Image by Planet Volumes.
“Why is nobody f……g stopping Israel…….Wtf,” asks my exasperated daughter? Its a question people around the world are asking, and have been asking for years.
As must be clear to all by now, the current Israeli regime led by Benjamin Netanyahu, is a barbaric unlawful terrorist group. Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians has expanded its vicious campaign to Lebanon and is threatening to attack Iran and destabilise the region even further.
No other country in the world would get away with this. It is State terrorism gone mad; it is the expression of that destructive, corrosive force we call evil, and it is being carried out with the unconditional support of the US and other Western allies of Israel.
In a sane world Israel would be completely isolated. All forms of Western support — arms and political cover, including mainstream media spreading Israeli propaganda, would be stopped, sanctions applied and Israeli leaders, as the ICC have judged, arrested, to face trial. None of this will happen of course.
Publicly Western leaders call for restraint and in some cases a ceasefire in Gaza (20 November US again vetoed a UN Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza), and now Lebanon, where a ceasefire has been agreed. But these same politicians apply no meaningful pressure on the Israeli leadership and have done nothing substantive – i.e., cutting of all military support, to stop the carnage.
Far from being ostracised, Netanyahu is lauded by US politicians and invited to Washington to address Congress, where he is cheered to the rafters. For what? For slaughtering 45,000 Palestinians plus (70% are children and women), for levelling Gaza, for allowing settlers in the West Bank to attack Palestinians, for the indiscriminate bombing of Beirut? What exactly were the US congressmen, these so-called lovers of peace, democracy and the rule of law, cheering like a baying mob?
If you are the Israeli government or the IDF, it appears that genocide, apartheid, slaughtering civilians, demolishing homes, trampling on international law and, disregarding UN resolutions, attacking the UN, its staff, and agencies are all absolutely fine. Israel feels like and behaves like it can do anything, no matter the legality or inhumanity of its actions, because it has done so for decades.
Israel baits and provokes, it violates and abuses. It then sits back and waits for the response, which it knows will come, sooner or later. That reaction, more or less violent, allows Israel to retaliate with, in the case of Gaza, completely unrestrained, violence. The conflict then becomes divorced from the underlying issues, which, as we all know, is Israels abhorrent treatment of the Palestinians.
This distortion allows the Israeli propaganda machine and Western media to spin Israel’s actions as ‘self-defence’, as a democratic nation-state protecting itself against marauding barbarians. Nonsense that is lapped up by mainstream media and repeated by Western politicians, most of whom it seems lack the courage to speak the truth.
Israel is now hated, not just by people in the Middle East, but by groups throughout the world, and understandably so. Its barbaric actions in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and possibly Iran to come, are ensuring future generations of Arabs in the region and elsewhere will see Israel as their enemy, and many will understandably, want revenge.
In addition to the military onslaught in Gaza and Lebanon, Israel, along with its main backer the US, is waging an assault on international institutions and the rule of law. This is fuelled by the fact that these bodies are attacking Israel. International law/institutions are not regarded by the US as universally applicable, but as means of controlling other nations and reinforcing American hegemony, and they don’t like it when they or there allies are subjected to criticism, and in the case os Israel, legal accountability/judgements.
The United Nations is routinely slated by Israel and the US, Secretary General Antonio Guterres criticised and insulted. Preliminary findings (‘on plausible genocide’ by Israel in Gaza) by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against Israel and the recent action by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant are angrily dismissed by the Israeli Prime-Minister as antisemitic. President Biden called the “ICC……arrest warrant for the Israeli prime minister outrageous.”
The US (along with only seven other countries including Israel) has not signed up to the Rome Statute (the treaty that established the ICC), and therefore ICC laws are not incorporated into US domestic law, as they are in most European countries for example. The Rome Statute established four core international crimes: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression. All of which the Israeli State is guilty of.
The US, which routinely ignores international law whilst accusing non-allies, of acting illegally, has said it ‘rejects’ the ICC ruling. As if the US has a choice or is somehow in a position above the court. Stamping and screaming like a teenager, because it doesn’t like the ruling. Its pathetic, hypocritical of course, arrogant no doubt, but its also extremely dangerous. Dismissing the courts ruling sends a message to other States and non-State actors, that international law, or the law more broadly, is something you can adhere to when it suits you, but disregard when it doesn’t.
None of this addresses my daughters straightforward, but difficult to answer question of course. Difficult because of the twisted complex motives and influences that shape political decisions.
The US presents itself as a peaceful nation that believes in international law (certainly when it applies to others/non-allies at least), so why would it facilitate a genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, when it could stop it by cutting military aid? America is, after all complicit in the crimes of Israel.
No doubt there are a plethora of influencing factors including among others, the US administration’s hatred of Hamas (a political body with a military wing that is critical of the US), and its alignment with Israel’s aim of destroying/degrading the organisation. Hamas is seen as a proxy for Iran, and Iran is an adversary of the US, so weakening Hamas it is argued impacts/weakens Iran’s influence within the region – another goal of the US. And then there is the Israel/Jewish lobby, which is powerful in Washington, and the Pentagon, which has close connections with Israel.
So, on and on it goes, the madness and duplicity; the networks of mutuality and (perceived) self-interest, ideology and divisions that build walls between peoples, fuelling injustice, leading inexorably to conflict and death.
And where, darling daughter might rightly ask, is ‘the good’ in all of this, doing the ‘right’ thing, which politicians routinely lay claim to, the moral, humane action? It is nowhere at all, lost in the darkness of mankind’s ignorance, dishonesty and violent brutality. The consequences of which are widespread suffering and fear, environmental vandalism and ecological collapse; a world in total disarray.
