It took 7 hours of debating, but the apartheid state of Israel has finally agreed to take a break from genociding Palestinians in Gaza…at least for a few days.
Yesterday, the apartheid-endorsing Israeli cabinet agreed to a temporary halt to their campaign of violence and destruction in Gaza after six weeks of committing the most horrific war crimes imaginable. Much of the western world is already busy trying to spin this as a ceasefire, but that’s not really what this is. In reality this is exactly the type of “humanitarian pause” the Biden administration has been clamoring for. It is by no means the end of the violence. Even as prime minister Benny Netanyahu gathered his cabinet for a vote on the deal, he promised to resume the genocidal offensive against Palestinians as soon as the “truce” ends.
Don’t get me wrong, for the violence to stop for even a few minutes is welcome news. Tragically, this same deal could’ve been reached weeks ago, before the brutal ground invasion began on 10/27, and before the attack on Al Shifa Hospital and before thousands of innocent Palestinians were murdered. Israeli media reported that the prisoner exchange deal between the Palestinian resistance and the apartheid state was proposed by the resistance weeks ago, but Netanyahu rejected it. The murderous prime minister eventually agreed to accept the deal due to pressure from families of Israeli hostages after reports that the Israeli military killed several of them in its indiscriminate bombings. Israeli media reports that the agreement includes a five-day halt in the offensive in Gaza and the release of 50 hostages held by Hamas in exchange for 150 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
So dozens of the Israeli hostages being held in Gaza will be freed in exchange for a fraction of the thousands of Palestinians languishing in Israeli prisons. To be clear, the Palestinians being released aren’t some hardened criminals or violent extremists; they’ll mostly be women and children captured by Israeli gunmen and held without charges, trials, or conviction. There’s a word for such prisoners…it’s escaping me at the moment, but I’m sure it’ll come back to me eventually (hostages).
It seems the main concern for the Biden administration in all of this is the optics of the deal. There’s no sense that this pause will turn into a lengthier ceasefire, according to members of Biden’s administration. Moreover, the clowns in office are worried about one unintended consequence of the pause: that it might allow journalists broader access to Gaza and the opportunity to further investigate the devastation there and turn public opinion further against the apartheid state. That’s what Joey B is really worried about; that more people might become aware of the depravity of the Israeli military and the complicity of the US.
If you’re curious to know what kinds of bigoted monsters are advising our elected officials, this video provides pretty good insight into the type of architects of US foreign policy that support and fund genocide. This video features a man named Stuart Seldowitz harassing an Egyptian halal food cart vendor in NYC, threatening his family overseas with torture and generally making an ass of himself. Ordinarily this type of person could be classified as a useless and ignorant loser, but in this case Seldowitz is someone with actual proximity to power. This hateful bozo served as deputy director of the US department of state’s office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs for years!
I generally have a pretty high threshold for Islamophobic ignorance and bigotry (a result of growing up in the post-9/11 American South, I reckon I didn’t have much choice), but to threaten the guy who sells food on your street that you’re going to get the specific intelligence agency from his home country to pull out his father’s fingernails is truly a cartoonish level of authoritarian evil. The fact that Seldowitz taunts this harmless food worker numerous times with a smile plastered on his face lets you know that this is a man well accustomed to harassing Arabs and Muslims. Endless credit to the food vendor for not beating the life out of Stuart right then and there, I’m not sure I would’ve had that level of self-control.
The backlash against those willing to speak out against Israel’s crimes also continues with no end in sight. The actress Melissa Barrera was dropped from the upcoming ‘Scream VII’ film due to “controversial comments” she made in defense of Palestine. The comments in question were really just Barrera correctly observing that Gaza has become a concentration camp of tragedy and seemingly endless violence. For the record, Sarah Silverman is allowed to post online saying Gazans don’t deserve access to water and electricity and her reward is a highly lucrative gig hosting The Daily Show, meanwhile hundreds of ordinary people continue to lose their jobs and livelihoods for the mildest criticisms of the Israeli campaign of ethnic cleansing unfolding in front of us.
Don’t lose sight of the fact that a ceasefire is not the end goal. Don’t stop speaking up just because the rate of death and the frequency of horrors might slow down for a few days. The only tenable solution is an end to the blockade on Gaza, an end to the occupation, and a permanent end to the apartheid system in Israel. Anything less is unacceptable.