Genocide. Diplomicide. Militarism... Revulsion growing worldwide.

Genocide. Diplomicide. Militarism... Revulsion growing worldwide. https://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward/preview?u=6051805ea28d7ad24c553979e&id=c783f41fc5 Dear friends-- The news from Gaza, Iran, Lebanon, and other points across West Asia about the results of the continuing US-Israeli aggressions against the region is all deeply, deeply disturbing. Nevertheless, I hope this finds you well, and your spirits strong enough continue to work to build a better world. I call the genocide and military campaigns being waged against West Asia's indigenous peoples "US-Israeli" because of the deep complicity of the Biden administration in every aspect of what the Israeli military has been doing. That has included: the recent dispatch of U.S. service-members to Israel in the USAF fighter jets recently sent there, who join those staffing the THAAD high-altitude interception system sent there earlier; the constant contribution that US (and UK) surveillance and other intel systems have made to the Israeli military's operations; and of course the continuing "ironclad" political protection that Washington has given to Israel in all the authoritative decisionmaking bodies worldwide. The results, as we know, have been catastrophic for the people of Gaza and extremely damaging for communities throughout the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iran, and Iraq. I'm going to write a bit more about Iran, below. But the crisis and tensionsthat Israel has deliberately spread throughout the whole of West Asia still all has its origins-- and the crucial key to any de-escalation-- firmly rooted in Gaza. Gaza's crisis intensifying In Gaza, it is not "just" the food system that has been strangled by Israel's military, per the graphic that I showed above. All the other systems essential for the maintenance of human life have also come under systematic Israeli attack there. We have heard a lot about the destruction of Gaza's hospitals and basic medical facilities... And on the same UN-OCHA chart from last Tuesday (PDF here) from which I took the "truckloads" numbers, I found this report about the extreme shelter crisis in Gaza: Read every item on that list carefully. And know that winter is already starting to hit Gaza Palestinians clustering in their crude tent/shelters on the beaches, many of them having access now-- after repeated "emergency" displacements-- to only a few, now very ragged items of summer clothing. As I have argued repeatedly, the crisis that Israel (with strong US-NATO backing) has inflicted on Gaza's people is not just "humanitarian", such as might have arisen from a "natural" disaster. It is entirely man-made and intensely political. And it can only be ended by determined and effective political/diplomatic action to Achieve the Ceasefire and End the Israel Occupation that has plagued Gaza's people-- and their confrères in the West Bank-- for 57 years now. (Indeed, I now consider that the work that my JWE board colleagues and I have put into our "Understanding Hamas And Why That Matters" project constitutes, at one level, a radical plea for effective diplomacy...) Throughout the 55 weeks of the current Gaza-Israel crisis we have seen that the United States, which has almost single-handedly dominated global politics since 1991, has not only been diplomatically quite ineffective... It has also continued to shower the Israeli military and their attendant political system with arms, arms, more arms, money, intelligence assistance, and solid support at the U.N. And by doing that, it has ensured the failure of any diplomatic "performances" that Pres. Biden or his cabinet members might have put on for public consumption. That's why I put my newly-minted term "diplomicide" into the subject line of this newsletter. This U.S. administration has been systematically killing the whole concept of diplomacy ever since October 8, 2023. And it is not just the death of diplomacy. What the Palestinians and others in West Asia have been experiencing over the past year has often felt to many of them to be death by diplomacy. Yesterday, my dear, brave, talented friend Laila El-Haddad posted onto Instagram the photo and commentary you see here. These are very far from the first members of Laila's family who have been slaughtered during the current genocide. But this latest slaughter came while Sec. Anthony Blinken was in Israel, putting on the eleventh performance of his grotesque "watch me while I pretend to do U.S. diplomacy" show during the current crisis. And still, some Gaza Palestinians continue to exude-- and to urge the further spreading of-- a world-transforming spirit of radical hope...