On the first anniversary of the cross-border incursion on 7 October 2023 and the start of Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza, all that the UN can boast of can be summed up in one word: complicity. Western countries have either provided Israel with weapons or endorsed the genocide by reiterating Israel’s fabricated security and “self-defence” narrative. If a colonial, occupying entity has the “right to self-defence”, what about the people under occupation? According to the West and the UN, the colonised Palestinian people deserve genocide punctured by rare humanitarian pauses after which Israel is free to kill thousands more.
Netanyahu’s speech at the UN General Assembly blamed the Lebanese for Hezbollah’s existence; he invented stories about missiles and rockets in garages and kitchens – just one missile in each room – which is preposterous. Next, Lebanon is being bombarded by Israel and the Lebanese are blamed for Israel’s aggression, because according to Netanyahu, it is the Lebanese people who can end this new genocide, when the reality is that only Israel and its accomplices in the West are responsible for doing this.
Netanyahu doesn’t employ impenetrable rhetoric, he just lies. And this is apparently acceptable to the UN and the West’s “moral standards”.
For Israel to exist, genocide must be committed, insist Netanyahu and the allies of the settler-colonial, apartheid state. Having basically endorsed Israel’s “right” to commit genocide, is it possible for Western leaders to sink any lower?
I would add, that they don’t only claim and propagate the self-defense narrative, but also the dehumanization of Arabs/Muslim which is necessary for genocide and combine it with another propaganda technique called Accusation in a mirror, whereby you accuse the other of what you are already guilty of or intend to do. Which makes self-defense and genocide almost a necessity. Analyzing other genocides, this technique was also employed in the Armenian and Rwandan genocides as well as by the Nazis. In the Palestinian/Lebanese case it has been done for decades but was really ramped up after the Al-Aqsa Flood operation. From 40 beheaded oven babies and systemic rape as a weapon, to seeing every civilian as a combatant, these debunked claims serve only to further demonize and dehumanize the civilian populations and in the same breath make it necessary to kill them. And when checked, there’s a story of a beheaded Lebanese baby in the 1980s, beheaded babies in Gaza, rape in prison camps with electrified metal rods and compulsory military service for almost everyone young in Israel. Who knows what else there is, since journalists were and are targeted and the health ministry doesn’t exist anymore in any real sense.
Because this didn’t just start a year ago and combined with a sense of entitlement through god (Jewish superiority and god given right to the land which is necessary for Apartheid) as well as the past trauma of genocide against themselves and re-traumatization in everyday life, the rhetoric doesn’t have to be impenetrable.
If it wasn’t clear after the crimes in Syria, Lybia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Cuba, Cambodia, Vietnam and oh so many more back to WWII where the modern U.N. was established, international law serves predominantly as a weapon to the hegemonic powers to further their interests. The General Assembly is powerless, the courts are ignored and threatened, U.N. peacekeepers, aid workers and doctors can be attacked and slaughtered without repercussions. And the security council is also impotent. As can be seen in the case of Russia, the West has established other means to put political pressure through economic sanctions outside of the U.N. structure. As could be seen in Iraq even offensive military invasions don’t require the U.N. as long as you have the weapons and economic power. This isn’t to say that the U.N. and international law have no effect at all. Just that they certainly aren’t what they are made out to be and the myth of international law and human rights, which are only selectively applied defeat the whole purpose of a right or laws and makes them a privilege and injustice.
Speaking on the moral values that underlie all of this would really go beyond the scope of a forum post and I would argue, that I’ve already bored and depressed people enough already with this text.