
“Do you agree that Israel has the right to defend itself?” This question, so often and repeatedly put by journalists, is irritatingly banal. Invariably, it’s pitched as a kind of provocation, as if to infer that the person being quizzed has never considered the matter, or worse, is a closet antisemitic.
The seemingly obvious answer is yes. Yet answering in the affirmative should invite many caveats, otherwise the question is as vacuous as it is baiting. Context matters: a cliché, yes, but so often ignored in public discourse. To claim the right of self-defence without considering the wider historical picture is to position oneself as the hapless victim of aggression. Yet if an act of aggression – yes, ugly and brutal in its effects – is in part a response to decades-old occupation and oppression, then we need a more nuanced range of questions. We need a sense of history.
Why is this so hard to understand? Even Piers Morgan, among the most self-promoting of celebrity journalists, seems to comprehend that the catch-cry of self-defence may in fact shroud a much more complicated story. But there’s more: context demands that we consider the actions of nation states against the benchmarks of international law, human rights, UN conventions and resolutions, as well as common decency and humanity. Israel has trodden all over these supposed barriers to indiscriminate cruelty and slaughter.
While Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu howls at accusations of genocide (and ecodside and sociocide), the courts of international opinion, and law and justice, think otherwise. Israel is, as journalist Mehdi Hasan argues in a recent Guardian opinion piece, a rogue state. What does this mean? It means it does not adhere or respond to the demands of the international community. It claims self-defence by allegedly ‘targeting’ its “terrorist” opponents, although the “collateral damage” of the dead and injured civilians, and widespread destruction, point to a more indiscriminate military campaign. But the campaign is more than a clear-out of terrorists (a failed project, by the way). It is also about the pursuit of the Zionist project of a Greater Israel. The genocidal nature of the onslaught suggests that the latter is Israel’s main goal.
Politically, this a risky venture requiring pushback on many fronts, including against the body that supposedly represents the world’s nations – the UN. Israel has, not for the first time, rounded on the UN, ignored its pleas, castigations and resolutions, and has sought to trash its reputation. It has attacked UN aid workers and peacekeepers. For decades, the state of Isreal has illegally occupied Palestinian lands and subjected its people to indescribable suffering and humiliation.
The travel-weary and hugely ineffectual US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, and pro-Zionist US president, Joe Biden, have been repeatedly embarrassed by Israel’s far-right leadership, now backed, it has to be said, by a majority of the Israeli electorate. Norman Finkelstein has dubbed Israel “the lunatic state” which seems increasingly accurate in light of the cruel self-deception that it has the “most moral army in the world” and is doing all it can “to limit civilian casualties”, which begs the question as to what would happen if it were fully out of control?
As innocents continue to face Israel’s onslaught, the US yet again threatens to stop sending (some) weapons, perhaps temporarily suspending exports of 2000-pound bombs. But the bombs and bullets keep flying. In effect, Israel has been allowed to continue with its campaign of collective punishment. We don’t need to repeat the statements of the more brazenly murderous in the Israeli war room. Their intentions are clear, at least when it comes to the erasure of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Palestinian people.
The moral duplicity of the US and many of its allies is matched by the inability of international institutions to hold Israel to account. Most Western governments have engaged in double speak (expressing concern over civilian casualties while supplying weapons) and equivocating on the question of genocide. Some laud the Israeli state, as when Netanyahu, despite being issued an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Couirt, is invited to speak to the US congress where he is greeted with prolonged applause and cheers. Seventy times congress people cheered his speech.
Less brazen perhaps in its support of a rogue state, the cowardice and timidity of Australia’s’ political leaders and the Coalition’s refusal to back calls for an immediate ceasefire reveal the moral depths to which many have sunk.
Daily, we stare at our TV screens with a sense of outrage, aghast at the failure of most of the world’s leading powers to stop a prime-time atrocity. Many of my colleagues say how powerless they feel. They wonder what on earth they can do other than rage, join protests, write articles, etc. They sometimes write letters to their local MPs, most of whom seem bereft of moral acuity.
It’s interesting how our politicians can talk so loftily about the rule of law, the rules-based order, and promote tough law and order measures. Yet when confronted by the most gut-wrenching and egregious example of cruelty and lawlessness in the Middle East, they remain silent.
And it’s this silence that enables the killing to continue.