Israel is preparing for a massive assault on the Palestinian people, backed by powerful western states and institutions. They require a huge international movement of solidarity, argues David Jamieson.
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On Saturday 7 October, every politician around the world, and many public facing institutions, were asked to comment on only one of two military operations, which took place miles apart from each other at almost the same time, on either side of the Gaza border.
The first – and the one on which the pre-scripted, banal soundbite was required – was an assault by Hamas and allied militants which infiltrated occupied territory currently held by Israel. This attack involved the killing or capturing of hundreds of Israeli soldiers and civilians, and was the most audacious carried out by Palestinian fighters in a generation, after 75 years of Israeli occupation.
This humiliation of Israeli security forces was always likely to draw a response. It has already taken the form, as is the rule for Israeli retaliation (and instigation – often the case) of the wholesale killing of civilians in illegal acts of collective punishment. This second attack, which by day three had involved dropping over 1000 tonnes of high explosives into residential areas in Gaza, killing hundreds and wounding thousands, did not require denunciation, and none was requested by western media outlets. Nor was denunciation required once the Israeli government announced it would cut of all power and water to the Palestinian “animals” in Gaza, a move backed-up by the EU, which pledged to halt all aid to Palestine.
Throughout the days of massacre, western media carried wall-to-wall coverage of the initial Palestinian attacks. This transparent display of double standards was emphasised by an endless stream of interviews, which saw Israeli and western politicians repeat the same justifications for atrocities – euphemised as ‘Israeli self-defence’.
Keir Starmer was keen to outdo the herd on the first day of his Labour conference. So he took to describing Israel as a woman: “I utterly condemn the ongoing attacks on Israel and her citizens…Israel has a right to defend herself.”
That final phrase in this disconcerting courtship was uttered even as ‘self-defence’ was being directly blasted into the most crowded parts of the Gaza strip – one of the most densely populated regions on earth, owing to its wholly artificial function as a giant prison-ghetto for those the state of Israel deems racial undesirables.
None uttering lines about the Israeli right to self-defence are ever asked if the Palestinians enjoy this same right. Yet, since September 2000, Palestinians killed by Israeli forces amount to 10,500. Israeli civilians killed by Palestinians, to 881. A ratio of 12/1.
The right to Palestinian self-defence wasn’t uttered earlier in the year, when Israel launched deadly assaults on the Jenin refugee camp in July, and another attack on Tulkarem refugee camp in September. The towns of Hawarra and Nablus have also been attacked in recent months. Speculation has it that it was this pivot to attacking Palestinian west bank communities that left Israel exposed to an attack from Gaza.
The uniformity and vehemence of western ganging behind the Israeli military punishment-beating has a further context: both Israel’s deteriorating popular image around the world, and the increasing favour it enjoys among Arab elites.
The open racism of Israeli society, which in recent years has been further warped by the rise of extreme right-wing parties and tendencies, has further corroded Israel’s image as an outpost of western liberal democracy in the middle east. Israeli law is now openly discriminatory, though in truth it is only catching up with the ‘facts on the ground’ of a nakedly apartheid system which violently suppresses the Palestinians daily, and denies them democracy, rights, basic services, employment and access to safe food and drinking water in the Gaza strip.
Though western political and media narratives love to portray the ‘Israel-Palestine conflict’ as essentially ethnic in nature, powered by unstoppable racial enmity against the Jewish state, the truth is that Palestinian oppression has an increasingly sharp class dynamic. Palestinians find themselves abandoned and resented by powerful Arab state leaders, who in past generations were compelled to a pretence of solidarity by a combination of Arab nationalist ideological commitments, and their own (related) geostrategy. The process of ‘normalisation’ between Arab countries, including Jordan in 1996, the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco in 2020 and Sudan in 2021 is thought to be enticing Arab elites in yet more countries.
This returns us to some of the basic realities of the Palestinian plight, routinely elided with every explosion of violence. Israel and Palestine are not parallel societies struggling, against faith and custom, to get along with each other. The source of the violence is not stray hot-head elements on either side.
Israel is instead a society built on top of Palestine. The ethnic cleansing of Palestine, which has seen millions forced into permanent exile and the remnant population squeezed into depraved conditions in enclaves, is the only basis on which a colonial Israel could be constructed. For Israeli governments of whichever hue, the oppression of the Palestinians is an existential question – it cannot end this fundamental injustice without ending itself.
Thus the stable features of this ‘conflict’ over the best part of a century, have been the steady displacement of Palestinians from their territory, violent persecution, and the growth of increasingly desperate Palestinian resistance. None of these features are accidents, repeated at intervals out of cultural misunderstanding. The Oslo Accords, recognising Israel and a Palestinian Authority, were struck three decades ago. Since then, Israeli expansion has only continued, with settlements approximately quadrupling in that time.
For those of us living in the west, there is a seminal fact left untouched by the 24 hour news cycle: none of this would have been possible without sponsorship from western powers – the US, UK and EU. Without military, economic and diplomatic support, tiny Israel could never have established its formidable barracks state.
This is why the endless demands for the denunciation of this or that Palestinian faction are tiresome and cynical – it’s such an obvious evasion. Western states are active participants in the unfolding slaughter. Anyone living in the west and serious about peace and a just settlement must ask themselves how we can contribute to that peace.
This question is only becoming more urgent. Our governments fund the killing which is underway in Gaza now, but they will also fund and provide diplomatic cover for the vengeance attacks promised by Benjamin Netanyahu’s increasingly extreme racialist government, which is gearing up for a huge assault on the Palestinian nation. We should not underestimate the ferocity of what may come. It is only prudent to prepare for crimes of historic proportions, given the record of history.
Pressure must be brought to bear on our government, and allied states and institutions like the US and EU, all of which have thrown themselves behind the Israeli assault. This is the urgent task of the hour and supersedes all the rounds of media sloganising. In the dark days that are coming, the Palestinians will need a broad international movement demanding a halt to the Israeli war machine, and those who feed it.
