By Malik Washington, Destination Freedom Media Group
I am a journalist who analyzes patterns, trends, and milestones in history. I also closely examine current events in order to develop an accurate understanding of foreign affairs and the geo-political climate. Last year on March 19, 2023, the Israeli Minister of Finance, Bezalel Smotrich spoke in Paris, France at a private memorial service which was held for a prominent, right-winged Likud activist and Jewish Agency board member, Jacques Kupfer.
Mr. Smotrich, who also holds a position on Israel’s war cabinet, was quoted at the memorial service saying that there was “no such thing as Palestinians because there’s no such thing as the Palestinian people.” Smotrich continued by saying, “The Palestinian people are an invention of less than 100 years ago.” When one considers these statements from a highly placed minster in the Israeli government, and factor in that Israeli intelligence may have been fully aware of an imminent terrorist attack by Hamas in October 2023, it raises the question of a larger strategic and pre-planned pragmatic plan.
The genocide and famine unfolding before our eyes in Gaza is all the proof anyone needs to see in order to come to the conclusion that the end game as well as the mission of the Netanyahu coalition is to eradicate and annihilate the Palestinian people.
U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer most certainly was not wrong in his critique of Benjamin Netanyahu. Unlike many of his colleagues in the U.S. Legislature, Senator Schumer possessed the courage to speak the inconvenient truth about the way Netanyahu and his 
colleagues are prosecuting the war in Gaza. On Sunday, CNN reporter Dana Bash had a compelling interview with Benjamin Netanyahu. Mr. Netanyahu balked when Ms. Bash questioned the Israeli leader about his popularity in the polls which points to Israeli citizens favoring early elections in order to choose another leader of the Jewish state.
Anti-Netanyahu protestors in Israel have been violently suppressed and silenced recently.
Hunger has reached catastrophic proportions in Gaza. When you starve human beings, they will loot food trucks in order to sustain themselves. The instinct which drives human beings to survive is very strong. Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel is doing everything they can to minimize civilian casualties. However, when I see IDF soldiers shooting Palestinians in lines for food, I find these claims from Mr. Netanyahu disingenuous. The distortions of truth and fact are overwhelming. I do believe there are human beings in Israel and throughout the world who are interested in preserving the lives of innocent Palestinians and children. We must not remain silent. This loss of life is real, and it can be prevented. If there is a case to be made for an immediate ceasefire, the prospect of saving the children of Gaza is our strongest argument.
MY POLITICAL CRITQUE
Those who do remain silent about the atrocities in Gaza will find themselves complicit as we watch Israel begin to destroy the City of Rafah. This hasn’t happened yet, but I predict it will happen if the international community continues to wring their hands and not stand up to the Netanyahu coalition.
I’VE SEEN THIS BEFORE
In June 2018, I wrote an article, No Love for Yemen. In 2018, “UNICEF called for $350 million to feed the starving Yemini children. They called the amount of $350 million “peanuts” compared to the money spent on arms. – Al Jazeera. At the time, Newsweek reported that 75% of Yeminis required humanitarian assistance. The United Nations declared Yemen the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Yet the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia continued to attack civilians and were blamed for at least half of the 1,300 children killed in Yemen. The United States and the United Kingdom provided Saudi Arabia with 84% of its weapons and arms at the time. Eight million Yeminis were on the brink of famine.
Now in 2024, we see the mass extermination and destruction of a people as well as their land in Gaza. Naomi Wolf wrote a book that I’ve studied for half a year entitled, The End of America. The title of Chapter Two is “Invoke an External and Internal Threat.” In Gaza, Israel has labeled the threat as Hamas, yet no one seems to know where the Palestinian people begin and Hamas ends. The only thing that I’ve observed thus far is the wholesale killing of human beings in the name of revenge. Ms. Wolf quotes political theorist Robert O. Paxton on pages 36 and 37 of her book. Paxton said, “Fascists need a demonized enemy against which to mobilize followers.” In the United States of America, the “enemy” is current migrants. I don’t want to digress here.
We’re talking about Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the conflict in Gaza. In Paxton’s book, The Anatomy of Fascism, he points out, and I quote, “…that once an enemy has been identified, the elites create myths inflaming the fears that the population begins to suffer from in relation to this ‘other.’ The ‘enemy’ is functional: What matters to a fascist leader is not to get rid of the enemy but rather to maintain an enemy.” The point is this, even if Israel destroys Hamas, Netanyahu and his coalition will demonize the Palestinians left over after his experiment of ethnic cleansing and purging.
There appears to be a seductive lure of authoritarianism. It’s not just happening in Israel; it’s happening in the United States. In America, some say that we are “sleepwalking” towards fascism. But I believe that there is a large cross-section of our population that is running towards fascism. When the primary Republican candidate for President begins to make statements like there would be a “bloodbath” if he lost in November (NY Times) and that any Jewish person who votes for Democrats “hates their religion” (CNN). These are the warning signs of a fascist attempting to use hate rhetoric and fear mongering to manipulate the people.
In regard to the war in Gaza, it’s as if we’re witnessing the duplication and magnification of the Yemini crisis. The Saudis have been replaced by Israel and the United States continues to provide a copious amount of material support for the Israeli war machine. Now, how do we reconcile the forced starvation of Palestinian children with our morals and values? How do we turn away when we see IDF soldiers firing on Palestinian human beings waiting on food. Watching any child being eaten up by hunger is unconscionable.
I end this piece by saying, we must end this war in Gaza now, but more importantly, a serious dialogue must be opened up in order to free Israeli hostages while saving the Palestinian people from imminent famine.
