"Happy Holidays" is a Cruel Joke

During the US-Israel Crucifixion of Gaza

There are almost no words for the horrors afoot within and beyond the Middle Eastern “holy land” this Christmas season. "Happy holidays" is a cruel joke this year.

Look at this report from CNN, not from the so-called radical left, not from Al-Jazeera but from imperialist CNN:

“In the first month of its war in Gaza, Israel dropped hundreds of massive bombs, many of them capable of killing or wounding people more than 1,000 feet away, analysis by CNN and artificial intelligence company Synthetaic suggests.

Satellite imagery from those early days of the war reveals more than 500 impact craters over 12 meters (40 feet) in diameter, consistent with those left behind by 2,000-pound bombs. Those are four times heavier than the largest bombs the United States dropped on ISIS in Mosul, Iraq, during the war against the extremist group there.

Weapons and warfare experts blame the extensive use of heavy munitions such as the 2,000-pound bomb for the soaring death toll. The population of Gaza is packed together much more tightly than almost anywhere else on earth, so the use of such heavy munitions has a profound effect.

2,000-pound bombs are normally used sparingly by Western militaries, experts say, because of their potential impact on densely populated areas like Gaza. International humanitarian law prohibits indiscriminate bombing.

Marc Garlasco a former US defense intelligence analyst and former UN war crimes investigator, said the density of Israel’s first month of bombardment in Gaza had ‘not been seen since Vietnam.’

Garlasco, now a military adviser at PAX, a Dutch non-governmental organization that advocates for peace, reviewed all the incidents analyzed in this report for CNN.

‘You’d have to go back to the Vietnam war to make a comparison,’ said Garlasco. ‘Even in both Iraq wars it was never that dense.’

The heavy munitions, mostly manufactured by the US, can cause high casualty events and can have a lethal fragmentation radius – an area of exposure to injury or death around the target – of up to 365 meters (about 1,198 feet), or the equivalent of 58 soccer fields in area.

Weapons and warfare experts blame the extensive use of heavy weaponry, such as the 2,000-pound bomb for the soaring death toll. According to authorities in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, about 20,000 people have been killed since October 7.

Most of the dead are women and children, according to those figures.”

Ok, again that is me quoting CNN, not the Revcoms or CounterPunch or the Intercept or Antiwar.com or Democracy Now! or an Arab outlet like Aljazeeera.  That was good old American capitalist-imperialist CNN, reporting on a genocidal attack that numerous longtime humanitarian leaders and service providers say is causing the worst and most rapid devastation they’ve even seen.   

The vicious assault on the people of Gaza is moving at such an accelerated pace that “the number of Gaza residents killed during Israel’s 10-week-old war in the territory has already surpassed the toll for any other Arab conflict with Israel in more than 40 years and perhaps any since Israel’s founding in 1948.” And here I am quoting the good old establishment American-imperial New York Times.

One of the most horrific aspects about the US Israel-Crucifixion and ethnic cleansing of Gaza is how brazenly open it is — shameful war crimes being openly reported as millions of Americans race around doing their last-minute mass- consumerist planet poisoning shopping to celebrate the day on which Jesus Christ was supposedly born in Bethlehem.   

Two days ago, the Times reported that “Genocide Joe” Biden and the US are now badly “isolated” on the world stage because of their brazen backing of the crucifixion, including even the repeated solitary vetoing of United Nations Security Council resolutions calling for a ceasefire.  A poster on display at a recent Palestinian solidarity protest asks:

WHO THE F*CK VETOS ENDING A GENOCIDE?

The answer: the United States does, that’s who.

Here is my partial re-work of the much-loved Christmas song “We Three Kings of Orient Are”:

The two butchers of Palestine Are

Reigning Terror from near and from Far

Bombing, Killing, Maiming Displacing

Genocide committing

******************************

Netanyahu and Genocide Joe

War Criminals from head to toe

Uncle Sam funding, equipping, protecting

And Backing a  genocide

********************************

This Christmas season

Let’s not pretend

That our ruling class

Is humanity’s friend

Uncle Sam funding, equipping, protecting and backing a genocide.