The political class in the West has so many excuses for denying the Zionist genocide in Gaza. This is however contradicted by the facts
Neil Broatch is a writer and researcher. He has critiqued the reliance on pharmacological interventions in mental healthcare, and advocated for alternative approaches. He holds an MA in Philosophy.
There are dark clouds overhead, rivulets of water run slowly down the window, a puddle forms below. A soft white noise emanates from the roof, as the gutter pipe gurgles away.
Someone suggests it is raining.
“Hmm, I can’t say if it is. I haven’t concluded that it is.”
“Ah, so you’ve concluded it isn’t?”
“Look, I don’t have all the information. And it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to say, not until the meteorological office makes an announcement.”
“Yes, of course. I’ll say you don’t believe it’s raining.”
The philosopher G.E. Moore once raised the possibility of pairs of true statements, involving belief, that are not logically contradictory, but completely absurd to utter: “It’s raining. But I don’t think it is.” Wittgenstein found the idea fascinating and it became known as ‘Moore’s paradox’.
In respect of the daily atrocities, ethnic cleansing and apparent genocidal intent of the Israeli state, the British government’s official position has for some time been landed in this realm of paradoxical absurdity.
On Gaza, British officialdom’s response is baffling. Daily strikes on the Gazans are denounced by the recently departed foreign secretary David Lammy as “utterly appalling”. Whilst officially, he argues that the government can’t be sure it’s obligated to act to prevent them.
The foreign office has assessed that there might be a risk of F-35 components being used in serious violations of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) in Gaza. But this does not mean they are satisfied that continuing provision of the parts would enable such violations.
A cursory web search will bring up reports that F-35s have been used extensively in Gaza, and been linked to mass civilian fatalities.The Foreign Office, though, claims to be unaware of any links to specific violations.
According to ministers,these questions are too complicated and the government does not have access to all the relevant information:
“Determining whether violations of international humanitarian law have occurred in the conduct of hostilities, for example, depends upon detailed knowledge of the facts of the specific military operation, including the precise nature of the target, the methods used to attack, the attacking party’s knowledge at the time and the anticipated military advantage in launching that attack. This is information to which the Foreign Office does not readily have access.”
This newfound insistence on withholding judgment by the foreign office contrasts rather strongly with the positions its officials have taken on Russia’s conduct in the Ukraine war. Where throughout they have been much less equivocal, keenly condemning Russian actions as “egregious and unlawful”.
Despite there being a collaborative relationship between the British and Israeli militaries, the government protests it doesn’t have access to the detailed information, about the ‘state of knowledge’ and aims of particular military units, necessary to judge allegations of violations of IHL. One supposes then, that it must have had such specific information about the motives of particular Russian military units fighting in Ukraine?
One month after October 7th the Turkish news agency Anadolu presented data showing that one month of Israeli attacks on Gaza had resulted in more civilian fatalities than 20 months of intensive fighting between Russia and Ukraine. The situation in Gaza has only grown more dire and independent assessments more grave since then. Officials in Whitehall have though apparently developed selective attention.
The question of genocide has been carefully considered, they say, although they feel it is not a matter they should really have to consider.
“The government is not an international court. We have not – and could not – arbitrate on whether or not Israel has breached international law.”
Accordingly, the UK is said to have “not concluded” that Israelis committing genocide in Gaza. Headline writers would quickly parse this into a conclusion that Israel is not committing genocide.
This flies in the face of findings by leading scholars on genocide and even Israeli human rights NGOs, that the “calculated and systematic” character of the attacks amount to genocide.
The work of Donald Bloxham emphasizes that mass slaughter, as the culmination of a genocide, is typically normalized by preceding stages, such as legal discrimination, economic dispossession, cultural and institutional erasure, and population displacements or deportations. If it is not a genocide, then what has been happening to Gaza has a lot in common with one.
Those who developed the concept of ‘genocide’ saw it as planned, systematic and arising within a historical process where political, social and ideological forces shape events, rather than being due simply to ‘the wicked intentions of evil men.’
As Iris Chang concluded in her 1997 book on the Rape of Nanking, one of the worst crimes of the 20th century, it was:
“less a product of dangerous people than of a dangerous government, in a vulnerable culture, in dangerous times, able to sell dangerous rationalizations to those whose human instincts told them otherwise.”
And:
“an illustration of how easily human beings can be encouraged to allow their teenagers to be molded into efficient killing machines able to suppress their better natures.”
Chang also pointed to the absolute power of Japan’s rulers. Agreeing with RJ Rummel that the less restraints within or upon a government, the more likely that its leaders will act on their ‘darker impulses’
Israeli society and culture certainly has vulnerable aspects, and in dangerous times – being in a protracted political crisis long before October 7. Whilst its leaders appear not to shrink from their ‘darker impulses’, even at the cost of traumatizing their own people.
Bloxham’s work underlined that genocides, even when stemming from exclusionary nationalism, are not isolated or purely domestic events, but conditioned by geopolitical factors, often arising during wars or imperial crises. As processes, they must be understood as transnational in their origins and character.
And it is the transnational context; its place among hegemonic powers, that really enables Israel’s leaders to exercise their worst.
Their aggression is of a piece with reckless western neo-colonialist projects for the region. Israel’s patrons in Washington, London, and the EU are invested alongside it – their spearhead – in its expansive aims and their divide and rule plans for fragmented, compromised and compliant polities across a ‘new middle-east’. Their military and security sectors have acted in tandem with it; against Iran, Yemen, in Lebanon and Syria.They will not risk hobbling their strategic partner, even as it shames them.
Legalistic disputation over the semantics terms like ‘risk’, ‘might’ or ‘would’ from evasive officials reflects this. An attempt to profess sticking to the letter of the law, contrary to their human instincts.
‘It’s utterly appalling, but we don’t think it is.’
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