Interesting to hear Senator Marco Rubio on CNN discuss the Iran-Israel news of yesterday. He refers to Israel as the “Jewish State”. By definition he calls it a state based on one ethnic group/religion. Very different from how the US Constitution defines the US. Very different from “sharing our values”.
He rightly states that many Northern Israeli families near the border with Lebanon have been evacuated South. He does not mention that the same thing has happened to the Lebanese families on the other side of the border. They too have had to move. away from the border. Rubio states that Hezbollah is launching rockets across the border but does not mention that Israel is often the one starting the shelling going the other way.
As usual – its often a situation of semantics. Israel hit the consulate in Damascus killing Iranian generals. Rubio says its “not a consulate but a building next door” Consulates can have an annex so who is to say its a consulate or not? The point is Israel attacked Iran and made it impossible for Iran not to respond. Now that Iran has responded the news is calling for Israel to respond to last nights attack (which turned out to be rather pathetic with very little damage). A recipe for more and more tit for tat. Biden is correct. “Call it a win” and move on.
Meanwhile, news of Israelis attacking Palestinians in the occupied West Bank continue unabated and get little news coverage. Also we keep hearing of the “brutal” actions of Hamas on Oct 7. and accusations of burning babies etc but have we ever seen any proof of any of those accusations? No, they are just accepted as fact. Meanwhile we DO question the numbers of Palestinian dead in Gaza coming from Hamas. The truth is both sides have an incentive to exaggerate and now we see with our own eyes the degree of destruction the IDF has inflicted on Gaza it seems pretty apparent that if Hamas is exaggerating the numbers of Palestinian dead they are probably underestimating NOT exaggerating. Meanwhile Israel has prevented Western journalists from entering Gaza to document what Israel is doing. For good reason apparently, because Western journalists might find that much of the horror stories that Israel is pushing are exaggerations or even worse, just untrue.
In all of this, the issues of the Middle East are complicated and no side, including ours is above playing politics, exaggerating, lying, favoring one group over another, avoiding the truth, turning a blind eye or whatever. Religion is to blame for much of it – Iran, Israel, Lebanon are all guilty of using religion to advance their bullshit. And lets be honest – the US is headed the same way.