My Take | To nuke or to level Gaza? That is the question

America’s ruling elite is getting unhinged. One after another, it is referencing the country’s past atrocities and war crimes to justify Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza.

The latest? Influential US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham argued on Sunday, on live television, that Israel must be able to do whatever is deemed necessary in Gaza because the United States also dropped two atomic bombs on Japan and bombed Germany to smithereens towards the end of World War II.

Speaking on NBC News’ Meet the Press, he said: “So when we were faced with destruction as a nation after Pearl Harbour, fighting the Germans and the Japanese, we decided to end the war by bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear weapons. That was the right decision.

“Give Israel the bombs they need to end the war they can’t afford to lose … Why is it OK for America to drop two nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end their existential threat war? Why was it OK for us to do that? I thought it was OK.

“To Israel, do whatever you have to do to survive as a Jewish state. Whatever you have to do!”

Graham is unhappy that the Joe Biden administration has temporarily halted a shipment of weapons to Israel in an attempt to pressure Benjamin Netanyahu and his government to avoid a full-scale assault on Rafah, the last refuge of more than a million Palestinians. However, that’s a drop in the ocean compared to all the weapons the US has already shipped to Israel. In any case, the American demand has now been ignored with an ongoing invasion of the enclave.