![\"\"](\"https:\/\/steelcityscribblings.uk\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/gaza-food-queue-1.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
A return to America’s proxy war on Russia in Ukraine, in which it seeks to “freeze” the conflict at Europe’s expense – i.e. have the latter’s deeply unpopular comprador<\/strong> <\/a>leaders cut welfare even further to ramp up “defence” spending in guns not butter style, and so free Washington to focus for the time being <\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> on ‘containing’ the China threat to US rule of the planet – is well overdue.<\/p>\n Genocide in Gaza having quite distracted me. <\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n Events permitting, I’ll start that return this week. Meanwhile, with the Guardian reporting<\/strong><\/a> an open letter to Sir Keir Starmer from 800 lawyers demanding sanctions on Israel to meet UK obligations under international law, here are two short pieces on Palestine from the many to have caught my eye these past few days.<\/p>\n The first is by Jonathan Cook on but one facet of Israel’s record not only of lying on an industrial scale but of being believed or given benefit of doubt by credulous – if we’re feeling charitable – media. Two days ago in just 592 words he addressed the murderous settler state’s racist claim that Gazans starve because Hamas steals aid. Both the claim, and its widespread acceptance, rely on the toxic orientalism in which we in the West are knowingly or unknowingly steeped.<\/p>\n Israel’s claim that Hamas is “stealing aid” is so preposterous no serious journalist or politician ought to give it any kind of airing \u2013 yet there it is continuously cropping up in the coverage of Gaza.<\/span><\/p>\n How do I know Israel\u2019s claim is utterly worthless? For this simple reason:<\/span><\/p>\n Israel has a fleet of surveillance drones constantly hovering over the tiny strip of land that is Gaza, monitoring every inch of the territory. The whine you hear every time you watch someone there being interviewed is from one of those drones. They are Israel’s eyes on the enclave. If you are outside in Gaza, you might as well be living in the Truman Show.<\/span><\/p>\n Were Hamas stealing aid in Gaza, Israel would easily be able to document it. It would have the video footage from its drones. The fact that it has not provided any footage showing Hamas\u2019 theft of aid \u2013 its ransacking of aid trucks, or its fighters smuggling themselves into aid warehouses \u2013 is confirmation enough that it has simply invented this claim to rationalise its plans to starve the people of Gaza to death through months of an aid blockade or force them to flee into neighbouring Sinai, whichever comes first.<\/span><\/p>\n Without its disinformation campaign about \u201cHamas stealing aid\u201d, Israel knows popular revulsion to its starvation campaign would grow quickly, and western governments would further struggle to keep opposition in check.<\/span><\/p>\n There are lots of others reasons, of course, to reject Israel\u2019s lies about “Hamas stealing aid”. Not least, because every single charity and aid agency dealing with Gaza says that aid is not being stolen by Hamas.<\/span><\/p>\n But also because, were Hamas fighters doing so, they would be stealing from their own families: from their children and grandparents, who are much more vulnerable to Israel\u2019s starvation campaign than they are. The idea that Hamas is stealing aid makes sense only to a racist, European colonial mindset in which Hamas fighters are viewed as bogeymen figures indifferent to the deaths of their own children, wives and parents.<\/span><\/p>\n What undoubtedly is happening is that Israel is allowing the strongest extended families in Gaza \u2013 often crime families with significant private arsenals \u2013 to loot the aid. That has become a serious problem since Israel killed off Gaza’s civilian police force (in violation of international law), leaving no one to enforce public order. <\/span>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n When everyone\u2019s starving, the most powerful families mobilise their strength to grab an unfair share of the aid. That was an entirely predictable outcome of Israel\u2019s policy to smash all of Gaza\u2019s institutions, including its hospitals, government offices, and police stations, on the bogus pretext that they were \u201cHamas\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n Note too that Israel has long cultivated close ties to Palestinian crime families, because they provide a potential alternative, and more co-optable, power base to the Palestinian national movements and are a good source of collaborators.<\/span><\/p>\n The evidence suggests Israel is encouraging these crime families to loot the aid precisely to justify its dismantling of an existing aid system that works remarkably well, given the catastrophic circumstances in Gaza, and replace it with its own militarised, completely inadequate “aid distribution” system, which is designed only to herd Palestinians into the southern-most tip of Gaza, ready to be expelled into Sinai.<\/span><\/p>\n No journalist ought to be repeating Israel\u2019s transparent disinformation. To do so is to collude in the promotion of lies to justify genocide. But the western media class have been doing that now for more than a year and half. They have grown entirely insensible to their own active collusion in the genocide.<\/span><\/p>\n *<\/p>\n The day Jonathan’s piece came out, one by Caitlin Johnstone also got my attention. I usually give all her short posts the two or three minutes they demand, given her peerless ability to confront speciously power-serving narratives in words of withering simplicity. This post was guaranteed to pull me in with its calling out of a “spiritual leader” who can’t see a genocide when it stares him in the face.<\/p>\n Been there. Done it. Got the t-shirt. (Those interested can check out my uncompleted series<\/strong><\/a> <\/span>4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> on how I joined a “spiritual” cult.) Meanwhile, over to Caitlin:<\/p>\n They\u2019re<\/span> burning kids alive<\/strong> <\/a>in Gaza. They\u2019re burning them alive. And still people are silent, or are actively supporting Israel, or are spouting mealy-mouthed both-sides gibberish while shrugging their shoulders.<\/span><\/p>\n A spiritual teacher who I used to like posted the most<\/span> obnoxious screed <\/strong><\/a>today …<\/span><\/p>\n Do check out that “obnoxious screed<\/strong><\/a>“, its po-faced angst blown out of the water when we replace Palestinian<\/em>\u00a0 with Jew, Israeli<\/em>\u00a0 with German, Gaza “conflict”<\/em> with Nazi holocaust.<\/em><\/p>\n A gushing BTL comment applauds the author:<\/p>\n Neutral stance? In a genocide? Gosh, how profoundly\u00a0spiritual!<\/em><\/p>\n … babbling about how both Israelis and Palestinians are suffering in this \u201cwar\u201d and that, while Israel does have a \u201cright to defend itself\u201d, it\u2019s time for a ceasefire to be reached.<\/span><\/p>\n This is a guy who\u2019s made a career out of presenting himself as so wise, insightful and enlightened that people should pay him money to hear what he has to say about life and spiritual attainment, finally deciding to speak out about a genocide that\u2019s been going on for nearly 20 months now, and saying the most vapid, infantile nonsense imaginable. I know teenagers who could\u2019ve done a much better job.<\/span><\/p>\n And from where I\u2019m sitting, if this is the best you can do after a lifetime dedicated to spiritual insight and awakening, then what good was any of it? If you can\u2019t even take a solid stance against history\u2019s first live-streamed genocide after decades of spiritual seeking and spiritual finding, then it kinda seems like you\u2019ve been wasting your life this whole time.<\/span><\/p>\n No quarrel from me, Caitlin.<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A return to America’s proxy war on Russia in Ukraine, in which it seeks to “freeze” the conflict at Europe’s expense – i.e. have the latter’s deeply unpopular comprador leaders cut welfare even further to ramp up “defence” spending in … Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,21,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-146857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-politics-middle-east","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelcityscribblings.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelcityscribblings.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelcityscribblings.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelcityscribblings.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelcityscribblings.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146857"}],"version-history":[{"count":126,"href":"https:\/\/steelcityscribblings.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146857\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":147032,"href":"https:\/\/steelcityscribblings.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146857\/revisions\/147032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelcityscribblings.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelcityscribblings.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelcityscribblings.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Israel’s claim that ‘Hamas is stealing aid’ is patently a lie …<\/a><\/h3>\n
… if this is the best you can do after a lifetime dedicated to spiritual insight and awakening, what good was any of it? If you can\u2019t even take a solid stance against history\u2019s first live-streamed genocide after decades of spiritual seeking and spiritual finding, then it kinda seems like you\u2019ve been wasting your life this whole time.<\/span><\/h6>\n
If You Don\u2019t Oppose The Gaza Holocaust, You\u2019ve Been Wasting Your Life On This\u00a0Planet<\/a><\/h3>\n
Take a firm position on the great moral issue of our time, or be prepared to spend the rest of your life explaining why you didn\u2019t.<\/span><\/h5>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/steelcityscribblings.uk\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/gaza-little-girl-in-inferno.jpg\")
<\/p>\nScreen-grab, May 26: 7-year-old Ward al-Sheikh Khalil tries to flee an inferno after the bombing of a school in Gaza City.<\/span><\/a><\/h6>\n
You really are staying neutral and, taking a neutral stance, your stance is as worthy as any I have heard.<\/h6>\n