It was a jarring spectacle to those horrified by the carnage in Gaza. The attention of a nation was focused on a very large ball game while the bombs dropped unabated in a place called Rafah. This southern Gaza city is swollen with Palestinians that have been funneled there as a place of refuge. A million and a half individuals are trapped in this area, and have been relentlessly targeted by Israeli bombing campaigns. There’s simply no place else for them to go now. Israel has succeeded in moving Palestinians south of any planned area that could be used for the Ben Gurion canal project and has effectively created a fish-in-a-barrel situation. With ease and at their leisure they can pick off remaining Palestinians, or even allow time, hunger, and disease to do the clean-up work for them. All the while, photographic evidence of slaughtered and mutilated children shows up on the feeds of all who care to bear witness in between surreal Hunger Games-looking elites yucking it up at the big game.
The murder of so many children has certainly marked the souls of those who have perpetrated such atrocities, not the least of which is one Joseph Biden, self-proclaimed Zionist and the number one recipient of over five million dollars in Israeli lobbyist “support”. It’s not even close, his lone perch at the top heap of dead Palestinian bodies…..the next closest recipients being Robert Menendez, Hillary Clinton, and Mark Kirk (who topped out only in the two-three million range). How much does it cost to do the mental gymnastics to allow for genocide? For those trash humans, there are the above amounts.
To add to the unreal quality of the Super Bowl, Israel was allowed to run an ad for themselves, all the while the bombs dropped, flinging that horrendously imprinting image shared by photographer Ezzedine Al-Muasher of a limbless girl dangling out of a window. But this horrific image is one of hundreds, if not thousands in circulation. Those who care and want a free Palestine force themselves to witness such things because the world doesn’t believe without the proof (and sometimes not even then) but all the while not a single one of us will look at children the same way ever again, without seeing in our mind’s eye those lost to such ghoulish violence. It seems disrespectful to not see them, as if the dead scream “know me and what was done to me– do not look away”. It is a more difficult path in life to see the darkness but to not see it is to become the darkness.
If nothing else, most cultures do not approve of the wanton slaughter of innocents. The times in the past that this has occurred–the eye of history has looked back with horror and disgust. But this current genocide is being viewed by all of us, in real time, yet Israeli officials brazenly make excuses about civilian targeting—this despite multiple videos of snipers taking out individuals clearly doing things like just going for water or attempting to aid an injured person. Trying to cross a street: HAMAS! Trying to get water? HAMAS! Just not wanting to be occupied and murdered……yep, Hamas! At what point is it even so hard to figure out why a portion of the occupied people would want to be….Hamas? If it wasn’t Hamas, it would be some other militant group in defiance. People don’t want to be kettled, occupied and murdered. Actually I think that’s the recipe to use if you want to get a group to hate you with a clear and defined rage. What would the “founding fathers” of the United States be called if they lost? And they were mainly pissed for taxes and other economic reasons, not for living in a clear apartheid state!
I witnessed an interview with an Israeli apologist being asked about the murder of little Hind Rajab. For those not aware, this six-year-old was trapped in a car with dead relatives after their vehicle was attacked. She had the presence of mind to call, while wounded, for help. She thought those in the car with her were “sleeping”. The kind soul on the other end encouraged her to just let them sleep. When the Red Crescent ambulance arrived to help the little girl, they were attacked and killed. The sad scene found days later with Hind dead……one can only imagine the terror of her passing– cold, scared and in pain. This is a work of evil to do this to a child. The interviewee did the usual….oh maybe the ambulance workers were Hamas. Sure. I assume six-year-old Hind was Hamas too. I think at this point maybe even the pope is Hamas. I know I would be included in Hamas for not being thrilled to see slaughtered innocents. It’s lost all meaning, which is exactly what it was designed to do, this mangling of semantics and bodies.
This “everything is Hamas” has been the go-to reason for the willful slaughter of apologists. One wonders how this mentality would work in the United States—that is, when a criminal is in a vicinity, all nearby must be killed? How would that have worked at the ill-fated Chiefs celebration parade in Kansas City? To use Israeli governmental logic, the entire parade should have been attacked and all there killed in an attempt to liquidate the shooters at that event. It’s ludicrous, but the numbers probably about match up with what is going on in Gaza…. get a couple of militants and kill thousands in the process. But of course we know it isn’t about getting Hamas. It’s about wiping out as much of the Palestinian public as possible and the disproportionate number of child victims is no accident.
They are the future and Israel wants to wipe the possibility of a Palestinian future off the map.
This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Kathleen Wallace.
Kathleen Wallace | Radio Free (2024-02-16T06:57:14+00:00) The Savage and the Spectacle. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2024/02/16/the-savage-and-the-spectacle/
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