Israel's Day of Infamy

The World's Most Notorious Rogue State Has Outdone Itself

“Xerxes responded to their speech with proud magnanimity. He said he would not act like the Lacedaemonians who had violated laws observed by all humanity when they killed the heralds; no, he himself would not do the kind of thing for which he was reproaching them: he would not kill these two men to release the Lacedaemonians from their guilt.”
- Herodotus [7.136.2]

“If he had been as discreet in carrying out his crimes as he was reckless in attempting them in the first place, he might perhaps at some time, in some respect or other, escaped my notice. But as luck would have it, his unbelievable recklessness has so far been accompanied by singular stupidity…In his aim of corrupting the court he has made his plans and ambitions clear to everyone”
- Cicero [In Verrem I, 5]

The Al-Shifa hospital, once the largest and most advanced in Gaza, after the IDF finished with it.

Israel’s Triple Crown

On April 1st, Israel, perhaps the world’s most notorious “rogue state,” committed three egregious crimes on the same day. In the morning, they bombed an Iranian consulate in Syria, violating an international law which has been recognized by all nations since prehistory. Then, during the day, they withdrew from their siege of the Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest in Palestine, leaving hundreds of dead bodies, more missing, with the building a smoldering ruin. Not content with these crimes, on Monday night Israel bombed an aid convoy of the World Central Kitchen charity three times. I personally find the first of these the most outrageous, as there is no possible excuse. However, it seems it is the third that will harm them the most as the World Central Kitchen is ran by celebrity Chef Jose Andres, who goes to all the right cocktail parties and was described as a “friend” by Joe Biden. Of course, some lives are seen as being worth more than others, and the killing of volunteers from multiple nations with such a powerful advocate is a bigger problem for Israel than the mass murder of Palestinians. In an uncharacteristic move, Israel immediately apologized and mostly gave up on justifying their actions, seeing that they were finally dealing with someone the American ruling class cares about. Further, Andres has faced substantial criticism for his willingness to coordinate closely with the IDF while working in Gaza, demonstrating that being Israel’s friend will not protect you from their violence and depravity. For his part, perhaps behaving immoderately from grief, Andres accused Israel of the strike being intentional, leading the John Podheretzs and Ben Shapiros of the world to accuse him of “blood libel,” because they think their disingenuous accusations of anti-Semitism never wear out. I have long thought that Israel seems to be using a strange strategy of protecting themselves by acting so wildly unlawful that our continued support incriminates us along with them, and that perhaps reached its peak on April 1st.

It’s hard to say if any of this will matter, but Israel has shown itself to exist outside of the civilized world. Iran is normally extraordinarily restrained, recognizing its ever-perilous position as an enemy of the US and Israel, so we don’t know how they may respond. Further, the US government is almost entirely captured by Israel, even if there are some problems between the Democrats and Netanyahu on a political level. I don’t expect anyone to be held to account, but for those of us watching, the character of Israel’s regime has been displayed more clearly than ever. Israel is a nuclear rogue state guilty of horrible crimes and it is long past time that the United States end its illegal policy of aiding this criminal state.

The Law Observed By All Humanity

An illustration of the Spartans throwing the Persian envoys into the well. The Spartans later considered that this had brought a curse upon them.

When Israel bombed an Iranian consulate in Damascus, they broke the world’s oldest international law. I am generally a skeptic of “international law,” as outside of maritime law where there are widely respected rules regarding flags and piracy, there is rarely consistent application. International law is most commonly just the party that is currently in power telling others what to do as they see fit, even in our era where most countries are members of many complex arrangements, most of all, the United Nations. However, the inviolability of diplomatic personnel and facilities is the customary law of all nations stretching back to prehistory. When the US murdered Iranian general Soleimani there were some questions about if the sanctity of diplomats had been violated as he was said to be carrying diplomatic correspondence, but he was still a general outside of a protected area and thus would usually be considered a valid military target. The act of carrying a message does not usually give one immunity. Hitting a consulate building in Damascus holds no such excuses, and it is impossible to claim the targets posed an immediate threat. This strike served no purpose but to antagonize Iran with Israel’s gratuitous lawlessness.

The institution of heralds are shown to be well-established in the earliest writing, with Hermes being the herald of the gods: of course the Greek gods were always in conflict, so had much need for this service. Heralds carried a distinct staff with the head of Hermes, their patron, on it, and were allowed to travel freely across the world even, or especially, during war. The necessity of communication, even if it be to declare war itself or say other unpleasant things was well understood. We have the expression “Don’t shoot the messenger,” but in Ancient Greece the herald’s person was sacrosanct and it was sacrilege to harm a herald. In Homer and other extant writings, Agamemnon, the leader of the Achaeans during the Trojan War, had two heralds, one of whom was named Talthybios, who became a famous figure and gave his name to the heralds of Sparta, who were known as Talthybiads.

Of course, men are known to commit crimes against gods and men, and this position was not always respected. There is one notable and extreme instance recounted in sections 7.133-7.137 of Herodotus, the oldest extant history. The Persian King Darius had sent heralds across Hellas to ask for “earth and water,” which were a symbol of submission. This is exactly the sort of unpleasant request for which the sanctity of heralds was important. The Athenians executed them by throwing them in a pit for criminals, whereas the Spartans threw them in a well, and told them to get earth and water from there. After this, the Spartans could not get good omens from their sacrifices for a number of years, which in effect crippled their state’s ability to function, as taking military action required good omens. They attributed this to the Wrath of Talthybios, and sought to purify their crime. The Spartans sent two volunteers from among the best men of their society to Xerxes, by then the King, to offer themselves up for punishment. This is when Xerxes relayed the sentiment in the epigraph, that he would not expatiate their guilt for their sacrilege.

Heralds were just one type of low-level diplomat which had this particular immunity. It was mostly their function to send messages and make arrangements for envoys, who had more negotiating power. Of course, these systems became more formalized over time. The status of embassies as a country’s sovereign soil and diplomatic immunity and the rest of the modern system of diplomacy date back to well before the settlements after the Second World War that created the modern “rules-based world order.” The most relevant active treaty governing this status in the modern era is the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which every member of the United Nations besides South Sudan and Palau [neither of which were independent states at the time of ratification] has signed. The preamble of this treaty, which Israel has voluntarily agreed to follow, begins with,

“The States Parties to the Present Convention,

Recalling that peoples of all nations from ancient times have recognized the status of diplomatic agents…”

The preamble ends with, “Affirming that the rules of customary international law should continue to govern questions not expressly regulated by the provisions of the present Convention.” What this recognizes, then, is that this “treaty law,” as it would be called, simply codifies the customary laws of mankind, and if it should miss anything, those customary laws are fallen back on. The treaty speaks little of attacking a diplomatic compound in a third country, presumably because they assumed no one would be crazy enough to do such a thing. The home of a diplomat cannot lawfully be bombed under any circumstance. The treaty states that the residences of diplomats are inviolable.

A state attacking a diplomatic compound is an abomination in the eyes of man and God. Israel, it should come as no surprise, has broken an oath which others took in good faith. Israel thus distinguished itself as a uniquely evil state when they made the decision to bomb the consulate in Damascus, killing 7 people. The dead are military officials, who would generally be considered legitimate targets, but the compound they destroyed is attached to the embassy and included the residence of Iran’s Ambassador to Syria, who is protected as a diplomat. If it was so important to commit this attack they could have bombed these individuals at a different location and not violated a law common to all of mankind. Instead, they made the decision which they made, and there can be no argument that this escalation was unintentional. On top of this, of course, all Israeli bombing of Syria is illegal, but it is normalized behavior for a reckless and unlawful regime which behaves however it wishes.

The aftermath of Israel’s strike on the Iranian consulate building in Damascus.

The EU and much of the rest of the world have condemned Israel’s crime. In an unusual move, the United States immediately contacted Iran to say that they had no advance knowledge of this strike and did not approve it. Of course, it is the US’s stance that Iran is responsible for the spate of attacks against the US military across the Middle East, and by that standard, the US as the major supplier and foreign funder of Israel’s military, bears responsibility for this. It is widely expected that Iran will respond, though it is not clear how. We must assume that Israel did this hoping it will cause war to spread. As is the case with Russia in Ukraine, it is generally unwise to let oneself be provoked by a party you know is trying to provoke you, but Iran has few options and cannot be seen to tolerate such an offense. The US has warned Iran against targeting US facilities or personnel, but has been less clear about what they will do about an attack on Israel. Either way, perhaps more than anything since Israel attempted a secret nuclear test in 1979- which everyone instantly discovered- this solidifies Israel’s status as a rogue state which refuses to follow the laws which govern the other countries of the world. For now, we wait to see what Iran does, but most reports signify that a large-scale aerial attack on Israel is expected within the next week. There are reports that Israel has closed its embassies in many countries as a precautionary measure [though there are conflicting reports that they were already closed and have simply remained so.]

Only the Persians can know if they will be as magnanimous as their ancestor Xerxes and refuse expatiate Israel’s guilt by punishing them for their crime.

The Siege and Destruction of Al-Shifa

The Gazan public witnesses the ruin of what was once their largest and most advanced hospital.

Throughout the war on Gaza, Israel has taken a characteristically violent an unlawful approach to hospitals within Gaza. We have seen countless examples, as the hospitals in Gaza have, one by one, ceased to function due to Israel’s malicious and inhumane actions. An article published by The New Arab in November highlights how much damage Israel had done to Gaza’s hospitals, including the Al-Shifa complex in under 2 months of war. At the time, 26 of Gaza’s 35 hospitals were non-functional due to attacks or the lack of power. Who hasn’t seen the horrific stories from doctors who have gone to work in Gaza? The examples of suffering and Israel’s attacks on hospitals are too many to go through and they all seemed to have merged together into a single horror. Though Wikipedia has its problems, it is an excellent repository of references, and the references for the page “Attacks on Healthcare Facilities During the Israel-Hamas War” currently list 188 articles, most of which are specific attacks on hospitals, the deaths of patients and medical personnel, and statements of condemnation from human rights organizations. Seeing it all laid out is shocking even as we have seen it unfold over the last 6 months.

Of course, the whole time we were told that Israel wouldn’t just attack hospitals, and the excuse each time was that the hospitals are used as a command center. In one particularly ridiculous instance, Israel claimed that videos of hostages being taken inside Al-Shifa hospital were evidence it was a Hamas command center…as opposed to evidence that Hamas was getting the hostages necessary medical treatment. Their line of reasoning was that Hamas would have had to drive by other hospitals to get there, ignoring that the Gaza Strip is quite small and they presumably had some sort of dispatch system telling them which hospitals had available doctors. As with most of the statements from Israel and its supporters, believing this was incriminating to the hospital itself required some combination of stupidity and malice. And who can forgot their tour of the hospital showing off the “weapons caches” they found that were a variety of small arms which individual fighters would carry. The reality is that the bar for hospitals losing their protection under international law is high, though poorly defined. However, situations such as militants of any sort receiving treatment or staying there after receiving treatment are explicitly considered to not make the hospital constitute a military threat, and they are allowed to have armed guards. Further, appropriate measures are allowed to be taken to move the injured in, which would include using tunnels to avoid airstrikes. As of November, Human Rights Watch said that Israel had presented no evidence that any of these hospitals would have lost their inviolable status under international law, and that Israel should be investigated for war crimes regarding attacking hospitals.

The world had mostly grown numb to the immense humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the repeated attacks on hospitals until Israel withdrew from its completed siege of the Al-Shifa hospital complex on April 1st. The US public broadcaster NPR describes the scene once the site was able to be inspected,

“Photos and survivors' testimony gathered by NPR in Gaza City reveal a battle that destroyed nearly every corner of Al-Shifa, as well as the neighborhoods and homes around it — now heaps of twisted metal, debris and ashes from fires that were set alight.

Bodies lay decomposing in the hospital's dirt courtyard, which was laden with unexploded ordnance. Other people were shot and left to die in its hallways, maimed and crushed by tanks outside its gates, decomposing on side streets and in buildings.”

Outside of the most unbelievable Israeli claims about 10/7, this is as bad as anything a terrorist attack can do. This is the sort of thing that gets people put on trial in the Hague. The same article includes a before and after photo of the hospital complex:

Satellite photos of the Al-Shifa hospital complex from Maxxar Technologies. The left is June 1, 2022. The right is April 1, 2024.

Israel, however, is very proud of what they’ve done at the siege of Al-Shifa. According to the Israeli government spokesman Avi Hyman this operation was a model of success, "We went in there with a surgical force, special operations and we took out over 200 terrorists. We apprehended over 900 terrorists with not a single civilian casualty.” He further said that this will be studied at top military academies like West Point and is, “The gold standard for urban warfare.” They obviously know no one but those with the combination of idiocy and malice described above could possibly believe them. I am reminded of one of my favorite quotes from Tacitus, where the conspirator Gaius Silius says, “Only innocent people can afford long-term plans. Flagrant guilt requires audacity. And we have accomplices who share our danger” [Annals, XI.26.] This has been, the whole time, why Israel takes it one day at a time with crazy claims that they can, or could, usually rely on the media to repeat, and up to now, have reliably had the institutional backing of Anglo-American power.

The NPR article, however, is reasonably skeptical of Israel’s claims, especially given the decaying bodies lying around. The hospital staff reported that among others, the chief engineer of the maintenance department, the head of pharmaceuticals, and a reconstructive surgeon, along with his mother, were all killed. These people were clearly and distinctly supposed to be protected individuals under international law. Further, doctors at the hospital state at least 7 of their doctors were taken by Israel, though one can only imagine how many of the hundreds captured by Israel are other innocent civilians. The World Health Organization also reports that at least 20 patients died during the siege. It is one thing to acknowledge that accidents happen during war and that these deaths are unfortunate, and then to blame Hamas for using the hospital for military purposes, but instead Israel says they killed no civilians, because, as said above, flagrant guilt requires audacity. It needs to be noted that, in general, occupying forces have an obligation to try and ensure those under occupation have adequate access to food and healthcare. At this current time Israel is most certainly occupying Gaza, though part of the concern when they withdrew from Gaza in 2006 was that if it was under siege but unoccupied Israel had fewer humanitarian obligations towards the well being of Gazans. Regardless, it has always been Israel’s stance that Palestine is not occupied, but that they voluntarily [pretend to] meet international humanitarian obligations.

The Turkish independent outlet Middle East Eye tells a much more drastic story of the end of the Al-Shifa siege than the ever-tepid National Public Radio. Their article, titled “War on Gaza: Israeli troops withdraw from al-Shifa hospital, leaving piles of dead bodies” is grim. They speak to one young man who says,

“People were shot at and attacked. We are civilians. The scene was worse than an earthquake. There were no doctors. Some of them were killed, some of them got arrested. Those who survived, survived. Those who died, died. Fifteen days of siege in al-Shifa with nothing, no food, no water." 

The article proceeds to explain the wreckage on the scene,

“The structure of the complex was damaged in every building, with destroyed equipment and paperwork strewn everywhere. 

At the special surgery unit, one of the newest buildings in the hospital, all that remained was piles of rocks and metal.

Among the units destroyed were the kidney and maternity buildings, the morgues, refrigeration facilities, as well as the outpatient clinics building.

Scores of dead bodies, including of children, women and the elderly, filled the streets near the complex. Medical sources said hundreds of bodies were found.”

They also quote a spokesman for the Palestinian Red Crescent Society who says that,

“The medical staff, some of them were killed, others tortured, others detained. According to eyewitness accounts and official reports, many of the civilians were executed. They were killed by the Israeli forces including medical staff, doctors and nurses, they were purposefully executed by the Israeli soldiers.”

What is described is a blatant and egregious crime against humanity. There is no way to describe this behavior but evil, and it is coming from “the most moral army in the world.”

But April 1st was not over yet.

When Murder Finally Matters

What has already become a notorious image of an Israeli strike through the logo of an aid vehicle.

Capping off the busy news cycle of April 1st, Israel brutally murdered 6 international aid workers and their Palestinian translator. Of course, the Palestinian wouldn’t have been noticed by the world, but the foreign nationals were. The aid workers were involved with the World Central Kitchen aid organization, ran by the Washington DC celebrity chef Jose Andres. The WCK had recently entered Gaza by sea after building a dock out of rubble- which as an article at The Grayzone pointed out, probably contained the remnants of dead humans. Andres had coordinated closely with the IDF, in fact getting criticized as a collaborator, for his generally positive attitude towards Israel, and for also feeding Israelis who have been displaced by the conflict. Everything that WCK was doing in Gaza had the explicit approval of Israel’s government and they were in near constant contact with the IDF to prevent this exact type of situation. Of course, the IDF’s first instinct was to try to say the strike was a “mistake,” which it was in the sense that it was the wrong decision, but which it was not in the sense that they intentionally blew up those cars.

By April 2nd, Haaretz had already got most of the story, in an article titled, “IDF Drone Bombed World Central Kitchen Aid Convoy Three Times, Targeting Armed Hamas Member Who Wasn't There.” The IDF’s story became that they saw a single armed man who they believed was with the convoy and thought might be a terrorist. That is to say, they believed there was a single gun in a convoy with 7 civilians. The truck that the armed man was supposed to be in had reached a warehouse with three WCK cars. The cars then left without the truck- and without the armed man. While driving on a route approved by the IDF, an Israeli war room decided to strike one of the cars with a Hermes 450 drone [ironically, named after the herald of the gods, a position which we now know that the Israelis do not hold sacred.] After the first missile strike the passengers were evacuated from first vehicle, they attempted to alert the IDF that they had been struck, and continued in two cars. Then, second missile struck the convoy. The third car approached and as the passengers- surely at this point terrified out of their minds- tried to evacuate the second car and escape by the third car. A third missile struck, killing whichever of the passengers had remained alive up to that point.

Perhaps it is the case that after these maniacs did the first strike they thought if there were no witnesses there would be no crime. A different article in Haaretz explains that every aspect of this broke normal protocol. They are specifically not supposed to fire at armed men approaching aid trucks, the aid workers are not supposed to respond to armed men approaching to avoid a dangerous situation, and after a first strike they are supposed to re-identify the target- who they weren’t supposed to be firing on regardless!- instead of assuming they have moved to a second vehicle. Of course, this protocol was separately violated with both the second and third strike. Though two officers have been dismissed and others are being disciplined or investigated, it’s hard to come to a different conclusion but that Israel does not usually follow these protocols at all when it is Palestinians they are killing.

Unfortunately for Israel, they killed the wrong people. Any cynical or just moderately observant person who follows the news knows some lives are treated as mattering more than others- I believe in the ‘90s the saying in the media regarding what sells newspapers was something like “1 white American is worth 100 white Bosnian Muslims is worth 1000 black Africans.” One way or another, they killed a white American, and one working for a “credible” aid organization in a way that mainstream America found acceptable, not some hippie like Rachel Corrie [may she Rest in Peace.]

This chef Jose Andres runs major restaurants in DC. He knows all the right people. He is said to generally have inoffensive centrist Democrat political views. The mainstream view among Americans is basically that Israel’s cause for war is just but that it is causing unnecessary human suffering in the way it conducts the war and that more should be done to help Palestinian civilians. Chef Andres was about the only person doing anything in line with these somewhat contradictory views by avoiding criticizing Israel’s methods and objectives but working to feed the people of Gaza. This has also broadly been the Biden Administration’s stance, even if they keep providing Israel with ever more weapons with which to conduct these massacres. Perhaps more importantly, Biden referred to Jose Andres as a “friend,” and I assume he meant it, though of course with someone at Joe Biden’s level “friend” means “associate” and “confidant” means “friend.” Regardless, all of these things taken together, the change in attitude towards Israel seems to have been immediate:

Even the Zio-Queen Bari Weiss, who previously had not seen any crime committed by Israel she would not happily justify, called this a “horrific tragedy” without any bloviating, at least not in the first tweet.

The World Central Kitchen announced that it would have to cease operations in Gaza. Andres was understandably quite angry at Israel’s government, given the high level of coordination and the fact that Andres had taken a degree of responsibility for the safety of his volunteers. As I said, this clearly was not a mistake in the sense of being an accidental airstrike being as they fired 3 times at all 3 vehicles, but it was a mistake in the sense that it was a bad decision. Chef Andres being personally angry should be the least of their worries, but some of Israel’s strongest supporters such as Commentary editor John Podhoretz of the famous neoconservative Podhoretz family has decided that accusing the Israel government- not the Jewish people- of having done this intentionally is blood libel. They are wearing out the anti-Semitism card to the extent that perhaps it can never be used in the future, and usually doing so while behaving horribly in the name of Judaism.

Of course Ben “my feelings don’t care about your facts” Shapiro also took this approach:

Fortunately, their lunacy is not working so well anymore, and many more people were critical of their decision to call Andres’ criticisms “blood libel.”

Following the strike on WCK workers, after a long day of unjustified, criminal mass murder, against all laws and customs, Israel was ready to go to bed.

The Empty Wrath of the Stuffed Corpse

We are told that Biden is very angry about this airstrike. Of course, he has a sort of rage dementia problem anyway, so who knows exactly what that means. However, in yet another article from Haaretz, one of the few I’ve seen which tried to tie these three events together as I am doing here, argues that the world was already running out of patience with Israel before they murdered the World Central Kitchen volunteers. The author, Amos Harel, is highly critical of Netanyahu’s actions before and since October 7th. There is no reason to believe Israel’s strikes against Hezbollah and Iran- most notably the embassy- will reduce the likelihood of war instead of increasing it, despite that being the ostensible purpose of such aggression. Many in Israel believe Netanyahu will do anything to stay in power to avoid corruption charges as well as investigations into his Administration’s drastic failures on October 7th. Now, Israel seems to be running out of time to bring this conflict to some sort of satisfactory conclusion. The problem is that they are no closer to removing Hamas from power or getting the remaining hostages back, and Netanyahu still has maximalist aims which no one will agree to. It isn’t just “vibes” that the world is running out of patience either, in the US, Israel’s most important sponsor, polling has shown that the public was running out of patience before April 1st. This is especially true among Democrats, and Biden is uniquely unqualified for a tough re-election fight. It’s true that the vast majority of Democrats would never vote for Trump, but getting people enthusiastic enough to bother to vote at all is one of the most important parts of an election, and the enthusiasm gap is massive, in Trump’s favor. At the same time, it seems that Israel is dragging down American electoral politics generally, as at least a fair amount of Trump voters hate his ardent support for Israel, but are pretending that his comments about Israel needing to wrap this up mean something different than “kill them all quickly.”

Still, even if it is just hollow rhetoric, it seems in many ways a corner has been turned. Though it still generally accepts the premise that the strikes on the WCK vehicles were an accident, the White House official statement was unusually critical of Israel. It included the following,

Israel has pledged to conduct a thorough investigation into why the aid workers’ vehicles were hit by airstrikes. That investigation must be swift, it must bring accountability, and its findings must be made public. 

Even more tragically, this is not a stand-alone incident…Israel has not done enough to protect aid workers trying to deliver desperately needed help to civilians. Incidents like yesterday’s simply should not happen. Israel has also not done enough to protect civilians.”

Just words, and they have made some effort to push Israel in this direction over time, but the war goes in one direction and what Israel suffered on October 7th [albeit much of it self-inflicted] is being forgotten in the wake of what Israel has itself done to Gaza. In a much more incredible statement, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned that Israel risked “Becoming indistinguishable from Hamas” if they didn’t manage to limit civilian casualties. He also made a rare, for him, good point that I have been making this whole time, saying,

“What happened after October 7 could have ended immediately if Hamas had stopped hiding behind civilians, released the hostages and put down its weapons, but Israel is not Hamas. Israel is a democracy; Hamas, a terrorist organization…If we lose that reverence for human life, we risk becoming indistinguishable from those we confront.”

Israel, whom we fund and have a “special relationship” with and who is meant to be our great ally with the most moral army in the world and the only Democracy™ in the Middle East shouldn’t be able to just say “well this is what Hamas would do” as a justification for their behavior. They have to be better than Hamas for that distinction to matter, and Israel has killed far more civilians than were killed in Israel on October 7th. Hamas are basically terrorists [though I would argue that their status as a quasi-state actor complicates that designation] so they should be expected to act like terrorists. It’s illegal for Americans to give money to anything associated with Hamas whereas its legal for Americans to serve in the IDF. Thus, these organizations should be held to drastically different standards of behavior.

The one solid change that did come out of this is Biden pressuring Israel into temporarily opening the Erez Crossing to allow aid in for the first time since 10/7, which is allegedly forthcoming. I take a moderate position on the question of how easily Biden could “solve this with a phone call,” but the irresponsibility with which Israel committed its crimes did put pressure on them to look less evil. It surely demonstrates he could have been doing more the entire time. However it doesn’t seem he will do more, the US not only won’t be changing policy, they just approved a new transfer of an enormous number of large bombs with which Israel can continue brutalizing the Gazans.

The one factor which still could change the US’s Israel policy is the response from Iran, which everyone still expects. Though I have no doubt the US could spin the narrative any way it wishes, it is already out there that this time it is Israel’s unjustified strike which put Americans in danger. It would be hard to make people forget Israeli responsibility for any retaliation which kills Americans. Now, the US and Israel just wait for Iran to strike, while we wonder if Biden is quietly seething about the events of April 1st or if he usually thinks it is still the First Intifada. It was most likely always Israel’s plan to draw us further in with the consulate bombing, but will such a transparent scheme bear fruit?

The Winter of Our Discontent

A makeshift cemetery in the destroyed Gaza City. Just a small part of what Israel has done with American bombs.

April 1st was but one incredible day in the ignominious modern history of the State of Israel. A variety of other facts and accusations have recently come to light. Haaretz reported on March 31st that Israel has made “kill zones” in Gaza where, unknown to Gaza residents, anyone who enters will be murdered- a repeat of the “kill anything that moves” order which seems to have gone out on 10/7, but without the excuse of panic and confusion. We learned on April 2nd that doctors within Gaza say that Israel deliberately snipes children. The most terrifying recent news is the April 3rd report in the Israel opposition magazine +972 about the Lavender AI targeting system where with minimal oversight and a huge “tolerance” for civilian casualties Palestinian men are targeted for destruction [in fact, not targeting women and children is its only meaningful safeguard.] Those monsters called a component of the system “Where’s Daddy?” which is clearly meant to be a humorous reference to it leaving kids as orphans. Caitlin Johnstone noticed something about this story I didn’t, which is that this wholly debunks their “human shields” narrative because the machine allows to 15-20 civilian casualties in order to get a low-level Hamas operative, meaning Israel is not even making a “tough decision” to have to strike anyway [by contrast, the US’s acceptable civilian casualties for such low-level targets is 0.] On April 4th a Human Rights Watch report was released saying that a strike in October which killed 106 civilians including 54 children had no apparent military target making it an “apparent war crime.” That, including the above mentioned “triple crown” on April 1st, is just 5 days’ worth of reporting on Israel’s crimes, any one of which should be shocking on its own.

Though it was always my instinct to sympathize with the Palestinians, as an adult I had become more neutral, most of all out of recognition that most states are founded in a similar fashion to Israel, they just had the misfortune of it being in the modern era. It is also the case that besides stopping my own government’s support for Israel and stopping Israel’s influence over my government [both of which are mostly hopeless goals anyway] it isn’t for me to say how this conflict should end, as only the two parties can decide what they would agree on, which of course is not forthcoming. Many supporters of Palestine take it too far, saying that Israelis should leave the region entirely. However, while an elite class which founded Israel may be Europeans who had no prior connection to the Middle East and might have dual citizenship or be able to easily get it, and a fair amount of West Bank Settlers are recent Russian immigrants who could return home, the great body of Jews in Israel are people from across the Middle East and North Africa who were expelled or otherwise displaced in the strife surrounding Israel’s founding and the general decolonization process. That is to say, they also don’t have anywhere to go, and by now most of them were born there; their being ethnically cleansed from Israel would be just as bad as it happening to the Palestinians of Gaza. This leaves me with a good measure of sympathy for both sides.

However, despite protests against Netanyahu, which are again large, there is great evil within Israel’s society, such as the “activists” blocking food coming into Gaza or the bizarre “human interest” story about the Grandma who wants to colonize an ethnically cleansed Gaza. We can’t judge the whole country by this, and certainly Palestinians have much hatred and are also led by bad people, but we are brought into Israel’s flagrant crimes with them if we keep supporting their actions on the grounds of the lie that they are the great liberal democracy of the Middle East. The fact, which I have perhaps been too hesitant to accept, is that Israel’s government simply is evil and this should not be considered relative to anything else. They bomb consulates in the hope of starting larger wars, they mass murder patients and staff at hospitals, they starve an enormous population and then bomb the people trying to help them, they cause mass civilian casualties based on a decision a computer makes, and they may even snipe children. And how do they respond to criticisms of this blatantly evil behavior? They sometimes claim a need to defend themselves but more often call you an anti-Semite or say it is blood libel. Their country is poisoning ours, and it is hard to come to a different conclusion than that they are intentionally incriminating us along with them for the protection they believe will come from our guilt. It is enough already, and was a long time ago, even if it took the three events of April 1st to make that more clear than ever.

In many ways Israel as a state has come to remind me of Shakespeare’s Richard III. Deformed, unloved by those around him, having lost much in his family’s struggle for the crown, he rages at the world. But he sees a salvation and safety in power, and without a second thought kills all of those who get in his way, including many of his own relatives, until his own mother says that she should have strangled him in her accursed womb [4.4.138.] As Israel’s reckless and evil behavior seems to lead us with it into a terrible war for the Middle East, one can imagine Israel saying the same thing to America that Richard told his officers before his last battle, justifying past crimes while bravely moving forward to commit more:

“Let not our babbling dreams affright our souls. /
Conscience is but a word that cowards use, /
Devised at first to keep the strong in awe. /
Our strong arms be our conscience; swords, our law. /
March on, join bravely! Let us to’t, pell mell— /
If not to heaven, then hand in hand to hell.”
[5.6.38-43]

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