Several days ago Hamas militants launched a brutal ground-offensive operation into Israeli territory. Reports of civilian killings and kidnappings led to calls for an all-out offensive strike against Hamas and for unconditional U.S. support to Israel. While these attacks were horrendous and Hamas is very much an evil terrorist organization, further escalation will not solve the deep-seated issues. History did not begin on the day of Hamas attacks, and much like the war in Ukraine this could prove to be another long and costly war that is a direct response to U.S. foreign policy. The U.S. should seek to make amends for its decades of intervention and seek peace solutions rather than further war, which will only move the world deeper into division.

The official narrative in both Ukraine and Israel ignores certain historical actions on behalf of the U.S. and its allies both initiating and goading further conflict. I will seek to provide at least some of that history in this post, but first I will demonstrate the pattern of speech exhibited to prop up the U.S. war machine.

One recognizable point of speech across various proponents of U.S. support for proxy wars is the word unprovoked, typically an untrue claim that seems to never have any evidence provided to back it up.

The U.S. Department of State wrote in a 2023 fact sheet on the war in Ukraine, “The United States, our allies, and our partners worldwide are united in support of Ukraine in response to Russia’s premeditated, unprovoked, and unjustified war against Ukraine.”

They were incorrect, at least in saying that the war was unprovoked. The U.S. backed a coup in 2014 to overthrow the elected government of Ukraine and also had been trying to make Ukraine a member state of NATO, despite earlier promises that it would not expand its borders beyond Germany. NATO membership for Ukraine would mean that the U.S. would be able to move weaponry, even nuclear weapons, into Ukraine. Whether or not the Russian invasion of Ukraine was justified, there was certainly a lot to provoke it.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was a candidate who seemed to understand this and spoke up adamantly against the war in Ukraine, but following the Hamas attacks did not understand that the situation was very similar in many ways to that in Ukraine and called for U.S. support of an Israeli offensive on X.

Kennedy began his tweet, “This ignominious, unprovoked, and barbaric attack on Israel must be met with world condemnation and unequivocal support for the Jewish state’s right to self-defense. We must provide Israel with whatever it needs to defend itself — now.”

2 of those adjectives I can agree with, but certainly not unprovoked. It ignores the lengthy history of Israeli-Palestinian relations with numerous conflicts and many illegal actions on behalf of Israel to oppress Palestinians.

I covered many of the actions of the Israeli government, which have caused them to be labeled an apartheid state by human rights watch and condemned by the UN in a previous post, including:
– The Israeli government’s unhidden agenda to maintain a 60 percent Jewish majority
– Israeli confiscation of Palestinian land and establishment of illegal settlements
– Denial of building permits to Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem
– Travel ban for Palestinians in Gaza and the west bank since 2007

The calls for escalation continue to come in the U.S. and Israel has already taken siege measures against the 2.3 million residents in the Gaza strip.

According to CNBC reporting, the current total of casualties in the current bout of conflict are as listed below and the U.S. first shipment of arms to Israel has already arrived.
– 1,000 deaths in Israel and 2,700 injured
– 900 deaths in Gaza and 4,500 injured

On top of this, the siege tactics implemented by the Israeli government include bombardment and freezing of essential goods to the entire territory.

In a video, the Israeli defense minister is quoted as saying “I have ordered a complete siege on Gaza. No Electricity, no food, no fuel, no water. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly.”

Despite the ethnicity of the people or the land that they claim, the Israeli government does not represent the people of God. It is instead a corrupt government funded by the U.S. just like that in Ukraine.

Why would the U.S. do this? The interests of the military industrial complex run deep and stand to gain from continual war on as many fronts as possible regardless of the justification.

From review of the department of defense fact sheet I found the following U.S. government expenses to aid Ukraine:
– $44.5 billion plus in security assistance since 2021
– $23.8 billion in military assistance provided by executive branch from DOD stockpiles since August 2021.
– $4.65 billion in foreign military financing from congress
– $12.1 billion under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (2023)
– $6.3 billion under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (2022)
– $115 million in financing in 2021

This totals up to about 91.5 billion since 2021 with more future expenses planned. Items provided directly includes missiles, guns, ammunition, and tanks, but the total number does not even include transfer of equipment through NATO.

This increase in spending in Ukraine has also coincided with an increase in overall spending with U.S. defense contractors who stand to benefit the most from these wars. Overall contract spending increased by $43 billion from 2021 to 2022 according to Bloomberg government. The top 6 defense contractors all took in more than 10 billion dollars each from government contracts in 2023.

With the U.S. jumping in to support Israel’s new counter-offensive, those numbers will only shoot up further over the following years. However, they are not just numbers, it is wealth taken from average Americans to support endless conflicts with thousands of innocent bystanders caught in a proxy war between foreign powers. The longer the wars are fought, the more radicals are created. The only U.S. government involvement should be to advocate for peace, while U.S. citizens can make their own monetary decisions about what organizations to support to help people hurting from violent conflict.