In an extraordinary rebuke, the State Department condemned Israel's "disgraceful" attack, which killed 10 people including, as usual, children:
"The United States is appalled by today's disgraceful shelling outside an UNRWA school in Rafah sheltering some 3,000 displaced persons, in which 10 more Palestinian civilians were tragically killed," said spokeswoman Jen Psaki.
But at the same time, the US is providing Israel with the diplomatic cover, the money and, critically, the very weapons it is using to slaughter innocent Palestinian men, women and children — always children — by the hundreds.
Under a Pentagon program called War Reserves Stock Allies-Israel (WRSA-I), Israel stores American munitions that it can also use in emergency situations. The US allowed Israel to tap these reserves, even though IDF did not cite any emergency. "They didn't ask for it from there but we gave it to them so we could rotate our stocks," a Pentagon explained to Reuters.
If anyone thinks this weekend's strong words from Washington offer hope for change in the US-Israeli relationship, think again. This isn't the first time the Obama administration has denounced Israeli crimes. Early in his first term, the president repeatedly demanded an immediate freeze on the construction of illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded by announcing a major settlement expansion while visiting the White House in 2009.
Remember Obama's response? He angrily cancelled a planned dinner date with Netanyahu, then dropped his settlement freeze demand, allowing what some observers, like Jewish-American UN human rights official Richard Falk, have called Israeli ethnic cleansing to continue.
The last time the United States actually sanctioned Israel for its barbarism was in the 1950s, when the Eisenhower administration suspended economic aid after an IDF commando unit led by future prime minister and "man of peace" Ariel Sharon massacred scores of innocent civilians, including many children, in villages in Jordan and Gaza.
Since then, even when Israeli warplanes attacked the USS Liberty, killing 34 sailors in an attack that the secretary of state, NSA director and many victims believed was intentional, the United States has stood by Israel, right or wrong.
Ultimately, the American people are complicit in Israel's crimes against humanity. America counts a racist, fortified, paranoid and aggressive state as one of its best friends in the world. American taxpayer dollars are funding the slaughter of Palestinian children. American bombs, bombers, bullets, bulldozers, guns, missiles, jets, helicopters, tanks, artillery and chemical weapons are used to kill, maim, terrorize, repress and humiliate the Palestinian people. Meanwhile, we keep electing the same leaders who perpetuate this madness, forever pledging our undying friendship to a nation whose leader has said that 9/11 was good for Israel and who has boasted about how easily he can manipulate America.
Until we, the American people, condemn Israeli aggression — and disgraceful US hypocrisy — in the loudest and strongest possible language and demand an end to military aid to the murderous Israeli regime, we all bear some responsibility for the slaughter of innocents in Gaza.
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