The fix was in from the get-go.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/judge-tosses-trump-documents-case-135928486.html
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| President Joe Biden...to be or not to be |
Okay, let me preface any
further remarks with this: As long as the Republicans’ opposition candidate to
the incumbent president remains Donald J. Trump—court-confirmed sexual predator,
thirty-four-count felon, and the man who sought to overthrow the government and
remain in power as an ad hoc ruler—the only option open to anyone who gives a
damn about the future of American democracy will be the man or woman running
against him. The salient point of this upcoming election isn’t a choice between
candidates. It is a choice between democracy and authoritarian rule. (I defy
you to read Project 2025—aka Agenda 47—and tell me I’m wrong).
For any true patriot, any
person who cares about preserving the two-and-a-half-century democratic
traditions of the United States of America, Donald Trump is simply not a viable
alternative. On the contrary, he is a clear and present danger to American
democracy. If you don’t believe me, read Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, or watch the excellent TV series of the same
name, and then read the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. Atwood couldn’t
have written Agenda 47 better (or worse, as it were). In fact, it’s almost as
if the Heritage Foundation had used Atwood’s novel as a blueprint for the kind
of dystopian, post-democratic world they wish to create.
These are all questions
I’ve been asking myself as well. There are many, myself included, who are being
perceived as attacking the president over his disastrous debate performance, when
what we are instead asking is if the president was in the shape he was in, why
on earth did his campaign team, his closest aides, and indeed the first lady,
not say he was too ill to go on, and simply cancel or postpone the event?
Putting the party’s campaign ahead of the president’s health and welfare is
precisely how we got into this mess in the first place, and it has been a
disservice to both the president and to the Democratic presidential campaign. So
it is the campaign and the party that are to blame. Not the president, who,
through no fault of his own, was in no condition to totter out onto that stage.
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| Documentary filmmaker Michael Moore |
The NATO allies view with
horror a second Trump presidency. It nearly sank NATO the first time around,
and now after three and a half years of working with Biden to rebuild that
seventy-five-year-old alliance that Trump so undermined, they hear the former
president saying that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin should do “whatever the
hell he wants to” in Ukraine. European leaders don’t believe Putin will stop
with Ukraine. So hearing that, they can only see Trump 2.0 as not only a threat
to American democracy, but to a free and democratic Europe as well.
In that sense, President
Biden made a miraculous comeback from the debate episode when he this past week
hosted the annual NATO conference, this time in Washington. By all accounts,
the president was on his game, greeting world leaders, holding talks on
Ukraine, and handling other weighty topics with knowledge and aplomb. This was
President Biden in his element, since there has probably been no other
president in living memory with such an intimate working knowledge of
international affairs. But even at his current best, there was a glaring
disconnect when he spoke of the courage of Ukraine’s President Volodymyr
Zelensky in resisting Russian invasion, and then introduced him to the
conference as “President Putin”.
I watched the president’s
post-NATO summit press conference last evening. As I did, I think I probably
felt like many other viewers who have long admired President Biden, based on
his half-century in government and lawmaking, and think of him as the leader
who stopped Donald Trump and saved American democracy from dissolution. That is
to say, I found myself agitated and sitting on the edge of my seat, hoping with
all my heart that he would be able to show the country and the world that the
issues that affected him at the debate were merely the product of overwork and
exhaustion, not of any permanent cognitive failing.
The other feeling that I
had was one of growing irritation that the president was having to field
question after question regarding his fitness to continue serving for another
four years, when the man he is running against is a morally bankrupt, grossly
perverse, criminally unfit insurrectionist with a now well-documented
authoritarian agenda for the future of the United States. I was thinking that
President Biden was doing well, sounding strong and confident, despite knowing
that his debate performance has placed him under a magnifying glass.
The president worked so
hard to allay all of the concerns that have swirled about him since the debate,
and did such a good job at it, that there was a moment when I asked myself if
we hadn’t all just panicked and made a mountain out of a molehill. But then it
happened. In answer to a query about whether he was confident in Vice President
Harris’s ability to lead the country if, for some reason, he couldn’t.
"Look,” the president responded, “I wouldn't have picked Vice President
Trump to be vice president if she was not qualified to be president.”
Perhaps this gaffe
wouldn’t have been quite as noticeable if it hadn’t followed another
crossed-wire incident earlier in the week. I’m referring to when, in an
interview with Philadelphia-based WURD Radio anchor Andrea Lawful-Sanders the
president said, “By the way, I’m proud to be, as I said, the first vice
president, first black woman, to serve with a black president.” Obviously, he
meant that he had been the VP of the first black president and that he was the
first president to appoint a black woman as his running mate and vice
president. But it came out as a brain salad.
Leaving that aspect aside
for a moment, however, those of us who are capable of looking at this from a
human as well as political viewpoint are heartbroken to see how a man with an
admirable and uncommon half-century political career, who preceded his own term
in the Oval Office with an eight-year stint as vice president to one of the
most popular leaders in US history, is being politically manhandled, humiliated
and raked over the coals, essentially, for being unwell, instead of being
placed under the care of the elite teams of physicians that, as president, he
has at his disposal.
Unfortunately, these
meltdowns didn’t take place in the privacy of President Biden’s own home in
Wilmington, Delaware. They happened in the homes of many millions of Americans.
And no one with any experience in these matters believes that his shocking
debate performance was a one-off, or “a bad night”, as the campaign is spinning
it. Rather, to anyone who has known someone who has suffered through such old-age
problems is bound to feel that it is likely only one in a series of frightening
moments.
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| Bernie Sanders |
Like Moore, I don’t
believe age alone is a disqualifying factor. There are people whose mental
acuity and physical resilience continue to be more than acceptable at the
president’s age. For instance, anyone seeing and hearing Vermont’s Independent
Senator Bernie Sanders—Biden’s most successful liberal contender for the
presidency and later staunch supporter—would still have trouble making a case
that he is too old to remain in politics, despite the fact that he is eighty-two.
But by the time one reaches, as I myself have, one’s mid to late seventies,
continuing to function like a well-oil machine becomes less and less of a
certainty. It becomes the thing you fear.
Still, there are
incredible cases, like that of renowned linguist, philosopher, sociologist and
democratic activist Noam Chomsky who, at least until a very recent stroke,
continued to have one of the most brilliant minds in America, even into his
nineties. I’m thinking too of renowned newsman Robert Cox, the man who was my
mentor when I started out in journalism fifty years ago this year, and who, at
a lucid ninety, continues to travel internationally and to accept public
speaking engagements and TV interviews in his second language. But these tend
to be admirable and enviable exceptions to the rule.
While some people close
to President Biden, including First Lady Jill Biden, might see as traitors the—up
to now—seventeen Democrat members of Congress who have openly asked the
president to step down, or other highly influential Democrats like former
President Barack Obama or retired House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who are
reportedly discussing the issue in private. But they are not. Most of them have
both the well-being of the president and the well-being of the nation in mind.
In the end, the most
patriotic mission that the president has right now is to ensure that Donald
Trump never again sets foot in the White House. And if that means stepping down
and handing over the mantel to a more viable candidate, then that is clearly
what he needs to do.
The outcome of the debate
was a huge win for former president and convicted felon Donald Trump’s blindly
loyal base—the Trump or die cult. But it left independents twisting in the wind
and Democrats in a state of shock. Joe Biden, the savvy career politician with
a half-century trajectory, twelve years in the vice-presidency and presidency,
and a well-earned level of respect in Washington, appeared frail, confused, and
at times at a complete loss. It was clear that his train of thought was
consistently broken and he appeared uncomfortable and ill.
The lame excuse of
President Biden’s closest collaborators was that he “had a cold”. It was also
later reported that he had been tested for COVID. But the responsible response
to this is that, if the president was sick enough to be weak, fevered and
disoriented, then the debate should have been postponed or called off. He,
octogenarian that he is, should have been home in bed. Failing that, if he was “good
to go”, then a cold is no excuse for the horrifying performance that he put in.
He is, after all, the president of the United States, and it is utterly
ludicrous and disingenuous to cite “a cold” as justification for what was, by
all accounts, the political train wreck that was his delivery during the
ninety-minute debate.
Former President Trump,
meanwhile, appeared well-coached, and physically strong. But there were no
pleasant surprises in his performance either. He was as unrepentant as ever
about the January Sixth Insurrection. He failed to commit to accepting the
results of a free and fair election. He repeated lies about widespread fraud in
the 2020 election that he lost, and contended that felony convictions and criminal
charges remaining against him were part of a political witch-hunt orchestrated
by Biden’s administration to keep him from running.
Overall, fact-checkers
were able to demonstrate that Trump told thirty lies over the course of the
event, which works out to about a lie every minute and a half, since only half
the time was his. In other words, the former president lied just about every
time he opened his mouth.
But what seemed most
alarming was that the current president was incapable of a coherent comeback
against any of those lies. President Biden’s first answers to questions from impeccable
moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash were halting and confused and given in a
hoarse murmur. It was painful to watch, especially for anyone who likes the
president and considers him a decent man and a sound statesman.
The entire debate was, in
fact, a bit like seeing your favorite fighter caught off-guard by a stunning blow
in the first round, kissing the canvas, managing to struggle to his feet before
the count of ten, but never fully recovering for the rest of the twelve rounds.
He might manage to stay on his feet, with knees wobbling, for the entire bout,
but throughout the twelve rounds, you tensely watch him teetering on the brink,
fighting desperately on the defensive, and you know that one well-placed glove
to the head or liver will lay him low for good. Even though, after he struggles
through to go the distance and the other fighter has to win on points, you can’t
feel okay about the outcome. You have to ask yourself if it isn’t time for your
one-time champ to step down from the ring and retire with dignity.
And that was precisely
what happened to even Biden’s most avid fans—like The New York Times editorial board, which advised that “to serve
his country, President Biden should leave the race.” Earlier, one of Biden’s
staunchest supporters, columnist Thomas Friedman, also of The New York Times, told Biden in an opinion piece that it was time
for him to step aside. Said Friedman, “Joe Biden, a good man and a good
president, has no business running for re-election.”
Friedman described
himself as a friend of Joe Biden’s. Indeed, he has long been known as a Biden
confidant. He said he had watched the debate alone, “and it made me weep.” I
too watched the debate alone, and although President Biden doesn’t know me from
Adam, his performance made me feel the same way. Seeing the one-time firebrand
who, back in the day, was criticized in Congress for being too young and too brash,
or the later experienced statesman brokering across-the-aisle deals that led to
some epic legislation, it was heart-rending to watch him mutter, stammer and
struggle to recall what he was talking about.
While Friedman, specifically,
and The New York Times as an
institution couldn’t have been blunter, there is a very real problem with that
advice. It comes extremely late in the game—perhaps too late. So does that of so many Democrat politicians, who flew
into a panic last Thursday after (during) the debate. More irresponsible still
is the inner circle of Biden’s administration and campaign, as well as
Democratic members of Congress who have been dealing with the president for the
past three and a half years, and who also knew him for decades before that as
vice-president and as a high-profile senator. While they might have sought to
convince the public that the president’s mind was as sharp as it had ever been,
they can’t have helped but notice in private government and diplomatic dealings
with him that he had grown elderly and that his health, both mental and physical,
was failing him.
In short, the time to
tell the president that he should refrain from standing for a second term would
have been midway through this one, when it started to become apparent, even to
those of us who tried hard to believe that it wasn’t, that the president’s
capacity to continue to lead the country for another four years was fading
fast. This is especially true because the possible need to replace the
president should have been obvious to his inner circle from the outset,
considering his advanced age, and contingency plans should have been quietly
created. That would have been an act of political realism considering that the
average life expectancy for males in the US is slightly under seventy-five
years, and the stark truth is that those of us who have reached that point in life
are, therefore, living on borrowed time. It is also an awful truth that while
many elderly people remain lucid to the end, a large percentage do not. And
when someone is in a position of worldwide power, as is anyone holding the
office of president of the United States, that is, indeed, something that must
be taken into account.
Does that mean that there
should be a cutoff age for presidential candidates? No. But it does mean that
the inner circle and campaign managers of those who run in their “golden years”
need to be aware of the increased inherent risks and have plans to deal with
them. It’s clear that this has not been the case with the Democratic hierarchy.
Is it too late for something
to be done to save the Democratic election campaign from the aftermath of the
debate debacle? Maybe not, but if not, just barely. For the Democrats, there
are only two choices. One, get the president to immediately say that he will
not be the candidate this November so that another candidate can be chosen and
promoted, or, go on as planned, campaigning hard on the premise of democracy.
Considering his criminally
seditious behavior under his first presidency, it is clear to any realist that
Donald Trump poses an imminent and existential threat to American democracy,
one that would only be heightened in a second term, when he would, literally,
have nothing to lose. And in the post-debate public perception of far too many
Americans, that might be the sole reason to continue to plan to vote for the
incumbent—namely, to deny an autocrat who sought to overthrow democracy a
second bite at the apple.
If the president were to
announce right now that he is stepping down, it could—though not certainly
would, depending on how it’s handled—have an unexpectedly positive influence on
Democratic election results. Clearly, polls tend to show that the vast majority
of Americans are incensed about once again having to choose between Trump and
Biden, neither of whom, they feel, is fit for office—President Biden because of
his age and mental health, Trump because of his immorality, seditious nature
and criminal behavior. The right Democratic candidate could well spark new enthusiasm
and optimism among Democrats and Independents alike.
It’s not like the
Democrats have no choice. They have several, all sound politicians and honest
potential candidates. Vice-President Kamala Harris, California Governor Gavin
Newsom, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar
all spring to mind. But the fact that we are now just four months away from the
general election makes it imperative that any decision to change horses
midstream be made with the greatest of celerity, and that the positive momentum
of doing so be exploited to the maximum.
For that to happen,
President Biden, in the spirit of service to the United States that has carried
him through his half-century of government, should listen to Tom Friedman and
other friends who are wisely encouraging him to step aside. Otherwise, this
November, in perhaps the most consequential election in history, Americans will
be confronted with a disheartening binary choice—between decency or
criminality, between democracy or autocracy, and the end of the traditions that
have set the US apart for the past two and a half centuries.
I should be clear here
that, when I refer to Israel, I am not talking about Israelis as a whole, but
rather, about the extreme right-wing government of Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi”
Netanyahu. Indeed, for a combination of reasons that range from the strictly
humanitarian to the purely political—such as the sagacious argument that
Netanyahu’s brutal policies are creating
more terrorists than they are destroying—the prime minister and his
administration are facing ever-increasing and expanding internal protests and
unrest.
 |
| Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu |
And it is clear too that he
represents only a scant minority of his people, since latest polls show his
popularity crashing and burning at well under twenty percent of the population.
In other words, it’s not difficult to surmise that it is in Netanyahu’s selfish
political interests to ensure that he can make his personal war on the
Palestinian people (make no mistake, Hamas is a mere excuse for the genocidal policies
the prime minister is employing against an entire people) last as long as he
can possibly stretch it. Or better said, as long as the United States will not
only put up with this outrage, but also keep shipping him all the fire-power he
needs to wipe the Gaza Strip off the map, and a large segment of its general
population with it. Hence, his staunch resistance to any sort of ceasefire or
negotiation—especially any negotiation that includes the slightest hint of an
eventual two-state solution, which, as diplomats and foreign policy experts all
over the world agree, is the only sort of solution that will ever permit peace
in that area of the Near/Middle East. In simple terms, when and if the war
ends, Netanyahu’s time as head of the Israeli government will very like end
with it.
For anyone who might feel
that the title of this essay is a bit over the top, people a great deal more in
touch with the issue than I am are also calling the brutal and indiscriminate
attacks on the Gaza Strip “a war against children.”
Reporting in The American Prospect, a respected
online liberal bimonthly publication that specializes in discussions on public
policy, editorialist Harold Meyerson recalled that, in public remarks about
Israel’s war in Gaza, US President Joe Biden
had urged Israel not to make the same mistakes America made in responding to
the attacks of 9/11: overreacting, which, in the case of the United States,
consisted of taking the war to a country (Iraq) that wasn’t even involved in
the attacks, and to another country (Afghanistan) where Americans remained
enmeshed for 20 years. But Meyerson points out that, if anything, “Israel has
opted to ape an even greater American folly. It is waging war on Gaza much as
we waged war on Vietnam.”
Another patent sign of
Netanyahu’s intentionality in crushing not just Hamas, but the Palestinian
people as a whole, is his utilization of famine as a weapon of war, as is the
intentional bombing of housing, hospitals and other vital infrastructure. While
the US has soft-pedalled in its “requests”, rather than demands backed by action (for
instance, the suspension of military aid until said requests are fulfilled) to
ensure that food, water, medical supplies and other humanitarian assistance are
getting to the civilian population in Gaza, Netanyahu has pursued a cruel and
internationally illegal policy of purposely withholding even the most basic of
assistance, adding this to the destruction of an estimated seventy percent of
all Gazan housing and infrastructure, as a means of bringing the entire
Palestinian population to its knees.
Even the much-touted
reopening of the Erez border crossing between Gaza and Israel—closed since the
Hamas attacks on Israel last October—following a reportedly tense phone call
between Netanyahu and US President Biden, appears to be little more than a
publicity stunt, since news correspondents on the ground, who were forced to
leave the immediate area by IDF personnel, reported hearing continued shelling
and gunfire on the Gaza side of the crossing. They also reported that the road
on the Gaza side had been heavily shelled and was full of bomb craters, as well
as having been mined near the border, which didn’t bode well for the chances of
semi-trucks and trailers carrying food and medical supplies being able to
actually cross into Gazan territory, particularly not in any great numbers.
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| Aid workers' truck targeted by Israel |
UNRWA
Commissioner-General Lazzarini recently reported a targeted attack on one of
his group’s facilities. In that attack on a UNRWA food distribution center in
Rafah, at the southern edge of the Gaza Strip, one of the UN group’s staffers
was killed and twenty-two others were injured. Said Lazzarini, “Today’s attack
on one of the very few remaining UNRWA distribution centers in the Gaza Strip
comes as food supplies are running out, hunger is widespread and, in some
areas, turning into famine.”
He was clear about the
intentionality of that attack as well: “Every day, we share the coordinates of
all our facilities across the Gaza Strip with parties to the conflict. The
Israeli army received the coordinates including of this facility…”
Since Netanyahu initiated
his war of attrition on the Palestinian people half a year ago,
the UNRWA has
recorded an unprecedented number of violations against its staff and
facilities. At least one hundred sixty-five UNRWA team members have been killed,
including while in the line of duty. More than one hundred fifty of the
agency’s facilities have been hit, many schools among them. And there are
reports of at least another thirty-five combat-related deaths among aid workers
from other organizations making an effort to help Palestinian civilians.
These are all tactics
that have been vigorously condemned when employed by regimes considered to be
enemies of the West. The best example is that of Syria, where the cruel regime
of Bashar Al Assad, with the enthusiastic backing of the even crueler regime of
Russian President Vladimir Putin, has employed exactly the same methods to end opposition to his authoritarian
rule, and, in the process, slaughtered at least a quarter-million Syrian
civilians. But so far, the US has led the West in giving Netanyahu a mildly
reluctant pass in this sense, far too long supporting Israel’s claims of mere
defensive action with a certain amount of “collateral damage.” In point of
fact, civilian deaths due to “collateral damage” have already topped fatal
enemy combatant casualties by a rate of six to one. And that doesn’t begin to
take into account the number of Palestinians who face death daily due to
induced dehydration, starvation and deprivation of medical supplies and
attention.
 |
| Before and after - greenhouses and gardens targeted |
UN aid workers reiterate
daily their warnings regarding the catastrophically perilous situation in Gaza.
UN estimates indicate that one in four
Gazan Palestinians are living in a state of near-famine. This comes to a total
of at least 576,000 people. Already, twenty-five people have died of acute
malnutrition. Again, children are the most vulnerable, and twenty-one of those
deaths were child fatalities. UNICEF
estimates that 1.7 million Gazan—out of a total of 2.2 million total—have been
uprooted from their homes. Of those displaced, a million are children, and some
seventeen thousand of those are kids who are either separated from their
parents or who have evacuated war zones unaccompanied. This renders them even
more vulnerable, since children are among the people least able to cope with
hunger, disease and general neglect.
The international
watchdog organization Human Rights Watch terms the tactics employed by Israel
under Netanyahu “a war crime.” HRW clearly accuses Israeli forces of “deliberately
blocking the delivery of water, food, and fuel, while willfully impeding
humanitarian assistance, apparently razing agricultural areas, and depriving
the civilian population of objects indispensable to their survival.”
The human rights group
points to public statements from Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant,
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Energy Minister Israel Katz from
the beginning of the war, indicating that their aim is to deprive Gaza
civilians of food, water and fuel, an apparent policy reflected in the concrete
actions of IDF officers and troops. Some Israeli officials have also indicated
that aid would be withheld as a sort of ransom, until Israeli hostages are
released or until Hamas has been destroyed.
Two days after the brutal Hamas attack on Israel last October, Defense Minister
Gallant said: “We are imposing a complete siege on [Gaza]. No electricity, no
food, no water, no fuel–everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and
we must act accordingly.”
National Security
Minister Ben-Gvir tweeted a week later, “So long as Hamas does not release
the hostages, the only thing that should enter Gaza is hundreds of tons of air
force explosives, not an ounce of humanitarian aid.”
And five days after the
Hamas attack, Energy Minister Katz said:
“Humanitarian aid to
Gaza? Not a switch will be flicked on, not a valve will be opened, not a fuel
truck will enter until the Israeli hostages come home. Humanitarian for
humanitarian. Let no one lecture us about morality.”
In support of its claims
that Israel is not only withholding food but is also destroying Palestinians’
own essential food production capabilities, HRW has provided before-and-after
satellite images showing thriving Gazan fields, orchards and greenhouses
apparently bulldozed by Israeli operatives just days after the Israeli war on
the Gaza strip began. High resolution satellite imagery of farmland near the
Erez border crossing shows both bulldozer tracks and soil bulldozed into mounds
surrounding former agricultural plots.
According to Human Rights
Watch Israel and Palestine Director Omar Shakir: “…Israel has been depriving
Gaza's population of food and water, a policy spurred on or endorsed by
high-ranking Israeli officials and reflecting an intent to starve civilians as
a method of warfare. World leaders should be speaking out against this
abhorrent war crime, which has devastating effects on Gaza’s population.”
And there can be little
doubt that human rights leaders are justified in referring to Netanyahu’s
actions as a war crime. According to international humanitarian law and
internationally accepted rules of war, intentionally starving civilians as a method
of warfare is prohibited. The Rome
Statute, under which the International Criminal Court operates, takes this a
step further by providing that “depriving (civilians in war zones) of objects
indispensable to their survival, including willfully impeding relief supplies”
is a war crime. Nor does criminal intent require the attacker’s admission of
such acts. These can be inferred from the totality of evidence and of the circumstances
involved in any military campaign.
According to human rights
activists and newspaper reports from media ranging from Al Jazeera to The New York
Times, this trend has only worsened over the course of the war, with the
number of Palestinians detained, many innocent bystanders and random men of
military age, having burgeoned to some nine thousand. According the Physicians
for Human Rights report published in ReliefWeb,
“Efforts to push Israeli courts to
intervene and prevent the systematic disregard of reasonable incarceration
standards have so far been unsuccessful. Similarly, efforts to encourage the
medical community to safeguard the right to adequate care have also failed. As
a result, Israel’s vindictive policies and unofficial punitive measures in
prisons continue unchecked and unchallenged.”
Accusations
including holding prisoners for extended periods naked, hooded and shackled in
infra-human conditions, systematic humiliation and beatings, denial of basic
medical care, as well as other forms of torture and sexual assault. Sadly, there
has been nearly no international outcry regarding these blatant rights
violations other than those coming from the world human rights community.
We Americans have always
stood with Israel. We recall the Holocaust and the fact that the Jewish people
have been the most persecuted and victimized social group of modern times. We
remember this as a major rallying call for rising up against fascism and crushing
it in the deadliest war of all time. We recall and hold as nothing short of
sacred the memory of the six million Jews exterminated by Nazi Germany during
World War II, in what was the worst genocide in history. In much the same way,
we remember the twelve hundred Israelis and foreign visitors murdered by Hamas
terrorists last year.
But Benjamin Netanyahu is
taking unfair advantage of the deference that the West has bestowed on Jews in
general and on the State of Israel in particular. Worse still, he is employing,
in a sense, the same sort of indiscriminate and genocidal tactics in his
personal war on the Palestinians that led to the Holocaust during World War II.
While he insists that his only purpose is to wipe out the Hamas terrorist
organization, his mass killing of Palestinian civilians can no longer be
ignored, condoned or excused.
Netanyahu’s war is an
all-out war on the Palestinian people. It is a war that shows no mercy for
civilians in general, or for women and children in particular. And making war
on children is clearly contrary to his stated aim of doing away with Hamas.
Making war on children definitively guarantees a whole new generation of ever
more ruthless, anti-Israeli fighters. As such, this will be the cruel and
dangerous legacy of Netanyahu’s war, bequeathed by him both to the people of
Israel, and to the Palestinian people.
