor: DELINDA C. HANLEY

Managing Editor: DALE SPRUSANSKY

Senior Editor: IDA AUDEH

Other Voices Editor: JANET McMAHON

Middle East Books and More Director: NATHANIEL BAILEY

Middle East Books and More Asst. Dir.: JACK MCGRATH

Finance & Admin. Dir.: CHARLES R. CARTER

Art Director: RALPH UWE SCHERER

Founding Publisher: ANDREW I. KILLGORE (1919-2016)

Founding Exec. Editor: RICHARD H. CURTISS (1927-2013)

Board of Directors: HENRIETTA FANNER

JANET McMAHON

JANE KILLGORE

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What The Destruction Of Tents Says About Our Leaders

Corporate-owned television has shown us the recent breakup of the student encampments on our nation’s colleges and universities for protesting the ongoing genocide in Gaza by the state of Israel.

Here’s a question: Are the tents the problem, or is the problem that 2,000pound bombs—supplied with billions of our U.S. tax dollars—are being used to eradicate Palestinians?

Over 35,000 Palestinians have been killed, some 70 percent women and children. Over 70,000 have been wounded, some requiring amputations without anesthesia. Their homes have been reduced to rubble with our U.S. bombs. They have been driven south to Rafah where some 1.5 million people are on the brink of starvation and living in tents. Even there, they are being attacked.

Tents, in general, seem to be despised by those in power. We have seen city after city destroy homeless encampments. Are the homeless the problem, or are our priorities as a government screwed up? We spend billions on wars, but we don’t have enough money to provide drug, alcohol and mental health services. Having a home should be a human right, unfortunately we point to their tents as a problem.

The attacks on students and the homeless are merely a reflection of our priorities as a society.

Laurent F. Gilbert, Sr., The Villages, FL

Israel Targets Journalists To Hide Its Atrocities

Israel is apparently ashamed of what it is doing, and rightly so. “Israel is killing Palestinian journalists, banning foreign media [most notably Al Jazeera] from reporting on Gaza—and losing credibility,” columnist Rami G. Khouri recently noted.

“For the past six months, Israel has put a lot of effort into covering up its genocidal crimes in Gaza,” he continued. “One of the most brutal ways it does this is by routinely threatening, targeting and assassinating Palestinian journalists.”

The Committee to Protect Journalists has reported that at least 100 Palestinian journalists have been killed since Oct. 7, alongside two Israelis and three Lebanese. This is the highest death toll of journalists in any modern conflict that the organization has monitored. Palestinian journalists have also been detained by Israeli forces.

With tens of thousands killed by Israel in Gaza, it’s no wonder they are trying to limit the world’s access to news from Palestinians.

Doris Rausch, Tullahoma, TN

Israel Has Defeated Itself

Despite the killing of Gazans, despite efforts to label all Palestinians as Hamas, despite 75 years of occupying and oppressing the indigenous people, Israel has finally failed. It’s been defeated by too many lies, too many distortions, too much land being stolen, too much destruction of olive trees, too much denial of justice, too much imprisonment of children without charges, too much abject blind support from the United States, too much blood-spilling of innocents and too many young people worldwide unwilling to ignore an ongoing genocide.

Israel is defeated. Its right-wing, extremist, Zionist government has laid bare its cruelty, its ugliness, its vengeance for all the world to see. It has forgotten and ignored the Judaic and Islamic values of justice, peace, compassion and mercy. Now it is doomed as a pariah nation state unless it does what it should have done in 1948, or in 1967—create a secular democracy in which all citizens are equal under the law, whether it is called Israeli Palestine or Palestinian Israel. Because it has chosen death for decades, now it must suffer to choose life. This will save not just Palestinian lives, but Israeli Jews as well.

Dan Callaghan, New Port Richey, FL

From a strictly emotional point of view, the article by Abubaker Abed in last issue’s “Other Voices” supplement about a Gazan gravedigger, “Abu Jawad’s Heart Breaks Daily as He Buries the People Killed by Israel,” was especially moving. It made plain the tragic consequences of Israel’s indiscriminate bombing campaign. There’s obviously no effort being made to avoid civilian casualties. Heck, the Israelis don’t even contend they are carrying out so-called surgical strikes.

Two articles I also found particularly informative and useful: Jack McGrath’s “How Biden Uses Loopholes, Courts and Congress to Arm Israel's Genocide,” and Bruce Fein’s “Sacred Constitutional Rights Like Politically Motivated Boycotts Can't Be Surrendered.” The piece on “Cultural Heritage Under Attack in Gaza” by Ida Audeh also made for informative reading.

As I’ve written before, here in Western Europe there is so much angst about anti-Semitism and eternal feelings of guilt about the Holocaust. Consequently, the news is abysmally one-sided. Worse yet, in Germany and elsewhere, the authorities rush to prevent any expression of solidarity with the Palestinians—to the point of even cancelling art exhibits or speaking engagements that feature Jewish and Israeli personalities, artists, writers and dramatists who express sympathy for the Palestinians. Despite all the grief they endure, Europeans of conscience nevertheless are continuing to demonstrate and protest.

To give you an example from Luxembourg, the national newspaper printed a full-page article one month ago in which the author claimed anti-Semitism is rampant in Luxembourg because everyone to the left of Attila the Hun wants to see a ceasefire enacted and steps taken toward the long-awaited two-state solution. The guy’s claims were ludicrous.

George Aldridge, Bissen, Luxembourg

CANADA STANDS BY THE U.S. IN ITS SUPPORT OF GENOCIDE

Bob Rae, Canada’s United Nations ambassador, recently stated that “the ulti-

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Send your letters to the editor to the Washington Report, P.O. Box 53062, Washington, DC 20009 or e-mail <letters@wrmea.org>.

mate responsibility for the conduct of the [Gaza] war lies with the parties who are fighting.” In so stating, Rae, a former Rhodes Scholar, ignores the United States’ pivotal role in providing Israel with weapons, money and diplomatic support. Of course, Rae’s rhetoric reflects official Canada’s deference to U.S. Middle East policy.

The U.S. facilitates Israel’s indifference to international law on the matter of territorial seizure, occupation, settlement and resource extraction in the occupied Palestinian territories and the Syrian Golan Heights. Therefore, all Palestinian negotiators face the combined force of the U.S. and Israel, who together reserve the right to define peace.

A bolder Rae might highlight the lost promise of the 2002 Arab League Peace Initiative. This proposal from the major Arab states offered the “establishment of normal relations in the context of a comprehensive peace with Israel in return for the…full Israeli withdrawal from all the Arab territories occupied since June 1967, in implementation of Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338.”

It seems that Bob Rae and Canada’s government remain willing to pretend that the so-called peace process is something other than Israel’s cynical delaying tactic designed to annex all valuable Palestinian territory.

Under the circumstances, why should Palestinians meekly accept Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and believe that these and future settlements are not part of an established Israeli policy of isolation and incremental annexation?

Perhaps Bob Rae might consider the notion that a bi-national state in Palestine with equal rights for Jews, Muslims, Christians and others is the only fair arrangement. In fact, it is probably inevitable.

Morgan Duchesney, Ottawa, Canada ■

OTHER VOICES is an optional 16-page supplement available only to subscribers of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. For an additional $15 per year (see postcard insert for Washington Report subscription rates), subscribers will receive Other Voices inside each issue of their Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. Back issues of both publications are available. To subscribe, telephone (800) 607-4410, e-mail <circulation@wrmea. org>, or write to P.O. Box 292380, Kettering, OH 45429.