Those who criticize the patronizing attitude of the American leadership towards Israel did not miss the fact that no one in Washington looked back when the Israeli defense minister announced that the residents of Gaza would be deprived of electricity, food and fuel, and a high-ranking general called them "human animals".
When a picture of a boy with a Palestinian flag in his hand appeared on the Facebook page of a CIA employee recently, it was clear that the divisions over the war in Gaza had spilled over from the streets of American cities to the buildings of the state administration. There were also internal disagreements during the war in Iraq, the intervention in Afghanistan or Trump's decision to limit the entry of residents from Muslim countries, but never until now have hundreds of employees in federal institutions asked to review the course of state policy according to a problem that shakes the world. Those who work in the intelligence services avoided this, because such jobs entail loyalty to the motherland.
Unlike the boulevard press, the serious media never published the name of this CIA analyst, otherwise the winner of numerous awards from the intelligence community, who publicly stated her position. But on Facebook, in the background of her portrait with the national symbols of the United States of America, there is no longer a picture of a Palestinian flag waving in front of a Gaza suburb.
ANXIOUS AND DISCOURAGED
Anyone who receives a salary from the US budget understands what these gestures mean. Although it is not written explicitly in employment contracts, it soon becomes clear that personal posts on social networks are no longer as private as they were before entering the service. Therefore, the public presentation of the position of an employee of the intelligence service is similar to the resignation of Josh Paul, director of the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs of the Department of State for, as he said, "one-sided politics favoring Israel."
That it is not just about two sensitive individuals, is also shown by the letter of more than a thousand employees of the American Agency for International Development (USAID) who "disturbed and discouraged by numerous violations of international law" requested an immediate ceasefire in the conflict between Israel and Hamas; a public address by four hundred employees of federal departments and agencies who appealed for the immediate establishment of a ceasefire, the release of Israeli hostages, Palestinian prisoners, as well as the supply of water, fuel, electricity and other essential necessities to Gaza; internal cables from several dozen State Department diplomats who expressed their dilemmas and disagreements about how the administration has positioned itself toward the conflict in Gaza; protests of about a hundred administrative workers of the Congress because of "unreserved support for Israel".
And finally, the address of the group of Biden's Democrats with Bernie Sanders at the head, who finally said what many were looking for at the very beginning of the action against the extremists Hamas - how it is necessary for American aid to Israel to be conditioned on the steps taken by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. "If politely asking for something could have brought results, we wouldn't be in this situation today," Sanders said, stressing that "blank support" for Israel must end.
Coming under attack from Republicans who demanded an even more radical response to Hamas and increasingly open criticism from progressive members of their party, state leaders began to send slightly different messages compared to the unreserved support that President Joseph Biden sent to Israel immediately after the terrorist attack by Hamas. Since Secretary of State Anthony Blinken first warned that "too many Palestinians have died and are suffering", that he "sees his children in the faces of wounded Palestinian boys and girls" and that much more must be done to protect civilians and deliver humanitarian aid, identical the message was echoed by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Vice President Kamala Harris.
"Too many innocent Palestinians have been killed. Honestly, the level of civilian suffering, the pictures and videos coming from Gaza are devastating", said Kamala Harris, although all these are still only choice words in relation to the Spanish Prime Minister's assessment of the "indiscriminate killing of innocent civilians", the French President who brings the question of the goals of the destruction of Hamas, the UNICEF officials who describe how Gaza has "become a graveyard for thousands of children" and "hell for everyone else" or the assessment of the president of the Red Cross that the human suffering of the people of Gaza is completely "unbearable".
DEMOCRACY AND AUTOCRACY
photo: ap images for amnesty international usa and avaaz...
Those who criticize the state leadership's patronizing attitude towards Israel did not miss the fact that no one in Washington addressed the fact that when the Israeli defense minister announced that the residents of Gaza would be deprived of electricity, food and fuel, and a high-ranking general called them "human animals", the team before State Secretary Blinken once strongly condemned the Russian attacks on the civilian infrastructure of Ukraine, calling them "barbaric" and "brutal". They are, but even those who regularly call the Russian president a "tyrant" and a "murderer" have started talking about the American "double standards" and "ambivalent attitude towards war crimes", and that the White House is not sending a clear enough message. .
"When civilians started dying in Gaza, we all knew the means of killing," a US official told NBC, referring to US-sourced Israeli weapons.
Therefore, it is increasingly obvious that what the Vice President, Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense are saying about Israel's actions is not currently reaching those who lead the military action from Jerusalem, so it was only a matter of days before the sentiment prevailed among the US citizens that Israel had gone too far in its response to the terrorist attack by Hamas and that, by all accounts, it has no intention of stopping, given that the continuation of the operation after the cease-fire is no less brutal than what the civilian population in the northern part of Gaza suffered in the first days war. Thus, the results of the latest Reuters/Ipsos survey show that public support in the US for Israel's war against Hamas is declining, and that most Americans believe that Israel should declare a ceasefire in a conflict that is increasingly reaching the proportions of a humanitarian crisis. Currently, 32 percent of respondents still believe that the US should support Israel in the conflict, AP Images for Amnesty International USA and Avaaz), but this is ten percent less than in the first days of the conflict in Gaza.
At the same time, no one questions Israel's right to defend itself and respond militarily to the brutal attack by Hamas, its mass killings of innocent civilians, taking women and children hostage, raping girls and desecrating the bodies of the killed, as well as the fact that the military infrastructure of Hamas militants is completely a legitimate military target. This is primarily about the concern that in these actions Palestinian civilians suffer massively, mostly children and women, and that residential structures, buildings, hospitals or camps for the displaced are destroyed wantonly. Along with Secretary of State Blinken and Vice President Harris, a significant number of American residents are clearly struck by the sight of murdered and wounded children, which is why they believe less and less in the rigid divisions of "democracy and autocracy" or "good and evil" on which, in the manner of the old schools, insists President Biden, because it is more than obvious that these bipolar divisions remain in some past times. Neither are all democracies the same, because in the Indian state of Assam, things are viewed significantly differently than in the American New Hampshire, nor is Putin's dictatorship identical to the one implemented by, for example, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Given that it is well known what kind of taunts America is capable of unleashing on those who violate humanitarian law or do not respect basic democratic values, criticism of Israel still resembles the warm, motherly rebuke of a child who, out of love or a sense of responsibility for some past horrors he has survived, he does not see all the wrongdoings that the ward is currently doing. Perhaps that love, and other good things, still resemble each other, but their opposites now come in different forms, meanings, and manifestations, so that those who sit in the White House can only look out the window at Lafayette square and see that the well-known world has changed again.
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