Even the "World Central Kitchen" can't escape a "World on Fire."
I write as credibility drains out of Israel's tactics, and out of Joe Biden's F.P stances...
This picture is by Abel Kareem Hara/AP and appeared in a “Fox News” story on April 2, 2024 by reporter Greg Norman: “World Central Kitchen pauses Gaza Operations…”
Dear Citizens and Elected Officials:
I intended this posting to be a brief one, sharing my published comment in the NY Times on the deaths of the World Central Kitchen workers, and the follow-up letter I sent to some of my Maryland political delegation, and then a brief heads-up on what I’ve been reading as deeper background for the series “World on Fire.”
Well, as you will see below, the letter to Maryland’s delegation expanded “just a bit,” so this posting has grown beyond initial inclinations. But first things first, my comment in the NY Times online:
---------- Original Message ----------
From: The New York Times <comments@nytimes.com>
Date: 04/02/2024 12:28 PM EDT
Subject: Your Comment on What We Know About the Israeli Strike That Killed 7 Aid Workers in Gaza
Thank you for sharing your thoughts with The New York Times community.
William Neil | Maryland
I find the Israeli explanation completely unacceptable. I am a small, very small donor to World Central Kitchen, as well as Doctors Without Borders, which has lost five staff members according to a March 21st posting I just read. AIPAC would laugh at my tiny gesture . What is so outrageous about this event, even with the admission of IDF responsibility is that the cars were marked on their roofs, were white vehicles and the Kitchen was working with the IDF in advance of the movements. What grates even more is the praise being heaped on the IDF for its "pinpoint" attack in Damascus, Syria on the Iranian diplomatic compound to get at Quds officers - so successful, so pinpoint. I read Chris Hedges, sometimes agreeing and sometimes not, but he much more than Senator Ben Cardin has won my respect in facing up to what Israel is doing in Gaza, taking their own reputation for ethics and the US's down the tubes with their policy of all out revenge. The American public deserves a "Town Hall" with Hedges debating Ben Cardin. That would be real democracy. Having said that, I have nothing good to say about Hamas; they have adopted desperate tactics which may well be, are indeed, war crimes for their entaglement at every level with the civilian infrastructure of Gaza, but that is the way such movements fight, as I have just finished M. Evans fine book on the Algerian War, full of slaughters and mutilations on all sides, and there were many sides. It's called "Context."
From Reuters, “Pictures of the Day,” April 2, 2024; image by Ahmed Zakot, showing what looks to me to be, by size and “context” the entry point of a small missile fired from a drone or aircraft…early analysis I’ve read at YouTube leaning toward a drone. The type of drone we don’t supply to Ukraine.
And then my expanded letter to part of the Maryland delegation, and your “readings” preview:
Dear Senators and Representatives:
Well, it's getting personal now, when my expressed wish for humanitarian aid, not to mention the UN's formal effort, is under attack by Israel's military, where even white flags carried by hostages do no good. We all await the report from the IDF on how its chain of command broke down in such a seemingly straightforward matter, given World Central Kitchen's efforts to make their visibility and travel itinerary very clear. Meanwhile, I share a shocked world's outrage over, once again, the slaughter of humanitarian workers.
Below, in my published comment at the NY Times, I protest the paltry state of American democracy versus the power of AIPAC - where serious public debate doesn't make the "town halls"...
It is said now that the trend among young Americans is away from college and towards vocational careers. Of course, the truth is "college" itself had become very vocational in the sense it produced business and accounting majors galore, media and tech specialists, with history, literature and especially intellectual history fading away like the left's hopes for the "working class." The lack of depth and historical knowledge, especially of other cultures, has always plagued US foreign policy: witness China, Iran, Cuba, Vietnam and in a very long list, the Middle East and Africa.
Forgive me then as I recently checked into the "Hotel Abyss," (well, maybe it was the downscale "motel" version, not the one the Frankfurt School "stayed in") and then spent two months on "vacation" in Algeria...I hope the IDF is not monitoring the books I read. They seem to monitor to everything else but managed to miss a two year long plot in the making to attack Israel on October 7th. Is "Selective Comprehensiveness" an oxymoron?
My vacation in North Africa was two months with Martin Evans' "Algeria: France’s Undeclared War," (2012) which was prompted in part by the complexities not of American foreign policy "discussions," but rather by a drama/mystery series around aging Private Eye Sam Spade in France, in the wake of the very same "undeclared war," 1954-1962. Keeping an eye on the better parts of "popular culture" does pay non- financial dividends. The complexity of the series plot mimicked the actual situation in both France and Algeria with fascinating foreshadowings of the US tragedy in Vietnam and now Israel in Gaza.
I know the staunchest supporters of Israel choke on the term "colonial settler" nation, as Senator Schumer did in his courageous attempt to warn Israel away from its disastrous current course of action, and yet, once again I think dissident Chris Hedges, who repeatedly uses the term, has gotten it more right than wrong. Indeed, as the war in Gaza entered its second month, my visit with some accounts of the American Western frontier disclosed the same brutal savagery of massacres, mutilations and yes kidnappings, and even a visit to Wikipedia under the topic of "Indian Massacre" shows four centuries of continuous barbarism on both "sides": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indian_massacres_in_North_America
And before anyone jumps to accuse me of justifying Hamas' brutality on October 7th, let me say the long record of history both in the Americas and in European history (West, Central and Eastern) shows that when vast cultural, religious and territorial interests clash, the worst of human nature pours out, tragically for all sides. We can publicly plead all we want, Cheryl Sandberg, to remove rape as a political/military weapon, but even in very recent memory, Russian troops, especially the second line troops, raped German women in the millions in the Spring of 1945, as German troops had done to all the Slavic people in their war for living space in the East, June of 1941-1944. In America's Vietnam, in Russia's assault on Ukraine, when the underlying forces reach the primitive threshold, only the best disciplined troops can resist the combination of forces. No excuses for the behaviors which all deplore, but even without being set as policy behind the scenes, mere rhetorical calls for civilized conduct seem unworldly; and perhaps only the trials to come for Russia's conduct in Ukraine or Hamas in Israel will provide some buffer. But don't count on it.
And who, in our one sided accounts of October 7th, would cite what I am going to now, raising the question of the Israeli military's role in driving out Hamas from the settlements, here at a publication where editor Robert Kuttner has long ridden tight herd over extreme views of any type: https://prospect.org/world/2024-03-20-what-really-happened-on-october-7/ It's a rather short and to the point - of the right questions and reports from the IDF which we will never see by Maureen Tkacik, the investigations editor at the American Prospect, to which I subscribe.
It is in that spirit that I read Evans work, "Algeria: Frances Undeclared War." Once again, as with the Vietnam War, the War on Ukraine, and now with Gaza, it is further historical evidence that troublesome foreign policy questions do reverberate inside domestic politics. The dynamics within French society as well as within the "Liberation" movement in Algeria do have pessimistic lessons for Israel and the US in the current situation. And I hope that they will not apply to Ukraine. Which is all I'm going to say now, pending another chapter in the "World on Fire."
It's no secret that I have never been an admirer of Joe Biden despite the long overlap of our years of interest in politics. He doesn't inspire me as a leader, speaker or intellectual visionary, although I'm clearly asking too much on the last disappointment. Here's the brutal reality:
Did Joe Biden stand up to Joe Manchin? Can he stand up to Mr. Putin and his murderous ways, extending now to our own embassy and FP staffers subject to novel forms of audio-radiation? (Even ancient Odysseus had the ears of his crew blocked to protect them from dangerous songs - and the myth is elaborated even further in Adorno and Horkeimer's major work, the "Dialectic of Enlightenment" - a gift from the Frankfort School ). "Joe's" in denial, lest Putin be upset with our findings that his subtle (and not so subtle) aggressions can take many forms, many for long under our radar. Can he stand up to P.M. Netanyahu?
The resounding answer is no, and the American people know it. If they back him, they do so by recoiling from the pending Tyrant Trump, who has managed to prove that our legal institutions, as with those in Weimar Germany, 1919-1932, are incapable of stopping a cunning, unscrupulous Fascist on the make, cynically working the dark side of "nationalism" on the way to vast "detention camps."
And yet, more a protest over our current state of politics and even with French politics, 1954-1962, in mind, I might have to vote for him.
Meanwhile, back in "popular mass culture" let's go on "thriving," of course being "resilient," and "hard working" through those double digit bank credit card rates. "Joe" will get us some relief from the late fees, but not the crushing usurious rates themselves. That's "piety" for you.
"SO..." the word that has emerged over the past decade to supply, in my interpretation, the missing continuity, and dare I say "CONTEXT" to our disconnected lives, institutions and mostly AWOL conversations.
It's asking a lot of a two-letter word, don't you think?
So...long live the Republic,
William R. Neil
Frostburg, MD
PS The "Grand Hotel Abyss" was the mocking term applied by one intellectual to the privileged lives of the Frankfurt School, those upper middle class assimilated Jews who were witness to the collapse of the Weimar Republic, but were for the most part, not involved in the hyper politics or street fighting, but rather worked in the social research and psychological realms to answer the awful question of how one of the most advanced nations in history descended into outright barbarism. It's book by Stuart Jeffries, 2016, and a bit more readable than the "Dialectics of Enlightenment" and "Eros and Society" which, nonetheless, get the serious treatment they deserve. Readers will be surprised at how many contemporary problems of mass culture were anticipated, and the last chapters dealing with the work of Jurgen Habermas are especially good on the breakdown of democratic discourse, the hopes for reasoned debate to lead us to better policies, and including the emergence of "left fascism" - triggered by the aging Frankfurt School leaders meeting the students of the barricades of 1968 - in their classrooms and in public debates.
In an additional follow-up to my comment 2 hours ago, I have heard retired American general and European theatre commander Ben Hodges on Erin Burnett's "Out Front" show on CNN and he is very sceptical about current IDF explanations. As is Jose Andres the head of World Central Kitchen who is insistent that given the distances of the vehicles, and the time gaps between attack, that Israel deliberately targeted the convoy. Hodges and Burnett discussed the IDF's habit of targetting suspected Hamas in travelling and the suggestion was that if they thought there was even just one in the convoy all the vehicles were game for destruction. And later on "The Source" former CIA officer Bob Baer whom I will listen too with interest on a number of topics, insisted that it was an accident and a realistic possibility based on his own time in drone warfare abroad.
Still no direct handling of my earlier point on how the internal IDF sequence should have worked: facts and time on the convoy conveyed to an IDF office....and then what...message sat on?...not conveyed to the operations team...or deliberately ignored because a different level of command/intelligence had the higher power to say the hell with humanitarians, pull the trigger. Of course, if you believe Chris Hedges whole line on the drift of Israeli society and especially since Oct. 7th, the point could be, could be to drive all the humanitarian workers out of Gaza for the purpose of, it sounds brutal, ethnic cleansing or worse.
Let's see how "outraged" Biden does with Netanyahu tomorrow by phone. And have you seen any talk about the American nautical effort, the artificial pier and harbor? I haven't since the topic was first broached. And by the way, I don't know if the drone firing missiles that were used against the convoy were American made, but the US definitely will not supply our advanced Reaper and Predator drones to Ukraine, just to continue the outright favoritism towards Israel, soon to include 50 more F-15's state of the art fighters, while Ukraine can't even collect the obsolete versions of the F-16's promised so late in the struggle.
Just a follow up info post, speculative before the IDF says anything further. The world is outraged at the missile-drone attack (that's speculative but on good physical evidence and images) and I'm very glad the head of World Central Kitchen spoke out, directly, calling it like it appears to be.
Now here's my take. Military commentators and defense specialists have noted the skies over Gaza are rich with Israeli drones, day and night. Here's how I think the system may have operated inside the IDF: the WCK worked to send their movements, configs and signaling to someone in the IDF, set up before. Some effort went into preparing the vehicles to prevent precisely what happened. Now that likely was a laison in the IDF, but not the person or office pulling the trigger to have the drones launch the missiles, maybe three separate times given the vehicle separations. Therefore, either the coordination office failed to pass on the info entirely, or it was ignored by the operations office tasked with pulling the electronic trigger. I suspect something very foul, therefore, pending the report. The excuses I've heard and seen on behalf of the IDF are not credible to me.
I don't have much money to give to very selected charities in the front lines, and did so with Docs without Borders and Andre's WCK after some scrutiny. The world should be outraged at what happened and to Israel's conduct in this war. Read the Algeria book to foretell just how ugly, brutal and sadistic these types of conflicts can become. I don't want my US money spent on such international disgraces. Senator Cardin, the long time apologist for Israel and firm AIPAC supporter ought to resign.