BRATTLEBORO —
Richard Evers describes himself as "of Jewish heritage but not of faith or belief."
On Nov. 26, in The New York Times, the headline for the lead story on the front page reads, "Gaza Civilians, Under Israeli Barrage, Are Being Killed at Historic Pace."
The article goes on to state that "Israel's liberal use of very large weapons in dense urban areas, including U.S.-made 2,000-pound bombs that can flatten an apartment tower, is surprising, some experts say.
"'It's beyond anything that I've seen in my career,' said Marc Garlasco, a military adviser for the Dutch organization PAX and a former senior intelligence analyst at the Pentagon. To find a historical comparison for so many large bombs in such a small area, he said, we may 'have to go back to Vietnam, or the Second World War.'"
The article continues: "In fighting during this century, by contrast, U.S. military officials often believed that the most common American aerial bomb - a 500-pound weapon - was far too large for most targets when battling the Islamic State in urban areas like Mosul, Iraq, and Raqqa, Syria."
Think about that: American military experts determined that a 500-pound bomb "was far too large" to use in urban areas, yet Israel apparently has no compunction about dropping 2,000-pound ones on a hospital among scores (hundreds?) of other targets.
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Israel, and its American friends (including our Congressional delegation, of course), has claimed ad infinitum that the justification for use of these huge, grotesque bombs (gifted by the U.S.) is to destroy the tunnels that Hamas uses.
Yet, as Democracy Now! reported (Nov. 28), "The Intercept's Jeremy Scahill deconstructs Israel's narrative around Gaza's Al-Shifa Hospital, including unsubstantiated allegations Hamas uses tunnels under the hospital as its command center - tunnels that Israel itself built.
"'We were told that this was like a Hamas Pentagon,' says Scahill, who describes how the Israeli military's own evidence disproves its allegations that the hospital was dangerous enough to justify its siege and bombardment."
Doesn't this remind you of the phantom weapons of mass destruction that were deceptively used to justify our catastrophic invasion of Iraq in 2003?
Which leads further to the question: What the hell is up with Mossad, Israel's intelligence service, once so highly regarded?
Reader, if you're thinking to yourself, "Well, Democracy Now! and The Intercept are left-wing news outlets, I can't really trust them to be unbiased," then ask yourself if you've read or heard from any credible news source any factual evidence that the supposed Hamas command center under the hospital was actually found.
No? That's because it wasn't.
So, all those hundreds of terrified people sheltering at the hospital, including doctors, nurses and other health care workers - as well as thousands and thousands of civilians, mostly children, elsewhere in Gaza - were maimed or murdered for what? For Israel's "right to defend itself"?
No, it was for vengeance: impure, brutal, savage, horrific vengeance that dwarfs Hamas's Oct 7 attack.
Indeed, the massive bombing of Gaza, to me, bears an all-too-eerie resemblance to the allies' infamous bombing of Dresden. And then there's the threat of disease and mass starvation in a population of over two million. Starvation!
Think about that, if you're able, in this time of holiday feasting and plenty here in the happy, merry U.S.A.
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So, when our Congressional delegation eventually votes on the next, huge aid package to Israel, it's my fervent wish that they think long and hard about Israel's unspeakable war crimes that would not, of course, be remotely possible without massive military aid from the U.S.
And I would further like to pose a question to each of them: If you yourself were of Palestinian origin, instead of Jewish or Christian, would you still be so ready and willing to finance, and thus enable, this hideously destructive bombardment?
This Voices Viewpoint was submitted to The Commons.