Call me a maniac, a monomaniac, purveyor of fake news or just some uncredentialed internet a—hole, but from what I’ve seen lately, news of the war in occupied Gaza, down in a border town called Rafah, has been predominating the headlines even more than usual. Even the war in Ukraine and Trump nonsense have been drowned out by it. (That is, until Trump got convicted on Thursday on all 34 counts in that hush money trial of his; now the fallout has begun, and it’ll be a while before it all really sets in.) But, anyway, in case you don’t care—or don’t know and/or don’t not care—I’m about to make my problems your problems. But there’s a point to it, I swear.
And, yes, it involves fisting. Kind of.
First, though, a backstory:
In fulfilling its pledge to eradicate Hamas, as it’s been moving south through Gaza, Israel and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have slaughtered some 36,000 Palestinians, leaving over a million homeless and just as many on the brink of famine. This outright pledge was in response to the 1200 that were slaughtered by a surprise Hamas attack on—and by the many Palestinian opportunists who followed in the wake of—October 7th, 2023, after which some 250 Israelis were taken prisoner. In retaliation, Palestinian towns have been razed; hospitals, journalists, news networks, farm fields, UN aid efforts and refugee camps have all been targeted with precision bombing and other political and military efforts by Israeli forces and the Israeli government.
Recent news includes the IDF’s bombing of a refugee camp, killing 45 civilians who wanted nothing to do with any of it, let alone anything to do with Hamas. In response, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it was sort-of a mistake, and the US took him at his word like always, saying no official rules were broken, so: no harm, no foul. The International Criminal Court (ICC), depending on who you ask, ruled that the arguable genocidal slaughter, if not the entire war itself, needed to end. In response to this, Republican lawmakers in the US spoke of drafting legislation to punish the ICC, while President Biden called the ruling “outrageous.”
Two days later, after Hamas had retaliated by firing rockets into Tel Aviv, Israel fired four shells into a humanitarian zone full of even more innocent people not wanting anything to do with the war, killing many, as reported by Gaza health authorities. Israel denied this, and the US feigned confusion about the matter.
As a refresher, to basically fist the media memory hole in this country and pull out what I could to remain semi-informed and semi-intelligent of/regarding the building blocks (i.e. reasons) for the events I see taking place in the news, I opened up a 20-year-old text about U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, written by someone who actually does research on the matter. In the chapter I flipped to, terroristic activity in the region was being discussed. Seconds in, I came across this passage:
The year 1985 is identified by scholarship and media as the peak of Middle East terror during Reagen’s “war on terror.” By far the most significant acts of terror that year were the [CIA-and-Saudi-intelligence’s] Beirut bombing, [Israeli Prime Minister] Shimon Peres’s vicious Iron Fist operations targeting “terrorist villagers” in Israeli-occupied Lebanon, and Israel’s bombing of Tunis, murdering seventy-five Tunisians and Palestinians with extreme brutality, according to the report from the scene by Israeli journalist Amnon Kapeliouk. The United States assisted by refusing to inform its ally Tunisia that the bombers were on the way, though the Sixth Fleet certainly knew. The attack was praised by the Secretary of State George Shultz, then unanimously condemned by the UN Security Council as an “act of armed aggression” (United States abstaining). The pretext for the bombing was retaliation for the killing of three Israelis in Cyprus, apparently traced to Syria, but Tunis was a defenseless and ideologically more useful target, housing the headquarters of the [Palestinian Liberation Organization]. The Cyprus killings were in turn retaliation for regular kidnappings and killings on the high seas by Israeli naval forces attacking ships in transit between Cyprus and northern Lebanon, with many of those captured brought to Israel and kept in prison without charge as hostages.
And then there was this, which also seemed to mirror modern events:
There are…divergences between Lebanese and official US opinion on democracy. Attitudes toward Hezbollah are an illustration. Hezbollah has gained considerable support in Lebanon, particularly in the south, where its candidates won 80 percent of the vote in the June 2005 elections. In March 2005, by a vote of 380 to 3, the US House of Representatives passed a resolution condemning “the continuous terrorist attacks perpetrated by Hezbollah” and urging the European Union to “classify Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.” The Senate followed with unanimous endorsement of a similar resolution. Middle East scholar Stephen Zunes contacted scores of congressional offices asking for examples of terrorist attacks by Hezbollah in the past decade, but no one was able to cite any.
The author gives a reason for the hostility that’s been aimed at the party:
Organized in 1982 in response to Israel’s US-backed invasion of Lebanon, Hezbollah drove the invader from the country. For twenty-two years, Israel had defied Security Council orders to withdraw, in the process carrying out many atrocities with impunity, thanks to US support.
Failed States, Noam Chomsky, 2006
Forty years, twenty years, and same scenarios keep playing out, over and over again. History repeats itself. And the good guys are often far from the ones doing good.
Not to sound too pretentious, but this helped to remind me of that. I thought it might help you, too.
Memory hole fisted.
