No more puerile ‘debates’ about the Gaza genocide, please

Dec 29, 2024
Palestinians carrying belongings on their way in Beit Hanoun, northern Gaza due to the recent Israeli attacks Palestinians carrying belongings on their way in Beit Hanoun, northern Gaza due to the recent Israeli attacks on November 12, 2024. Hundreds of displaced Palestinian families, forced to flee shelters and camps in Beit Hanoun, began moving to areas believed to be safer, carrying whatever belongings they could take with them. Photo by Hadi Daoud apaimages Gaza city Gaza Strip Palestinian Territory 121124 Gaza HD 0014 Copyright: xapaimagesxHadixDaoudxxapaimagesx Contributor: Imago / Alamy Stock Photo Image ID: 2YHKK33

I’ve had a hard day’s night watching an excruciating, made-for-Fox-TV showdown between political scientist Norman Finkelstein and the former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, Fleur Hassan-Nahoum.

It’s white knuckled viewing, no doubt about that. It’s designed to be. Piers Morgan, an infotainment stalwart, presides over these so-called “debates” (which are anything but) by extolling his own views on each and every topic, in this case the “war” on Hamas.  He lauds lofty journalistic values of objectivity and balance. And yet, his constant recycling of the question, “Do you think Israel has the right to defend itself?” betrays a profound misunderstanding of why the current bloodbath is taking place. When interviewing former leader of the British Labour party, Jeremy Corbyn, Morgan kept asking this same question, ad nauseum. Yes or no, he growled, without ever giving Corbyn the chance of introducing shades of grey in the form of context and nuance. Again, this was excruciating TV, even though Corbyn tried in vain to hold the line.

Morgan’s selective antipathies are there for all to see. His grovelling adulation of Noam Chomsky stands in stark contrast to the many guests he regularly shuts down and humiliates, all while presenting himself as a fair-minded news hack. He’s far from that.

Finkelstein, on the other hand, is a thoughtful man. He at least tries to ground his views in evidence and serious contemplation of the “facts” – a dirty word these days. He sometimes equivocates, but only when the answers are too complex for simple answers. The problem with the format of Piers Morgan Live though, is that it doesn’t really allow for deeper analysis. It hinges on contestation and adversarialism. Easy answers are sought when only complexity will do. When Hassan-Nahoum attacked Finkelstein for his “long answers”, he replied, “yes, they are”, because that’s the only way certain questions can be answered. And in developing his responses, he draws on evidence from UN reports, NGOs and human rights organisations. He cites the decisions of the ICC, the ICJ and the resolutions of the UN General Assembly. He draws on clear evidence of the destruction of Gaza, to the point where he thinks the Strip is now wholly uninhabitable. “It’s gone”, he says.

What strikes me about the defence put up by Hassan-Nahoum and other apologists for Israel’s onslaught against the Palestinian people (as well as aid workers, hospital staff, journalists, academics, etc) is that it flies in the face of the majority of world opinion and the voluminous empirical data. One wonders how a far-right government propped up by apologists and a propagandised population of seven million people can continue to consider a genocidal war as a just cause. Or how they can hide behind the lie that they are simply attacking Hamas terrorists? Surely, the amassed and verifiable evidence accumulated over 75 years can’t all be tainted by antisemitic sentiments?

Israel is now as isolated as it has ever been, the Zionist project exposed for what it is: a racist, hyper-nationalistic system that has legitimised the violent, cruel and inhumane suppression of a massively traumatised people. The historical revision proposed by Hassan and others, the lack of any acknowledgement of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and the clear racism exhibited in claims that the lands occupied by Israel in 1948 were barren deserts (a fiction repeated in Benjamin Netanyahu’s autobiography) are all crude attempts to represent the state of Israel as a benign, victim state. And yet, the crimes committed in 1948, the ongoing occupation following the 1967 war, the trashing of UN resolutions, and now the war of aggression against Syria and Lebanon speak for themselves. No amount of revisionist somersaults can deny these historical realities.

What’s needed now is not more puerile “debates” but rather, a reckoning. The perpetrators of the genocide against the Palestinian people, their Western political enablers, military chiefs, US and European arms manufacturers and so forth need to be held to account.

The reckoning is under way. There is little point in having puerile debates with Israeli spokespeople as to whether genocide is occurring.

The task now is to adjudicate on such matters in courts of law or even people’s tribunals, and if Israel refuses to recognise them, then these trials should proceed anyway, with the state of Israel in absentia. Those who support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign do not have to wait for the outcome of trials in order to act. The accumulated evidence is so weighty and conclusive, so grotesque in its implications, that only an immediate, life-saving ceasefire will do. The wheels of justice turn slowly.

We need to save lives, now.

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