Israel, the country billed as the only democracy In the Middle East, is sinking ever deeper into a dark pit of violence, lawlessness, and revenge. But, according to many reports, Israelis don’t seem to care.
There’s no powerful Israeli leader trying to calm his countrymen’s fears and their strident lust for vengeance, just as there were no Americans able to reign in the U.S.’s violent outburst after 9/11.
In both cases, it’s like an instinctive reaction of a primitive organism, lashing out, refusing to listen to heed the warnings of others, seeking only to destroy what it perceives as a mortal threat.
We’ll begin with Israel and a recent report by Haaretz’s Gideon Levy, “Anyone who wants to learn what's happened to Israelis since October 7 is advised to look at the release from prison of Al-Shifa Hospital's director. Dr. Mohammed Abu Salmiya sat in jail for seven months without judicial supervision, indictment, or guilt.
“He was abducted by Israel in the same way that Hamas abducted the Israeli hostages and was thrown in jail. Like the Israeli hostages, his family knew nothing of his fate, and neither Red Cross representatives nor his lawyer were permitted to visit him.
“Released with him on Monday was surgeon Dr. Issam Abu Ajwa, who recounted the horrific abuse he underwent. His pictures before and after left no doubt about the veracity of his claims.
“The other 50 released Palestinian abductees were not shown in the Israeli media, of course, but audiences abroad saw adults who have become broken shells: gaunt, timid, of bony body and spindly legs, injured and bruised and full of wounds….”
Gideon Levy goes on to report that most Israelis were upset not by the doctor’s brutal treatment but by his release. This is despite the fact that a Washington Post investigation—among others-- contradicted Israel’s previous claims that the hospital was a kind of operations central for Hamas.
“For Israelis agitated at his release – Israel was wrong not to kill him too, by beating, starvation, disease, or other forms of torture. Israel wants to see doctors, like everyone else in Gaza, die an agonizing death.
“The image of Abu Salmiya released from jail, hugging his mother and crying, should have had an emotional effect on any human being: an innocent hostage walks free. In Israel, however, it marked the beginning of a hysterical campaign of panic, incrimination, hatred, dehumanization, lust for vengeance, thirst for blood.
“Not just right-wingers – everybody, everybody, politicians, broadcasters, pundits, and loudmouths in a choir singing in unison: His release became a failure that equals October 7. How did it happen, that Israel released an innocent doctor from Gaza, who gave the order and who's to blame? Israel 2024.
“…Abu Salmiya was held by Israel on the strength of a dubious law it passed, the illegal combatants law, which allows the detention of a person without a judge's review for 75 days – an even more draconian law than the one permitting administrative detention. Israel, and in particular its judicial and health establishments, cares nothing about this. A hospital director is in jail – he is, after all, Gazan, that is to say, a terrorist.”
As another Haaretz columnist, Dahlia Scheindlin writes,
.. “The discourse demonstrated the circular reasoning by which everyone Israel arrests is a combatant by virtue of having been arrested. It's little wonder then that many Israelis justify the casualties in Gaza.
“… In an interview on Monday with Israel's Army Radio, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir gave his solution to the problem of prison overcrowding that prompted the release: "If they had listened to me about the 'death penalty for terrorists' law, we would have killed them, and there would be more room in prisons.".
Another politician, Tally Gotliv of Likud “thinks that Israel should "flatten southern Lebanon," which can be done in three days, she argues. "What are we waiting for?"
This brings us back to the eruption of outrage and calls for vengeance in the U.S. after Al Qaeda’s attacks on September 11, 2001. Almost 3,000 Americans were killed; another 6000 were injured. The toll was shocking but far less compared to the total U.S. population than the percentage of Israelis killed on October 7, 2023 (.001% versus .012%)
Also, the only contact most Americans had with the 9/11 attacks was the nightmarish images on their TV. In Israel, however, just about everyone knows someone who knows someone who was killed or injured in the Hammas attack. And in Israel, the group that committed that attack is still next door—not thousands of miles away.
Nevertheless, a similar wave of panic and fear that swept across Israel also inundated the U.S. Senator John McCain expressed the sentiment of many when he said, "I don't think there's any doubt that there are sleeper cells here in America... We're going to have to live with this threat for the rest of our lives."
The Americans, who had always enjoyed the security of two oceans, suddenly experienced the horror of being attacked in their own home by a distant enemy.
Fear reigned supreme. Vengeance trumped everything. The shock of the attacks quickly gave way to anger and calls for retaliation.
Conservative commentator Ann Coulter infamously wrote on September 13, 2001: "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity."
Amid the calls for extreme action, some voices urged caution and adherence to American values. Senator Robert Byrd warned in October 2001: "The Constitution is being dismantled, civil liberties are being trampled, and millions of citizens' rights are being sacrificed on the altar of 'national security.'"
Congressman Ron Paul cautioned: "We must be careful not to sacrifice the very freedoms we are struggling to protect."
But no one wanted to listen.
George Bush declared his “War on Terror.” It became a forever war.
Thus, the invasion of Afghanistan, which cost trillions of dollars in U.S. treasure and hundreds of thousands of lives (mainly Afghans), ended with a humiliating, chaotic U.S. retreat twenty years later. And the Taliban back in power.
Bush followed up in May 2003 with a disastrous invasion of `Iraq under the false claim that Saddam Hussein was developing nuclear weapons.
Meanwhile, as part of the “War on Terror,” U.S. Intelligence agencies identified individuals suspected of involvement in terrorism or just possessing “valuable” intelligence. They were captured, often in covert operations, sometimes without the knowledge of local governments. In other cases, local leaders falsely labeled enemies as terrorists and turned them over to `U.S. agents in exchange for a bounty.
The prisoners were transferred to detention facilities in other countries, frequently using shell companies and secret flights. The destinations were typically countries known for harsh interrogation practices or CIA-run "black sites." A convenient way for the U.S. to circumvent legal constraints.
Interrogations were conducted by U.S. personnel or by local authorities with U.S. involvement. The prisoners had no access to legal representation or communication with the outside world. Years later, U.S. and international investigations found that the detainees were subjected to a wide range of brutal torture and degrading techniques. “Enhanced interrogation,” as American officials reluctant to be labeled “torturers” came to call them.
The Obama administration officially ended the CIA's detention and interrogation program in 2009; despite investigations and disclosures, many details of the program remain classified, hampering full accountability.
Many detainees ultimately wound up in a special U.S. prison on the American naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. At one point, more than 800 were imprisoned there, most held without charges. Tellingly, the most vigorous protests about the operation came from typically conservative U.S. military lawyers routinely assigned to defend the prisoners. Many were shocked and then outraged by the brutal methods being used and the legal limbo in which the prisoners were held.
The Supreme Court ultimately ruled against the U.S. government and the theory of law used to justify the prison. Hundreds of prisoners were slowly released over the years, most without being formally charged.
In 2009, Obama ordered the prison closed, but it never was. Twenty-three remain prisoners to this day. Since the prison costs $500 million a year to operate, that comes to an incredible $21 million per year per prisoner!
But everyone looks the other way. The remaining prisoners are hostages of an outrageous military justice procedure and American political deadlock.
"The continued detention of individuals who have not been charged with a crime flies in the face of fundamental American values," says Jonathan Hafetz, law professor at Seton Hall University. "It creates a dangerous precedent for indefinite detention without trial." (This, mind you, as Donald Trump is likely to be back in the White House.)
As journalist Glenn Greenwald wrote in 2011: "The 9/11 attack was a heinous crime that merited a forceful response. But the way in which that attack consumed American political culture and produced a radical transformation of American character, values, and priorities should be deeply alarming to any rational person."
That same tragic process seems to be happening in Israel today.
Who will save the Zionist State from itself?
:
The parallels are clear, but you could make them to any war. States posing as democracies always require a cassus Belli to convince their citizens to killl and be killed.
All too often it turns out that Cassus Belli was a lie (USS Maine, Burning of the Reichstag, Gulf of Tonkin).
It seems we require a victimhood narrative so we can release ultimate destruction.
This victim narrative, Israel has in spades. It is deeply rooted in the psyche.
I predict that nothing other than a societal collapse will stop their headlong rush into ethnic cleansing.
They will not ‘come around’. And I don’t expect any future US or European leaders to apply much pressure.
It’s going to be an ugly tragic horrifying end, one which I expect will be studied for centuries.