In the not-too-distant future, the Netanyahu Government will fall. When this happens, it will become politically fashionable (and indeed necessary) for Western leaders outside the US to intellectually “package” the genocide in Gaza.

What do I mean by packaging? In short, the attribution of blame and innocence. Inevitably, the blame for Israel’s crimes against humanity in Gaza will be laid squarely at the feet of Benjamin Netanyahu and a small handful of extremists in his cabinet. They will be positioned as the bad eggs. At the same time, there will be a concerted effort to exonerate certain parties, to ensure they remain blameless in both contemporary discourse and the historical record. Two parties in particular will be the object of this exoneration effort: Western leaders, and the Israeli public.

The goal of this collective positioning effort will be to convince the Western public to store all that they have seen in Gaza in the right intellectual folder, and to move on quickly from the genocide. To ignore its truths. To forget its lessons.

What will be the key messages of this packaging?

It will be argued that Netanyahu and the extremists went overboard in their response to 7 October. It will be argued that Western leaders (outside the US) tried to stop Israel by calling repeatedly for a ceasefire and for aid to flow, by sanctioning some of the extremist ministers, and by recognising a Palestinian state. It will be argued that the Netanyahu Government, not the Israeli public, was responsible for what took place in Gaza (we will simultaneously be asked to accept that Israel is a robust democracy). Under questioning, it will be admitted that individual war crimes were committed by Israel. It will not, however, be accepted that Israel committed a genocide.

Why refuse to accept — or, at the very least, why ignore — the charge of genocide? Fear of the US aside, I believe there are two key reasons.

Firstly, those Western powers that championed the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine after World War II, and that have spent the decades since then defending its actions and conflating criticism of it with antisemitism, simply cannot confess that that very same ethnoreligious state is responsible for the most serious of crimes: genocide. It is too stunning an intellectual reversal, too radical an act of political honesty and too revealing an admission about the nature of the state they helped foist onto the international stage in 1948.

Secondly, when the Netanyahu Government falls, those same Western powers — Australia included — will begin a collective marketing effort to salvage Israel’s international reputation. Even before the UN’s official declaration of genocide in Gaza in September, that marketing effort was going to be a difficult project. But it will be nigh on impossible if Western Governments simultaneously accept the charge of genocide. That is why limiting blame to Netanyahu and the extremists will be so critical: they want a clean slate to work with when he is gone, somewhere to divert the arrows.

A key pillar in the effort to salvage Israel’s reputation will be making the distinction between the Netanyahu Government and the Israeli people. Israelis must remain blameless. Here, the atmosphere of fear created by charges of antisemitism will continue — and does continue — to stifle an honest appraisal of affairs. Let me give a recent example.

On 1 October, following his address at the National Press Club in Canberra, the international lawyer and UN expert, Chris Sidoti, made the following comment:

“I think that there is… now a general realisation that what the Israeli Government, and the Israeli military, not the Israeli people, the Israeli Government and the Israeli military, are doing in Gaza, is totally unacceptable.”

I will give Sidoti the benefit of the doubt and assume that he was making a strictly legal, rather than moral, point: states, not nations, have legal personhood under international law. In any event, it is clear that the nature and extent of the Israeli public’s complicity in the genocide remains an area of sensitivity and we should necessarily tread carefully here. But we should also acknowledge the facts.

The facts are that in March, polling conducted by Tel Aviv University found that 53% of Jewish Israelis supported the ethnic cleansing of Gaza (by transferring its population to another country). In July, polling conducted by the Israeli Democracy Institute revealed that 79% of Jewish Israelis were personally “not that troubled or not troubled at all” by reports of famine and suffering among Gazans. We should remember these figures when Western Governments seek to promote a neat separation between the Netanyahu Government and the Israeli public in relation to the genocide.

The sprouts of this discourse building, the packaging of Netanyahu and a small number of his cabinet colleagues and military officers as the ones solely responsible for the genocide, are already starting to show. But the project can’t begin at scale while Netanyahu retains power and has US support – it is too politically dangerous. When he falls, the project will begin at lightning speed.

Politicians, particularly those with a remit that covers international affairs, have an eye to their historical legacy. Here in Australia, while they can’t admit it publicly, Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong are craving the moment Netanyahu falls. They are craving the moment they can start rolling out the post-Netanyahu discourse package to the Canberra Press Gallery and Australia’s tabloid press. A key ingredient in that effort will be the whitewashing of their own role in the story. The months — the years — of silence. Of minimisation. Of refusing to condemn. Of refusing to sanction. Of refusing to admit the charge of genocide. Of refusing to even say the word genocide. Of their own complicity.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.