Deserving and Undeserving Massacres

From 2009 to 2018, the United States is scheduled to give Israel - the largest recipient of U.S. assistance - $30 billion in military aid. Through its illegal 44-year military occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip, Israel misuses U.S. weapons in violation of U.S. law to kill and injure Palestinian civilians, destroy Palestinian civilian infrastructure, blockade the Gaza Strip, and build illegal settlements in West Bank and East Jerusalem - How Much Military Aid To Israel

US President Barack Obama has approved air strikes in Iraq, ostensibly to offset the threat posed by ISIS, the Islamicist group engaging in crimes against humanity. Obama contends that marooned Iraqi Yazidi refugees on Mount Sinjar face genocide.

When we face a situation like we do on that mountain, with innocent people facing the prospect of violence on a horrific scale and we have a mandate to help - in this case a request from the Iraqi government - and when we have unique capabilities to act to avoid a massacre, I believe the United States cannot turn a blind eye … Earlier this week, one Iraqi said no-one is coming to help. Well, today America is coming to help.

Spurred no doubt by the Rwandan experience where America was not coming to help:

As the terror in Rwanda had unfolded, Clinton had shown virtually no interest in stopping the genocide, and his Administration had stood by as the death toll rose into the hundreds of thousands.

As President Bill Clinton subsequently felt obliged to make something of a sorry apology for having left the Tutsis and moderate Hutus to the genocidal urges of Hutu Power in Rwanda, neither a Democratic Party president not the Democratic Party itself wants to be seen openly siding with the genocide. Well, in the official version anyway.

What unalloyed sanctimonious piffle designed to mask strategic self-interest. If it is not racism I no longer understand the meaning of the word. Those who seek to slaughter Iraqi citizens will be subjected to bombardment, while those who for the past month (not to mention the numerous occasions in the past when they did likewise) have been massacring Palestinian men, women and children in Gaza have been the recipients of US military hardware that makes it all possible.

On the same day Israeli forces killed 20 Palestinians at a U.N. school this week, the U.S. confirmed it had provided Israel with fresh supplies of munitions, including mortar rounds for tanks and ammo for grenade launchers.

The way it seems to work is this: if you are an Iraqi and your fate is bound up in US global strategic interests President Obama will not turn a blind eye to your predicament. If you are a Palestinian, and the people bombing you represent a state which is a strategic partner of the US (the bill approving this partner status in Congress was passed with 410 votes to 1) Obama will ensure that you are blinded in both eyes. Rather than moving to help prevent the slaying the US moved to arm the slayers. They behaved no better, worse even, than the French did in respect of Rwanda. Navi Pillay, U.N. human rights high commissioner acerbically stated:

They have not only provided the heavy weaponry which is now being used by Israel in Gaza, but they’ve also provided almost $1 billion in providing the Iron Domes to protect Israelis from the rockets attacks, but no such protection has been provided to Gazans against the shelling.

Why is Obama not imposing a no-fly zone around Gaza? It would look a bit rich given the planes not allowed to fly would be those supplied to the Israeli murder machine by the US. It is not that Obama should do what one Sinn Fein councillor called on the UN to do and bomb Israel - before he was pulled into line by the party hierarchy. But if he can bomb ISIS to prevent massacre the ethical logic implicit in such an action is that the US should initiate a limited shelling of the of IDF front lines for the sole purpose of inserting a firewall between them and the population they are intent on slaughtering.

That would be a genuine example of humanitarian military intervention. It is also the very reason it will never happen.