When the ‘civilised world’ allows inhumanity to thrive, we are all in deep trouble

As the predictable calls for “restraint by both sides” are rolled out by Western politicians and officials, let us be clear that Israel’s latest attack against Iran could not, and would not, have happened without the support that those same politicians and officials have given the occupation state throughout the ongoing genocide against the people of occupied Palestine. The most far-right regime in Israel’s history has been emboldened by the likes of Keir Starmer and Ursula von der Leyen, allowing Benjamin Netanyahu to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity, as well as genocide, without restraint.

Yvonne Ridley warned in an article in MEMO last October that, “Netanyahu will not stop until he drags the US and UK into Middle East war.” Her words are hugely relevant today.

In Netanyahu’s warped worldview, his “mad dog” of a state is part of the “civilised world” that he sought to “assure” in his reported comment about the Iran attacks in which he said: “…we will not let the world’s most dangerous regime get the world’s most dangerous weapons, and Iran plans to give those weapons — nuclear weapons — to its terrorist proxies that would make the nightmare of nuclear terrorism all too real.” Then he went into full “Saddam’s 45-minute WMDs” mode: “The increasing range of Iran’s ballistic missiles would bring that nuclear nightmare to the cities of Europe and eventually to America.”

The “world’s most dangerous regime” at the moment is, however, none other than the settler-colonial state of Israel, the same state that was founded on the barbarity of Zionist terrorists and has used state terrorism against the Palestinians and others ever since. 

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Which other state is committing war crimes on a daily basis (every illegal settlement is a war crime, remember) and letting its army loose on civilians, killing tens of thousands of women and children, destroying civilian infrastructure in the process, including hospitals, schools and places of worship? Which other state has weaponised humanitarian aid and is using starvation as a weapon of war? That’s what Israel is doing against the Palestinians in Gaza. At the same time, it has invaded and occupied parts of Lebanon and Syria while conducting a brutal military operation against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, especially the city of Jenin and its refugee camp. All the while, it has imposed apartheid on the Palestinians, including those who are Israeli citizens, according to major human rights groups B’Tselem, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Apartheid is akin to a crime against humanity.

And this regime has nuclear weapons. The French are usually credited, if that’s the correct term, with giving Israel support for its nuclear ambitions in the late 1950s. However, according to Andrew and Leslie Cockburn in their 1992 book Dangerous Liaison: The inside story of the US-Israeli covert relationship and the international activities it has served to conceal,” Israel also carried out acts of “nuclear espionage” against the US, the evidence of which had been “carefully buried at the request of at least one [US] president.” The espionage involved, it was said, included the “disappearance” of “at least 206 pounds of highly enriched uranium” from the Apollo nuclear development plant in Pennsylvania. 

Today, Israel is believed to have up to 400 nuclear warheads, as well as the means to deliver them, at its Dimona nuclear facility in the Negev Desert. The world does not know for certain how many warheads, because the apartheid state has not signed the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and refuses to allow inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to visit Dimona. 

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Once again, the hypocrisy of Israel and its supporters in the West — Zionists one and all — is laid bare for all to see; only Israel must be allowed to be armed to the teeth, with conventional as well as nuclear weapons, and use them, where and when it wants, in “self-defence”. Nobody else in the region is given this right. Only Israel.

And yet we are being asked to believe that it is the genocidal, nuclear-armed mad dog of a settler state lashing out at anyone who dares to question its “right to exist” on Palestinian land (“People have a right to exist,” UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese noted not so long ago, “not states.”), which is a force for good in the world. Who are they kidding?

We are being conned. When the bad guys are portrayed as good people, and vice versa; and when illegality is acceptable, and what is lawful is criminalised, we need to acknowledge that we are on a slippery slope towards a huge test which threatens humanity itself. If the general response by world leaders to events in Gaza is anything to go by, however, either the message just isn’t getting through, or they are complicit in the trashing of international laws and conventions. The evidence to date points very much to the latter. We can’t say that we haven’t been warned.

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The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.