Let not the fear of God be used to justify Israel's terror in Gaza

 Israeli troops during a ground operation in Gaza Strip on August 30, 2024. [AFP]

It is now one year since the ongoing Israeli war with the Palestinians in Gaza, West Bank and Lebanon started. It is an expanding, rather than contracting, war that continuously exposes the failure of major Western powers to be fair in the Middle East.

They appear to be captive to Israeli wishes and, fearing to question its policies, willingly fund its armed activities. They fear Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister who, despite pressure, has no intention of ending the war until he wipes out his enemies. He was aware of, and reportedly even helped, the Hamas group growing as a force in Gaza in opposition to the Palestinian Authority, which became the excuse for the current war. Subsequently, the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, became the trigger for this expanding war.  

The genesis of this fear seems to be rooted in European guilt of having persecuted Jews for centuries and culminating in the Hitler holocaust. This guilt found a partial escape place, after World War II, in Palestine where the World Zionist Organization expelled the people to found the state of Israel and ended up creating Palestinian refugees. In doing so, the Zionists had the support of both Cold War superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, but it is the Americans who stood out as champions of the new geopolitical implant. Reservations about the planting of Israel amid Orientals, away from Occidentals, and the subsequent expulsion of the Palestinians from their homes were drowned in the sea of Western sense of guilt. In addition to the sense of guilt, the claim to divine authority gives Israeli operators religious-cultural freedom to dominate the neighbourhood that resonates with Western beliefs, which makes questioning Israel tantamount to questioning God.

The appeal to divine privileges started losing acceptability with the increasing atrocities in the War in Gaza as it expanded to the West Bank, Lebanon, and even Iran. In Israel itself, Netanyahu appeared desperate to cling to power amidst criticism of his war policies that appeared to serve as a diversion from accusations of criminal behaviour. With little interest in ending the war until the total annihilation of the enemies, he rejected the suggested two-state solution for both Israel and the Palestinians, insisting that God gave the entire place to Israel. This argument of a God who discriminates and creates exclusivity as a reason for dispossessing other people did not make sense to a growing number of people who are not Westerners or those who profess different faiths, especially those who claim similar Abrahamic lineage. Still, Netanyahu argues he is right even with growing anti-war protests within Israel and demands for the release of hostages. His frustrated backers in Western capitals then seem to walk a tightrope between supporting Israel’s right to defend itself by beating up on the Palestinians and appearing to be human by empathizing with suffering Palestinians.  

The Western condoning and excuses for the Israeli war affected their global standing. Growing demographic changes in the United States made questioning long-held policies normal. Criticism of Israeli policies in support of Palestine increased in universities and even in Congress so much that American officials poorly tried to balance statements. The questioning of policies led to concerted pressure for university officials to defend Israel against its critics. As this led some presidents to lose their jobs at Harvard and U-Penn, universities found their activist calling to champion international fairness.

There were also visible changes in attitude at the United Nations and in other countries which angered Israel. Israel took unusual steps that raised international eyebrows making it seem like a reckless international outlaw. It appeared to target the giant Al-Jazeerah media house for covering the war in Gaza in detail. It also banned UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres from entering Israel, for questioning some of its policies, accusing him of “backing to terrorists, rapists, and murderers”. In addition, developments in Gaza had led the ICC to indict Israeli and Hamas leadership and had enabled South Africa to launch a case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, ICJ. All these showed that Israel’s global standing was on the decline.

The decline was not simply in Israel; it was also in the West where credibility was eroded. While the West still has military might and technological advantage, it has lost soft power in the sense that it is not believable, which in turn affects perceptions of the War in Gaza. The transfer of the Western sense of guilt for the mistreatment of the Jews to the Orientals in Palestine lost its attraction as those outside the Conceptual West questioned the logic of divine discrimination.

Israel is thus no longer the perceived little victim of Arab aggression in the Middle East. It is a nuclear-powered apartheid-like expansionist entity that would have received much condemnation had it been another country. Its seeming leverage of fear on the United States and the rest of the conceptual West gives it impunity to ignore the rest of the world while claiming God’s blessings in doing so is exposed. The one-year War in Gaza, in exposing this unusual Israel leverage on big powers, has undermined their credibility in the world arena.