{"id":1341149,"date":"2023-11-20T07:00:45","date_gmt":"2023-11-20T07:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/?p=305397"},"modified":"2023-11-20T07:00:45","modified_gmt":"2023-11-20T07:00:45","slug":"is-there-no-end-to-the-war-mongering-of-the-washington-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2023\/11\/20\/is-there-no-end-to-the-war-mongering-of-the-washington-post\/","title":{"rendered":"Is There No End to the War-Mongering of the Washington Post"},"content":{"rendered":"\"\"<\/a>\n
\"\"

Photograph Source: Michael Fleischhacker – Public Domain<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cIn the end, Ukraine may face the reality that it needs to negotiate with a Russian foe willing to endlessly sacrifice treasure and lives on the battlefield\u00a0 That point has not been reached, but the West should give Ukraine the leverage to drive the best possible bargain if the time comes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013 Washington Post editorial, November 13, 2023<\/p>\n

\u201cA unilateral or unconditional cease-fire by Israel would be inconsistent with the country\u2019s right to defend itself against the authors of the massacre on Oct 7: Hamas.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013 Washington Post editorial, November 6, 2023<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/i>It is increasingly clear that the Russian campaign against Ukraine and the Israeli campaign against Gaza are violating international law and the essential tenets of just war.\u00a0 Neither Russia nor Israel is making the required distinctions between combatants and non-combatants, and the excessive use of force on both battlefields is a violation of the need for proportionality in warfare.\u00a0 Russian and Israeli military forces are targeting civilian infrastructure and even civilians themselves.<\/p>\n

Last week, a Palestinian official with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the agency that cares for Palestinian refugees in the Middle East, was killed in his home in Gaza along with his wife and their eight children.\u00a0 Last June, Israel\u2019s ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, called UNRWA a \u201cdestructive agency\u201d because it supports the idea of returning Palestinian refugees to their homes in Israel.\u00a0 Last week, according to the New York Times<\/i>, Erdan told the UN Security Council that \u201cmany UNRWA workers in Gaza are themselves members of Hamas.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ambassador Erdan\u2019s remarks are particularly odious, but there have been statements from high-level Israeli officials over the years that point to the genocidal intent of Israeli policy toward Palestinians.\u00a0 Former Prime Minister Golda Meir said \u201cThere is no such thing as a Palestinian people… It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn’t exist.\u201d\u00a0 Former Defense Minister Ariel Sharon\u2019s wanton disregard for Palestinian life was demonstrated in 1982 during the massacres at the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon, where Sharon allowed Lebanese Phalangists to commit large-scale killings of the Palestinian civilians.\u00a0 Israel\u2019s war crimes in Gaza were foreshadowed in Lebanon in 1982 and 2006, when Israel conducted aerial bombardments against refugee settlements.<\/p>\n

The idea of a nuclear strike against Gaza was even raised by a right-wing minister in Netanyahu\u2019s government, Amichay Eliyahu. \u00a0 A member of the Knesset has called<\/a> for a second Nakba, in reference to the expulsion of Palestinians that Israel carried out in its 1948 war with its Arab neighbors. A military spokesperson said<\/a> that \u201cthe emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy,\u201d when describing Israel\u2019s airstrikes.\u00a0 Palestinians are paying the price for German crimes against European Jewry in the 1930s and 1940s.<\/p>\n

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used biblical references in emphasizing that Israelis were united in their fight against Hamas, whom he described as an enemy of incomparable cruelty.\u00a0 He noted \u201cYou must remember what Amalek (a rival nation to ancient Israel) has done to you, says our Holy Bible, in order to justify killing Palestinians.\u201d\u00a0 Netanyahu was referring to God\u2019s command to King Saul\u00a0<\/b>to kill every person in Amalek.\u00a0 \u201cI will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.\u201d\u00a0 This may explain why the Israelis are doing virtually nothing to stop the violence of Israeli settlers against Palestinians on the West Bank, which is taking innocent lives and destroying ancient olive trees.<\/p>\n

Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2019s inflammatory references to Ukrainians are similarly odious.\u00a0 According to Putin, Ukraine doesn\u2019t exist. Like so many Kremlin rulers, particularly Josef Stalin, Putin would deprive Ukrainians of their nationality.\u00a0 Like Stalin, Putin is making good use of trench warfare, and is targeting civilian infrastructure as a military objective.\u00a0 Russia\u2019s indiscriminate bombing and shelling of civilians and civilian infrastructure was foreshadowed by Soviet military actions in World War II.\u00a0 Stalin accused Poland of using the Ukrainians to destroy the Soviet Union.\u00a0 Putin is accusing the United States and various European nations of using Ukraine to destroy Russia.\u00a0 Russian leaders are referring to Ukrainians as Nazis and fascists in order to justify their efforts to Russify Ukraine.<\/p>\n

What the Washington Post <\/i>hasn\u2019t mentioned in making the case for continued warfare is\u00a0 that more than 500 political appointees and staff members representing more than 40 government agencies wrote to President Biden last week to protest his support for Israel\u2019s war in Gaza.\u00a0 The letter, according to the New York Times<\/i>, calls on Biden to seek an immediate cease-fire in Gaza and to demand that Israel allow humanitarian aid into the territory.\u00a0 Dozens of Foreign Service Officers have sent several protest letters to Secretary of State Antony Blinken; more than a 1,000 officials at the Agency for International Development have petitioned AID administrator Samantha Power to do the same.<\/p>\n

Power\u2019s silence regarding Israeli war crimes is particularly noteworthy; after all, she is the author of \u201cA Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide,\u201d which won a Pulitzer Prize in 2003.\u00a0 Her book was a study of the failure of American leaders to summon the will to stop genocide.\u00a0 Today, we find the Biden administration unable to summon the will and the power to stop Israeli war crimes.<\/p>\n

The post Is There No End to the War-Mongering of the Washington Post<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is increasingly clear that the Russian campaign against Ukraine and the Israeli campaign against Gaza are violating international law and the essential tenets of just war.\u00a0 Neither Russia nor Israel is making the required distinctions between combatants and non-combatants, and the excessive use of force on both battlefields is a violation of the need for proportionality in warfare.\u00a0 Russian and Israeli military forces are targeting civilian infrastructure and even civilians themselves. \u00a0 More<\/a><\/p>\n

The post Is There No End to the War-Mongering of the Washington Post<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":200,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,266],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1341149"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/200"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1341149"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1341149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1347456,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1341149\/revisions\/1347456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1341149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1341149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1341149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}