Truth, law and justice are no longer on Israel’s side

by Guy Mettan, freelance journalist

“The only democracy in the Middle East”, “the most moral army in the world” – how often have we heard these phrases from the mouths of Israel’s flatterers and harsh critics of anti-Semitism, who are always quick to bring up the Shoah and appeal to emotions when it comes to legitimising the illegal occupation of territories, the indiscriminate bombing of civilians and the murders of foreign officials by the Israeli authorities.

Words break down by the obvious

They knew it without admitting it, they suspected that these expressions were sounding more and more false. Since 8 October 2023, it is no longer possible to be mistaken. These mantras no longer mean anything and fall under pure propaganda since the government in Tel Aviv decided to retaliate disproportionately to the bloody attack by Hamas by trampling on international law and multiplying war crimes.
    For a long time, Israel was forgiven everything – on the basis of the monstrous crime of the Holocaust, the right to self-defence, the fight against anti-Semitism and sympathy for the little David against the big Arab Goliaths. The ethnic cleansing of 1948, the illegal annexation of the Golan Heights, the occupation of the West Bank, the open-air concentration camp in Gaza, the wall of shame that separates Israel from what should have been the Palestinian state, the apartheid of the Palestinians in the West Bank, the massacres of Sabra and Shatila, the invasions of Lebanon, the targeted killings of Arab opposition figures and Iranian generals, the bombing of Syria – all of this had been wiped away, forgotten, written off as a loss and dismissed as collateral damage, justified by Israel’s right to exist at any cost.

Blindness to history

At the beginning of last week, the commemoration of the massacres perpetrated by Hamas on 7 October 2023 once again provided an opportunity to whitewash Israel in the media and among Western politicians. It was incredible to see how, in thousands of interviews, debates and reports on this event, experts once again had their say, talking about everything but the dispossessions, riots, expulsions, torture and murders of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, acting as if none of this had ever happened and as if Hamas’ revenge had struck poor, innocent, blameless people like a bolt from the blue.
    In Europe and the USA, no one wants to remember that the attack on 7 October was a response to the repeated provocations by Jewish religious fanatics against the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third sacred site in Islam, and that the Hamas operation was named precisely to avenge this affront. That Israel adopted the official name “nation state of the Jewish people” in 2018 and therefore does not have to teach the Islamists a lesson in religious extremism. That the alleged beheadings of babies and women on 7 October 2023 were just a fabrication of the propaganda of the most extreme Jewish settler organisations.

The majority of the world
has made up its mind

However, this blindness and denial are becoming increasingly untenable, unbearable in the eyes of those who bother to inform themselves. The excesses that have been committed for twelve months in the blind suppression of the Palestinian civilian population, with images of blood and destruction that are visible to all despite censorship, mean that it is no longer possible to accept this one-sided and truncated view of things. In the eyes of the global majority, at any rate, the myth of the “oasis of freedom surrounded by the forces of tyranny and fanaticism” has collapsed. In the United Nations, Israel, which had enjoyed broad support until last year, saw its last supporters dwindle from vote to vote. Even the Marshall Islands and Malawi, which are always quick to side with their former masters, the USA and Great Britain, have changed sides. In the vote on the last resolution, Washington found itself alone on the side of Tel Aviv. That should raise questions.
    I say this with regret for my Israeli friends. I still retain a vivid memory of my last visit to Jerusalem for a dinner in honour of Carl Bernstein, one of the two heroes who dared to expose the Watergate scandal and inspired generations of journalists. On the occasion of this visit, I was also lucky enough to be invited to the most fraternal and intense Shabbat I had ever experienced, on the terraces of the Old City opposite the Wailing Wall and the forecourt of the mosques. Young female soldiers in uniform took part with machine guns slung around their necks. Female soldiers who now have to put up with an army that commits war crimes.
    Indeed, today it is no longer possible to ignore the scale of the atrocities and destruction committed against innocent people, civilians and children. How can one mourn the 815 civilians massacred by Hamas on 7 October 2023 and remain cold in the face of the 17,000 Palestinian children killed by Israeli bombs in one year?
    This simple question is enough for Israel to no longer be morally justified. From now on, law, truth and justice have changed sides.

Still slow, but unstoppable:
the end of this apartheid

The least jaded Zionists are beginning to worry about this reversal of perception. Recent Israeli governments have “weakened the state. Instead of investing in science, education and internal cohesion, they have squandered resources on building settlements and unnecessary provocations. This has weakened institutions, divided society, undermined the army and undermined the international legitimacy of Zionism,” as journalist Ari Shavit admits in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs.
    In its early days, the apartheid regime in South Africa also presented itself as a model of democracy in the face of barbarism, relying on Western support. It successfully maintained this mode of expression for decades, until the untenable finally crumbled before the world public and the outrage forced the white rulers to give in. Discrimination against black people in the USA followed the same process. It took Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King as crystallisation points for change.
    In the case of the Israelis, this decisive turning point is still a long way off. But now the outraged global majority has made up its mind and will not forget. Sooner or later, this new reality will prevail.  •

(Translation Current Concerns)

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