The Witness Chronicles, 6/6/25

Gaza atrocities and a bromance in flames

Why Are We Not Protecting Palestinians?

This is a televised Holocaust and it is not Judaism, it is a crime

Note: Recently I have avoided writing about Gaza, in part because it is so polarizing, as evidenced this week by the flamethrower attack on a demonstration of support for Israeli hostages in Boulder, CO. But the news has become so awful on a daily basis that it pushed me over the edge. But I need to be clear: I am not anti-Semitic, I am anti-Netanyahu.

If you watch as much news as I do, you know that what Netanyahu is doing in Gaza is a war crime. To be clear, this is not about Jewish beliefs or preferences, this is a dictator doing what his hardcore supporters want to protect himself. But it is more than that.

Every time there is a slaughter in Gaza, which is now a daily event, there are claims made of targets being Hamas but there is never any proof or any intelligence that justifies these killings. It is not anti-Semitic to question this, it is human. During the Holocaust under Hitler, American leadership was presented with a constant flow of intelligence showing what was going on in Germany.

And we did nothing. And now we are doing nothing again, but this time the acts of killing are on the news every night. They target food distribution sites in a country where everyone in literally starving. And there have been targeted attacks on local journalists.

This looks like genocide. Again, the blame falls entirely on Netanyahu and his loyalists, who have clearly stated they want to take over the Gaza Strip and remove all the Palestinians, tear everything down to bare earth and turn it into a part of Israel. To be clear, there is no evidence this is what the majority of Israelis want.

Netanyahu has dropped any pretense of being anything other than a thuggish dictator clinging to power. If he is deposed he faces corruption charges that could land him in prison. The real corruption here is in the Israeli Defense Forces who carry out his commands.

This is not ‘defense’, this is a scorched earth strategy, the fallback of desperate men throughout history. Kill them all and let God sort them out. It’s as simple as that. And there is a lesson we here in the US can learn from this. Watch out for a leader who is backed into a corner but retains the command of the military.

Donald Trump is increasingly backed into a corner as his tariffs strategy fails, he is unable to deliver on his campaign promises, and his only weapon is blunt threats to Congress, a weapon of limited power if he cannot deliver on those threats.

These would be dictators have a common thread throughout history. They don’t learn from their other autocrats, those they emulate. They always go down in flames but not before they have done extensive damage that takes years to undo.

The degree of anti-Israel sentiment being built worldwide by Netanyahu’s actions can’t be underestimated. And it feeds the anti-semitism that has plagued the Jews for centuries, with no justification. Now the US risks destroying a level of respect it took us 250 years to develop by ignoring events like the events in Gaza.

These are big stakes.

Meanwhile there is discord in Trumpland as Elon Musk went off on X about the big beautiful bill that will increase the national debt by $2.8 trillion, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. He hates it, not surprising given his failed mission to cut anything significant from the government.

As you might suspect, Trump is not happy about that. And that’s not all that’s getting him bent out of shape. He spoke with Putin for over an hour and all he could report was that Russia must strike back after Ukraine’s devastating drone strike and that Putin was very difficult to negotiate with. Duh.

And then there is that call with China’s Xi that Trump has basically been begging for to no avail. Xi knows Trump has nothing and we have a whole shopping list of Chinese goods we desperately need for national security, among other essential uses.

Trump’s record on his vaunted tariff deals is a big fat zero despite the constant refrain that they are in the works coming from his increasingly desperate Treasury Secretary, whose reputation for financial acumen is sinking daily. It’s unlikely that anyone will take Trump’s deals seriously when he is constantly and unpredictably changing the terms.

Musk’s rejection of the Republican bill was accompanied by a threat because, after all, that’s the way things work in Trumpworld, even though Musk is now thoroughly out of the loop. The threat? To fund primary challenges to those who vote for the bill without more cuts.

It is estimated that Musk’s net worth, since Trump to office the second time, increased by $100 billion, meaning he has lots of cash to back your his threats, far more than Trump. It is not coincidental that Musk spoke out this week because he knows Trump has been feverishly twisting arms in the Senate, trying to convince doubters to give up their ideas and cave in to him.

It’s very possible Musk’s threats may help some of them stick to their guns, though most of us are skeptical about their suddenly growing backbones. The usual chaos continues.

Information is power and sharing it is resistance.

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Martin