American elites are squandering the country’s global standing and political capital defending the indefensible with Israel’s genocidal war.
When you not only defend but actively enable genocide and the mass murder of children, all norms and standards in human decency go out the window. That’s what’s happening to the ruling and media elites in the United States and allied Western powers such as Germany as they are now fully complicit in Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza and murderous repression in the West Bank.
The US has dug such a big hole for itself it’s turning into a moral abyss. Not only has it supplied essential weapons, intelligence and funding without which Israel could not continue its merciless assault on the very existence of the Palestinian people, it is pretending that doing so is both just and necessary.
That’s why you have increasingly ludicrous statements and actions from its elites, who are offering live-TV lessons on how genocides became possible in the modern world.
Former chairman of the US Joint Chiefs Mark Milley was last week admitting major atrocities the American military had committed at a Washington forum for lawmakers and military contractors.
But if you think it was a rare moment of moral self-reflection, you would be disappointed.
“We shouldn’t forget that we [the] United States killed a lot of innocent people in Mosul, in Raqqa, that we the United States killed 12,000 innocent French civilians. And here we are on the 80th anniversary of Normandy, on the prep fires for Normandy. We destroyed 69 Japanese cities, not including Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We slaughtered people in massive numbers, innocent people who had nothing to do with their government, men, women and children.”
A mea culpa from a career soldier? Not quite. What he meant was that Americans have done the same, so “we” (the Americans) are in no position to criticise Israel, except to let it finish the job.
Speaking at the same forum, Palantir’s billionaire CEO Alex Karp ranted against student protesters demanding an end to the Gaza war. Palantir is a CIA-funded surveillance and data-mining tech company with close ties to the US-Israeli defence/intelligence industrial complex. “We kind of just think these things that are happening, across college campuses especially, are like a sideshow – no, they are the show,” Karp said. “Because if we lose the intellectual debate, you will not be able to deploy any army in the West, ever.” In a truly Orwellian statement of “war is peace”, he added: “The peace activists are actually the war activists, and we’re the peace activists.”
Milley, the four-star general, nodded in agreement.
But how so? In a Fox News interview, Karp elaborated on the religious and cultural dangers of the student protests. Seriously!
He said: “This new religion, which has nothing to do with Judaism, Christianity or Islam … It’s a full-on regression from below our Constitution, from below the Western tradition.
“From below the classics, below the three withstanding great religions into something pagan, discriminatory, irrational, not bound by any of the norms that we have.”
It’s interesting that his PhD thesis, written in German, was about the connection “between jargon, aggression and culture”.
Meanwhile, a movement is brewing in the US Congress to ask the White House to defund the United Nations. This comes after the UN General Assembly voted 143 to nine in favour of recognising Palestinian statehood with full UN membership. They are citing a fiscal appropriations law dating from 1990 that prevents the State Department from funding any UN entity if a Palestinian government is recognised as a full member state.
A new House Republican bill – I swear I am not making this up – has been introduced to punish convicted student protesters by shipping them to Gaza.
This came after 12 Republican senators wrote a formal letter threatening sanctions – even a military response – against the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, his family and associates if he issues arrest warrants for Israeli leaders for war crimes.
Such behaviours and statements are truly beyond the pale of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
Republished from the South China Morning Post, May 12, 2024
Alex Lo has been a Post columnist since 2012, covering major issues affecting Hong Kong and the rest of China. A journalist for 25 years, he has worked for various publications in Hong Kong and Toronto as a news reporter and editor. He has also lectured in journalism at the University of Hong Kong.
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