WALSH – A harsh spotlight on the West’s moral bankruptcy

Official truths are often powerful illusions. The greatest crime of war is not only the loss of life, but the loss of truth. — John Pilger. 

I HAVE STRUGGLED to understand and express the tragedy and barbarism taking place in Gaza.

Israel’s actions are so horrific that I keep thinking I must be misinterpreting what I’m reading. I disregard a claim as too implausibly over the top, only to find out that no, that’s exactly what is happening. As bad as I know its past actions have been, Israel keeps finding new ways to show me that the evil the Nazis did to the Jews was not an abnormal, isolated event. The world needs to speak up to stop this genocide.

The Israeli slaughter of thousands upon thousands of Palestinian women and children in retaliation for the Hamas uprising cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be described as self-defense. Look at the scale of the killing. Slaughter of civilians on an industrial scale is not self-defense.

This is not a fight between religious fanatics, the narrative most often presented by our state-fed western media. It is not a simplistic war of Arab vs Jew. This crisis and the brutal conditions in Gaza did not start after Oct. 7.

Similar to the so-called ‘Indian wars’ in what we now call America, violent settler colonization of indigenous Palestinians created this tempest of hate.

Israel has long had total control of almost every life-giving service in Gaza, including water, electricity, food, medicines, fuel, movement, etc.. Gaza has been described as an open-air prison, but in actuality has been little more than a concentration camp over the past 17 years.

Media manipulate the narrative

Most westerners are ignorant of this due to state-embedded media manipulating the narrative to continually portray Zionist Israelis as victims, while for decades these so-called victims have engaged in an illegal and cruel occupation, indigenous land theft, and ethnic cleansing.

Many people don’t understand that the Hamas attack was the result of brutal, illegal occupation and theft of indigenous Palestinian lands in Gaza and the West Bank that has been ongoing for the past 75 years. They are ignorant because they are not from the region, they weren’t born into this horror, or they have so far believed the simplified narrative spun, presented and repeated by the media.

If my narrative is alien to you, you should be asking why. If you accept even a small portion to be true, how can this new narrative be happening in this day and age, with communication technologies so advanced?

The Palestinian fight isn’t against Jews, but against Zionist occupiers. It is not about Judaism, but about a dangerous, extremely racist ideology called Zionism, which, akin to the exceptionalism of the Third Reich, has two similar goals: ethnic superiority and territorial expansion.

This ongoing conflict is due to Zionist ideology gone bad. The government of the state of Israel is controlled by far-right Zionist Likud party extremists with a clearly racist, anti-Arab agenda. The Zionist goal, according to the Likud charter, is to form a ‘Greater Israel’ from Jordan to the sea. These narcissistic, expansionist psychopaths therefore want to possess all indigenous Palestinian lands.

This Zionist final solution without military justification amounts to genocide with a goal to complete the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Relocation is the goal, through forced displacement by destroying hospitals, schools, universities, civil infrastructure and housing, pushing these unequal victims with nowhere to escape toward the Egyptian border, followed by Sinai displacement with no hope to return to their homeland. Zionists do not see Palestinians as human beings and will not allow them to exist as such.

Zionism has hijacked the Jewish faith and people. It has done more to damage Israel’s image in the last three months than anti-Semites did in the last seven decades.

Western leaders, especially in U.S., are complicit

Our leaders are complicit. The U.S., U.K., European Union, Canada, etc. have known about the illegal occupation and ongoing colonization for decades. As the world’s most powerful state, the leadership of the imperialist U.S. is a main cause for concern.

America’s blind support of Israel’s crimes over 75 years, and especially now, is destroying its already damaged reputation. The curtain has been pulled away; the U.S. is revealed to be the emperor with no clothes: a global mafia with disdain for peace, truth, and justice.

While Israel drops “dumb bombs” on refugee camps, the U.S. gives it more bombs and vetoes ceasefire proposals. The daily U.S. supply of military equipment to Israel means that attacks on civilians are, in fact, another American proxy war.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of western media coverage has predictably fallen into line with the U.S. administration’s unequivocal support for Israel. We’ve seen Arab and Muslim journalists taken off the air and sidelined at major news outlets. Even established, award-winning journalists at major U.S. news outlets express concern that their careers will suffer if they report Israeli war crimes or defend Palestinian human rights.

I believe many of us want to protect Israel’s right to exist, but not while allowing another nation’s people to be destroyed. It just doesn’t fit together, it’s unacceptable.

If you read this far, Part 2 is coming on Thursday.

Denis Walsh is a former three-term Kamloops City councillor. He chose not to run again in 2022, convinced that City councillors should step aside after a maximum of three terms to allow others to serve and to experience being on the “outside looking in.”