Is everyone lying and only Israel can be relied on to tell the truth? Is that it?
Amnesty lying? Médecins Sans Frontiéres? UNWRA? The International Criminal Court? The International Court of Justice?
That’s how it’s coming across. Just watch US President Joe Biden and British PM Sir Keir Starmer offer excuse after excuse for easily the worst atrocity I have seen in my lifetime.
Israel, they tell us time and time again, is ‘only defending itself’ and they’ll give iron-clad support to the only good guy in the Middle East conflict.
I know you have heard it all before but let’s get it on the record one more time what ‘little Israel’ is doing to defend itself.
Up until the end of last month, 40,000 Palestinians have been killed. This includes 108 journalists and over 224 humanitarian aid workers, including 179 employees of UNRWA.
Israel seems to have disproportionately targeted both groupings, probably for having the nerve to speak out against them.
It’s believed there are around 15,000 children dead, with possibly thousands more bodies under the rubble.
Nearly two million people have been displaced, starved and are still being bombed. Eighty per cent of Gaza’s housing stock is destroyed. Civilian infrastructure – hospitals, offices, sewage treatment plants, churches, mosques, bakeries, agricultural land – is all gone.
Last week Israel launched attacks on the capitals of three countries – Syria, Lebanon and Iran – and assassinated Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, the man they were supposed to be negotiating with to bring about a ceasefire and bring the Israeli hostages home.
Is it normal in negotiations to kill the person you are negotiating with?
So, keeping that in mind, do Israeli actions since October 7 2023 sound to you like a country that’s ‘only defending itself’?
As the author George Orwell observed in his famed political novel 1984, politicians and leaders told so many lies and manipulated the masses so much that they could be convinced that “war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength”.
The proof of that Orwell observation is out there big time.
Biden is facing no real challenge from either side of the aisle in Congress for his support for Israel. Starmer still got a huge majority in the general election even when he indicated support for the right of Israel to deny food, water, medicines and fuel to the Palestinians. I can only presume the British electorate had no problem with his stance.
Last week I ran into a man who has played a role in public life here for some years, and he said something that has really struck a chord with me.
Humanity now, he felt, was at the lowest point that he could ever recall. Barbarism was not only accepted but justified. Lies had become truth. Propaganda had become fact.
He was genuinely depressed and angered by the actions of the leaders of the western world whom, he believed, had lost all moral authority.
Towards the end of last month you may have seen Benjamin Netanyahu address the United States Congress. During his scathing speech he described those protesting against his visit to the States as ‘idiots’, suggesting that they didn’t know what they were talking about, that Israel was doing us all a favour – it was on the front line in the fight for western values and civilisation, and rather than condemning his country we should be grateful.
And he got around 50 standing ovations for what the BBC’s international editor, Jeremy Bowen, suggested was a speech that contained more than a few untruths and inaccuracies.
Unlike my American friends, I find it hard to take seriously an Israel prime minister condemning ‘barbarism’ when his forces have dropped 2,000 bombs on people in tents, have massacred thousands of innocent women and children, and have relentlessly attacked hospitals, refugee centres and schools. Exactly who are the barbarians here?
And there’s the growing issue of intolerance to those who dissent from the orthodoxy of our rulers. In Germany last week, a man peacefully having a pint at an outdoor café was arrested for wearing a Palestinian t-shirt. In Scotland, the rector of St Andrews University was axed from its governing body for an email remarking that Israel had carried out ‘genocidal attacks’ on Gaza. Considering the International Court of Justice said such an observation was ‘plausible’, it could be argue her comment was reasonable.
When previous atrocities were being committed – like the industrial killings in the concentration camps in WWII – most people had the legitimate excuse ‘we didn’t know’. We don’t have that get-out this time around. We do know. And silence is complicity.
Finally, I believe we in the west will pay a big price for the absurdity and amorality of defending the indefensible. If there were an Olympic Games for hypocrisy and the double standards we would top the medal table.