A genocide is under way — but it’s not in Gaza
Accusing Israel of trying to annihilate the Palestinian people is a luxury belief. Liberals should call out Hamas and Russia instead of carping about Zelensky
Which do you care more about — victory, or your own moral superiority? Which do you prefer — defeating our foes, or your own home comforts? There are wars raging today. Two democracies — imperfect, no doubt, but free societies by comparison with their foes — are battling two allied tyrannies. Defeat for Israel and Ukraine would mean obliteration, extinction.
For the US and the UK, and indeed for the EU, the destruction of Israel and Ukraine would be more than inconveniences. Such outcomes would significantly worsen the West’s strategic position and strengthen that of the axis of authoritarians: China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.
And yet our support for these two democracies is at best equivocal and at worst hypocritical. Twenty-two months after the slaughter of the innocents by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, murderous appendages of the Islamic Republic of Iran, western liberals join the Iranians and the apologists for Hamas by sanctimoniously and erroneously accusing Israel of genocide.
To add insult to injury, the governments of France, Britain and Canada announce their intention — unconditional in the French case — to recognise a Palestinian state when the UN general assembly convenes in September.
Not content with passing this judgment on the government of the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, they then turn their pious scrutiny to that of President Volodymyr Zelensky, accusing him of being insufficiently tough on corruption — even while western companies continue to profit from their commerce with the vastly more corrupt fascist regime of President Putin, and while the continued flow of western arms to Ukraine depends on internecine wrangles between government departments in Washington.
These sentiments can be summed up together under one heading: the new defeatism. They are the moral posturing of politicians and publicists more concerned with flaunting their own confused ethics than with helping the democracies to beat the authoritarians.
The phrase “luxury beliefs” was coined by the brilliant young psychologist Rob Henderson to sum up the more preposterous ideas that progressives can afford to hold — “Defund the police!” “Open borders!” “Men can become women!” — because they are largely sheltered from the consequences when such ideas are put into practice.
Accusing Israel of genocide and recognising a non-existent state are the luxury beliefs of western foreign policy, elicited in response to misleading photographs on front pages and fake fatality statistics, and utterly divorced from strategic reality.
To read the rest of this essay for The Times, go to: https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/a-genocide-is-under-way-but-its-not-in-gaza-pkgl7vh8h
Excellent analysis and so true. Here's one more thing that lays bare Hamas. They are more willing to let 2 million Gazans suffer (through violence, extortion, controlling the supply of food) rather than surrender 50 or so Israelis, of which only 20 or so are alive.
Meanwhile the media ignores the actual genocide being perpetrated by the PRC against the Uighurs, the actual famine that is occurring in Sudan, the persecution in Iran of women (and Afghanistan too). All to focus on Israel.
Yes of course Israel's strategy to end the war is problematic as marginal returns for their effort are very low and its hard to see how this will ever end without some kind of compromise. But just like the Palestinians have never accepted any offer from Israel for peace, it is also unrealistic to think that Hamas or the Palestinians will ever accept a compromise. There have been too many decades of propaganda glorifying martyrdom. And the suffering of the people of Gaza and media complicity are the only weapons Hamas has left.
Golda Meir's words were so true. This will never end until the Palestinians love their children more than they hate the Israelis.
Spot on about Israel.
As for the Ukraine, it is turning into a horrible calamity if not a civilizational genocide. The culprit though in starting this war is not Russia alone. It was the Neocons and Joe Biden who insisted on expanding NATO, Russia's Red Line, and refusing to negotiate peace proposed by Russia three times including right after the Invasion. Proposals we would jump at now. We knew. A million Russians are casualties and counting. A reported five hundred thousand Ukrainians too. The Ukrainian population has collapsed from over 41 million in 2022 to fewer than 30 million according to some reports. There are no good actors here. The Genocide then is on both sides but look in the mirror and you will see we and Forever War Joe ignited it with Zelinsky's willing participation. Maybe we thought over a million dead and wounded was worth a small genocide in return for Empire?