Whatever You Want to Call It, Israel Really is Engaged in a Genocide

The upper bound estimate is about 200,000 dead in Gaza so far. To call it “a war” is an understatement.

Here in Salt Lake City, there is a bar where Zionists are banned. They’re not allowed. The bar owner says what he’s doing is legal. A local attorney disagrees. I noticed right away how a reporter threw out the gauntlet of antisemitism. From KUTV News:

“Are you anti-Semitic?” 2News asked Michael Valentine, owner of Weathered Waves, which only recently was given a license to serve alcohol at The Gateway.

“No I am not,” replied the one-time candidate for Salt Lake City mayor, and who also plans to run for county mayor. “It’s not anti-Semitic to be anti-Zionist. It’s not anti-Semitic to call out genocide.“

You can’t criticize Israel without being antisemitic. Antisemitism is what you whip out when you don’t have an argument against genocide.

If you don’t like it when an Israeli soldier armed to the gills shoots a Palestinian kid for throwing rocks, and he hobbles that kid for for life, you must be antisemitic.

If you don’t like it when Israeli settlers run a Palestinian family from their home and kill a few of them while they’re running a way, you must be antisemitic.

If you don't like it when the most extreme members of the Israeli legislature — the Knesset — openly daydream about renting out beachfront property as a tourist attraction in Gaza, you must be antisemitic.

If you’re even a tad bit livid because you just learned that the upper bound for the number of dead in Gaza is about 200,000 — not 30,000 — you must be antisemitic.

At least, that’s the number Ralph Nader said on Common Dreams. In an article critical of the media’s accepted notion that only people who show up in hospitals and morgues should be counted, Nader says the number is arguably far higher. From "The World Must Calculate the Real Gaza Death Toll”:

From accounts of people on the ground, videos and photographs of deadly episode after episode, plus the resultant mortalities from blocking or smashing the crucial necessities of life, a more likely estimate, in my appraisal, is that at least 200,000 Palestinians must have perished by now and the toll is accelerating by the hour.

Imagine Americans, if this powerful U.S.-made weaponry was fired on the besieged, homeless, trapped people of Philadelphia, do you think that only 30,000 of that city’s 1.5 million people would have been killed?

I have long been neutral on Israel. I have even once noted their free healthcare system that pays for nearly all abortions in Israel with mild approval.

I was not really aware of just how violent some Israelis are when it comes to protecting their real estate business until after October 7th of last year.

Yes, I bemoaned their constant presence in the NPR news, but now I understand why they’re so consistently in the news. They need the rest of us. They need us bad or their way of life will suck way more than it does now. Without our help their tiny, pitiful theocracy will fail.

I’m not anti-Semitic for criticizing Israel or the way some of them practice their religion (the war has a religious basis). I believe that the primary purpose of any religion is to know your maker. To know your creator. To know where you will go after you die. To know how to live in peace and harmony with others.

But the moment you step into the guise of a warrior or some other fighter for your religion, in my mind, you are no longer religious. When you kill people for your religion, you are no longer living God’s words, no matter which God you pray to.

At the bottom of our hearts, the one thing we want to know is that we’re loved. Killing other people, no matter the purpose, or how righteous one may feel about their cause, is not the way of any religion. If you believe you will go to heaven, then be willing to sacrifice yourself for your beliefs. If you die at the hands of an assailant, you go to heaven and then you forgive your assailant because you’re in heaven.

Every religion has a prohibition on killing in their holy books. For whatever reason, the three religions that I’ve seen most in my life, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, are populated by a lot of people who go far, far out of their way to excuse murder.

What’s happening in Gaza is a mass murder. The counts are low because Israel won’t let anyone in there without escort. They shoot down every drone they can find if it's not painted with the Star of David on it. They simply do not want anyone outside to see what they’re doing and how they’re doing it.

When I see Israel, I see their primary function as an oil price moderator. Their purpose is to spy on the oil producers and keep them in line. With all the mayhem going on there, it’s a wonder that gas isn’t $7 a gallon right now. That’s the price moderator in action.

We know they have nukes. We know they have wunderwaffen. We know they’re not afraid to kill people to defend their right to exist. The irony here is that Israel doesn’t really respect the right of other people to exist. The moment they begin to think you’re not with them, in their minds, you don’t have a right to exist.

I’m still thinking about that religion thing. If the people of Israel truly believed in their creator, in their one and only god, and that their god was on their side, they wouldn’t need so many guns or even any nukes. They wouldn’t need a state for protection. God would protect them. They could become ascetics and just live day to day on what life gives to them. Gifts are everywhere, right?

But they’re killing people over land. That land was taken by force from someone else, and gifted to the founders of Israel in 1948. Whatever the Israelis got back then wasn’t enough. What they have now still isn’t enough to them. And some of the fanatics are talking about greatly expanding the size of Israel as if it’s theirs to take. As far as I can tell, the most powerful Israelis are not happy with the gift they received or they wouldn’t bother seeking more.

“But it’s not about the land. They just want to be left alone!” Then they don’t need Israel. Those Jews can find a home in a melting pot like America and maybe Europe, too. The Russians paid rivers of blood and mountains of treasure to stop the Germans in the Second World War, so Jews in Israel could find a home in Russia and Germany, too. Like many other displaced peoples, Jews can find a place to fit everywhere, anywhere.

I live in a Mormon state. They send their kids all over the world to engage in missions of kindness to make the world a better place. They don't have a state of their own. They wanted to keep bigamy, but the other Christians wouldn’t have it. The Mormons gave up bigamy to join the Union for the protection of the melting pot of America. The alternative wasn’t very appealing and they knew what was coming.

I wonder if perhaps the Jews living in the hostile holy land of Jerusalem could surrender that ill-gotten land to live in peace among the rest of us. Without weapons, without nukes, without a country. Not having a country does wonders to help us find our humility. That’s the life they’re walking into if they can’t give the Palestinians a home. There won’t be much that America can do to stop that from happening.

As a voter, an American and a human being, I want Israelis to find peace. If they can’t find peace with a state of their own, they may find peace much faster without a state of their own.

Write on.