West Bank Violence Surges: Surprise, Say US Officials
Al Jazeera highlights the 'spiralling' Israeli violence in the West Bank, a revelation that would shock anyone who hasn't been paying attention since, well, at least the 1967 occupation. The mainstream media frames this as a recent 'surge,' deftly side-stepping the fact that systematic settler aggression, often backed by the Israeli military, has been a documented feature of the occupation for
generations. This isn't a new phenomenon; it's the predictable outcome of unchecked expansion subsidized by US foreign aid. Instead of merely observing the 'spiral,' why not discuss the concrete support that fuels it? For instance, the nearly $4 billion in annual US aid to Israel (Congressional Research Service, 2023), much of which provides military equipment, directly enables the very security
apparatus that oversees and often participates in this violence. We're asked to lament the symptoms, never the disease—a classic tactic to avoid interrogating uncomfortable truths about complicity. One might ask, how many more 'spirals' before it's called what it is: deliberate policy?