The utter slaughter, ethnic cleansing and genocide that Israel has carried out over the last six months has, of course, been harrowing to watch. The glory that is instantaneous communication in the digital age has made information, up to and including video of these war crimes, available to anyone with a device in their hands. Such information should lead to the utter condemnation of Israel, and its identification as a rogue nation in the international sphere. But this is not the case, or at least it has not been up to this point.
The international response to this callous, intentional massacring of more than 40,000 people has been weak to put it very mildly. Leaders in the West (Britain, the US and Australia specifically) have spoken of ‘anger’ and ‘concern’, but have done precisely nothing tangible. Why is this? This is one of the issues I want to explore today. The other issue concerns the Western reaction to the recent murder of those international aid workers.
Inconvenient Truth, Part One a): The International Mafia
In my younger days, I used to conceive of international affairs as run like a mafia organisation, with the United States as the Godfather pulling the strings. If you were ‘outside the family’ (that is to say outside of the influences of American capital) you were a rogue nation that might ‘need some democracy’, especially if you had natural resources that Western capital wanted to exploit. In light of recent events, I have modified this description somewhat. It still very much holds, but the role of the United States has changed.
America is no longer (if it ever was) the Godfather of this international mafia organisation. It is merely the muscle. As the owner of the largest and most powerful military apparatus in human history (for now), the Americans have great influence, but they still cower in fear when it comes to the true Godfather of international affairs: Israel. Israel has carried out what the International Court of Justice has said there is reasonable evidence to call a genocide, but the Americans continue to fund, and more importantly arm, this rogue nation.
Israel is a paper tiger propped up by American money and weapons. The Americans do not know (or are choosing to ignore) the fact that this gives them tremendous power when it comes to Israel. If the US made its funding and arming of Israel conditional on, oh I do not know, adhering to international law, the Jewish state’s policy would change right quick. But they do not do this. Why? What are they afraid of?
Inconvenient Truth, Part One b): Israel’s ‘Secret Weapons’
The Jewish state has, in recent times, adopted a new secret weapon. You may have noticed that anyone, regardless of who they are, or how many facts they have on their side, is labelled, for even the most tepid criticism of Israel, an anti-semite. This pathetic conflation of disagreement with the policies of one state with hatred of an entire people, members of which live all over the world, seems to keep nations in line. Think of it as a form of extortion, as in ‘Nice international reputation you have there; be a shame if anything were to happen to it’. This slimy tactic effectively renders Israel ‘the nation who cried anti-semite’. The word is now meaningless.
Israel has another secret weapon, one of geography, which gives them power over certain American christians. There is a twist to this which I will get to in a minute, but for now some facts. There is a subset of American christians who believe that the end-times cannot happen until all the land in the middle east is under Israeli control. This partially accounts for their obsessive, almost religious, support of Israel. They need Israel to ‘win’ so jesus can come back.
But there is a twist. There is a great unspoken truth about the fate of the Jews in Israel when jesus comes back. According to this subset of christians, those Jews will be tossed into the lake of fire for eternal torture because they never accepted jesus like the christians did. That’s right: the religious support of Israel is a total con. Every Jew in Israel is to be obliterated because they did not fall in line with this very narrow subset of christianity. But remember, it is critics of Israel who are the anti-semites.
Inconvenient Truth, Part Two: The Hypocrisy of The West
The world was recently set alight with outrage over the murder of those seven international aid workers in Gaza. It was this event, rather than the indiscriminate slaughter of tens of thousands of Palestinians, that got international attention. The cynics among you may have noticed that the West, for all its bleating about ‘equality’ and all the rest of that crap, actually gives less than two sh*ts about Palestinians. But you kill our citizens? Oh now we’re outraged.
The utter hypocrisy of the West is thereby exposed: if you’d just stuck to killing Palestinians, everything would have been fine. We could have gone on ignoring your obvious genocide since no-one really cares about ‘Palestinians’ anyway. But you f*cked it up. By killing UK, Australian and American citizens, we have to respond now. Our citizens expect us to. We won’t actually change our policy in any way, we promise, but we have to be seen to be doing something. Maybe a few days’ delay on the next weapons shipment. Maybe.
Analysis: Voltaire and Who Rules You
Anyone who thinks the idea that Israel is in control of international affairs is some sort of conspiracy should consider the quote attributed to Voltaire:
If you wish to know who rules you, find out who you are not allowed to criticise
In light of this, the status of Israel as hegemon (leader) in international affairs is no conspiracy. Any and all criticism of Israel has to be premised with statements about ‘Israel having the right to exist and to defend itself’ and ‘I condemn Hamas’. When medicine is given to an animal, it is commonly concealed in food to make it as palatable as possible. The comparison to criticism of Israel needing to premised with the aforementioned statements is apt. And they will still call you an anti-semite.
Conclusion
I realise I have gone for the jugular here, but I do not apologise. Israel is subject to a different standard (read no standards) precisely because it is Israel. If Iran or one of the other so-called ‘rogue nations’ bombed the living hell out of a region to this extent (whatever the provocation) the American and other nations’ response would not be strong words. The response would be a bombardment so vicious that Dresden would say ‘calm down’.
The time has come to remove Israel’s special status and hold them accountable under international law and the laws of war. This will never happen, of course, since setting a precedent of prosecuting war criminals who are ‘the good guys’ (read friends of America) is not in the interest of the international community. As Noam Chomsky said, if the Nuremberg Laws were actually enforced, every post-war US President would hang as a war criminal. Awkward.
This post is likely to cost me a friend or two, but that is ok. Friends like that I can do without. I abhor violence and indiscriminate killing of civilians and children. If condemning that makes me an anti-semite, then HH.
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