Letter from Robert Yoesle
President Biden has done the right thing to restrict supplying 2000 pound “bunker buster” “dumb bombs” to Israel that have indiscriminately killed thousands of Palestinian civilians, and injured tens of thousands more. These men, women, children, and infants were already living in horrid conditions in the densely-populated Gaza Strip “reservation” where many Palestinians fled or were expelled to after the creation of Israel following WWII.
And just because you oppose Israel’s 1,000 eyes-for-an-eye reaction to the horrific October 7 attack by Hamas on Israeli civilians doesn’t make you “anti-Semitic.” It makes you a compassionate human being. Student protesters have led the opposition to the unconditional support of Israel, just as they have done in opposing injustice from the civil rights movement to the tragedy of the Vietnam War.
Israel has long been the US proxy-state in the Middle East for our conflict with Iran – which originated with the CIA helping to overthrow a democratically elected president who nationalized exploitive western oil companies. We installed a hated and corrupt – but US and oil company friendly – dictator who was subsequently overthrown by Iranians in 1979, where understandably hated Americans were also taken hostage.
US support for Israel and against Iran therefore led to turning a blind eye to the manifest destiny of the Zionist occupation and de facto annexation of the West Bank. This Israeli occupation is illegal under international law, just as was the Russian communist occupations of Crimea and invasion of Ukraine, or the Chinese annexation of Tibet. The hypocrisy of some politician's unconditional support of Israel is galling.
Pro-Israel individuals and groups have called Hamas “savages” and “animals,” and indeed their actions on October 7, 2024 were. These horrible actions often occur when colonials take other less powerful peoples' land and put them on reservations and keep them subjugated for decades; just as white European immigrants did with Native Americans in our history; and we called them savages for their horrific actions. Being members of the animal kingdom, the capacity for humans to act savagely like “animals’ is because we all are members of the animal kingdom, and such actions go both ways.
Just like European colonist in North America, the Israeli government supported creation of Hamas in Gaza in order to implement a “divide and conquer” strategy to weaken the Palestinian Authority governing in both the West Bank and Gaza. Taking other people's land and killing civilians has been a part of our history from almost exterminating Native Americans and enslaving and killing African Americans, to the Japanese internment, to killing 200,000 civilians by nuking Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Senator Lindsey Graham favors nuking Gaza. And let’s not forget the carpet bombing and the My Lai massacre (which included raping and killing young girls) and others in Vietnam, where some officers had an informal policy to “destroy the village in order to save it.”
I’m not saying Hamas’ actions are anywhere near acceptable; I’m just think people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
The Israeli military actions in Gaza are creating more desperate and traumatized civilians who will gladly support the insurgency against Israel or become members of Hamas, and the cycle of hatred and violence will continue if not worsen. President Biden has done the right thing to attempt to limit this violence, and push Israel towards an equitable solution where both Israelis and Palestinians have their aspirations for autonomy and self-rule realized within internationally recognized borders.
There will be no peace in the Middle East for anyone until there is justice for everyone.
