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ACCORDING TO LIZ - Speaking to a joint session of Congress – decimated by those protesting his presence – on Wednesday Netanyahu euphemized the war in Gaza as “a clash between barbarism and civilization.”
He attacked Americans’ right to free speech by calling pro-Palestinian protesters “Iran’s useful idiots.” Blithely ignoring that the Republicans and some Democrats giving the Israeli murderer-in-chief standing ovations might be called by many of us “Netanyahu’s useful idiots.”
After all, who is authorizing the spending of billions of American tax dollars to ship Israel the weapons used to maim and kill Gazans, destroying their homes, their land, their infrastructure, their future?
Biden isn’t doing this all on his own. Who are in the back rooms of power urging him on?
Who are the warmongers in our own government supporting Netanyahu’s aggression, profiting off of arms deals, and driving further climate change which is a direct result of military action.
Who instigated the overthrow of Iran's elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953 and then propped up the Shah’s oppression that gave direct rise to the Ayatollahs?
Who are guilty? The Iranian people or the few Ayatollahs?
Those in the Iranian government responding to the murder of its military leaders and destruction of their property? Or the Mossad agents that facilitated those acts of violence?
A purportedly democratic Israeli government that continues to allow settlers to illegally seize land in the West Bank? Those settlers who then call on the Israeli military to arrest, remove, or otherwise dispose of the rightful owners?
Netanyahu said Israel did not want to “resettle” Gaza but should have indefinite “security control” over it.
In other words, relegate the land to an Israeli possession and its inhabitants to chattels. Sounds like a reincarnation of the Deep South.
About half of the Democrats boycotted the speech and Kamala Harris missed it due to a scheduling conflict. Others remained seated when the sycophants stood, and Senator Chuck Schumer would not shake hands with Netanyahu.
Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American member of Congress, held up a sign that said, “Guilty of genocide” for all to see.
Who can we believe? Israeli news outlets who serve and are served (mostly) by Netanyahu’s muzzled government? Or news out of Iran, too often suppressed in America, or used to illustrate (mostly) the American-Israeli viewpoint.
Who can we believe? People protesting peacefully (mostly) against the genocide in Gaza or the Maga-nuts who co-opt social media to amplify their voices calling for the arrest and deportation of Palestinian Americans (along with the Mexicans, et al)?
I think Tlaib was correct. As does the International Criminal Court who has called for Netanyahu’s arrest.
And it is Netanyahu who is trying to cloak his own barbarism with American approval.
Just say no, Joe.
(Liz Amsden is a contributor to CityWatch and an activist from Northeast Los Angeles with opinions on much of what goes on in our lives. She has written extensively on the City's budget and services as well as her many other interests and passions. In her real life she works on budgets for film and television where fiction can rarely be as strange as the truth of living in today's world.)
