Netanyahu biting the hands that feed Israel’s war machine

With elections on the horizon next year in the USA and the UK, the Joe Biden and Rishi Sunak administrations have their backs against the wall with global public response reverberating across the world and on the streets across the UK and the USA, forcing the respective leaders to take and make decisions that are, like always, less in the full national interest as in their own political survival.

President Biden is hosting the APEC Summit in San Francisco with high hopes and rather low chances of being lulled into brightening his electoral prospects just for the fun of it and it’s also highly unlikely that the host will extract from his guest any of the stated objectives of drug control, improving US-China military ties and taking sides in the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Faced with wall-to-wall protests against UK’s support for Israel, the Prime Minister hastily sacked Home Secretary Suella Braverman after she accused the London police of being too soft on Palestinian protesters; and with the groundswell so large and effective, Sunak has also been forced to announce an accompanying Cabinet reshuffle.

With general elections due any time he decides between now and next year, PM Sunak’s reshuffle is clearly aimed at improving the ruling Conservative Party’s polling numbers, that have been speeding downward in comparison to the opposition Labour Party.

The sheer carnage against Palestinians unfolding on TV screens worldwide and the absolute refusal of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to do anything recommended to stop the vengeful killing of Palestinian civilians and children came to a head this week with indications of babies dying prematurely at the last hospital in Gaza able to offer any care.

Netanyahu has defied every plea for a ceasefire or opening of humanitarian corridors and it’s becoming increasingly clear that obliteration of Hamas and bombing Gaza into smithereens, with everyone there if needed to achieve his stated ultimate goal.

But while Netanyahu is not facing elections, he’s fighting to stay in power after – and out of jail.

Found guilty on corruption charges while in office and sure to be sent to jail when out, Netanyahu made a holy pact with the unholiest of right-wing politicians in Israel last December and managed to stay in office – and delay being sentenced.

The genocide and utter carnage being exacted against Palestinians is the result of the influence of the Prime Minister’s right-wing allies who took the fight to Palestinians in their mosques and homes, making 2023 the worst period Palestinians faced outside of any war in the 75 years Israel has been occupying their territory.

Netanyahu may not be facing elections but his is more than a sense of political survival, but one of trying to escape from the fact that every Israeli Prime Minister who’s led a war against the Palestinians has lost the next election.

The PM, who also earned his people’s ire when he tried to have his right wing cabinet pass laws to allow politicians to overrule judicial decisions, is probably hoping that his exacting of the heaviest toll on Palestinians in history will make his win the next election.

But it’s more likely that the pressure starting to boil from the families of the Israelis held in Gaza will morph into a wider movement calling for Netanyahu to either stop the bombing or resign.

Meanwhile, international diplomacy has gone through the window, with the United Nations (UN) unable to say or do anything to improve the situation for Palestinians, while the West continues supporting Israel’s mammoth war machine, and  at the same time calling for ‘pauses’, but not a ceasefire.

Already having deployed two of its largest aircraft carriers to the Mediterranean to provide intelligence and logistical support for Israel, Biden is seeking more US financial support for the war and is likely to get congressional support for its continuation.

But in Britain, both the government and opposition are facing severe public backlashes following protests by millions across the UK, including over 300,000 in London and tens of thousands in Belfast, Cardiff, Glasgow and Manchester.

Scotland’s First Minister Hamza Yousaf’s in-laws live in Gaza but even he can’t get in contact with his wife’s parents.

Both the ruling Conservatives (Tories) and opposition British Labor Party are facing parliamentary backlashes from MPs defying leadership’s calls for ‘pauses’ and instead calling for permanent ceasefires, resulting in PM Sunak dismissing a Tory MP for publicly calling for an end to the fighting.

Washington and London are increasingly losing the diplomatic fight with the UK abstaining on the UN General Assembly vote and the USA being the only major Western nation to oppose the non-binding resolution calling for humanitarian access to Gaza.

The US is insisting that a ceasefire ‘will only benefit Hamas’ and Israel is also now attacking position in neighboring Lebanon and Syria, widening the arenas for conflict, while settler violence continues on the occupied West Bank.

But as Israel’s blasting of Gaza continues unrelentingly, it’s just not been ever-possible to keep-up with the numbers tallying the atrocities in Occupied Palestine’s Gaza and West Bank since Israel launched its war on Hamas after the latter’s October 7, 2023 attack that took over 1,300 lives in one day – the highest casualties in any such war since 1967.

Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands over the past 75 years has seen constant loss of Palestinian lives, recently estimated at 120,000 dead and over one million arrested and detained (out of a population of five million) – and that was BEFORE October 7.

As if ten thousand wrongs add-up to a big right, Israel has been merciless in its retaliatory response.

After five weeks of relentless bombing of Gaza (October 7 to November 11, 2023), the numbers continued to appall.

Washington is in the crosshairs between funding and boosting the Israeli war machine, while skirting around defining differences between a ‘ceasefire’ and a ‘humanitarian truce…’

Gaza is described by the UN’s Secretary General Antonio Guterres as “a graveyard for children’ where parents of newborns get their death certificates instead of birth certificates.

But it’s clear Israel is now biting the hand the feeds its war machine, with PM Netanyahu telling President Biden he’ll neither stop the killing, nor negotiate a peace treaty, until and unless his terms are met.