There is no point pinning all the blame on Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, for the violence and bloodletting that his regime has unleashed as his aggression is enabled by the support and funding of the US, aided by the UK and Germany in particular. If blame were to be allotted, it should first be apportioned to the enablers, without whom Netanyahu’s bravado would collapse like the proverbial house of cards.
When Hamas launched its brutal attack on Israeli communes, I and almost all other commentators called it by the right name: “terrorism”. There was condemnation, sometimes without using that word, from Arab regimes and ordinary Arabs. That was the time when the US could have shown leadership and enabled a global political coalition to challenge Hamas and strengthen Israel. Instead, Joe Biden decided to take the easy and more lucrative way out: supply Israel with arms and missiles worth billions. It was a shortcut for the US regime, and it enabled ordinary taxpayers’ money to be ploughed into the private military-industrial complex, which is by far America’s most lucrative business.
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When Netanyahu, taking advantage of the duplicity and cynicism of Western regimes, launched a brutal wave of attacks on Gaza, the term that came to mind, “genocidal violence”, was not used by the same governments and the “free” media in their countries. Buoyed by such support and the limitations of Arab regimes, themselves not much more popular in their countries than Netanyahu is in Israel and dependent likewise on the US and other secret services to avoid internal challenges, Netanyahu moved from one level of aggression to another. Currently, he is jabbing at Lebanon, and might invade it, while domestically he is affiliated with another far-right Israeli party, which believes in “war on all seven fronts”. His rhetoric of “total victory” is itself, obviously, genocidal rhetoric because after what he has done to Palestinians and might do to the Lebanese, there can be “total victory”—in his terms—only when the last Palestinian has been eradicated.
The “free media” in the West is choosing not to see this, but Netanyahu, who is no fool, knows it. He knows that after what he has done and what he plans to do, he will leave a much more radicalised Arab and Palestinian population. For every Hamas he destroys, three Hamas-like organisations are likely to be born. This can only be prevented if Palestinians are given a viable—not a truncated—and free country, and it is clear by now that not only Netanyahu, but most other Israeli politicians have no real intention of doing so.
‘Final solution’
Even the two-nation solution still parroted by Biden is a joke: it will lead to a Palestinian state with no chance of ever becoming truly independent and hence with every chance of succumbing to Hamas-like ideologies. If such a state is created, it will simply mark a pause in the ongoing genocidal violence. Netanyahu knows that he is aiming at genocide as, alas, the “final solution” of the Palestinian problem.
All this is being enabled by the US and its allies, who form the core of the old colonial countries of Europe. Without their material and ideological support, Netanyahu would have long lost power or changed tracks. The Israeli military would also not have had the wherewithal to sustain its genocidal violence and expand it further. Interestingly, when Israeli attacks killed Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah in Lebanon, thus provoking a further escalation, Israeli leaders came on CNN to claim that this was “a chance for the people of Lebanon to claim their country back” from Hezbollah. Obviously, CNN is unlikely to broadcast something similar about Netanyahu and the people of Israel seizing the chance to “claim their country back” from him.
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Criticism of the ongoing genocidal violence and political mayhem is silenced in the West by raising the spectre of anti-Semitism. As I noted a long time ago, I can criticise Iran and Saudi Arabia—and I have done so—without being anti-Islamic or Islamophobic. But as soon as I criticise Israel, an apartheid nation, I will be considered anti-Semitic in many circles. This is rubbish: just as the regimes of Iran or Saudi Arabia do not represent Muslims, the regime of Israel does not represent Jews. By blithely equating Israel with Jews, Western regimes and the Western media are actually sowing the seeds of anti-Semitism, not combating it as they claim.
This is not surprising because the destruction—between Netanyahu and the US (and its allies)—of a common, peaceful future for (Semitic) Arabs and (Semitic) Israelis is arguably the worst act of anti-Semitism after Hitler. Its consequences will ripen into the far future: its victims will be “Semitic” peoples on all sides in that region. Yes, the real anti-Semites are people and regimes that support or justify Netanyahu and his game plan.
Tabish Khair is an Indian novelist and academic who teaches in Denmark.
