Have you heard the latest Gaza genocide joke?

Alameen Templeton

Ah, how they’re laughing in Tel Aviv. Did you hear the latest? “The EU has warned Israel it better not extend the Gaza war to the West Bank”: that’s what Thursday’s headlines are saying.
Imagine! They’re still calling this stroll-in-the-park, in-the-palm-of-your-hand genocide a “war”.
Everyone in Israel knows the real war will start when the Iranian missiles start raining down; hopefully, the US dead hand on the Arabian tiller will then be forced into some boots-on-the-ground commitment to prosecuting the “final solution” confrontation with Teheran that Israel’s always wanted.

‘Geneva-schmeneva!’

And the EU’s wandering around the battlefield that Israel is so carefully salting, muttering old World War II soliloquies to the wind. Something about the Geneva Convention and civilian casualties.
“Geneva-schmeneva!” Don’t they know? Israel’s biggest army isn’t one smelling of mogas, white phosphor and soiled underpants. It’s Israel’s army of lawyers that constitutes its deadliest battle group.
And they’re everywhere. How do you think the arms keep flowing into Israel, despite all the mountains of evidence they’re being used to commit genocide? It’s the lawyers, not the generals, who do that.
If there isn’t a joke like this in Israel, then there should be: Israeli mothers don’t brag about having a lawyer in the family. Who cares? Everyone has a lawyer in the family in Israel because everyone in Israel is born a lawyer. Now, a plumber! That’s something Israeli mothers brag about.
The US has a whole raft of “Leahy Laws” that supposedly prevent it from arming a genocide. But there’s a whole battalion of lawyers spread across Washington drilling loopholes into the Leahy floor, ensuring its precious “checks and balances” blow away into oblivion as the Gaza death toll slouches towards 41 000.

Guilty as Hell

Across the Atlantic in London, another squadron of legal eagles is chumming up to England’s working class, blathering Labourite assurances that the arms must stop – oh yes, they must – but first, let’s review these licences and every part, nut, bolt and screw on the genocide production line of Israel’s globalised war machine and see if it qualifies as an “assault weapon”.
Confess and avoid: it’s a classic defence in legal circles; laymen (and all children) know it as the “yes-but excuse”.
It’s called “legal procedure”, schmuks!
Welcome to the real world. Come, let’s take some lessons from Introduction to Law 101.
What does a lawyer do when his client is guilty as Hell?
He delays!

Playing to the mob

He objects, he demands to see the evidence, he challenges each and every police deposition, every prosecution line up. He hounds the witnesses and abjures the jury. He bewails “oppression” at press conferences on court steps to ensure his witness never enters the witness box.
He plays to the mob and rails against the system that persecutes his client.
Sound familiar?
Now, if a lawyer, or – even better – a whole army of lawyers, has access to deep pockets, the game can drag on interminably to eternity.
The whole of Israel knows every one of them is guilty, guilty as Hell. “Oy vey! Might as well be hung for a sheep as for lamb, right?”
Look, the genocide is happening, but it also has already happened.
You can stop it today and Israel will be guilty of genocide. Heck, you could have stopped it nine months ago and Israel would still have been guilty of genocide.

Scorched earth

So, the logic goes, you can keep it going for as long as possible and the charge against the accused remains the same. From Israel’s point of view, things can’t get any worse; for the Palestinians, of course, a lot more “worse” is lining up in their future if the world thinks the Geneva Convention is going to save them.
And Israel’s army has access to the deepest pockets; so deep, they mirror the pits of Hell.
And you can always gear up your money pit! One can become ten, easily, in Wall Street’s environs.
Yes, dears: the Gaza genocide is a scorched earth that stretches from the gates of Rafah to Berlin, Paris, London, The Hague, the Washington brothel and the hallowed halls of Hollywood.
And an army of lawyers is scattering salt in profusion.

A child’s excuse

Every scattered grain helps gum up the protests and lends viscosity of the flow of outrage, congealing it on the streets and ensuring it never penetrates the 70 000 corporate veils and the seventy times 70 000 “yes-but” excuses separating atrocity from justice.
Imagine. A child’s excuse, “yes-but”, alone, can thwart the West’s entire systemic edifice of “human rights” it erected after its genocidal, World War excesses in the last century.
It seems the edifice, the façade, “today’s joke”, has always been a mere cobweb protection of lies and hubris.
So, they’re laughing today in Tel Aviv. That EU guy, Josep Borrell, is stumbling about on salted ground, the gore sticking to his boots, “warning” Israel not to extend the Gaza war into the West Bank.
As though muttered mantras to a long-dead holy cow is going to make a difference.