In his speech to Congress on Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a direct appeal to U.S. lawmakers to send Israel more weapons, vowing, chillingly, that the weapons shipments would enable Israel to “finish the job faster” in Gaza.
Netanyahu drew one of the clearest lines yet between the supply of U.S. weapons and Israel’s genocidal assault of Gaza, essentially straight out saying that the slaughter has been made possible by U.S. assistance — and that the speed of Israel’s genocide is scaled to how many U.S. weapons they receive.
“Fast tracking U.S. military aid can dramatically expedite an end to the war in Gaza and help prevent a broader war in the Middle East,” said Netanyahu, who tried to stoke war with Iran later in the speech.
“In World War II, as Britain fought on the frontlines of civilization, Winston Churchill appealed to Americans with these famous words: ‘Give us the tools and we’ll finish the job,’” he went on. “Today, as Israel fights on the frontline of civilization, I, too, appeal to America: ‘Give us the tools faster, and we’ll finish the job faster.’”
This rhetoric is horrific to those who have followed the genocide, in which Israeli forces have made it clear that they are willing to kill any Palestinian in Gaza — including newborn babies. “Finish the job faster,” in the context of what UN experts have labeled a “genocidal” famine, a looming polio outbreak, and Israel’s relentless and indiscriminate attacks, commentators noted, appears to be a call for the complete ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population of Gaza.
Israel has vowed to continue attacking Gaza until it has eliminated Hamas — a goal that experts have said is impossible to achieve in practical terms, especially as the genocide inspires a new generation of Palestinians to take up arms against Israel. At the same time, many reports — some from Israeli soldiers — have shown that Israeli forces consider any man or boy in Gaza to be a member of Hamas and therefore a legitimate target.
Netanyahu, perhaps inadvertently, alluded to this policy elsewhere in his speech. When speaking about Israel’s invasion of Rafah, where nearly two-thirds of the Palestinian population had been sheltering before May, Netanyahu said that Israeli forces had killed no civilians there in the first days of their attack — but had killed 1,200 “terrorists.”
It is a lie that Israel has killed no civilians in Rafah; in fact, there have been many reports of the Israeli military killing people, including children, in civilian areas both before and after their invasion of Rafah in May. Netanyahu himself admitted that Israel has massacred civilians in Rafah, saying that a soldier told him a supposed accidental strike in Rafah had killed 24 civilians — which Netanyahu qualified as “practically” no civilian deaths.
As Netanyahu spoke, Israel was carrying out more massacres in Khan Yunis, which Israeli forces have fiercely attacked this week. In the past 24 hours alone, Israeli forces have killed at least 30 Palestinians and injured 146 others, the Palestinian health ministry reported on Thursday. Just prior to his speech, Palestinian officials reported that, in the previous 48 hours, Israel had killed 129 Palestinians and injured over 400 others in Khan Yunis alone.
Netanyahu also laid out a “day after” plan for Gaza in his speech, saying that Israel was aiming to “demilitarize” and “deradicalize” Gaza — in other words, even further intensify Israel’s control over Palestine and eliminate the ability of the remaining population of Gaza to resist against that control. His plan, in essence, is to eliminate all possibility of a Palestinian state.
“For the foreseeable future, we must retain overriding security control there to prevent the resurgence of terror, to ensure that Gaza never again poses a threat to Israel,” he said.
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