The president of Harvard University, Claudine Gay, has been under fire for her non-answers and muddled defense of freedom of speech considering the subject of genocide, which was admittedly unfortunate; she should have simply said that suggestions of performing “genocide” was not in compliance with the school’s civility policy and left it at that. Of course, “genocide” is more the vision of far-right extremists, while accusing Israelis of “genocide” against Palestinians is something the “far-left” is being accused of, and these accusations typically suggest that “leftists” must then support “genocide” committed by Israel’s enemies, which is ridiculous.
But Gay’s refusal to be “specific” on the matter is leaving her under attack by far-right political opportunists as being “anti-Semitic.” Yet last week Sen. Bernie Sanders, who happens to be Jewish, was the lone vote on the Democratic side of the aisle to vote “no” on advancing an aid package for Ukraine and Israel. Although the package had no chance of passing in the far-right controlled House, Sanders issued this statement on his reasoning:
I voted NO on the foreign aid supplemental bill today for one reason. I do not believe that we should give the right-wing extremist Netanyahu government an additional $10.1 billion with no strings attached to continue their inhumane war against the Palestinian people. Israel has the absolute right to defend itself against the Hamas terrorists who attacked them on October 7. They do not have the legal or moral right to kill thousands of innocent Palestinian men, women, and children.
But Sanders could have gone further than that, accusing Israel of being culpable in the deaths of its own citizens. One might recall the events of 9/11. Could it have been prevented? One might recall Pres. George Bush’s bug-eyed look in that classroom when he was told of the hit on the first of the Twin Towers; was he warned that something like this would happen, but shrugged it off as “improbable,” but now realizing he was terribly wrong and people died because of it? In a CIA report that informed him that an al-Qaeda attack in the U.S. was “real,” he reportedly waved it off, saying "All right. You've covered your ass.” 36 days before the attack, the CIA gave Bush another brief, in which he was warned that a terrorist attack was “imminent,” the very real possibility of it involving the hijacking of commercial aircraft.
The CIA and FBI appeared to have their communications crossed concerning known al-Qaeda operatives in the U.S. at the time and there was little follow-up to find out what exactly they were up to at the moment. Furthermore, an FBI field agent memo detailing suspected terrorists training in flight schools only to fly and not to land commercial aircraft was apparently ignored. Various Bush administration officials later tried to excuse their failure to take warnings seriously, claiming that the information was “old news.”
We of course know that the Bush administration was seeking a "pretext" to invade Iraq again, borne out by the fact that it clearly did not prioritize Afghanistan, and many al-Qaeda terrorists and their Taliban abettors were allowed to escape into Pakistan. Most of the military effort was put in subduing Saddam Hussein in Iraq and spending over a decade trying to “pacify” the country. Of course, thousands of Americans died in Iraq based on the lie of WMDs and non-existent al-Qaeda “links” with the Saddam regime. The only thing that was actually accomplished by the Iraq war was to remove what had previously been a regime that was more a thorn in the side of the Iranians than it was the U.S.’.
So what about the Hamas attack on October 7? Did Israel know of it in advance and did nothing? The New York Times reported that
Israeli officials obtained Hamas’s battle plan for the Oct. 7 terrorist attack more than a year before it happened, documents, emails and interviews show. But Israeli military and intelligence officials dismissed the plan as aspirational, considering it too difficult for Hamas to carry out. The approximately 40-page document, which the Israeli authorities code-named “Jericho Wall,” outlined, point by point, exactly the kind of devastating invasion that led to the deaths of about 1,200 people.
The translated document, which was reviewed by The New York Times, did not set a date for the attack, but described a methodical assault designed to overwhelm the fortifications around the Gaza Strip, take over Israeli cities and storm key military bases, including a division headquarters. Hamas followed the blueprint with shocking precision. The document called for a barrage of rockets at the outset of the attack, drones to knock out the security cameras and automated machine guns along the border, and gunmen to pour into Israel en masse in paragliders, on motorcycles and on foot — all of which happened on Oct. 7.
But that was not all. Where did Hamas get the money to pay for all this military hardware, mostly from Iran? In a recent story reported by CNN,
In 2018, Qatar began making monthly payments to the Gaza Strip. Some $15 million were sent into Gaza in cash-filled suitcases – delivered by the Qataris through Israeli territory after months of negotiation with Israel. The payments started after the Palestinian Authority (PA), the Palestinian government in the Israeli occupied West Bank that is a rival of Hamas, decided to cut salaries of government employees in Gaza in 2017, an Israeli government source with knowledge of the matter told CNN at the time.
The PA opposed the Qatari funding at the time, which Hamas said was meant for the payment of public salaries as well as medical purposes. Israel approved the deal in a security cabinet meeting in August 2018, when Netanyahu was serving his previous tenure as premier. Even then, Netanyahu was criticized by his coalition partners for the deal and for being too soft on Hamas.
The prime minister defended the initiative at the time, saying the deal was made “in coordination with security experts to return calm to (Israeli) villages of the south, but also to prevent a humanitarian disaster (in Gaza).” Ahmad Majdalani, an Executive Committee member at the Palestine Liberation Organization in the West Bank, accused the United States of orchestrating the payment.
Israeli and international media have reported that Netanyahu’s plan to continue allowing aid to reach Gaza through Qatar was in the hope that it might make Hamas an effective counterweight to the PA and prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state. PA officials said at the time the cash transfers encouraged division between Palestinian factions.
Major General Amos Gilad, a former senior Israeli Defense Ministry official, told CNN the plan was backed by the prime minister, but not by the Israeli intelligence community. There was also some belief that it would “weaken Palestinian sovereignty,” he said. There was also an illusion, he added, that “if you fed them (Hamas) with money, they would be tamed.”
Far from being “tamed,” Hamas with the help of its Iranian handlers used the money not for “humanitarian” reasons, but to stockpile missiles and drones for a major attack on Israel. This obviously shouldn’t have come as a “complete” surprise, since Israel had received intelligence that this is exactly what was going to happen. Yet the regime did nothing to prepare for such a possibility, and the result was that almost 2,000 Israeli civilians were killed because of this deliberate negligence.
Suffice is to say that isn’t “liberals” in this country who are aiders and abettors of Hamas “genocide” against Israeli citizens; such an accusation is better applied to the Israeli government itself.
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