Why is the U.S. Supporting Israel?

As we witness the barbaric bombing of Gaza by Israel, and as the deaths and horrific injuries of civilian men, women and children rise exponentially, it is necessary to ask: who (apart from the Israeli government) is behind this murderous campaign?

Over decades the United States has liked to portray itself as an honest broker in an intractable conflict between Muslims and Jews, or Palestinians and Israelis.

However, with American naval battle groups now in the region to provide ‘air defense or air combat patrol, if necessary,’ according to Aram Nerguizian, from the Center for International and Strategic Studies in Washington, this claim seems increasingly hollow.

Nerguizian emphasizes that the current deployment is ‘not intended to be used in an offensive role.’ However, he acknowledges that this could change quickly if Israel finds itself in a ‘total, 360-degree conflict’.

Moreover, despite more kids being killed in Gaza over the past three weeks than in all armed conflicts in each of the past three years, the Biden administration is proposing to send $14.6 billion dollars of war aid to Israel, while the European Commission under Ursula von der Leyen intitially suspended aid to the besieged Palestinian enclave.

Meanwhile, in the West Bank illegal Israeli settlers have increased their attacks on isolated defenceless Palestinian villages, murdering one farmer collecting his olive harvest and leaving leaflets on cars and bloodied dolls at schools, warning Palestinians to leave or be killed. We appear to be witnessing a third wave of expulsions, following in the footsteps of 1948 and 1967.

Indeed, even the New York Times is reporting that attacks on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank are surging. At least 115 have been killed, more than 2,000 have been injured and nearly 1,000 others have been forcibly displaced from their homes because of violence and intimidation by Israeli forces and settlers since Hamas’s attacked Israel on October 7, according the United Nations.

America does not only give Israel political cover in the United Nations, it is also continuing to supply them with weapons of mass destruction. Along with the British and the French, the United States appears to be playing a more active role in this conflict.

With stalemate in Ukraine, it seems that the U.S.-led NATO alliance is determined not to see an ally lose in Gaza. We can only speculate as to why this is happening, but Joe Biden has repeatedly stated ‘If there were not an Israel, we would have to invent one to protect our interests in the region’. Israel’s war on Gaza acts as a veiled threat to any nation considering joining a fledgling multi-polar world order.

Many Israelis want to expel Gazans into the Sinai in Egypt and West Bank residents into Jordan to complete the Zionist dream of conquering all of Palestine and expelling its inhabitants.

The current Israeli government that includes far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir may not stop at that, as the illegal occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights and Lebanese Sheba Farms testifies to the endurance of a Greater Israel project, coveting lands much larger than those currently occupied.

Palestinians, however, will not go meekly into the night. Many would rather die than allow another Nakba to take place.

While parents write their children’s names on their bodies so they can be identified in the event of their being slaughtered by American munitions, and as people collect body parts of the dismembered dead around the blast sites, we can only imagine the despair felt by 2.2 million people hopelessly corralled into an area of just 365 square kilometres.

It seems as if Israel is hoping to occupy Northern Gaza and then expel the refugees into Egypt in a campaign of ethnic cleansing seemingly supported by the U.S., its main NATO allies and the European Commission.

Of course, it was Britain that created the problem with the Balfour Declaration of 1917 supporting the establishment of a ‘national home for the Jewish people’, along with the secret Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 between Britain and France envisaging the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire after World War I.

The current turmoil in the Middle East may be traced to the British and French policy of divide and conquer, a tactic subsequently employed by the U.S..

Perhaps, it is not the words of their enemies but the silence of their friends that Gazans may  remember after the deluge – at least those lucky enough to survive.