The one and only argument put forward in support of the fish-in-a-barrel slaughter Israel is carrying out in Gaza is “self defence”. Does that make sense?
Firstly, we have to look at the context in which the words are used. All the reports in the Western mainstream corporate and billionaire-owned media are couched in the terms normally used to describe a conventional international war between nation-states (starting with the word “war” itself); but clearly, this conflict isn’t like that. The occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza strip have been controlled by Israel for decades. Israel has full military and civil control in much of the West Bank; it restricts Gaza’s airspace, borders, and coastal waters, and has not allowed the construction of an airport or seaport, maintaining Gaza’s reliance on supplies of food, fuel and other vital necessities overland via Israel. In this way, Israel has kept a firm grip on Gaza’s windpipe and is currently using that control to starve the 2.2m population. Even before October, two thirds of the population of Gaza were dependent on food aid.
The walled-off Gaza Strip is not an independent nation state; it is often described as an open prison, or the world’s largest refugee camp. Israel has essentially treated it as a rebellious province, to be put down from time to time through punitive military expeditions (callously referred to as “mowing the grass”). Israel’s control of the occupied territories has always been maintained through violence, like any occupation. For example, over 170 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank by Israeli forces in 2023 prior to 7th October. In Gaza, over 2,200 Palestinians were killed in the 2014 Gaza campaign, and 128 in 2021. The measure of the escalation this time round is shown by comparing these numbers with the 35,000 (and climbing) Palestinian dead in the current campaign.
This is the context of violence inherent in maintaining Israeli control and dominance in the occupied territories. The current campaign must be seen as a continuation, with massive escalation, of that long-term, ongoing violence. Describing it as “defensive” is fatuous; the decades-long pattern of violence used by Israel against the Palestinians whose lives and living conditions they control, is fundamentally aggressive in nature. It is the occupier who is the aggressor; it is the occupied people who have the right to defend themselves against that aggression. This doesn’t justify the specific actions and strategy of Hamas, including hostage-taking and the killing of civilians, nor the use of improvised rockets or suicide bombings. No doubt, many members of Hamas do hate all Jewish people and would like to destroy Israel through violence; these are not legitimate aims, and anyway they lack the ability to do so. However, it is entirely unrealistic for Israel to control and suppress, indefinitely, the 5.5m Palestinians living in the occupied territories, and not expect at least some of them to resist in whatever way they can. It’s a very unequal fight, of course, and the current flare-up is an existential struggle – but only for the Palestinians. Netanyahu portrays it as existential for Israel, but there’s actually no such threat to Israel. Unlike Palestine, it’s a strong, modern country with a viable economy and powerful friends.
So, what is at stake in this conflict? The nature, if not the existence, of Israel, is in play. Israel tells itself a story in which they are behaving honourably and simply defending themselves in a war they did not want against an enemy which breaks the rules of conflict by killing civilians and taking hostages. In this story, Palestinians threaten, and attempt, to destroy the Israelis, who are thereby cast as the victims. The innocent civilians killed by Hamas were illegitimate targets murdered by hate-driven “human animals”. The Israelis then have no choice but to fight a defensive action against an enemy embedded in a densely populated area. The innocent civilian victims of Israeli violence are therefore not “illegitimate targets”, but “tragic collateral damage”. The many thousands of Palestinians held without charge in Israeli prisons are not hostages but “administrative detainees”. By telling themselves this story, the Israelis excuse their cruel, deadly behaviour and constant breaches of international law. Israel’s policy, so clearly designed to dominate through creating terror among the occupied people, is justified, while it is the resistance of those people which is classed as “terrorism”.
While telling themselves this story, Israel has established a system the rest of the world recognises as apartheid; they are using starvation as a weapon against a population of over 2m people; they use torture against detainees; they bomb and shoot unarmed civilians; and they have systematically destroyed the infrastructure of life in Gaza. All the while, they continue their deadly land-grabbing in the West Bank for their settlements. In doing all these things – and none of this is just my opinion, it’s all documented fact (the terms used to describe it may vary, of course) – they show that they are unable to live as a normal nation, abiding by international law. They are unable to accept that the occupied Palestinian territories do not belong to them. Until a mass of Israeli people change their worldview and stop listening to the story, none of this will change. The huge escalation of the level of violence used to maintain their dominance, and the sheer number of Israelis involved in that violence, together with the international reaction, means that increasing numbers of Israelis are questioning their national policy, and if their numbers continue to grow, such a change could become a real possibility, just as the USA changed its self-view when 3.4m Americans came home from South East Asia with personal experience at the sharp end.
Israel’s relationship with the USA is also at stake. As I’ve mentioned before, criticism of Israel in the West has always been met with the knee-jerk response of “antisemitism”. This slur has now lost its power. Especially among young people, a new level of awareness has been created of the true nature of Israel and of the violence on which its control is based. Many US taxpayers are tiring of paying for Israel’s wars; they ask, why should we give them so many billions, when Israel has less debt than we do? Along with this, is an awareness of the role the US plays as the supplier of weapons to repressive regimes which use them to kill the people under their control, not only Israel but countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Today’s American students protesting the Gaza bloodbath are calling, not only for a ceasefire, but for divestment from the arms industry; they know how the system works. This is why the reaction against the student protests has been so extreme. The students are accused of disturbing the peace; but the students have realised that, if you look beyond the end of your nose, there is no peace. As Howard Zinn once put it, what really bothers the powers that be, is that they are disturbing the war. A new generation of students are learning what their predecessors in the 1960s learned protesting the Vietnam War, which is that the police are not there to protect the people, but to enforce a profoundly violent system. Also, it’s not only youth in general who have demonstrated in favour of Palestinian rights, but many Jews, whether religious or secular, who do not want to be associated with the violence and excesses of the Israeli right. At the heart of this is an overdue unbundling of the Jewish religion and identity, from the remorselessly violent ideology represented by Netanyahu, Smotrich, Ben Gvir, West Bank settlers, and their ilk.
The status and posture of the Palestinians is also at stake. For decades they have been overlooked and marginalised, even by fellow Arabs and Muslims. Repressed at home, divided politically, and largely friendless abroad, dependent on aid, they lived a daily grind in which, for most of them, obtaining the basics of life came first, and their freedom and self-determination as a people was lower down the priority list. However, the current campaign and the huge scale of their losses has raised their profile. There was a 143 – 9 vote in favour of full Palestinian membership at the UN on 10th May. Norway, Spain and Ireland have just gone further and announced that they will recognise a Palestinian state at the end of May. The destruction in Gaza and the engineered starvation will doubtless create a huge wave of emigration (sadly – for until the situation changes, they will never be allowed to return, any more than the first Nakba refugees were allowed to return after their expulsion) and this new Palestinian diaspora will take the lead in forming the world’s view of their situation. Ironically, the mass killing in Gaza may finally lead to Palestinian life being accorded some meaningful value.
What else is at stake? The Western neoconservative “rules based order” is losing all credibility. Israel’s impunity has long been a problem for the West, but was successfully glossed over until the current campaign. Now it’s a big problem for the political establishment. Ask to see a copy of the rules of the “rules based order” and you quickly highlight the fact that most of these rules aren’t written down and do not apply equally to all. This week, the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court applied for arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Yoav Gallant, and 3 Hamas leaders. Israel has responded with fury at the suggestion that the rules might apply to them as well as to their enemies. Their statements all rely on their national story: they are shocked – shocked! – to be accused, because Israel is behaving honourably and simply defending themselves in a war they did not want, and it is only Hamas which kills civilians or otherwise uses “terrorist” tactics. These statements only serve to highlight the extent of the divide between Israel’s self-delusion and the way the rest of the world sees it. Israel’s impunity is finally being chipped away. Our failure to hold previous warmongers responsible is also wavering; the war on Iraq was a crime for which nobody has been punished, for example. Imagine a world in which heads of government actually believed that they, personally, might face justice for starting, or supporting, wrongful wars. All the laws and treaties we need are already there; we only need the will and courage to apply them equally. Neoconservative geopolitics is a criminal enterprise; it will not give up easily, but exposing its true nature, is a start.
As for the powers that be, they need to think a lot more than twice before letting Israel get away with fully taking over the occupied territories. In the last century, after thousands of years in which conquest was seen as legitimate and even glorious, it was finally established that a state must not seek to gain territory by force. The international community should hold to the principle and not endorse conquest once again. If we licence Israel to take full ownership of the occupied territories, by force, having expelled the Palestinians, what is to stop any other country seeking to do the same? Would China seize Taiwan? Would Russia use it to justify its own actions in Ukraine and maybe elsewhere? Would Argentina take another pop at the Falklands? Would India and Pakistan have one last big fight over Kashmir? One of the principal aims of international law has been to resolve territorial and border disputes peacefully. The last thing the world needs is a whole new round of wars of conquest. If Israel gets away with it, every tinpot dictator with an army would be licensed to go on the warpath with impunity.
There is one over-arching fact about the Middle East: the only way to peace and security in the region is for the illegal, long-term occupation to end. Once that happens, all other problems become soluble by normal, constitutional politics. An increasing number of people, especially young people, in the West can see this clearly, and are not afraid of the bogus accusation of antisemitism. This makes it a generational issue in which time is on the Palestinian side. Israel’s failure – Netanyahu’s refusal – to come up with a plan for what happens after this campaign, only highlights that they have no realistic way forward through brute force.
Israel, as currently constituted, will not accept Palestinian freedom and self-determination, nor accept that the occupied territories do not belong to them and that they will have to leave. It is the duty of the rest of the world – including those who count themselves as friends of Israel – to get this through to them. The genocide charge at the ICJ and the war crimes arrest warrants at the ICC are a good start; recognition of Palestine by an increasing number of Western-aligned countries is a good continuation. Growing sympathy for the Palestinian cause at grass roots level is the most important trend of all.
Notes from Interesting Times 