By Sara Flounders
July 13, 2024
Resist NATO demonstration during NATO Summit, Washington, D.C., July 7, 2024.
As the NATO military alliance was meeting in Washington, D.C., Israel bombed four schools in Gaza in four days. At the invitation of President Joe Biden, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz attended the NATO Summit.
Israel’s latest bombing of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (UNRWA) al-Awda School, east of the city of Khan Younis, can only be understood, not as an accident, but as a deliberate and intended NATO message to the world.
The UNRWA school was clearly marked and well-known. It was packed with defenseless refugees inside and in tents on the surrounding grounds. Once again dozens of people were killed and wounded in the bombing.
All of Gaza’s schools are currently shut as more than 85% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been displaced amid continued Israeli ground and air offensives. Gaza’s schools, by necessity, are converted into refugee encampments.
Israel has repeatedly leveled medical facilities and schools. Out of 36 hospitals in Gaza, 31 have been bombed. The five remaining hospitals are almost nonfunctional and on the verge of collapse. The World Health Organization has recorded a total of 890 attacks on health facilities, with 443 occurring in Gaza and 447 in the West Bank. (tinyurl.com/2342aaka)
Germany, France and the European Union issued pro-forma calls for a future “investigation.” This was strictly intended to blunt domestic outrage. Although the Pentagon is the largest supplier of weapons to Israel, Germany and France are also major suppliers.
NATO: Not one word condemning bombing
At the NATO Summit, held July 9-11, the school bombings were not a topic for politicians or military officials. No one stormed out of the NATO Summit in protest. No country called for the Israeli officials to be arrested for war crimes. No emergency media briefing was held demanding that Israel be barred from the meeting or censured.
It was business as usual at the NATO meeting. Israel, not a NATO member but one of over 40 NATO “partners,” is holding high level consultations and is using the NATO Summit to escalate calls for NATO attacks on Iran, Russia and China.
U.S. officials could at least have strongly suggested, during the three-day NATO Summit, that Israel carry out a publicized delivery of food or fuel, creating a photo op that the corporate media could dutifully cover. But a humanitarian message was not the intended image that NATO, a U.S.-commanded military alliance, wanted to project.
Israel backs NATO’s goal of military expansion
Israel’s Foreign Minister Katz was given a platform at the NATO Summit to warn against the alleged dangerous activity of Iran and China. While there, Katz spoke with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. He also met with top officials from South Korea, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Denmark and others.
The NATO Summit is about expanding the war on Russia and pulling Ukraine into NATO, while milking other NATO members for billions of dollars in defense contracts.
NATO’s announced goal is to mobilize for war on China, continually projected as the greatest threat to the alliance. The NATO Summit is a platform for announcing tons of new weapons being sent to Taiwan, in violation of their own signed agreements. The meeting projected expanded U.S. bases in the South Pacific and more ominous weapons to South Korea, the Philippines and Japan.
August: U.S. Navy exercises around Hawaiʻi
In August, the U.S. Naval Command is conducting the Rim of the Pacific military exercises (RIMPAC) around Hawaiʻi. This is the world’s largest international maritime warfare exercise.
NATO’s goals can seem abstract when the sympathy and anguish of the world’s people are focused on the systematic destruction in Gaza. It is the most unequal struggle imaginable. Yet the Palestinian resistance is so powerful that Zionist planners and generals admit that they have failed to break this indomitable liberation struggle, even after nine months. Palestine solidarity is a global phenomenon.
With Israel’s foreign minister an invited attendee at the NATO Summit, while publicly carrying out these repeated and utterly criminal attacks on defenseless civilians, the people of the world can only assume one thing: The intended NATO message is that war without limit is the new norm.
NATO seeks to normalize relentless war on civilian populations. It is a desperate effort to maintain its deteriorating world position through sheer terror. Such acts will fuel far greater resistance in West Asia and worldwide.
