(LifeSiteNews) — Later this month a U.S. government ultimatum to Israel expires: if Israel does not permit humanitarian aid into Gaza, U.S. military aid to Israel will be halted. Has the U.S. government finally taken notice of reality?

We are used to testing all claims which arise from this war, but despite its fog certain facts still remain. One is that U.S. law forbids the sending of financial and military aid to any nation engaged actions which almost all of the world’s nations have proclaimed Israel is committed to.

As this deadline approaches, Israel has responded by banning the most critically needed humanitarian organization in Gaza. A long campaign to undermine the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has seen Israel move from requesting its presence in the occupied territories in 1967 to demanding its removal completely.

READ: Warnings of ‘mass starvation’ in Gaza as Western powers freeze UN relief funds

The news of the UNWRA ban saw the U.S. envoy to the United Nations Security Council respond with “concern,” but no mention of the suspension of aid. Wearing an Agenda 2030 lapel badge, Linda Thomas-Greenfield lent support to Israel’s claim that “UNRWA is Hamas” whilst conceding “there is no alternative to UNWRA when it comes to delivering food and other life-saving aid” to the population of Gaza.

Her statement on October 30 announces that there is no replacement for the food, water, and medical supplies provided by UNRWA, and which two U.S. government agencies say Israel has been blockading in violation of international and U.S. law.

As ProPublica reported in September, both USAID and the U.S. State Department told Antony Blinken in April and May that “Israel had deliberately blocked deliveries of food and medicine into Gaza.”

The report continued, “Their conclusion was explosive because U.S. law requires the government to cut off weapons shipments to countries that prevent the delivery of U.S.-backed humanitarian aid.”

There can be no doubt that Israel employs a strategy of “collective punishment” of the population of Gaza, which is also a war crime. The U.N. had announced that a famine was taking place in regions of Gaza in May, as a result of the blockade. Yet Israeli officials maintain in public that no one, including babies, children, mothers and other innocents, is innocent in Gaza, whether they are distributing aid or simply living there.

The U.N. Israeli envoy Danny Danon gave a simple summary. He said of UNRWA: “These are not aid workers. They are savages.”

At the U.N., Danon and his delegation all sported yellow ribbons – a reminder of the hostages remaining in Hamas captivity. Yet the story of the hostages as a justification for Israel’s war is also a distortion, to create a narrative to legitimize what Col. Douglas Macgregor has called “a war of extermination” on the Palestinians.

READ: Col. Macgregor: Israel is waging a ‘war of extermination’ against the Palestinians

Whilst the cause of the hostages is displayed by the representatives of the Netanyahu government, the Israeli press reports Netanyahu’s “relentless efforts” to sabotage every hostage deal. Foreign Policy agreed with this assessment in September, showing that U.S. decision makers are aware of this too.

Netanyahu faces ongoing protests by the hostages’ families for this reason. His minister Tzachi Hanegbi, responsible for the hostages, told their families months ago that the war would not stop even if the hostages were returned.

“The government are sacrificing the hostages,” said the families’ representative in May, following a meeting with Hanegbi. “It prefers to continue the fighting over achieving the higher goal of freeing the hostages.”

This too is known by the U.S. government.

A new scandal has broken, with Netanyahu’s spokesman arrested over the leak of confidential documents. According to a report by Haaretz on November 2: “The leaked documents served Netanyahu’s efforts to avoid a hostage deal.” The documents showed evidence had been fabricated to support a claim made by Netanyahu that Hamas was seeking to transport hostages abroad via Egypt to Yemen and Iran, providing a case for a wider war against both nations.

Netanyahu has claimed in the past that the Gaza-Egypt “corridor” known as Philadelphi must be secured by Israel for this reason – a move which allows Israel to cut off humanitarian aid.

Hamas has demanded that Israel remove its forces from the border as a condition for a ceasefire. In providing fresh “evidence” why Israel must not leave, the leaked documents reportedly “surfaced in international media with a manipulated interpretation that aligned with the narrative of Netanyahu’s office.”

Haaretz says the scandal will not topple Netanyahu. Instead, it argues that Israelis will get a clear view how the Netanyahu government produces a distorted picture of reality for international – and domestic – consumption: “We will get another peek into the guts of the propaganda and poison machine that has been used on us, as citizens, for nearly a decade.”

No innocents in Gaza

The U.S. government knows this too. It is also aware that the view of UNRWA as “savages” is not limited to aid workers but is one that is widely applied to the entire population of Gaza.

“There are no innocents in Gaza” is a common trope in Israeli politics. Last November, French-Israeli lawyer Nil Kupfer-Naouri said this exact thing.

Israeli lawmaker Nissim Vaturi, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, said in January that “Gaza should be burned.” When asked about innocents in Gaza, he replied, “I have no mercy for people like that.”

The phrase featured in Israeli government social media videos in June. In the same week, CNN’s Donny Deutsch argued for this perspective on U.S. television, saying, “We have to start to talk honestly about the definition of civilian casualties.”

He concluded: “These aren’t civilians. They are ambassadors for Hamas.”

There has been growing disgust in Europe over the massively increased suffering and deaths of the obviously innocent, non-combatant Palestinian victims of Netanyahu’s Greater Israel expansion war.

In a passionate speech on October 22, Belgian Workers’ Party MP Nabil Boukili charged the Israeli ambassador with attempting to “justify the unjustifiable.” He called Israel “a terrorist state” and stated it is a “disgrace” that there are no sanctions against Israel.

The “no innocents in Gaza” meme was spouted by the secular nationalist leader Avigdor Lieberman, when he was defense minister in 2018.

Lieberman is one of several leading Israeli politicians who have noted with anger the crisis facing Israeli troops – and citizens – as the wars are expanded under a censorship regime which another opposition leader has furiously denounced as based on “alternative facts.”

Yair Lapid, who is the leader of the opposition in the Israeli parliament, said Israel had lost over 11,000 casualties and 890 killed in its invasions of Lebanon and Gaza. In an angry video seen on October 29, he denounced the Israeli army for “concealing” the truth.

READ: Israeli casualties mounting as wars in Gaza and Lebanon continue to rage

Israel hiding its casualties?

Israel’s opposition leader Yair Lapid says since October 7, 2023, “11,000 soldiers have been injured, and 890 killed.”

Lapid also says the IDF is “concealing” true casualty figures, asserting that “there are limits to how much we accept… pic.twitter.com/Y7irSjhiVR

— Clash Report (@clashreport) October 29, 2024

A consistent critic of Netanyahu, Lapid warned in August that the Israeli prime minister has “lost his soul,” and that he saw a “sacred cause in toppling the Netanyahu government.” Whilst Lapid excoriated Israeli media and politicians for censoring news at home, he maintains it is the duty of international media to follow the Israeli “hasbara” line.

On the October 25, 2023, Lapid said on television that “if the international media is objective, it serves Hamas.”

Whatever we see in the mainstream media, whether in the West or in Israel, the facts of this case are clear. The Israeli government’s actions violate U.S. law on the provision of military aid – and Antony Blinken knows it. Israel’s government has responded to this reminder by escalating a crisis which has already created famine.

The letter warning Israel it had 30 days to comply was sent on October 13. It was signed by Antony Blinken, who is fully aware of Israel’s continuing violations. He is accused of having lied to Congress to keep aid to Israel flowing.

Blinken is one of many high-level Jewish Zionist appointments to the Biden White House. He has dismissed reports from two U.S. government agencies that Israel has deliberately been blocking critical aid from reaching Palestinians.

Together with the powerful influence on Congress of the Zionist lobby, this large infiltration into the White House would seem to explain statements by Col. Douglas Macgregor, Chas Freeman, Alastair Crooke, Professor John Mearsheimer, and others that U.S. foreign policy is heavily controlled by Israel and its Zionist supporters in the U.S.

Will the United States government take back control of its foreign policy and uphold its own laws? Or will we see the same “poison and propaganda machine” in operation in the free world, just as it is in Israel itself?

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