Israel: The Blood-Soaked “Best Friend of America” Carries Out War Crimes While Imperialist Gangster Pompeo Gives His Blessing

May 7, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Over 40 Palestinians dead and 5,000+ wounded—these are the casualty figures among Palestinian protesters at the Gaza-Israeli border in the last five weeks in the Great March of Return, demanding the right to their land unjustly taken when Israel was founded with imperialist backing. Mostly unarmed, the protesters are going up against the murderous violence of the Israeli military. Medics helping the protesters say that Israeli troops are now using a new type of ammunition—known as “butterfly bullets”—which are designed to cause devastating injuries in human bodies and leave people disabled for life, if not outright kill them. A Gaza health official said a butterfly bullet “pulverizes the leg, and the leg gets cut off [as a result].” Doctors Without Borders is recording “an extreme level of destruction to bones and soft tissue, and large exit wounds that can be the size of a fist.”  At least two dozen people hit by Israeli bullets during the protests have had to have amputations, including two journalists.

According to news reports, Israeli troops are being ordered to deliberately target protesters’ legs. One protester, 21-year-old Alaa al-Daly, was an athlete, training to compete in this year’s Asian Games in cycling. On March 30, as he was trying to help another demonstrator who had been shot by the Israelis, a single bullet shattered his knee. Doctors tried to save his injured leg, but had to amputate it in the end. Daly said, “I saw my legs, and my dreams vanished. I said to myself: This wasn’t a bullet. This was like a mini-grenade.”

These are war crimes being carried out, in front of the world’s eyes, by Israel against protesters for daring to express opposition to the Israeli dispossession of a whole people, and as part of enforcing that dispossession, the confining of 2.4 million Palestinian children, women, and men in an open-air concentration camp that is Gaza. These atrocities are what Mike Pompeo—latest member of the Trump/Pence regime war cabinet—gave full blessing to when he said in a recent visit that the U.S. “fully supports Israel’s right to defend itself.”   

The U.S. rulers—Republicans and Democrats—call Israel America’s “best friend,” give them more aid than any other country (over $3 billion a year), and back the genocidal blockade of Gaza and the starving of its children. The imperialist gangsters of the USA are the Number 1 supporters of Israel’s war crimes and are soaked in the blood of the Palestinian people.

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