[Salon] The Netanyahu Speech - Guest Post by Ron Estes

The Netanyahu Speech By Ron Estes 3 August 2024 Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu addressed a joint session of Congress on 24 July for an unprecedented 4th time. Even Winston Churchill addressed a joint session of the US Congress only three times. He began by continuing his decades long practice of blaming Iran for all the turmoil in the Middle East. He said, “Our world is in upheaval. In the Middle East, Iran's axis of terror confronts America, Israel and our Arab friends. This is not a clash of civilizations. It's a clash between barbarism and civilization. It's a clash between those who glorify death and those who sanctify life.” Congress applauded. Netanyahu has for decades pursued a campaign claiming Iran is the world’s leading sponsor of international terrorism. What Netanyahu refers to as terrorism, many in the international community realize Iranian support for Palestinian attacks against Israel are initiated to bring to an end their occupation by Israel and to achieve their freedom and sovereignty. The right of the Palestinians to attack Israel to resist their occupation is protected by international law. He then turned to values, “America and Israel must stand together. Because when we stand together, something very simple happens. We win.” Every time Netanyahu has addressed Congress, he has emphasized our shared values, and Congress rewards the contention with standing applause. But for many Americans that is an allegation that must be addressed. The facts are, Israel is the only country in the Middle East occupying another people’s territory and population. It is in violation of numerous international laws, and in violation of more UN resolutions than all the nations of the world combined. The United States does not share those values. Turning to the 7 October Hamas attack, Netanyahu claimed Hamas raped women, beheaded men, burnt babies alive, killed parents in front of their children and children in front of their parents. He also claimed Hamas beheaded 40 children. Israeli journalists, however, who visited the scene of the alleged beheadings saw no evidence to support the allegation, and the Israeli military officials accompanying them made no mention of it. The Israeli army subsequently refused to confirm the claim. Regarding the charge of rape, and some Israeli officials repeated those charges, on October 10 an Israeli military spokesperson said that Israel “does not yet have any evidence of rape having occurred during Saturday’s attack, or its aftermath” and Israel has yet to provide any proof of rapes. And regarding burning babies alive, Israeli journalists found no evidence for the claim, and a representative of ZAKA, a first responder organization, said the claim was "false". The French newspaper Libération said the claim was "entirely fictitious.” While Netanyahu was speaking, there were hundreds of demonstrators outside the Capitol protesting Netanyahu’s appearance. Referring to them, Netanyahu said, “they refuse to make the simple distinction between those who target terrorists and those who target civilians, between the democratic State of Israel and the terrorist thugs of Hamas.” He then claimed Iran was funding the nation-wide anti-Israeli demonstrations taking place throughout the US. “For all we know, Iran is funding the anti-Israel protests that are going on right now outside this building.” He continued, “They not only get an F in geography, they get an F in history. They call Israel a colonialist state. Don't they know that the land of Israel is where Abraham, Isaac and Jacob prayed, where Isaiah and Jeremiah preached and where David and Solomon ruled?” And then, a typical Netanyahu statement, “For nearly four thousand years, the land of Israel has been the homeland of the Jewish people. It's always been our home; it will always be our home.” Netanyahu either doesn’t know, or doesn’t want Congress to know, that since the founding of the 1st Israelite kingdom in 1020 BC, until 1948, Israel held sovereignty over land in the region for only 513 years. Muslims occupied and governed Jerusalem longer than Jews, for example. Then Netanyahu turned to the International Criminal Court (ICC) saying, “The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has shamefully accused Israel of deliberately starving the people of Gaza. This is utter complete nonsense. It's a complete fabrication.” As a matter of fact, it is not a fabrication. In 2007, Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza that deprived the Palestinians of adequate food and water. The UN declared the Israeli blockade does not meet basic international nutrition requirements and said the population of Gaza required 400 trucks of food a day. Israel has never met that requirement. Continuing about the ICC, which by the way has finally filed an application for a warrant for the arrest of Netanyahu for war crimes. He then added, “The ICC prosecutor accuses Israel of deliberately targeting civilians. What in God's green earth is he talking about?” Netanyahu must know he was talking about this: In May Netanyahu said 14,000 Hamas fighters and 16,000 Palestinian civilians had been killed in the war. He underestimated the casualties. By late April 2024, it was estimated that Israel had dropped over 70,000 tons of bombs over Gaza, surpassing the bombing of Dresden, Hamburg and London during WWII. As of 13 May 2024, the U.N. had reported that 35,000 had been killed in the conflict, and that included 7,797 minors, 4,959 women and 1,924 elderly. As of this writing, 39,145 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza. Despite these facts, Netanyahu told Congress, “the war in Gaza has one of the lowest ratios of combatants to non-combatant casualties in the history of urban warfare.” Our parochial Congress applauded We are in the process of choosing a new government. Let's hope that process will include a thorough professional evaluation of the US national security interests that must be protected by our foreign policy, and perhaps reevaluate some of our so-called shared values. Ron Estes served 25 years as an Operations Officer in the CIA Clandestine Service.