Come on, let’s get out of here! It’s quite unbelievable how the West in general – Europe and the US – accepts and forgives everything Israel does. When we aren’t waging war for Israel (the US), whatever they do, we stand in solidarity with them – apart from the ‘we are concerned’ statements, which are incredibly effective – they are accepted everywhere, from Eurovision to scientific exchanges and European funding sources – they receive generous ERC grants – to highly favourable economic exchanges, and even military ones (albeit in secret). They even have an office in Strasbourg (the Knesset has an official office at the European Parliament), not to mention the super-powerful lobbies in Brussels and the numerous shadowy organisations that allow them to block anything they don’t like! On top of that, they have an ambassador who shamelessly parades his business cards in the French media, whilst I challenge journalists to give me the name of the Palestinian ambassador to France!
Yet there is no doubt about the war crimes and genocides of all kinds committed far and wide, in the several countries they are attacking simultaneously – including Lebanon – a country linked to France since the disastrous Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1918, which nevertheless left Lebanon as a territory under French protection – everything else to the British, who, in the colonial sphere, can lecture the whole world. Yet, compared to Israel, Putin’s ‘special’ operation is rather weak; certainly there are war crimes – particularly the Russification of Ukrainian children – and numerous civilian casualties, but it is nowhere near the scale seen in Gaza or elsewhere. Once again, let us remember that we are talking about over 100,000 deaths, including at least 20,000 children, plus journalists and healthcare workers killed directly by bullets and shells, the infamous ‘double hit’—where an area is bombed and then bombed again 10–15 minutes later when the rescue teams have arrived… An entire population is being starved, children in urgent need of rescue are being prevented from leaving, the sick are left to die for lack of care – virtually all hospitals have been destroyed – and this approach, directly inspired by Guernica and elsewhere in Lebanon, is being repeated, and it is starting in Syria too! The pretext is that they want to drive out Hezbollah and its missiles, fair enough, but these missiles have a range of several hundred kilometres and occupying 10 or 20 kilometres won’t change a thing… as for the balance of power, over 3,000 bombings in Lebanon, against 4 Hezbollah drones! No one can dispute that Israel is putting world peace on hold, wants to occupy the entire Middle East and is committing war crime after war crime. We are tired of citing all the sources and direct evidence of the massacres, the likes of which have never been seen in this century, committed by this army.
An Israeli historian of genocides, a professor at Tel Aviv University, states it loud and clear: ‘I know how to recognise genocides, and Gaza is one.’ Soon, with the possible vote in the National Assembly, if we were to say the same thing, we would be prosecuted for anti-Semitism (perhaps not the Jews, like the author of these lines…).
The Knesset votes (24 to 22 – Netanyahu’s party having ‘abstained’ so as not to upset the US king too much) to annex the West Bank, recognised by all countries as territory illegally occupied since 1947… The Yankee King announces that “he will never allow the Israelis to annex the West Bank”. His vice-president, on a visit to Israel, announces, ‘this vote is symbolic’. Frankly, if we’d wanted to be taken for fools, we couldn’t have done better; we miss Coluche – he would have found the words to describe this as ‘whiter than white’…
Yet Putin got the full brunt of the punishment, but not BIBI! The question is obvious: why? I think the answer lies in the fact that the West – Europe as well as the US – has committed acts of colonisation and massacres over the last few centuries all over the place. The French in North Africa, the Belgians in the Congo, the Germans in Namibia, the Americans pretty much everywhere, and the British, who remain the champions in terms of the number of countries they have subjugated. And ultimately, the Israelis’ ‘only fault’ is that they’re a bit behind the times, because ‘it’s a bit out of fashion’! What’s more, as the German Chancellor says, “they’re doing the dirty work for us”; by dirty work, we mean, of course, killing Arabs/Muslims, etc. In the West – whatever the media may say – anti-Semitism is far surpassed by anti-Arab racism (and racism against Black people is making a strong comeback). Ultimately, it’s a win-win operation: they strengthen the far right here, wage war over there on our behalf, and act as our aircraft carrier and forward military base in the Near and Middle East with the war in Iran.
All this under the pretext that it is a democracy – which is less and less true – and in the name of what does a democracy have the right to carry out massacres! I very much fear that the US president and his mentor Netanyahu are going to set us back decades on every front, or even indirectly cause a Third World War; the First was triggered for far less than that. It is time to stop these madmen, and especially Netanyahu, and finally impose a complete embargo on trade with that country, just as we did with South Africa in its day.
But clearly, the Europeans have not suffered enough humiliation. With the notable exception of Spain (and Slovenia and Ireland), which is showing us the way forward, and the brilliant Italians with their general strike and a million people on the streets – shame on France, incapable of doing the same with a ‘centre-right’ government, whereas over there it is the far right in power and Ms Meloni needs to go back to the drawing board!
The major countries, and especially France and Germany, accept everything and forbid any challenge to the agreements that outrageously favour Israel. We send our minister to Israel to try to secure some restraint in Lebanon; in response, they continue and intensify the bombings, and halt the purchase of French arms (so there were some). Netanyahu brushes Macron aside, and the government spokesperson loudly and clearly defends Israel’s decision to ban any Palestinian state, to occupy the entire West Bank, and to regard all institutions that criticise its policy as enemies. It is therefore understandable why no one believes in the West’s moral lessons about ‘human rights’ anymore.
Yet a wake-up call is crucial if we are to save our democracies, not to mention Israel, which, by relying solely on its own strength and that of the US, will one day be in danger of extinction, for brutality is not sufficient indefinitely.
P.S. The response from Ms. Kallas—the EU Commissioner for External Affairs—to criticism of the EU’s inaction at the European Parliament is worth noting: “Our position is clear, but we cannot take a stance because we do not know when the war will end”….. As anyone with a modicum of common sense would say, we know full well, “when all the Palestinians in Gaza are dead or have been sent elsewhere.”
