Who Will Stop Israel’s War Crimes?

They crowd them into densely packed ghettos like animals in urban cages. They control their economic destiny and keep them trapped in poverty. They evict them from their homes when it suits them. They invade their mosques at will. They brutalize peaceful demonstrators. And then they are shocked, shocked when these abject people finally erupt — and they respond with a fury of bombardment on densely populated urban targets.

The U.S. mainstream press and other Israel apologists want to call the current bloodbath in Gaza a “conflict” between Israel and Hamas. But that’s not what it is. Few Palestinian rockets have reached their targets because of the protective Israeli “dome” while the Israeli air force has destroyed civilian targets in Gaza with impunity. Over 200 Palestinian men, women and children have been killed, and only about a dozen Israelis. This is asymmetrical carnage against a largely defenseless civilian population. In other words, the government of Israel’s repulsive leader-for-life Benjamin Netanyahu is guilty of war crimes.

Will Israel finally be restrained? Will the Netanyahu regime at last be held accountable? The rising left wing of the Democratic Party finally forced President Biden to call for a ceasefire, And a new generation of activists — including many young American Jews — is making the links between the apartheid policies of Israel and the systematic injustice that afflicts racial minorities in the U.S.

Hopefully, the slaughter in Gaza is a turning point. Israel must get rid of Netanyahu and his legacy of swagger and belligerence. The Palestinians have been demanding dignity and human rights for far too long. It’s time that Washington finally hears their cries.