How far will Tel Aviv go? Not content with having reduced Gaza to rubble, and perpetrating a genocide there, Israel is now extending its operations to neighbouring Lebanon with the same methods, the same massacres, the same destruction, secure in the unwavering support of its Western backers, now the direct accomplices of its criminal enterprise.
The Lebanese dead from these bombings are already over 1,974 and rising, and Israel’s “exploits” have proliferated, starting with the pagers episode, which thrilled so many Western observers, fascinated by the display of “technological prowess”. Just too bad for the victims, killed, disfigured, blinded, amputated, quickly forgotten. After all, “they were just Hezbollah fighters” was what we heard over and over again, a “humiliation” for an organisation which official France does not even consider a terrorist one. And as if those explosions had not affected the whole of society, killing militiamen and civilians alike. Yet the use of booby-trapped objects is in violation of the laws of war as several experts and humanitarian organisations have pointed out1.
The summary assassination of Hezbollah leaders, including its general secretary Hassan Nasrallah, accompanied each time by “collateral victims”, scandalize no one. Once again Netanyahu thumbed his nose at the UN by giving the green light to bomb the Lebanese capital from inside the organisation’s New York headquarters.
With each day that passes, the Security Council members bury a little deeper the rulings of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), whether they concern Gaza or the rest of the occupied Palestinian territories. And the International Criminal Court (ICC) still hasn’t issued a warrant against Benyamin Netanyahu while its chief prosecutor, who requested that warrant, has reported “pressures by world leaders” and other parties, including personal threats against himself and his family2. Have Jo Biden, Emmanuel Macron or Olaf Scholz said a single word about these practices?
For nearly a year now, a few voices have been raised, and generally dismissed as those of a deranged fringe, denouncing Israel’s impunity, encouraged by the passivity of the Western nations. This war would never have been possible were it not for the airlift of mostly American - and to a lesser extent European - weaponry and without the diplomatic and political cover of the Western nations. If France wanted to, it could take steps which would really hurt Israel, but it still refuses to suspend the arms export licence it has granted that country. In the European Union, it could also, along with countries like Spain, advocate the suspension of the association agreement with Israel. It does nothing of the sort.
This second Palestinian Nakba, which goes on and on, and the systematic destruction of Lebanon which is gathering speed by the day, are not just Israeli crimes, they are crimes of the West, in which Washington, Paris and Berlin bear a direct responsibility. We mustn’t be taken in by the posturing and masquerades staged these past few days in the UN General Assembly, nor fooled by Joe Biden’s displays of anger nor Emmanuel Macron’s pious wishes for the “protection of civilian lives”. That French President has never missed an opportunity to proclaim his unfailing support for Benyamin Netanyahu’s radical right-wing government. We can also forget about those diplomats who walked out of the General Assembly hall when the Israeli Prime Minister took the floor, a gesture which was more a matter of emotional catharsis than of politics. For while the Western nations are primarily responsible for Israel’s crimes, others, like Russia or China, have taken no steps to put an end to a war that is expanding every day, has already spread to Yemen and may reach Iran tomorrow.
This war is dragging us into a dark age where laws, legality, democratic safeguards, everything that might keep human beings from sinking into barbarity is being methodically laid waste. A period when one party has decided to exterminate the other party, decreed “barbarous”. “Savage enemies” as Netanyahu has called them, threats to “Judeo-Christian civilization”. The Prime Minister is trying to drag the Western world into a war of civilizations with religious undertones, in which Israel sees itself as the vanguard in the Middle-East – with some success.
By the weapons and munitions which they keep supplying to Israel, by their unfailing support for a specious “right of self-defence”, by their denial of the Palestinians’ right to resist an occupation which the ICJ has ruled illegal and ordered to be ended - a ruling which the UN Security Council refuses to apply - these Western countries are responsible for Israel’s overweening hubris.
As members of such prestigious institutions as the UN Security Council or the G7, the governments of these countries are endorsing the law of the jungle as laid down by Israel and its logic of collective punishment. This logic was already at work in Afghanistan in 2001 and in Iraq in 2003, with results we all know. Already, in 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon, occupied the southern part of the country, laid siege to Beirut and supervised the massacres in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Chatila. It was that macabre “victory” that ultimately gave birth to Hezbollah, just as Israel’s occupation policies produced the 7 October attacks. Because the logic of war and colonialism have never led to peace and security.
Translated by Noël Burch.