What Rough Beast? - TomDispatch.com

What Rough Beast? - TomDispatch.com Juan Cole, Pax Americana? Not a Chance! November 10, 2024 Honestly, can you believe that Hamas's devastating October 7th attack on Israel and that country's initial military response to it occurred well over a year ago? Or that, for the last 14 months, the Gaza Strip -- and it's not called a "strip" for nothing, being only 25 miles long and, at most, seven miles wide -- has become an all too literal hell on Earth? Only the other day, the Israeli military, back campaigning in northern Gaza, reportedly managed to kill at least 50 children in an attack on a refugee camp, while UNICEF’s executive director recently warned that all the people -- yes, everyone! -- now remaining in that area, particularly children, are “at imminent risk of dying.” And that's not just from the fighting but from disease and famine, since the Israelis are letting very little food into that area or the Strip as a whole. (And were I to write this a week or two from now, count on one thing: I'd have a whole new set of nightmares to cite.) Oh, and don't forget the recent attack on a polio vaccination center in northern Gaza that wounded at least six people, including four children, while the car of a UNICEF official involved in that polio program also came under attack, or the grim damage done to a local hospital. In short, each time you think it can't get worse, it does and, one year-plus later, it's estimated that 1.9 million Palestinians, or 90% of the population, has been displaced, at least 66% of the buildings -- mosques, churches, schools, housing of all sorts -- have sustained some damage, and all too many of them are now pure rubble. And don't forget that much of that damage has been done with weaponry the Biden administration has shipped to Israel, including devastating 2,000-pound bombs that can take out whole city blocks. And worse yet, what happened to Gaza now seems to be repeating itself in Lebanon, where more than 1.2 million people have already been displaced from their homes. But let me not go on with this seemingly unending tale of horror. Instead, let TomDispatch regular Juan Cole (whose Informed Comment website is, to my mind, a daily must-read and whose latest book is, all too appropriately, Gaza Yet Stands) consider just how our country and specifically the Biden administration contributed to this ongoing horror in a big-time fashion. Tom