Israel continues its phase of destruction in northern Gaza, with attacks against civilians, the blockade of humanitarian aid and the siege of the Kamal Adwan hospital. Hundreds of people have died in the last two weeks and thousands suffer from hunger, disease and forced displacement. The images showing Palestinian families walking en masse towards the south, with hardly any luggage, are compared to those of the Nakba, the mass expulsion of the Palestinian population in 1947 and 1948.
Terror in northern Gaza
United Nations agencies warn of the difficulty in delivering aid, of the obstacles imposed by Israeli forces. “This is an attempt to use hunger to displace, kill and annihilate, an attempt to erase the Palestinians and their land from history, so that Israel can completely annex Palestinian territory,” the UN rapporteur denounced this week. UN Michael Fakhri.
Some Israeli attacks are especially violent, such as the one launched a few hours ago in Beit Lahia, where at least forty people have died. In Khan Younis another bombing two days ago killed 38 Palestinians, most of them children and women. Several photographs show a row of corpses of children, mortal victims of that massacre.
This is an attempt to use hunger to displace, kill and annihilate, an attempt to erase Palestinians.
UN Rapporteur on the right to food
Israel targets 6 journalists
This week the Israeli military published the names and photographs of six Al Jazeera reporters working in Gaza, accusing them of being Hamas, which in itself carries a death threat. Hossam Shabat, one of them, has denounced that “Israel has fabricated accusations against us, the last witnesses in northern Gaza, to turn us into targets to kill.”
The International Committee to Protect Journalists, based in New York, has regretted this accusation and has recalled that it is not the first time that Israeli forces have made similar accusations against other reporters, without presenting credible evidence. For her part, the UN rapporteur, Francesca Albanese, has denounced that “these six Palestinians are among the last journalists to survive Israel’s massacre in Gaza. Declaring that they are terrorists sounds like a death sentence. “They must be protected at all costs.”
From October last year to today, Israel has killed at least 130 journalists in Gaza, the highest number in the history of all conflicts, since deaths have been recorded.
Harris has told us that the left and the pacifist forces are irrelevant and Trump tells us that he is going to corner us
Naomi Klein
Indifference to the murder of three other journalists
The principles that govern journalism are based on the defense of freedom of information and the protection of reporters, protected by international law anywhere in the world. But it seems that Palestine is not just any place in the world. The acceptance of this framework of impunity pushes towards a new scenario in which the press will be more vulnerable at a global level, with the silence and indifference of an important part of Western journalism.
Nor has the Israeli attack that killed three journalists in southern Lebanon while they slept this week caused much scandal. The three had provided their coordinates to UN peacekeepers operating in the area, but to no avail. Tel Aviv pointed out that the fatal victims worked in media outlets related to Hezbollah, as if that justified their murder.
The US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, always dedicated to the Israeli cause, was in the region again three days ago, and the press asked him about what happened: “Too many journalists’ lives have been lost,” he answered. We do not know what figure Blinken considers must be exceeded for there to be too many journalist deaths. Are seventy dead journalists too many? Or is it from a hundred? The cause that causes this “loss” does not appear in his story either. They have simply been lost.
The Israeli journalist Gideon Levy responded to the US Secretary of State in a television interview: “No, Mr. Blinken, the journalists were murdered by the Israeli Army. Their lives were not taken by God or fate, they were taken by the Israeli Army that you support, finance and arm.”
Harris has contributed to sending more military aid to Israel and has not wanted to distance herself from Biden’s policies
Gaza in the US election campaign
This fact highlighted by Levy – Washington’s great support for Israel – is the elephant in the room that conditions a good part of the US electoral campaign, now in its final stretch. Polls show a narrow margin of difference between the Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris, and the Republican Donald Trump.
Harris has not wanted to distance herself from Biden’s policies towards Israel, she has publicly supported them and, in fact, she has been an active element of them, raising support in Congress to carry out another large military aid package to Tel Aviv last year. month of April. During her time as a senator, the Democratic candidate showed strong support for Israel, opposing the intervention of the United Nations and the international courts in The Hague in Israeli issues.
A few days ago, in an interview on CNN, when journalist Anderson Cooper asked Harris what she would say to citizens who are not going to vote for her because of her position on Gaza, she responded:
“I am not going to deny the intense feelings that people have, I do not think there is anyone who, seeing the images, does not have strong feelings, and even less so those with relatives who have died, those who have been killed. But I also know that many people who worry about this also worry about the need for food prices to come down. They also worry about our democracy and about not having a president who admires dictators and is a fascist.”
Those outraged by Gaza are trapped before a vote that can prevent Trump’s victory but that means supporting a candidate who has allowed the massacres
His statement is sincere. She goes on to say that her support for Israel in Gaza is a lesser evil, because she can lower the price of food and because the alternative is Trump. The Republican candidate represents one of Harris’ greatest assets. Americans concerned about Gaza are trapped by a vote that may prevent Trump from winning but will give a boost to a candidate who has facilitated the genocide in Gaza. This is the dilemma that looms over this election and offers a graphic portrait of today’s America.
In a country with a very marked bipartisanship, the two major options – Republicans and Democrats – have been allowing the illegal Israeli occupation, the segregation of the Palestinian population, the massacres in Gaza since 2006 and now the genocide for decades. Both receive large donations from pro-Israel lobbies, in a democracy highly conditioned by the corporations that finance the two major parties. Republicans have supported sending US military aid to the Israeli Army in recent months – and years – and Trump boasts of having a close relationship with Netanyahu, to whom this week he told “do what you have to do.”
There are other candidates who will obtain very low percentages of support at the polls, but who could make Harris lose votes in key states. Some, like Jill Stein -of the Green Party- or Cornel West -independent-, denounce the active support of the US for Israel and call for an arms embargo.
US democracy is greatly conditioned by corporations that donate money to parties
In the February Democratic primaries, the Uncompromised National Movement, integrated into the party’s grassroots, obtained more than 700,000 votes nationwide. Its members asked Biden – and now Harris – for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and an arms embargo on Israel. Their demands have not been heard. In fact, at the National Congress of the Democratic Party this summer the only voices banned were Palestinians, and those of the members of this movement. Harris’ contempt for those sectors will lead some of those voters to abstain or to other options.
Michigan, one of the decisive states in these elections, has a significant percentage of Arab and Muslim population. There the Gaza massacre will mark the direction of the vote of some citizens. The Democratic mayor of Dearborn, the first American city with an Arab majority, announced this week that he will not ask for support for any candidate:
“I am not going to support anyone, not even the candidate of my party (…) Let everyone vote according to their moral conscience. When we see the genocide, many faces that appear there in Gaza are not unknown to us in Dearborn, they are our family and our friends. That is why I have taken this position.”
Try to win without the bases
Harris has placed her speech in search of the centrist and Republican vote, to the point that she has obtained the support of former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney, one of the great promoters of the illegal invasion of Iraq. The writer Naomi Klein, in an interview on Democracy Now, explained this week the dilemma that arises for voters who understand the dimension of what is happening in Gaza:
“I think Harris is running an extremely risky and dangerous campaign, because she is trying to win without the base. And it’s sending a message to those bases: ‘Sorry, I’m more interested in Liz Cheney and Dick Cheney and getting Republican votes than I am in listening to the Palestinians, the Muslims, the Arabs, the left in general, the pacifist forces’. She has told us that we are irrelevant and Trump tells us that he is going to corner us. Nobody would want these elections, but we have to be smart.”
This is the electoral framework in the US in 2024. Whoever wins, the White House will have a president who will have contributed to facilitating the illegal Israeli occupation and the massacres in Gaza.
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