The Blood Feud
Tuesday, October 31, 2023 10:56 PM
Dear Friends + Interlocutors,
Wonderful. The vagaries and machinations of U.S. foreign policy have created two horrific blood feuds on the international stage. Ukraine and Palestine. Most especially the latter. From Seymour Hersh’s latest bulletin:
I was told by a well informed Israeli that two weeks ago Netanyahu instructed Israel’s foreign and domestic intelligence agencies “to hunt down and kill every single Hamas political and military leader” in the Middle East. “Israel, ruthlessly,” I was told, “is going after the families, wives, kids, brothers, sisters, parents of Hamas political and military leaders.” He said fourteen members of the family of Ismail Haniya, the political leader of Hamas based in Qatar, had already been killed. Within two days of the October 7 raid, he said, the widow of Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, a Hamas co-founder who was assassinated in 2004, was killed. Similarly, he said, eight members of the family of Muhammed Deif, the Hamas military leader, were killed in safe homes. “From Israel’s perspective,” the Israeli told me, “It is now a no-holds-barred war.”
The fact is, Washington has enabled and made all this insanity possible thanks to its slavish, unbalanced foreign policy with respect to “the Jewish State” since the Kennedy Administration.
One wonders who learned targeted murder from whom. Recently in a campaign speech for the U.S. Presidency before the Jewish Republican Coalition, Donald Trump offhandedly boasted about his ordering the assassination of the Iranian General Qasem Soleimani. Enthusiastic applause followed.
This grotesquerie is an example of what the 20th Century conflict in Palestine has come to in the 21st Century. Barack “Drone King” Obama had his share of targeted killings as well. Through its political leaders, Americans are directly complicit in a blood feud in the Middle East. Do we need this?
Both Abdel Asis al-Rantisi and his immediate predecessor the blind quadriplegic Sheikh Ahmed Yassin were murdered by Hellfire missiles from an AH-64 Apache helicopter. U.S. equipment. Obama preferred unmanned drones as did Trump.
Patrick
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