The bloody assault on the Palestinians in Gaza would not be as intense and destructive if it were not for the weapons that the U.S. routinely provides to Israel and the $3.8 billion that the U.S. gives to Israel every year.

In addition to the weapons sales and the financial support, there is always the support, spoken and unspoken, that the U.S. has promised to Israel's leaders over the generations, since 1948. The annual money gift continues to be given without any requirements, without any strings. That has caused outrage across the U.S. in the past week since Israel has begun its bombardment of parts of Gaza, whether they are commercial, residential, or other buildings. Israeli officials, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, simply need to say that they believed the buildings were harboring "terrorists."

The current U.S. administration, as administrations past, has ignored the principle that no aid can go to any nation that is committing human rights violations and crimes against humanity. The disparity in power between the Palestinians and the Israelis can be likened to a lopsided fight between one side armed with slingshots and the other with automatic weapons, artillery, and fighter planes. In fact, one of the charges that have been made was that the Palestinians were "stockpiling" rocks to throw at members of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Rocks! Against one of the most heavily armed nations in the world.

All of the aid and weapons sales are carried out despite the Leahy Laws, human rights laws that declare the U.S. Department of State and Department of Defense are prohibited from providing military aid to foreign countries that violate human rights with impunity. Israel has consistently committed human rights violations against the occupied Palestinians, including the recent human rights report that Israel meets all of the criteria of an apartheid state, surely a human rights violation in the eyes of most nations, except the U.S. and Israel.

In addition, Israel is a nuclear state, but no one in the U.S. hierarchy is willing to officially state that, because again, if that fact were officially admitted, Israel would be entitled to no aid from the U.S. on that basis, alone. In a lawsuit filed in 2016 by the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, its director, Grant Smith, reported that the U.S. had given $234 billion in foreign aid, from 1976 to the time of the lawsuit. A stipulation of the International Security Assistance and Arms Export Control Act contains a stipulation that countries that did not sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) would be prohibited from receiving such aid. Israel did not sign the NPT.

Palestinians have showered Israel with rockets, which have done some damage and killed several Israelis, but even with that, the disparity in weaponry is staggering. Many of the rockets have been intercepted by Israel's “Iron Dome” anti-rocket system and many of the rockets have fallen short of their targets, dropping into Gaza itself. The Palestinians do not have a standing army, nor a navy, nor an air force. Especially, they don't have a benefactor like Israel has the U.S., which provides military hardware and support in every way.

President Biden has called for a cease-fire, but Netanyahu has said he will not stop until he gets what he wants out of this assault. It has not been made clear what he wants out of this particular assault, but one thing is certain: The threats to his power in office will not be a consideration while he is engaged in a "war" in Gaza. He said he appreciates Biden's expression of support.

Biden, like so many American officials before him, has declared that Israel "has a right to defend itself," completely disregarding that an occupied people have a right to attempt to free itself and the occupier has an obligation to protect the occupied. None of that matters in the case of Israel. The view by Israelis of Palestinians is quite clear. Every once in a while, so some Israeli officials have said, they have to "mow the grass," meaning Palestinians, and that trims them down to a size that is easier to control. Besides, it strikes fear in the hearts of Palestinians. But this round may signal the end of such fear and willingness to be controlled.

Younger Palestinians have been in the forefront of the demonstrations at the fence between Gaza and Israel and their generation may not be willing to spend another generation in what is essentially an open-air prison, Gaza having packed into its small space some two million souls. It may be the most densely populated area in the world and it suffers all of the ills of such conditions, especially when the IDF, from time to time, has destroyed water treatment facilities, electric generation stations, sewage treatment plants, and many other parts of the infrastructure that is needed for a civilized nation.

What the world is witnessing is the stand that is being taken by a younger generation, which may not “take it anymore.” They have seen their compatriots at the border fence shot in the legs by IDF snipers, who were instructed to do so, because they know there is not enough medical care to repair the wounds and so, the legs are amputated, according to press reports. That makes it difficult for the young and newly disabled to continue their protests. For Netanyahu, mission accomplished.

The general goal of Israel and Netanyahu is the ethnic cleansing of the region of Palestinians, who supposedly have the “right of return,” to their villages and homes inside Israel and in the West Bank, but for the past 70 years that has not happened and it is not the intention of Israel's leadership to allow that to happen. So, where do the Palestinians go? Their homeland is being occupied. They do not want to be forced from their homeland, and the Gaza Strip does not qualify as nationhood as it is generally understood by most of the world. The two-state solution is at this time not possible, since Israeli leaders have said it will not happen, and they don't want a one-state solution either.

Palestinians are not going to evaporate into the ether. They are still there, waiting for a return to their homes and villages. They don't want to be forever refugees in any other lands in the region. And that is the crux of the problem for Israel, the occupier. As a nation, it does not want to be responsible for Palestinians, but it must be responsible for protecting the occupied. They have shirked their responsibility to Palestine and the world in failing to do so.

That's what this "war" is about. There is no solution to wave after wave of assault over years. The one solution would be to end the occupation and with the rise of the right-wing and ethnic supremacists, that will be a difficult thing. Netanyahu and Biden, like U.S. presidents before him, are on the horns of a dilemma and neither horn is going to let them go.

BlackCommentator.com Columnist, John Funiciello, is a former newspaper reporter and labor organizer, who lives in the Mohawk Valley of New York State. In addition to labor work, he is organizing family farmers as they struggle to stay on the land under enormous pressure from factory food producers and land developers. Contact Mr. Funiciello and BC.