Unholiness reigns in the Holy Land, but its reign is faltering

Over the last fifteen months the world has watched in disbelief Israel’s horrifying military assault on the people of Gaza and its escalating use of force in the West Bank, Lebanon, and now Syria.

The inescapable question is: how do we explain this descent into barbarism? To begin to answer it, we must first put together several key pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, dreary and distasteful though the exercise may be.

The mounting human toll is indescribable. The latest figures released by the Health Ministry in Gaza indicate at least 45,129 people killed (including 17,492 children) and 107,338 wounded. Many thousands more are believed buried under the rubble.

UNRWA reports some 1.9 million displaced out of a population of 2.2 million, with some 380,000 displaced people currently sheltering in over 100 UNRWA school buildings across the Gaza strip. Shelter, however, remains illusory, as schools, hospitals and refugee camps come under relentless fire. And now we see the rising prospect of death through starvation and disease.

According to a report just published by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) “the signs of ethnic cleansing and the ongoing devastation – including mass killings, severe physical and mental health injuries, forced displacement, and impossible conditions of life for Palestinians under siege and bombardment – are undeniable.” All of which leads MSF to conclude that “genocide is taking place in Gaza.”

Nor has the West Bank been spared Israel’s unrelenting use of force. Between January 2023 and November 2024, Israeli attacks have resulted in close to 1,000 Palestinian fatalities and 16,000 injuries.

Following the escalation of hostilities with Hezbollah in September, Lebanon has been subjected to intensive bombardment and land incursions. As of early December, the death toll reached 4,000 Lebanese, with those injured numbering well over 16,600. With this has come mass displacement, destruction of entire villages, farmland and livestock and disruption of essential services, including healthcare facilities, water systems, and schools.

The fall of the Assad regime has provided the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) with the opportunity to launch hundreds of military strikes aimed at Syria’s strategic military assets. In violation of existing agreements, Israeli forces have moved into the demilitarized buffer zone between the Israel-occupied Golan Heights and the rest of Syria, occupying several villages.

It is, however, the exchange of fire with Iran that has brought the present conflict to new heights. On April 1, 2024, the IDF struck an Iranian consulate in Damascus, killing an Iranian commander and his deputy. Two weeks later, Iran retaliated by launching 300 missiles and drones towards Israel, many of which, but by no means all, were foiled by a US-led regional coalition.

Military hostilities continued with an explosion in Tehran which killed visiting Hamas leader Ismail Haniyyah. Weeks later Israel launched an air offensive into Lebanon killing Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Iran responded by firing some 180 ballistic missiles towards Israel. Then came a series of precise and targeted Israeli airstrikes on Iran’s air defence batteries and radar, missile and drone factories, and military launching sites.

How is this mayhem to be explained? What is it that has driven the State of Israel to unleash such a catastrophic use of firepower?

The official explanation offered by the Israeli political-military establishment is simple enough. Israel is exercising its right to defend itself in the wake of the Hamas attack on 7 October.

The actions of Hamas that led to the deaths of many Israelis and the taking of over 200 hostages were abominable, and those responsible had to be brought to account. But the events of 7 October offer no justification and certainly no explanation for what has ensued.

Why is it that Israel’s response has been so brutal, so lacking in humanity, seemingly incapable of distinguishing between civilian and military targets? Why has it lasted so long, spread far beyond the Palestinian territories to engulf Lebanon, Syria, and even Yemen and Iraq?

Another explanation on offer is that the Netanyahu government, dependent as it is on a precarious coalition that includes extremist elements with strong fascist tendencies, has been consumed by a lust for blood, a desire to wipe out the Palestinian adversary once and for all, and so bring the Zionist project to its final and irreversible conclusion.

There is something to be said for this explanation. Zionism was born historically as a reaction to the longstanding oppression and persecution endured by Jewish minorities in Europe. In this sense, Christian antisemitism has much to answer for.

But once it was given the all-clear by the imperial power, Britain, the Zionist project soon assumed a profile which, notwithstanding subtle variations over time, is best characterised as settler colonialism.

A report published by Amnesty International in February 2022 sets out how the State of Israel has over several decades built an Apartheid system of oppression and domination involving massive seizures of Palestinian land and property, unlawful killings, forcible transfer, drastic movement restrictions, and the denial of nationality and citizenship to Palestinians.

Perhaps, the Hamas attack generated a fear that this system of oppression was now under serious threat. Alternatively, the governing elite may have concluded that this was a never to be repeated opportunity not just to eliminate the Hamas virus once and for all, but to extinguish any prospect of Palestinian self-determination and the creation of a Palestinian state.

The historical context no doubt offers useful insights, but of itself is not an adequate or comprehensive explanation. There is a missing link, and that link is Iran.

The Israeli establishment has developed an obsessive fear of Iran, precisely because of its perceived capacity to support in military, political and other ways the many groups that are deeply hostile to the Zionist project, not least Hamas and Hezbollah.

It was therefore critically important to counter the Iranian threat, first by administering a crippling blow on Hamas and Hezbollah, which explains the savage forays into Gaza and Lebanon, but also on Syria’s military assets, given its longstanding connection with Iran. Much the same can be said for Israel’s hostility to Iraq and the Houthis in Yemen.

This said, Israel would not have been able to move as ferociously as it has without US support, which it has had in full measure throughout.

Why has the United States refused to apply any meaningful brakes on Israel’s military fury? Why has it continued to provide vital economic support and military protection, in the face of war crimes and plausibly the crime of genocide?

Because successive US administrations have regarded Israel as an irreplaceable asset in their determined effort to maintain geopolitical dominance in the Middle East, a region they consider to be of paramount economic and strategic importance. Iran stands as the principal threat to that objective, especially as it develops closer links with Russia, China and other members of the rapidly expanding BRICS bloc.

Here then was an unparallelled opportunity to use Israel as the proxy that would deliver the coup de grâce to Iran’s geopolitical ambitions and to the effectiveness of the axis of resistance.

At face value, it would appear that the imperial power and its sub-imperial protégé have triumphed. But not all is at it seems. In the course of the last fifteen months Israel has become a pariah state.

UN General Assembly resolutions, driven by an increasingly assertive Global South, have sharpened their denunciation of Israel’s conduct and by ever larger majorities. The UN Secretary-General and every relevant UN agency have condemned with unusual vigour Israel’s flouting of international law and the basic standards of civilised conduct.

To this must be added the adverse judgments of the International Court of Justice and the recent decision of the International Criminal Court to issue warrants of arrest for Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant.

Many US allies in Europe and elsewhere, including Australia, are increasingly uneasy with America’s unquestioning support of Israel and are now prepared to break ranks with the US when voting on UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions.

Especially telling has been the shift in public opinion in much of the Western world, where support for the Palestinian cause has gathered pace, and is steadily gaining prominence in university campuses and in the electoral arena.

The fluidity of Middle East and global politics is now on full display. So is the uncertainty that pervades the future of US politics.

Nothing that has happened since October 2023 is likely to enhance Israeli security. The State of Israel remains imprisoned in a decidedly hostile neighbourhood. As for Israel’s economy, it is already paying a high price for its skyrocketing defence expenditure.

The goal of Palestinian self-determination may seem distant, but the Zionist project is more fragile than many would care to think.

First published in Pearls and Irritations, 22 December 2024