“When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.” Thomas Jefferson
“Israel has the right to defend itself.” This phrase has become the fail-safe incantation of leaders and politicians in the Western world whenever faced with a conflict between Israel and the Palestinian people under its occupation. President Biden reached for this phraseology – whose inanity is evident to all save Western leaders and politicians – to ground his statement on the current round of military clashes between the duo.
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Who then is the enemy that Israel has the right to defend itself against? It made peace with Egypt long ago, forced one on Jordan, Arab minions were dragged to Washington to embrace “the only democracy” in the region in former president Donald Trump’s infantile Abraham Accords while Syria is fractured.
So, the only possible enemy is the Palestinian people in the Occupied Territories who, to put it mildly, oppose Israeli policies towards them. Decades before Minneapolis City policeman, Derek Chauvin gained international infamy, the State of Israel has been kneeling on the necks of the Palestinians: current population around 5.10million (cf Israel’s 9.29m). Land annexation and confiscation, property and natural resources (water) seizures, deportations, confinement to ghettos and Bantustanisation have been their lot since Israel captured the West Bank and the Gaza Strip fifty-four years ago. Gaza is a prime example: a 365sq miles open prison housing two million Palestinians where only the air is free from Israeli control. Ditto the West Bank. Former president Jimmy Carter long ago likened the situation to apartheid. Only the Japanese occupation of the Korean peninsula comes close in obnoxiousness.
As the saying goes, even a worm will turn. This then is the background to the frequent uprisings by Palestinians against Israeli occupation and oppression.
Israeli faces no military threat in its neighbourhood of the Middle East. America and other Western countries have ensured that; the United States especially plying the country with an array of military hardware, some of which may not even be in service with its own military.
Israel’s continuing stranglehold on the Occupied Territories is not driven by security concerns but by a revanchist ideology, which commits to achieving the dream of a Jewish country from the Mediterranean to the shores of the Jordan River. Israel has thus been a coloniser for almost as long as it has been independent. All attempts to achieve peace between Palestinians and Israel have foundered on this account – Israeli acquisition of territory by force. Worse, at all times the United States and Western Europe prioritise Israeli security over Palestinian freedom and liberty.
The current Israeli onslaught against Palestinians in Gaza will not move the West to acknowledge Palestinian right to freedom and the right to strive for it. That’s the world’s greatest tragedy since the end of the Second World War, which has been allowed to carry well into the 21st century.
Muhammad T Usman can be reached via [email protected]
