Opinion: Israel wants to finish the job Washington started after 9/11

Nearly a decade ago, a leading Israeli human rights activist divulged to me a private conversation he’d had a short time earlier with one of Europe’s ambassadors to Israel. He had clearly been shaken by the exchange.

The ambassador’s country was then widely seen as one of the most sympathetic in the West to the Palestinian people. The Israeli activist had expressed concerns about Europe’s inaction in the face of relentless Israeli attacks on Palestinian rights and systematic violations of international law. 

At the time, Israel was enforcing a lengthy siege on Gaza that had deprived more than two million people there of the essentials of life, and it had repeatedly bombed urban areas, killing hundreds of civilians. 

In the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, Israel had intensified its expansion of illegal Jewish settlements, leading to a surge in violence from settler militias and the Israeli army. Palestinians were being killed and driven off their land.

The activist asked the ambassador a simple question: What would Israel need to do for his government to act against it? Where was the red line?

The ambassador paused as he thought hard. And then, with a shrug of the shoulders, he responded: there was nothing Israel could do. There was no red line.

A decade ago, that comment might have been interpreted as evasive. A year into Israel’s erasure of Gaza, it sounds utterly prophetic.

There is no red line. And more importantly, there never has been. 

Read more: Israel wants to finish the job Washington started after 9/11 By Jonathan Cook