Could a "Coalition of the Willing" Save the Children of Gaza?
Gilbert Doctorow's idea deserves a hearing
Welcome everyone to Press TV's news review program where we get in-depth in one of the day's top stories. And now today in review, the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees, UNRWA, says over 50,000 children across the Gaza Strip are suffering from acute malnutrition. UNRWA described the humanitarian situation as catastrophic, adding Gazans are now facing desperate levels of hunger due to the Israeli blockade.
The UN Children's Agency UNICEF also said the children of Gaza are living in constant terror due to Israeli bombardment. UNICEF said the Israeli forced displacement of Gazans in Rafah has caused the agency to lose track of over 3,000 children. It added the humanitarian conditions and the suffering of citizens in Gaza are worsening by the day due to the continuous blockade by Israeli forces.
And joining us for our program now, pardon, is Dr. Kevin Barrett, Editor at Veterans Today, joining us from Saidia, Morocco and Gilbert Doctorow, Independent International Affairs Analyst, joining us out of Brussels. Gentlemen, I'd like to welcome you both to the program.
Dr. Barrett, we'll start with you. Hope you're doing well out there in Morocco. Your thoughts about the regime continuing to block all humanitarian aid from getting into Gaza and that's impacting the development of vulnerable small children.
Kevin Barrett: Well, the genocidal Zionist regime is deliberately starving children of Palestine, and they're admitting this. They're not even trying to hide it. Numerous Israeli leaders have made clearly genocidal statements, such as statements about how the children who survived when we mowed the lawn are the same people who then grow up to support Hamas and so on, so we really should have just killed all the children back then. And by implication, we should kill them now. The top rabbi in Israel has basically said this, as have a number of the other Israeli leaders.
So they're not even hiding the fact that they're deliberately slaughtering, torturing, and maiming children as national policy. And the fact that this is allowed to happen in today's world is astonishing.
Right now we're celebrating Eid al-Adha in the Islamic world, which is a celebration of the end of human sacrifice, and specifically the end of sacrificing children. That was a common practice in the ancient Mediterranean, among the Phoenician and Carthaginian culture, particularly, but others as well. And when God told people to stop sacrificing their children, that was a momentous step forward for civilization.
But apparently we're going back to the era of the sacrifice of children as this bizarre, psychotic, millenarian-messianic, genocidal cult of satanic so-called Jews—really Zionists—in occupied Palestine, is sacrificing children by the tens of thousands. And the low estimate of the number of children murdered so far is somewhere in the neighborhood of 15,000 children. The reality is much higher, of course, as so many children have been lost track of and are buried beneath the rubble where they died very slowly and painfully in horrible anguish due to the Zionists deliberately dropping their buildings on top of them.
So it's completely disgusting and unacceptable that the world is allowing this to continue.
Thank you, Dr. Barrett. Gilbert Doctorow, welcome to the conversation, sir, and welcome to the program. The Israeli regime has the bigger guns, the tanks, the bigger bombs, the helicopters and fighter jets, far superior firepower. Why do you need to pick as your main victim the women and hungry children of Gaza?
Gilbert Doctorow: Well, I add my voice of outrage to what Israel is doing in Gaza. This genocide is unacceptable, but who is acting against it? And I'd like to use this opportunity, since you have given me the microphone, to suggest a way out of this. The way out is to follow a page from the American playbook. It's called form a coalition of the willing.
It is clear for understandable reasons that Iran, Saudi Arabia, and other neighbors of Israel are reluctant to enter into military confrontation with Israel because they know very well that this will be very damaging to their own populations and many people will die in a valiant effort that may or may not succeed. It is a different situation if it's not one country or two countries that go up against this blockade of Israel, but a coalition of nations. And I would propose, insofar as I am well aware that Russian officials follow Press TV, I make a proposal to them: that they lead this coalition.
The capability of the Russians who have a naval base in Syria, and who are present in the region, is large. The Israelis will not go to war with Russia, if Russia heads a coalition to break the blockade. I didn't say to break the Israeli army, no. To break the blockade for humanitarian grounds. That will be morally acceptable if it is not one nation…
Thank you, Mr. Doctorow. We're kind of having a loose connection toward the end of your words there, but hopefully that'll get resolved.
Dr. Barrett, a lot of people say that's exactly what the Israeli regime wants. It wants to see a coalition on the other side with opposition to the atrocities it's committing in Gaza. It wants to see regional powers get involved so the U.S. gets involved, with Berlin and London. So basically a world war erupts to try to protect the starving children of Gaza. Is that really what it's going to take?
Kevin Barrett: Well, that seems to be what Netanyahu and his camp are working for. Netanyahu has been trying to unleash a big war in the region, and a potential world war, in order to create the fog of war under which he could finish the genocide of the Palestinians. And he's been trying to do this since—well, really, for his whole political career, which began by creating the so-called” war on terror” at the Jerusalem Conference on International Terrorism in 1979, where he summoned a number of top U.S. leaders and set out the agenda, which was that post-Cold War, they would transition to a so-called War on Terror, which would really be a war by the West against Israel's enemies.
And so Netanyahu was then involved in the public relations launch for this on September 11, which was an Israeli job. And since then, Netanyahu and his faction have been pushing for a world war, trying to drag the Americans into a big war. Again, that's the way that he thinks he could finish the genocide of Palestine.
That is a pretty horrific prospect. As for to what extent does that limit the military options against the Zionist entity…if we were talking about trying to bring a coalition of the willing into outright war with the Zionist entity, that could easily spin off into World War Three. But a blockade-breaking effort, if it were the right coalition of nations that would have to include not just Russia and its allies but also countries like Turkey and maybe even Saudi Arabia. That is, a kind of a bridge-building exercise across the contours of the current system of alliances (consisting of) the U.S.-empire-occupied Zionist world on one side and this emerging independent BRICS world on the other. If you had a coalition that included members of both, if you got Norway and Spain and Ireland, some pro-Palestinian NATO countries on the side of sending military forces to break the blockade, along with Russia and Turkey and Saudi Arabia, with countries like Iran in a secondary role, that actually might have a chance of succeeding.
But of course, the question is, who's going to bell the cat? Who has the courage to actually stand up against these monstrous forces? But at some point, we need that courage if we're going to stop this mass slaughter of children. So I think this is an idea that should be explored.
Thank you. And final thoughts with you, Mr. Gilbert Doctorow. Why are Western leaders so—I mean, obviously they've all said time and again, nothing justifies the collective punishment taking place, the endless war crimes and atrocities being committed, especially against the children of Gaza. Why are they not doing more to put a stop to it, to feed the children throughout this onslaught campaign?
Gilbert Doctorow: The answer is “never again.” The really unfortunate aspect of everything that has proceeded since October of last year is that European nations and Germany in particular, as a leader in this, have a collective guilt for the awful things they did to the Jewish people before and during World War II. And for that reason, “never again” is the slogan that justifies, they think, the ongoing genocide that Israel is committing in Gaza, that has to be broken.
Unfortunately for the Jewish people, for the Israeli population, they have destroyed their moral authority and they have desecrated the memory of the six million people who died in the Holocaust. That is a tragedy that will take them several generations to live down. But we have to begin with remedying the situation today.
And I totally concur with my fellow panelist that a broader coalition that takes in some NATO members who have recognized Palestine would be ideal. I was not suggesting at any point that they all march in and try to defeat the Israeli army. That would be a very good formula for the start of World War III. But a more modest, limited, and urgent effort to break the blockade, I think that will work.
I was going to sign off, but I really want to get Dr. Barrett's take on that. And that's a powerful argument that Mr. Doctorow was making, that somehow the West giving Israel this carte blanche to do what it wants in Gaza, it's pathetic to think, but I'm sure some Western leaders feel it's some kind of reparation for the Holocaust.
Kevin Barrett: The Holocaust has become the new religion. It's replaced Christianity: The gas chambers are the crucifixion, Israel is the resurrection, and so on. It's the new de facto religion in the West. And I personally think that that's the product of the Zionist propaganda machine that dominates Western media, rather than the historical reality. The conflict between Jews and non-Jews throughout all of history has not been one of spotless victims on one side and evil perpetrators on the other. It's been a mixed bag. And if anything, I think the Jewish people have been more sinning than sinned against. And I know that's an absolutely heretical thought to end the show on, but I'm sorry. I believe it's the truth.
All right, gentlemen. Stay safe to both of you, and thank you both for your input on our program here.
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