As human rights groups continue to call out war crimes committed by the Israeli military, we speak to the only U.S. diplomat to publicly resign from the Biden administration over its policy on Israel.
We first spoke to Hala Rharrit when she resigned from the State Department in April, citing the illegal and deceptive nature of U.S. policy in the Middle East. “We continue to willfully violate laws so that we surge U.S. military assistance to Israel,” she says after more than a year of Israel’s war on Gaza.
Rharrit says she found the Biden administration unmovable in its “counterproductive policy,” which she believes has gravely harmed U.S. interests in the Middle East. “We are going to feel the repercussions of that for years, decades, generations.”
I overheard a brief conversation between Trump-supporting veterans last week. Youngish guys, so not your average Vietnam boomer. It was startling to hear them talk about what’s going on in Israel in two stark terms:
They talked about Israel being savagely “attacked” by Iran. Not Hamas, but literally Iran.
They hope the military turns Iran to glass.
No mention of Palestine or Gaza at all, nor of the history of Israeli aggression. All they see is that Arabic nations launched an attack on Israel, and Israel is “fighting back.” It’s a mini holy war to these guys, and I’d guess a sizeable bipartisan coalition within the military industrial complex sees it exactly the same way. Palestine, to them, is just collateral damage in a broader war that was started by “them.”
Anti-muslim Racism has been pretty common and accepted in the West since even before 9/11 (though it definitelly exploded in the aftermath of it) plus Jews are seen as Whites Of A Different Religion (it’s not for nothing that Zionists since the very beginning constantly repeat the “Israel has Western values” mantra).
So for those people the entire reading of the situation, judgment of the actions of the participants and definition of what’s an acceptable or unaccetable response is anchored on what their anti-Muslim and pro-White prejudices tell them is the character of everybody in each of the sides involved (or, in simple terms, who are the “good guys” for whom everything is justifiable and the “bad guys” whose actions are always evil).
This is why so many Liberals ended up siding with American Fascists in their defense of an ethno-Fascist (i.e. Nazi-like) regime commiting ethnic Genocide - they too aways judged people based on their etnicity, differing only from one another in the list of “presumed good” and “presumed bad” ethnicities, and in this specific case both shared “Jews” in their list of “good ethnicity” (the Fascists because they saw them as Westerners - i.e. White - and the Liberals because they saw them as Victims following the Holocaust, a view heavilly propagandized by Zionists) and “Muslims” in the list of “bad ethnicity” (curiously both because they’re not White, and both via the cultural differences between them and “Westerners”, though Fascists and Liberals disliked different elements the culture of “Muslims” - I use quotes because whilst they see it as a single culture, it’s not, not even close).
That’s not a point of view singular to the military. It’s a pretty stock conservative take.
I didn’t say the former, and my opinion doesn’t preclude the latter.
Then why include that they’re veterans? That’d be like me saying I saw four people, all black, discussing how they were going illegally pass water out in the voting line.
Including that bit doesn’t give us any more relevant information. Unless of course I’m trying to push an opinion about black people.
Edit - but->bit
Polite conversation not your strong suit? I don’t have an axe to grind here, dude, just making small talk.
And yet as an OIF vet I feel weirdly targeted.
Then offer your opinion about how a military operation looks to you. I was literally at a charity even for veterans and overheard a group of people talking who I don’t usually hear from. And they didn’t know I was listening, so they were transparently honest about how it looks to them. It startled me because it was a wildly different framing than I was familiar with. So when the person asked what exactly is going on beneath the surface, I offered an anecdote that was timely and relevant.
Don’t take everything so personally.
Sure, you take it objectively when everyone wants to pre-emptively lump you in with a bunch of traitors.
Israel is a rogue state going for the record on how many war crimes can they commit against a resistance movement they spawned with previous war crimes.
Damn, dude, take a deep breath. I didn’t lump you in with anything, infer you’re lumped in with anything, or disparage veterans in any way, shape, form, or fashion. I didn’t even know you existed until this very conversation. Talk about wildly disproportionate blowback.
Go tell the person who asked what’s actually going on, not me. I don’t agree with the people I overheard, I’m just the messenger and responded to that person’s question because they sounded curious.
Pretty sure OP is asking why the US gov relentlessly supports the genocide, not maga morons.
They did address that point.
…which is why I said: