Of all the ridiculous contortions Western media have performed over the past two years to whitewash Israel’s ongoing genocide, the breathless handwringing over the supposed calamity of Israel becoming a “pariah state” is an almost touching display of fevered wishful thinking. In headline after headline, article after article, the self-styled “liberal” press – Haaretz, The New York Times, and The Guardian foremost among them – frets that Israel’s supposed “missteps” might place it at risk of becoming a rogue state, as if unrestrained brutality and open contempt for international law were mere errors of judgment. But only in a looking-glass world could Israel’s pariah status – blindingly evident since its inception – ever be in doubt. If the term has any meaning at all, Israel is its archetype, and always has been.
