{"id":1421399,"date":"2024-01-01T07:00:08","date_gmt":"2024-01-01T07:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/?p=309339"},"modified":"2024-01-01T07:00:08","modified_gmt":"2024-01-01T07:00:08","slug":"unmitigated-horror-guernica-the-warsaw-ghetto-and-now-gaza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2024\/01\/01\/unmitigated-horror-guernica-the-warsaw-ghetto-and-now-gaza\/","title":{"rendered":"Unmitigated Horror: Guernica, the Warsaw Ghetto, and Now Gaza"},"content":{"rendered":"\"\"<\/a>\n
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Photograph Source: Tasnim News Agency – CC BY-SA 4.0<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

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\u201cHamas must be destroyed, Gaza must be demilitarized, and Palestinian society must be deradicalized.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, The Wall Street Journal, December 26, 2023.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe painful commonality between the tragedies of Gaza and the Warsaw Ghetto is the utter disregard for human lives in a war setting by the citizens of even the most enlightened countries.\u00a0 Such disregard is so much more painful when it is committed by \u2018our own people,\u2019 whether it be American soldiers in Vietnam and Iraq or the Israeli soldiers in Gaza.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013 Alex Hershaft, A Survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto, The Washington Post, December 22, 2023<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, how many deaths will it take \u2019til he knows that too many people have died?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013 Bob Dylan, \u201cBlowing in the Wind,\u201d 1962<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Nazi bombing of Guernica, a Basque town in northern Spain, took place in 1937 during the Spanish civil war.\u00a0 The Germans were testing their new air force, and their bombs killed or wounded one-third of Guernica\u2019s five thousand residents. Guernica\u2019s agony was captured in a painting by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso; it is considered the most moving and powerful anti-war painting in history.\u00a0 The painting shows the suffering caused by modern war and brought the atrocities of the Spanish civil war to an international audience.<\/p>\n

For Gaza, a Picasso would presumably use Israel\u2019s destruction of Gaza\u2019s hospitals to depict the terror and horror of Israel\u2019s use of heavy ordnance.\u00a0 Just as the Nazi bombing of Guernica had a casual aspect, Israel\u2019s use of its air force is casual in its destruction of Gaza\u2019s infrastructure, indeed Gaza itself.\u00a0 The use of U.S.-supplied one thousand and two thousand pound bombs puts the lie to Israel\u2019s claim that the primary objective of the war is to destroy Hamas. The primary objective of Israel\u2019s war is to destroy Gaza itself; it is the latest step in Israeli efforts over 75 years to displace Palestinian populations from the river to the sea.\u00a0 Israel\u2019s right-wing war cabinet and Israeli Defense Forces are not taking aim at the West Bank, where the death count is climbing.<\/p>\n

The Warsaw Ghetto housed 350,000 Jews who\u2014like Gazans\u2014were surviving hunger and disease, when the Nazi\u2019s began their campaign of liquidation.\u00a0 In the wake of the roundup of Jews, the Nazis deployed tanks and heavy artillery to destroy the remaining 50,000 survivors and level every building, until the Warsaw Ghetto was no more.\u00a0 The Israeli destruction of Gaza is designed to ensure that Palestinians will have no place to live.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0New York Times\u00a0<\/em>and the\u00a0Washington Post<\/em>\u00a0have put the lie to Israel\u2019s claim that Gaza\u2019s al-Shifa hospital was directly involved in Hamas activities and that the buildings of the al-Shifa complex sat atop underground tunnels that were used to direct rocket attacks and command fighters.\u00a0 The\u00a0Post\u00a0<\/em>analysis demonstrated that \u201cthe rooms connected to the tunnel network\u2026showed no immediate evidence of military use by Hamas;\u201d \u201cnone of the five hospital<\/p>\n

buildings\u2026appeared to be connected to the tunnel network;\u201d and that there was \u201cno evidence that the tunnels could be accessed from inside hospital wards.\u201d\u00a0 The Israels lied, and the Central Intelligence Agency corroborated the lies.<\/p>\n

Overall, the mainstream media continues to assist Israeli propagandists in making their case to an international audience.\u00a0 U.S. media consistently refer to last month\u2019s killing of three Israeli hostages by Israeli defense forces as \u201caccidental.\u201d\u00a0 There was nothing \u201caccidental\u201d about the killing; it was intentional with the hostages being shirtless, carrying a white flag of surrender, raising their hands, speaking Hebrew, and posting SOS notices as well as scrawling \u201cHelp! 3 hostages\u201d in Hebrew on nearby walls.\u00a0 The shooting may have been \u201cmistaken,\u201d but it was not \u201caccidental.\u201d\u00a0 The Israeli soldiers intended to kill the three men; they just didn\u2019t know they were Israelis. The father of one of the victims poignantly asked why the IDF didn\u2019t just shoot his son in the leg.<\/p>\n

The killing points to an ethical failure in the IDF, according to Ron Ben-Yishal, senior national security columnist for the Yediot Ahronot newspaper, who has reported on all of Israel\u2019s wars since the Six-Day War in 1967.\u00a0 These failures are predictable in view of Israeli racism toward Palestinans.\u00a0 Former Prime Minister Golda Meir\u2019s dismissed Palestinians as \u201croaches\u201d prior to the October 1973 war.\u00a0 Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has described Palestinians as \u201chuman animals,\u201d and \u201cwe are acting accordingly.\u201d\u00a0 In this way, Gallant justifies the Israeli war crime of cutting off food and water to the residents of Gaza.<\/p>\n

U.S. media have supported Israel\u2019s line that the shooting of the hostages was due to the \u201cfear and confusion\u201d caused by Hamas\u2019s \u201cwar of traps and trickery,\u201d which meant that Israeli \u201ctroops were spooked and too fast to fire.\u201d (The Washington Post<\/em>, December 24, 2023, p. 1)\u00a0 At least, the Israelis are investigating the killing, and will have the assistance of an IDF combat dog with a GoPro camera that recorded the voices of the three victims.\u00a0 Of course, if the victims had been Palestinian, there would have been no publicity, let alone an investigation.\u00a0 We will never know how many innocent Palestinian men have been murdered in similar fashion.<\/p>\n

The United States itself provides support for Israel by vetoing or abstaining from every UN Security Council resolution that is critical of Israel.\u00a0 Since the October War of 1973, the United States has vetoed more than 50 measures.\u00a0 When the Obama administration abstained from a 2017 resolution that declared Israeli settlements on the West Bank illegal, there was considerable congressional criticism.\u00a0 The United States last month even abstained from a UN resolution that merely supported additional humanitarian aid for Gaza.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the United States has offered no criticism of Israel\u2019s killing of more than 70 journalists and media workers, mostly Palestinian, marking the deadliest conflict for journalists ever recorded by the Committee to Protect Journalists.\u00a0 The Israelis have also killed more than a dozen Palestinian writers and poets.\u00a0 More than a hundred international aid workers have also been killed\u2014some of the along side their extended families.<\/p>\n

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, one of Israel\u2019s leading apologists, has merely stated that \u201cwe want to make sure that that\u2019s investigated, and that we understand what\u2019s happened and there\u2019s accountability.\u201d\u00a0 The killing of journalists is an Israeli attempt to ensure that the rough draft of Israel\u2019s war is not recorded accurately.\u00a0 Even the\u00a0Post<\/em>\u00a0referred to Blinken\u2019s remarks as a \u201cnothing burger of a response.\u201d<\/p>\n

Netanyahu\u2019s legacy is secure.\u00a0 When Guernica, the Warsaw Ghetto, and Gaza are discussed and analyzed in the future, the Nazis and Benjamin Netanyahu will be similarly condemned.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, there is much for all Americans to learn.\u00a0 President Biden should think about Vice President Hubert Humphrey\u2019s loss to Richard Nixon in the 1968 presidential election because of his belated opposition to the Vietnam War.\u00a0 And for a better understanding of Israeli apartheid and the miserable life of Palestinians on the West Bank, read Nathan Thrall\u2019s \u201cA Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Autonomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The post Unmitigated Horror: Guernica, the Warsaw Ghetto, and Now Gaza<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

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

The Nazi bombing of Guernica, a Basque town in northern Spain, took place in 1937 during the Spanish civil war.\u00a0 The Germans were testing their new air force, and their bombs killed or wounded one-third of Guernica\u2019s five thousand residents. Guernica\u2019s agony was captured in a painting by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso; it is considered the most moving and powerful anti-war painting in history.\u00a0 The painting shows the suffering caused by modern war and brought the atrocities of the Spanish civil war to an international audience. More<\/a><\/p>\n

The post Unmitigated Horror: Guernica, the Warsaw Ghetto, and Now Gaza<\/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":[266,204],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1421399"}],"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=1421399"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1421399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1422649,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1421399\/revisions\/1422649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1421399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1421399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1421399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}