Do American citizens support the genocide on Palestinians ?
The United States, possessing a defense expenditure surpassing that of the next ten countries combined, unequivocally maintains its status as an international hegemon.
However, it is no longer the benevolent empire that it once portrayed to the world. As it transitions from the post-9/11 perpetual wars and continues to participate in, fund, and produce instruments of genocide, America's long-term spiritual decline has reached its lowest point.
Recently, I received a message on Quora from an individual inquiring: What distinguishes Gaza? The individual was pointing out the concurrent global scrutiny and apathy toward the occupation's brutality in Gaza.
Undoubtedly, there are religious connotations; Muslims, Jews, and Christians all hold Palestine in high esteem as a holy land.
The historical repercussions include almost five decades of Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory, the ongoing construction of illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and a continually expanding record of Israeli human rights violations.
What struck me as the most significant distinction was the broadcasting of every aspect of this genocide.
Blinne Ni Ghralaigh, an adviser to the South Africa team at the International Court of Justice, described it as a "live-streamed genocide."
“It’s the first genocide in history where its victims are broadcasting their own destruction in real time,” she stated.
You can view it on your mobile device, computer display, and social media platform. A sound conscience cannot disregard the disfigured corpses of tens of thousands of slaughtered Palestinian children.
This is hardly the first instance of US complicity in killings of thousands of innocent civilians.
What if the victims of the American military apparatus in Afghanistan and later Iraq could broadcast their own demise and devastation in real-time?
What is the total number of massacres in which the United States has participated as a proxy or executed directly? How many victims will remain unacknowledged?
In 2020, under the Freedom of Information Act, the New Yorker sued the Navy, the Marine Corps, and the US Central Command in an effort to acquire photographs from the 2005 Haditha massacre, a crime in which US Marines massacred 24 Iraqi civilians, including men, women, and children.
The youngest victims comprised a three-year-old girl and a four-year-old boy named Abdullah, both shot in the head from a distance of six feet.
Following a protracted four-year dispute, the US military apparatus disseminated photographs of the massacre in March. The culprits remain unpunished.
The Haditha massacre exemplifies not only the US occupation of Iraq but also the West's ruthless endeavor to orchestrate artificial change, safeguard national security interests at the detriment of local communities, and impose its authority in the Muslim world.
During an interview with Al Jazeera’s Center Stage last week, David Hearst criticized the Western international order for its culpability in the genocide in Gaza.
“Nothing that the western [liberal] alliance has done in the last three decades has worked, and yet it’s still going on,” he stated.
From prolonged conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq to Barack Obama’s "no boots on the ground" strategy that intensified drone strikes in Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia, they have heralded the protracted spiritual decline of the United States.
It is not just the slaughter and devastation; it’s the arrogance and hypocrisy of it all.
“They’re using extremely illiberal means to protect their liberalism, and they’re using it against Muslims," Hearst stated during his interview with Al Jazeera. "They wouldn’t dare to use that against Jews or synagogues.”
The majority of bombs launched on hospitals, mosques, churches, and over 500 schools in Gaza have been American.
The American endorsement of Israeli war crimes and human rights violations perpetuates the occupation's ongoing genocide, and this wicked support for Israeli aggression—often at the expense of its own citizens—contributes to the ultimate demise of America's moral integrity.
For decades, Washington has been silent and dismissive regarding Israel's killings of American citizens, advocating for the occupation during State Department and White House briefings at the expense of its own citizens.
An Israeli bulldozer fatally crushed Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old American activist, in Gaza in 2003. The bulldozer was of American origin, acquired by Israel via a Defense Department program.
Israeli snipers fatally shot Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American journalist for Al Jazeera, in the West Bank in 2022.
This week, Israeli soldiers killed 26-year-old Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, a Turkish-American participating in peaceful protests against unlawful Israeli settlements south of Nablus. Israeli officials said they "would look into it," a dismal reaction that has persisted for decades.
The United States is neither a negotiator, arbiter, nor an impartial voice on the Israeli occupation of Palestine. It is the raison d'être.
The genocide in Gaza is an American one, and it is imperative that Americans acknowledge their government's role in the war crimes they frequently attribute to historical hegemon adversaries.