It’s American Shutdown Time

Last week the Old Testament “eye for an eye” happened, William Shakespeare’s query “If you wrong us shall we not revenge” was answered, and last week late great crooner Frank Sinatra’s definition of what the best revenge is, “massive success” was on full display. So in other words, last week, American shutdown time occurred.

After Hamas terrorists committed the Oct. 7, 2023, most violent attack in Israel on the Jewish people since the Holocaust, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed “We will take mighty vengeance for this wicked day, we are at war”, and “the enemy will pay an unprecedented price”, Israel will “return fire of a magnitude that the enemy has not known”. Accordingly, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) announced it was launching “Operation Swords of Iron” War to strike back in Gaza and seek revenge on its Hamas terrorists.

Ten months after the IDF launched Operation Swords of Iron, last August, American national security officials said Israel had achieved all that it could militarily in Gaza. The two main reasons American officials made this assessment was because the IDF had destroyed all of the supply lines into Gaza from Egypt, and killed or captured 14,000 Hamas combatants. Among those killed are 3 of the 4 most powerful Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh Hamas’s political leader, Muhammad Deif leader of the Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, and Marwan Issa its military wing deputy leader. American officials have been convinced since August that Hamas is no longer capable of planning or executing an attack on the scale of Oct. 7. They also doubt Hamas’s ability to launch smaller terrorist attacks on Israel.

Since Operation Swords of Iron began over 35,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza including more than 7,800 children and 4,900 women, with another 10,000 people missing and presumed dead under the rubble of destroyed buildings. The IDF has dropped 29,000 bombs on Gaza, destroying or damaging 70 percent of Gaza’s homes, hundreds of cultural landmarks, and dozens of cemeteries. Shortages of food, clean water, medicine, and fuel due to an IDF blockade of Gaza combined with Israel cutting off all the electricity to Gaza, has created a severe humanitarian crisis and a near-total collapse of the Gaza healthcare system. IDF bomb attacks have directly hit or damaged at least 88% of Gaza school buildings (477 out of 564) since the Oct.  7 attack. Also as of Oct. 2023, World Health Organization data showed there have been 48 reported attacks on healthcare facilities in the Gaza Strip, damaging approximately 24 hospitals. An additional 137 attacks on healthcare facilities have killed 521 people, including 16 medical workers.

Despite the IDF killing over 35,000 Palestinians to revenge the 1,200 Israelis killed on Oct. 7th, despite the IDF injuring 96,700 Palestinians to revenge the 8,700 Israelis injured, and despite the fact that the IDF has revenge killed 3 of the 4 top leaders of Hamas along with 14,000 of their combatants, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu will not agree to a temporary cease-fire or a permanent end to the Gaza War. Netanyahu claims his refusal is done for the safety and security of Israel. Nothing could be further from the truth, Prime Minister Netanyahu is not acting in the best interest of Israel, because Netanyahu is acting in the best interest of Benjamin Netanyahu.

Long before the vicious October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel Netanyahu was criminally compromised. In 2019 he was criminally indicted for breach of trust, accepting bribes, and fraud. When Netanyahu’s predecessor, convicted felon former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, was indicted for bribery and corruption he resigned, not only did Netanyahu refuse to resign he formed a new government with Israel’s conservative ultra-right-wing to remain in power and avoid prosecution.  In other words, as long as Netanyahu is Prime Minister of Israel he can avoid serving prison time.

In the aftermath of the most violent attack on Jews since the Holocaust, facts have emerged that make Netanyahu also politically compromised. Weeks before the deadly Oct. 7th Hamas attack the head of Israel’s Mossad arrived in Doha, Qatar, for a meeting with Qatari officials. In that meeting, the government of Qatar asked the head of Israel’s national intelligence agency, if it should keep sending millions of dollars a month into the Gaza Strip to prop up the Hamas government there. Since Netanyahu had recently decided to continue his decade-old policy of allowing money to flow to Hamas, Mossad chief, David Barnea, replied yes Israel welcomed Qatar to continue to fund the Hamas group headed by the Hamas leader who planned the Oct.7th attack.

After learning additional facts since the Oct. 7 attack, Israeli citizens are now aware that the same Mossad chief obtained a copy of the Hamas battle plan, which accurately detailed the Oct, 7th Hamas attack on Israel one year before the massacre occurred, but the Netanyahu government failed to develop a battle plan to prevent the specific Oct 7th attack or any other attack by Hamas on Israel, which is the most likely reason it took hours for the IDF to respond to the Hamas attack and prevent hundreds of Israeli deaths, Netanyahu’s political downfall is a near certain. A  December 2023 poll showed only 15% of Israelis wanted Netanyahu to remain Prime Minister after the Hamas war is over, and a pro-Netanyahu newspaper Israel Hayom has reversed positions and published an impassioned plea for Netanyahu’s resignation, calling on him to “lead us to victory and then go”, so the only way for Netanyahu to keep his political power and remain out of prison is if Israel is at war.

Israel’s continued bombings in Gaza have reduced it to rubble Credit…Mahmoud Issa/Reuters

Unfortunately for peace in the Middle East, Netanyahu’s self-serving war aggression is yielding some personal political results. A September poll showed that the IDF’s recent military successes against Hezbollah have boosted his political party, Likud, popularity. Last April when Netanyahu self-servingly ordered the IDF to attack Iran’s embassy in Syria, it violated the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations international law that grants every country’s embassies and consulates a special status. The immediate area around an embassy or consulate and the embassy or consulate itself belongs to the country it represents, making the embassy or consulate in effect a country within a country, and no one including representatives of the host country can enter an embassy, consulate, or an embassy complex without permission.

Therefore when Netanyahu ordered the IDF to attack Iran’s embassy, a country that had not attacked Israel, it was an unprovoked attack on Iran that Netanyahu hoped would provoke an Iranian response that would widen and prolong the Gaza War, allowing him to remain Prime Minister and avoid criminal prosecution. Instead of Netanyahu’s self-serving unprovoked strike on Iran, which could start a new war with Iran, eroding his popularity further, it had the opposite effect among an Israeli public hungry for Oct. 7th attack revenge. Fortunately for peace in the Middle East, Iran reacted to Netanyahu’s war attempt with a response that stopped short of declaring war on Israel. The reality is as long as Israel’s war status protects Netanyahu from loss of personal power and criminal prosecution peace in the Middle East is nowhere in sight.

Israel’s deadly indiscriminate bombing of both combatants and innocent civilians finally caught up to and killed Yahya Sinwar, the man who planned and engineered the worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust. Above he lies dead after an Israeli bomb attack

The other reality is Israel can’t conduct a war for longer than 2 weeks without both direct American economic and military aid. So when Netanyahu says regardless of what America thinks or says Israel will conduct war when and where it likes, it’s all Israeli bluster that can’t be backed up with Israeli action unless America supplies the money and weapons to do so. For instance, Israel acts and touts its Iron Dome missile defense system as making it an unbeatable foe impenetrable to Middle East enemy attack missiles. But when Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian reacted to Israel’s Oct. 1, 2024 announcement that it would attack Iran a second time, because Iran responded to Israel’s initial unprovoked slap on Iran’s shoulder attack with a more powerful fist blow to Israel’s face attack, by warning Netanyahu “Iran is not seeking war but it will stand firmly against any threats. This is only a small glimpse of our powers. Do not enter into a war with Iran”.

Israel felt the need to request that America send its Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system and 100 American troops to operate it, to protect Israel from Iran’s future retaliation. Now that a game-changing event occurred last week American shutdown time should kick in. Last week the IDF’s practice of indiscriminately dropping bombs on everything, regardless of whether it’s a military base or a home, and on anyone, regardless of whether they are a Hamas combatant or innocent civilian, hit pay dirt when the 4th and final member of Hamas leadership and more importantly, the man who planned and engineered the Oct. 7 worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust,  Yahya Ibrahim Hassan Sinwar, was killed not by a strategically planned IDF operation, he was killed because he happened to be in an empty building not yet leveled by an American supplied indiscriminate IDF bomb.

America’s commitment to the security of Israel is and should always remain sacrosanct, America should never attempt to dictate what Israel does, but the successful killing of Sinwar should activate American shutdown time for supplying Israel with any future offensive weapon capability to use in the Gaza War. Sinwar’s death removes America’s last creditable reason to continue to supply Israel with the money or weapons to fight the Gaza War. American shutdown time should not affect the recent deployment of the THAAD missile defense system to Israel, the 100 troops to operate it, or any other economic or military capability that enables Israel to defend itself.

American shutdown time means America will immediately stop supplying Israel with any bomb that can be used in Gaza, America will immediately stop any economic aid that would enable Israel to procure any offensive weapons to fight the Gaza War, and American shutdown time also means America will immediately halt any U.S. intelligence sharing that enables Israel to offensively fight the Gaza War. Last July, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued an opinion, it concluded that Israel’s decade-long occupation and annexation of Palestinian territory is unlawful, it violates fundamental tenets of International Humanitarian Law (IHL), and denies Palestinians their human rights, meaning the United States government’s failure to activate American shutdown time leaves America vulnerable to charges of immorality and violating international law, by enabling Israel’s capability to impose apartheid on Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank.

America is and always should be fiercely Zionist, but its iron-clad commitment to always preserve and defend a safe place for Jews to live in peace and prosperity, cannot be twisted to empower or allow Israel the freedom to enforce apartheid living conditions on its Palestinian neighbors. Nor should it allow Netanyahu to provoke war with a country that has not attacked Israel, solely to generate a reaction from the attacked country that forces America to provide an unlimited supply of military aid to Israel, which then enables Netanyahu to keep creating war havoc in the Middle East just to achieve his 2 goals of avoiding prison and maintaining personal political power. Sorry Prime Minister Netanyahu if the consequence of Middle East peace means you go to prison so be it. America can no longer enable the murder of thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians, the internal displacement of 2.3 million Gazans, and the destruction of the entire healthcare system in Gaza. Because it’s American shutdown time for any U.S. enablement or participation in the Gaza War!!!