Israel attacks UN peacekeepers, medics, hospitals. The world does nothing
A sampling of headlines over the past few weeks is revealing.
Israel has repeatedly attacked United Nations peacekeepers in Lebanon, and killed dozens of healthcare workers in the country.
An investigative report by Al Jazeera documented evidence of scores of war crimes by Israeli soldiers. A UN inquiry found that Israel has “perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system as part of a broader assault on Gaza, committing war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities”.
The headlines, or lack of them, tell their own story, but the reactions tell an even more alarming one.
A top UN official pleaded for Israel not to attack Beirut’s airport and ports. US President Joe Biden urged Israel to stop attacking UN peacekeepers.
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But in substantive terms, nothing changed. No action has been taken to stem the aggression in Lebanon, just as no meaningful action has been taken to protect the people of Gaza over the past year.
In fact, Israel has only intensified its war on Gaza, recently ordering hundreds of thousands of starving Palestinians, displaced repeatedly over the course of the year-long war, to leave their homes yet again.
This week Israeli shelling of a hospital in northern Gaza sparked a fire that saw patients and families sheltering in tents burned alive. This was caught on film and millions watched it on social media (it was widely ignored by the western media).
World at a crossroads
Israel’s constant and flagrant flouting of international law places the world community at a crossroads.
Western nations, including the US and parts of Europe, are enabling Israel in its shredding of international law.
While the reasons underlying that support are complex, and perhaps will never be entirely understood, they include some level of shame and contrition over the Holocaust and longstanding antisemitism; strong and effective influence by pro-Israel lobby groups; and a shared contempt for Arab and Muslim lives.
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An element of self-interest is central to the support being extended to Israel. The West sees Israel as a vanguard, or beachhead, representing western values and interests in a strategic area.
Arabs and Muslims, and indeed many in the Global South, see Israel in the same light: as an extension of the West’s history of settler-colonialism.
Does Israel act on behalf of the West, or is Israel manipulating the West to further its own policies?
Arabs and Muslims are split on their assessment of who is the tail and who is the dog. Does Israel act on behalf of the West, or is Israel manipulating the West to further its own policies?
Whichever perspective one takes, the strong support, enabling and sense of impunity that results from this western backing is indisputable. Any objective observer might ask: are there any red lines, or any actions that Israel would eschew in pursuit of its perceived self-interest?
The answer should be clear by now: there are none. There are no internal barriers arising from within Israeli society, its institutions or its war machinery; and there are no external barriers enforced by the so-called international community.
Even after the slaughter of tens of thousands of civilians, including thousands of Palestinian children, Israeli society overwhelmingly sees itself as a victim. For them, 7 October justifies everything that followed.
Israeli impunity
The notion of a pre-7 October world, in which Israel killed thousands of Palestinians and injured tens of thousands more in the decades prior, is broadly ignored.
Externally, Israel has already learned that nothing it does will endanger its standing with Europe or the US. Surveil and interfere with the International Criminal Court? Expressions of concern. Deploy spyware that is used on journalists, politicians and even heads of state? More expressions of concern.
The sense of impunity with which Israel acts is not new. Over the decades, Israel has engaged in false flag operations against targets in Iraq and Egypt, and it has also attacked American military targets.
Israel has sought to cast its war as one of a civilisational nature - a call that has been picked up by Europe’s far right. From the Netherlands, to France, to Germany, Israel is aligning itself with fascist and ultranationalist movements that seek to return Europe to the very ideologies that made it the epicentre of two world wars.
That European Jews themselves accuse these parties of antisemitism seems of no consequence. The present leaders of Israel, like their Second World War-era predecessors, appear to have no qualms over aligning with fascists and antisemites, even at the cost of Jewish lives, in order to secure and extend the state of Israel.
In some ways, this is indeed a civilisational war. It is a fight for a world based on order, laws, norms, institutions, rights, and a modicum of decency and justice.
In that war, Gaza and the Palestinian people are the last bulwark standing between the world and a complete jungle-based order.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
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