On October 8, 2023, Israel invaded Gaza Strip in retaliation to Palestinian Hamas’s attack on occupied lands the day before. Israelis have since brutally massacred Palestinians and, more recently, the Lebanese, forcing them out of their homelands, which most Western leaders have supported. This is not only apartheid ethnic cleansing, but it is also stealing the lands of Palestinians. As of this writing, about 42,500 Palestinians have been killed and about 100,000 critically injured. About two million have been displaced and made homeless in Gaza alone. This has been the most extensive genocide in recent history.
Israel initially supported Hamas’s growth in the 1980s for strategic reasons. Zionists viewed the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), led by Yasser Arafat, as their primary enemy. The PLO was a secular nationalist organization advocating for Palestinian statehood and engaged in armed struggle against Israel. In contrast, Hamas, a derivative of the Muslim Brotherhood, emerged as a religious movement focusing on Islamic values and social services and was seen by Zionists as a counterweight against PLO. The Zionists believed that encouraging divisions within the Palestinian territories could weaken the power of the PLO. By allowing Hamas to grow as an alternative to the PLO, Israel hoped to break the Palestinian resistance movement. They expected Hamas’s religious activities as a way to eliminate resistance by diverting Palestinian attention into religious life rather than armed struggle. However, this strategy failed over time. Hamas adopted a strong stance against Israel, calling for its destruction, and engaged in armed resistance.
In 2004, Israel assassinated Hamas’ founder, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, a disabled man in a wheelchair. Yet after two decades, Hamas not only has not been eliminated, but it has become more assertive. In the past few weeks, Israel has decapitated Palestinian resistance leaders who wanted to end its existence in their homeland. The last one was Yahya Sinwar, the legendary leader of the Palestinian organization and anti-occupation and the oppressors of the Israeli apartheid regime. He was killed on October 16 in the relentless attacks by the Israeli army on Gaza. Sinwar had spent 22 years in Israel’s prison until his release in a prisoners’ exchange in 2011.
Western imperialism is responsible for the religious conflicts in the Middle East, which has caused bloodshed in the region for about 100 years. Israel is an illegal state on Palestinian lands stolen through the 1917 UK-sponsored Zionist-initiated Balfour Declaration. In 1947, the United Nations General Assembly voted on the partition of Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem under international control. Out of the 58 members, 33 countries voted in favor of the proposed Resolution 181.[1]
Zionists control the West’s major financial and media institutions. The Zionists are dreaming of “Greater Israel,” which is an area stretching from the Nile Valley to the Euphrates River. It involves a policy of excluding Palestinians from Palestine, leading to the eventual annexation to Israel of both the West Bank and Gaza and some other territories in the region.
The Way Americans Perceive the War
In this year’s presidential elections in the US, domestic issues seem to be secondary. The primary issue is why the US is supporting the Israel war of genocide in the Gaza Strip. This makes the outcome of the election a toss-up. The US government has supported the war by providing money and arms to Israel at the expense of American taxpayers. President Joe Biden’s siding with Israel and his earlier opposition to an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza war of genocide has caused a large number of American voters, most of them college-age, not to support his administration and Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign. The voters were outraged after the US Congress, on April 20, 2024, passed $95 billion in aid in total for Ukraine, Taiwan, and Israel, of which $26 billion was for Israel.[2] On October 21, 2024, Israel received another $5.2 billion in emergency US aid.[3]
Former president Donald Trump’s good relations with the Zionists led by Benjamin Netanyahu and his support of Israel in the war have turned off some of his supporters. His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has stated that Gaza’s waterfront property could be a very valuable piece of real estate, and Palestinians must go out of Gaza.[4] Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy, who had received a $20 million campaign contribution to dilute votes from the Democrats’ candidate, had opposed a ceasefire of the genocide war. He finally dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Trump. That means undecided voters feel neither of the candidates will be effective in stopping the genocidal war.
The Zionist leaders call the Palestinians “human animals.” Most of the Western leaders, led by the US, support Israel, watching the Israeli massacre of Palestinians, and some even express their happiness at the assassinations of Palestinian leaders by the Israelis. Some people believe that the top US government officials are controlled by the Zionists, and this makes them impotent to stop the war.
Why should American taxpayers finance Israel to survive? Millions of people in the Streets have opposed the US support of the genocidal war and wanted a permanent ceasefire. The students in the US campuses and other countries have shown their opposition by encamping and resisting police brutality at many universities.
The Western powers, specifically Britain, supported the Islamic factions in Iran, which resulted in the formation of the Islamic Republic in 1979. They wished to prevent the secular and more progressive political groups from replacing the former monarchy regime in Iran.
The theocratic government in Tehran provides financial and military support for Palestinians as well as their allied factions in the region. It is a question of claimed morality versus money. Clerics in Tehran use the issue of Palestine as a political issue to maintain their own power versus the top government officials in the US who benefit from the financial support of the moneyed people to be re-elected and preserve their status. Many of the moneyed people, mostly Zionists who own many financial institutions and major media outlets, have continuously supported Israel’s war of genocide. They see the conflict from the lens of money and profit from the war through the arms manufacturing corporations.
Netanyahu does not want to change his position and has refused to accept the two states’ solution, which is no longer feasible. The clerics in Tehran, led by Ali Khamenei, want to stick to their martyrdom ideology and do not want to make any changes in the theocratic regime. This is a continuous war between the two sides; one side is controlled by money, and the other side claims morality to stay in power. The victims are the citizens in the region, including millions of Palestinians.
Akbar E. Torbat is the author of “Politics of Oil and Nuclear Technology in Iran,” Palgrave Macmillan (2020). Farsi translation of the book is available here.
[1] https://www.un.org/unispal/data-collection/general-assembly/?wpv_view_count=237041&wpv_paged=1
[2] https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-house-vote-long-awaited-95-billion-ukraine-israel-aid-package-2024-04-20/
[3] https://www.palestinechronicle.com/live-blog-massacre-inbaalbek-khan-yunis-israel-to-receive-5-2-billion-in-us-aid-day-381/
[4] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/19/jared-kushner-gaza-waterfront-property-israel-negev
