There is so much we don't really know about all of this. What we do know is that people are starving. The Hamas threat is real and as always, undefined by those assessing all of this. It still does not excuse the lack of food reaching desperate families. Surely there are better ways to deal with this, and the withdrawal of available food aid because of our apparent apathy to suffering that the Trump administration displays daily is inexcusable. Israel should not be the one who decides who in Gaza will be fed. They are at war with these people and will make decisions that are influenced by how they see this war. The United States and Europe need to send in food distributed by impartial groups that are willing to help, despite the ongoing conflict. The fact that Israel is not letting this happen, further damages any credibility that they have left. This article is correct is assessing that this is helping to create future strife and violence. Kindness and empathy, along with real help, goes a long way to ease suffering and until this happens, nothing will be fixed.
We do know that every single day for the past few months, Israeli troops and US mercenaries are massacring unarmed, starving civilians at 'aid' sites.
We do know that virtually every global human rights organizations and every genocide scholar around the world has affirmed that Israel is committing genocide, with US support.
We do know that in the West Bank, which has nothing to do with Hamas, Israel has killed over 1000 people in the past 20 months, including several Americans, while its campaign of apartheid and land theft has only escalated.
We do know that Israel has created more child amputees than anywhere else on Earth this century. We do know that Israel has killed more journalists than any other country this century.
We do know that Israel has murdered at the very least 60,000 people, and almost certainly has killed tens of thousands more than that. We do know that the US has given Israel the political, military and financial support to make this possible.
We need much more than 'kindness and empathy' The US need to stop arming Israel right now, and US and Israeli leaders need to be held accountable for this ongoing war crime.
Whatever future terrorist threats might emerge, the fa t that children will die or aurve and grow up emotionally and physically stunted is more than enough reason for the West to act and push Netanyahu to stop this endless war.
A question for Professor O'Neill or any Contrarian who knows more than I do.
Do countries other than the US supply military aid to Israel? If other countries, then the blame and shame for Gaza should be spread around. If only the US, then Gaza is our moral stain.
That said, we are the primary supplier of munitions to Israel. forget that without thr U.S. Israel would be less able to continue this war.
This is on us-on every single U.S. politician(Dem or GOP) who accepts AIPAC money every person who screams antisemitism when someone criticizes Netanyahu or Israel's oppressive policies in the West Bank.
Other countries supply weapons and aid to Israel, but none come close to what the US provides. The US send more weapons to Israel than all other countries combined, and for many years Israel is the top recipient of US aid.
No other country gives Israel political support and cover on the world stage as the US does. No other country consistently vetoes UN resolutions condemning Israel as the US has done for decades. No other country has sanctioned UN officials and world court judges the way the US has. AIPAC remains one of the most powerful lobbying groups in Congress.
No other country has allowed Palestinians right activists to be fired, deported, arrested, and attacked at the same level as the US has (although Germany and the UK are in the running for that 'honor' as well).
And now, US mercenaries are actually directly involved in the massacres at 'Gaza Humanitarian Foundation' sites.
There are also many thousands of Americans living in illegal' settlements'.
There is no way Israel could get away with decades of apartheid and violent oppression without the US. Gaza is certainly a 'moral stain' on the US, but it is much worse than that and has been going on much longer than the past two years.
Jason thank you. And thank you for your commitment these past 6 months to raise these issues in the Contrarian community. You have handled disagreements in a way that has left room for us to change our minds or at least begin to question.
I don’t see a chink in political support for Israel. Seems a taboo subject for Rs and Ds. How can that change?
How does Gaza fit into the US protest movement? I’ll bet you have some thoughts.
I actually see plenty within the Contrarian community, meaning the readers, condemning Israel's war crimes and the US support for those crimes. But there is much less from the outlet's writers...or, what criticism there has been if often misdirected, qualified, muted or softened (see today's "Coffee with Contrarians" discussion for another example).
I do actually see a "chink" in the wall of support, although its not much more than that.
The vote last week in the Senate, for many the first time ever, a majority of Democrats voted against the arming of Gaza in two resolutions proposed by Bernie Sanders (27 in one vote, 24 in the other). This isn't enough, but it does shows a real change in opinion.
We are seeing some changes at the local level now too, with Democratic mayoral candidates like Zohran Mamdani and Omar Fateh, who have both been critical of Israel's war crimes and have won strong support in their respective cities.
Global opinion has long been on the side of the Palestinian people, but we are now seeing big change even in Western countries like the UK, France and Canada. I am hopeful some of this will impact the US too.
And although I think there's always too much emphasis on what Israelis think (rather than what Palestinians think), it is really significant that both B'Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI), two very prominent Israeli human rights organizations, have now affirmed that Israel is committing genocide.
This is a very long way form ending the carnage and finally delivering justice to the Palestinian people, and every day the horror goes on ..maybe I think there's a glimmer of hope that the tide could be shifting.
Thanks again for sharing this information. Because of your post, I can now follow up and thank the Senators who supported the Sanders resolutions. Does sound hopeful.
Nothing much is going to happen until Netanyahu and his cohorts are driven from the Israeli government. (And maybe he’ll be tried as a war criminal in addition to his civil problems and jailed?). DJT may talk a good talk (“We must do something for the starving children”) but we should watch his walk — I think it will be too little, too late and never enough. It’s heartbreaking. 😥
Early in this conflict I wrote to President Biden telling him that Netanyhu was not to be trusted. Unfortunately I have been proved right. I am a Jew, but I knew that Netanyhu would take this beyond reasonable, that we should not be arming Isreal because they would seek to annilate to take this to gennocide. Yes, Hamas was clearly a threat, yes, Hezbolla was clearly a threat, most of all Iran is a threat. This is a shonda, a cause for shame for all Jews.
What Gaza has clearly shown is the fallacy of the Netanyahu policies. Don't forget his labeling of the "mowing the grass" of Gaza that facilitated the position of Hamas there.
The Contrarian consistently avoids the fact that Israel and the US are not only intentionally starving people (and yes, the US is 100% fully complicit in this crime).
Israeli troops and US mercenaries are massacring unarmed, starving civilians very single day, and continue to destroy what is left of society in Gaza.
The US does not simply lack of 'empathy' like so many of these Contrarian pieces imply.
It is genocide, as virtually every human rights organization and every genocide scholar around the world as affirmed, and the US is just as culpable as Israel is.
I have not seen the word 'genocide' mentioned yet in a Contrarian piece. Many readers have said it in the comments, but no writer here has said it even once that I know of.
This article makes no mention at all of the bipartisan US involvement and complicity in this ongoing atrocity.
Here are some more who apparently buy into the 'propaganda' that Israel is committing genocide, intentionally starving civilians while massacring them daily as it continues to destroy what remains of society in Gaza, with US help:
Human Rights Organizations:
Amnesty International
Human Rights Watch
University Network for Human Rights
B’Tselem - Israel
Physicians for Human Rights - Israel
Genocide Scholars and Experts:
Omer Bartov, Israeli-American professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University
Amos Goldberg, Israeli professor in the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a fellow of the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute
Raz Segal, Israeli historian and associate professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies and endowed professor in the Study of Modern Genocide at Stockton University
Shmuel Lederman, professor specializing in political theory and genocide studies at the Open University of Israel
Daniel Blatman, Israeli historian specializing in the history of the Holocaust and head of the Institute for Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Lee Mordechai, Israeli historian and associate professor at Hebrew University
Melanie O'Brien, president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars
Martin Shaw, emeritus professor of International Relations and Politics at the University of Sussex, research professor at the Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals, and author of War and Genocide, What is Genocide, Genocide in International Relations
William Schabas, professor of international law at Middlesex University in the United Kingdom, professor of international human law and human rights at Leiden University in the Netherlands, and author of several books on international law, including Genocide in International Law: The Crimes of Crimes
Dirk Moses, international relations professor at the City College of New York and author of The Problems of Genocide
Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories
Uğur Ümit Üngör, professor of Genocide Studies at the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies and the University of Amsterdam
I wonder what those organizations and people had to say about Hamas for their October 7, 2023 attack on Israel and their continued holding of hostages, both alive and dead.
Most everyone in that list have condemned Hamas. Does that now make it permissible to condemn Israel's massacres and intentional starvation? Or is your whataboutism just your way of dodging the obvious point?
I wonder why so many supporters of Israeli terrorism deny that Israel is committing genocide, instead blaming 'media bias' or any other straw they can grasp on, even when US media is so plainly and obviously tilted toward Israel.
I wonder why so many supporters of Israeli oppression can only reply, 'but, Hamas!' to any criticism of Israel's constant wars in the Occupied Territories, which have being going on since long before Hamas existed.
I wonder why supporters of Israeli violence have nothing to say of Israel's escalation of its ongoing war on the West Bank, which has nothing to do with Hamas, where over 1000 Palestinians have been killed in the past several months, while the Knesset has voted to annex the entire territory.
I wonder why supporters of Israeli subjugation ignore the crazed "settlers" who kill and burn and rampage with the same furor as segregationists in the Jim Crow South, who are backed by the IDF, and are rarely if ever punished for their crimes. i wonder if the 'settlers' who beat an American to death only weeks ago, and the settler who murdered a Palestinian activists in broad daylight, on camera, just days ago, will ever be held accountable.
I wonder why supporters of Israeli apartheid say nothing of the thousands of hostages held by Israel before and after October 2023, including children...about the constant abductions of Palestinians from their homes and their detentions in gulags with no charges and no representation.
I wonder why supporters of Israeli aggression ignore that Israel has created the most child amputees of any country in the 21st century and has executed more journalists than any other country in the 21st century, while openly and regularly targeting doctors and UN staff.
I wonder why supporters of Israeli war crimes ignore the fact that Israel unilaterally broke a 'ceasefire' which would have freed all Israeli and Palestinian hostages.
There is so much we don't really know about all of this. What we do know is that people are starving. The Hamas threat is real and as always, undefined by those assessing all of this. It still does not excuse the lack of food reaching desperate families. Surely there are better ways to deal with this, and the withdrawal of available food aid because of our apparent apathy to suffering that the Trump administration displays daily is inexcusable. Israel should not be the one who decides who in Gaza will be fed. They are at war with these people and will make decisions that are influenced by how they see this war. The United States and Europe need to send in food distributed by impartial groups that are willing to help, despite the ongoing conflict. The fact that Israel is not letting this happen, further damages any credibility that they have left. This article is correct is assessing that this is helping to create future strife and violence. Kindness and empathy, along with real help, goes a long way to ease suffering and until this happens, nothing will be fixed.
There is much that we do know.
We do know that every single day for the past few months, Israeli troops and US mercenaries are massacring unarmed, starving civilians at 'aid' sites.
We do know that virtually every global human rights organizations and every genocide scholar around the world has affirmed that Israel is committing genocide, with US support.
We do know that in the West Bank, which has nothing to do with Hamas, Israel has killed over 1000 people in the past 20 months, including several Americans, while its campaign of apartheid and land theft has only escalated.
We do know that Israel has created more child amputees than anywhere else on Earth this century. We do know that Israel has killed more journalists than any other country this century.
We do know that Israel has murdered at the very least 60,000 people, and almost certainly has killed tens of thousands more than that. We do know that the US has given Israel the political, military and financial support to make this possible.
We need much more than 'kindness and empathy' The US need to stop arming Israel right now, and US and Israeli leaders need to be held accountable for this ongoing war crime.
What matter is that people in Gaza are starving.
Whatever future terrorist threats might emerge, the fa t that children will die or aurve and grow up emotionally and physically stunted is more than enough reason for the West to act and push Netanyahu to stop this endless war.
The article is goog. Thank you the story.
A question for Professor O'Neill or any Contrarian who knows more than I do.
Do countries other than the US supply military aid to Israel? If other countries, then the blame and shame for Gaza should be spread around. If only the US, then Gaza is our moral stain.
The UK also supplies weapons to Israel.
That said, we are the primary supplier of munitions to Israel. forget that without thr U.S. Israel would be less able to continue this war.
This is on us-on every single U.S. politician(Dem or GOP) who accepts AIPAC money every person who screams antisemitism when someone criticizes Netanyahu or Israel's oppressive policies in the West Bank.
Thanks for your answer.
Agreed, on us.
Other countries supply weapons and aid to Israel, but none come close to what the US provides. The US send more weapons to Israel than all other countries combined, and for many years Israel is the top recipient of US aid.
No other country gives Israel political support and cover on the world stage as the US does. No other country consistently vetoes UN resolutions condemning Israel as the US has done for decades. No other country has sanctioned UN officials and world court judges the way the US has. AIPAC remains one of the most powerful lobbying groups in Congress.
No other country has allowed Palestinians right activists to be fired, deported, arrested, and attacked at the same level as the US has (although Germany and the UK are in the running for that 'honor' as well).
And now, US mercenaries are actually directly involved in the massacres at 'Gaza Humanitarian Foundation' sites.
There are also many thousands of Americans living in illegal' settlements'.
There is no way Israel could get away with decades of apartheid and violent oppression without the US. Gaza is certainly a 'moral stain' on the US, but it is much worse than that and has been going on much longer than the past two years.
Jason thank you. And thank you for your commitment these past 6 months to raise these issues in the Contrarian community. You have handled disagreements in a way that has left room for us to change our minds or at least begin to question.
I don’t see a chink in political support for Israel. Seems a taboo subject for Rs and Ds. How can that change?
How does Gaza fit into the US protest movement? I’ll bet you have some thoughts.
Thank you for your comments as well.
I actually see plenty within the Contrarian community, meaning the readers, condemning Israel's war crimes and the US support for those crimes. But there is much less from the outlet's writers...or, what criticism there has been if often misdirected, qualified, muted or softened (see today's "Coffee with Contrarians" discussion for another example).
I do actually see a "chink" in the wall of support, although its not much more than that.
The vote last week in the Senate, for many the first time ever, a majority of Democrats voted against the arming of Gaza in two resolutions proposed by Bernie Sanders (27 in one vote, 24 in the other). This isn't enough, but it does shows a real change in opinion.
We are seeing some changes at the local level now too, with Democratic mayoral candidates like Zohran Mamdani and Omar Fateh, who have both been critical of Israel's war crimes and have won strong support in their respective cities.
Global opinion has long been on the side of the Palestinian people, but we are now seeing big change even in Western countries like the UK, France and Canada. I am hopeful some of this will impact the US too.
And although I think there's always too much emphasis on what Israelis think (rather than what Palestinians think), it is really significant that both B'Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI), two very prominent Israeli human rights organizations, have now affirmed that Israel is committing genocide.
This is a very long way form ending the carnage and finally delivering justice to the Palestinian people, and every day the horror goes on ..maybe I think there's a glimmer of hope that the tide could be shifting.
Thanks again for sharing this information. Because of your post, I can now follow up and thank the Senators who supported the Sanders resolutions. Does sound hopeful.
I wish I could say the same, my two Senators from
NY did not support either resolution.
Thank you.
For not insulting us with another hopeful statement.
Indispensable chart that compares Gaza to other famines and leaves no excuse for inaction on Gaza.
As you say, the harm has been done and can't be undone and the consequences are ours to own.
The job of our group of Democracy Defenders is to demand action from our government and to keep those demands coming and coming.
Where has our humanity gone?
Nothing much is going to happen until Netanyahu and his cohorts are driven from the Israeli government. (And maybe he’ll be tried as a war criminal in addition to his civil problems and jailed?). DJT may talk a good talk (“We must do something for the starving children”) but we should watch his walk — I think it will be too little, too late and never enough. It’s heartbreaking. 😥
Early in this conflict I wrote to President Biden telling him that Netanyhu was not to be trusted. Unfortunately I have been proved right. I am a Jew, but I knew that Netanyhu would take this beyond reasonable, that we should not be arming Isreal because they would seek to annilate to take this to gennocide. Yes, Hamas was clearly a threat, yes, Hezbolla was clearly a threat, most of all Iran is a threat. This is a shonda, a cause for shame for all Jews.
What Gaza has clearly shown is the fallacy of the Netanyahu policies. Don't forget his labeling of the "mowing the grass" of Gaza that facilitated the position of Hamas there.
Quick addition: Netanyahu and his policies have possibly irretrievably damaged Israel in world opinion. What a way to counter antisemitism...not.
The Contrarian consistently avoids the fact that Israel and the US are not only intentionally starving people (and yes, the US is 100% fully complicit in this crime).
Israeli troops and US mercenaries are massacring unarmed, starving civilians very single day, and continue to destroy what is left of society in Gaza.
The US does not simply lack of 'empathy' like so many of these Contrarian pieces imply.
It is genocide, as virtually every human rights organization and every genocide scholar around the world as affirmed, and the US is just as culpable as Israel is.
I have not seen the word 'genocide' mentioned yet in a Contrarian piece. Many readers have said it in the comments, but no writer here has said it even once that I know of.
This article makes no mention at all of the bipartisan US involvement and complicity in this ongoing atrocity.
Just another article that leaves anyone with either a heart or a mind blinded by SHAME.
"Gaza has exposed not only the cruelty of the siege but also the hollowness of the U.S. response capacity."
I think Gaza also exposes the media's huge bias against Israel.
"'Truth-icide' and the NYT's propaganda"
https://theystandcorrected.substack.com/p/truth-icide-and-the-nyts-propaganda
Here are some more who apparently buy into the 'propaganda' that Israel is committing genocide, intentionally starving civilians while massacring them daily as it continues to destroy what remains of society in Gaza, with US help:
Human Rights Organizations:
Amnesty International
Human Rights Watch
University Network for Human Rights
B’Tselem - Israel
Physicians for Human Rights - Israel
Genocide Scholars and Experts:
Omer Bartov, Israeli-American professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University
Amos Goldberg, Israeli professor in the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a fellow of the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute
Raz Segal, Israeli historian and associate professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies and endowed professor in the Study of Modern Genocide at Stockton University
Shmuel Lederman, professor specializing in political theory and genocide studies at the Open University of Israel
Daniel Blatman, Israeli historian specializing in the history of the Holocaust and head of the Institute for Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Lee Mordechai, Israeli historian and associate professor at Hebrew University
Melanie O'Brien, president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars
Martin Shaw, emeritus professor of International Relations and Politics at the University of Sussex, research professor at the Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals, and author of War and Genocide, What is Genocide, Genocide in International Relations
William Schabas, professor of international law at Middlesex University in the United Kingdom, professor of international human law and human rights at Leiden University in the Netherlands, and author of several books on international law, including Genocide in International Law: The Crimes of Crimes
Dirk Moses, international relations professor at the City College of New York and author of The Problems of Genocide
Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories
Uğur Ümit Üngör, professor of Genocide Studies at the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies and the University of Amsterdam
I wonder what those organizations and people had to say about Hamas for their October 7, 2023 attack on Israel and their continued holding of hostages, both alive and dead.
Most everyone in that list have condemned Hamas. Does that now make it permissible to condemn Israel's massacres and intentional starvation? Or is your whataboutism just your way of dodging the obvious point?
I wonder why so many supporters of Israeli terrorism deny that Israel is committing genocide, instead blaming 'media bias' or any other straw they can grasp on, even when US media is so plainly and obviously tilted toward Israel.
I wonder why so many supporters of Israeli oppression can only reply, 'but, Hamas!' to any criticism of Israel's constant wars in the Occupied Territories, which have being going on since long before Hamas existed.
I wonder why supporters of Israeli violence have nothing to say of Israel's escalation of its ongoing war on the West Bank, which has nothing to do with Hamas, where over 1000 Palestinians have been killed in the past several months, while the Knesset has voted to annex the entire territory.
I wonder why supporters of Israeli subjugation ignore the crazed "settlers" who kill and burn and rampage with the same furor as segregationists in the Jim Crow South, who are backed by the IDF, and are rarely if ever punished for their crimes. i wonder if the 'settlers' who beat an American to death only weeks ago, and the settler who murdered a Palestinian activists in broad daylight, on camera, just days ago, will ever be held accountable.
I wonder why supporters of Israeli apartheid say nothing of the thousands of hostages held by Israel before and after October 2023, including children...about the constant abductions of Palestinians from their homes and their detentions in gulags with no charges and no representation.
I wonder why supporters of Israeli aggression ignore that Israel has created the most child amputees of any country in the 21st century and has executed more journalists than any other country in the 21st century, while openly and regularly targeting doctors and UN staff.
I wonder why supporters of Israeli war crimes ignore the fact that Israel unilaterally broke a 'ceasefire' which would have freed all Israeli and Palestinian hostages.
"Most everyone in that list have condemned Hamas. Does that now make it permissible to condemn Israel's massacres and intentional starvation?"
Does that now make the accusation of "massacres and intentional starvation" true?
"I wonder why so many supporters of Israeli terrorism..."
I wonder why so many are quick to use the word "terrorism" with regard to Israel's actions?
"I wonder why supporters of Israeli war crimes ignore the fact that Israel unilaterally broke a 'ceasefire'..."
I wonder why you're not blaming Hamas for anything in your response.
Empathy and investment without immediate reward from the Trump administration? I can’t see it happening, unfortunately