Israel-Palestine issue: Governments and media insult citizens’ intelligence
Readers may remember an incident at the 2011 G20 summit that took place in the French city of Cannes. The then US President Barack Obama and his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy were having an informal conversation in between summit sessions. They were sharing with each other their unflattering, under-the-skin opinions about Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister then and now.
Sarkozy said: "I cannot stand [Benjamin Netanyahu]. He's a liar." Obama didn't conceal his exasperated frustration of the Israeli politician and replied: "You're fed up with him; what about me? I have to deal with him every day."
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. It was reported that Obama and Sarkozy didn't realise that microphones readied for a press conference were actually on. As a result, journalists heard the private conversation. According to the British newspaper The Guardian (November 8, 2011), "The exchange was first reported on the French website Arrêt Sur Images [Freeze Frames], and was later confirmed by a Reuters reporter who also heard the remarks."
As stated in CNN (November 8, 2011), the Israeli politician Einat Wilf, an ally of Netanyahu, said in response to the two presidents' negative remarks about her prime minister: "I'm sure it would be nicer to know that our prime minister is loved. But at the end of the day, what did Machiavelli say? It's more important to be feared than loved."
Conversely, Israel's Labour Party politician Daniel Ben-Simon was "ashamed" and responded: "If the most friendly leaders say that about my prime minister, what do others say about him who are not as friendly?... If he lies to them, he must be lying to Israelis as well."
The entire episode and its threadbare analysis tell us about the nature of Israel's (Machiavellian) political philosophy. Thanks to media reports, we are better informed about the behind-closed-doors secrets and Western leaders' views of Netanyahu and the state of Israel.
In all likelihood, Sarkozy and Obama are not alone in their disgust at Israel's prime minister. Other leaders may feel a similar revulsion towards Natenyahu even though they apparently praise, and show solidarity with, him in public. One Western leader once caused laughter by regarding Netanyahu as "a man of peace, a friend".
We do not have many opportunities to hear unalloyed, politically "incorrect" truths – as expressed by Sarkozy and Obama – about Israeli leaders like Netanyahu. Even if such private conversations are not revealed, conscientious citizens of Israel, western countries and beyond detest Israel's colonialist policies and programmes of ongoing usurpation, occupation, dispossession, displacement, erasure and wanton slaughter of Palestinians. All these show the cowardice and moral bankruptcy of the country's political and military establishment.
Thoughtful citizens of the world may not be shocked to learn the naked truths elicited from the mouths of Sarkozy and Obama. What shocks them is the unqualified support such leaders offer to Israel and its unambiguous apartheid policies.
Since Hamas's surprise attacks on Israeli targets on October 7, Israel has been bombarding Palestinian houses, schools, hospitals and UN buildings indiscriminately. Because of Israel's scorched earth campaign, thousands of Palestinian men, women and children are being killed and many thousands are injured.
According to Save the Children, as reported in Aljazeera, from October 7 to 29, Israel killed "at least 3,324 children" in Gaza and 36 children in the West Bank in addition to many thousands of innocent men and women. As I am writing this essay, Israel's horrific butchery and genocidal carnage of Palestinians continue with abandon and impunity.
Donald J Moore of New York's Fordham University states in an essay titled "Heschel on Israel" (Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, Fall 2007, Vol 26, No 1, pp 112–129):
"Any policy of the occupying power that infringes on the rights of the occupied people or that changes the status of the occupied territory is forbidden by international law as established under the Geneva Convention. Also according to that same Convention no person can be punished for an offense that he or she has not personally committed. Collective punishments and any measures of intimidation are prohibited" (p. 120).
Some politicians and sections of the media do not talk about Israel's genocidal killings of Palestinians who had nothing to do with Hamas's surprise attacks. Thus, they insult our intelligence and attempt to fool us through campaigns of media disinformation, distortion, distraction and manipulation. We also know of governments that show apparent sympathy to Palestinians but maintain underhand collaboration with Israel and buy its surveillance technology to tyrannise citizens.
Even though Hamas's October 7 attacks were dastardly and condemnable, how can supporters of Israel continue showing solidarity with the apartheid state and turning a blind eye to the disproportionately greater suffering of Palestinians? Do they believe that their visits to Tel Aviv, hugging the Israeli leader and terming October 7 as Israel's darkest day will make us forget about Israel's war crimes and crimes against humanity now and for so many decades?
Israel and its allies continue harping on the term terrorism and want us to believe that Palestinians who resist the illegal Israeli occupation and cruelty are terrorists and that the occupiers and their supporters are civilised and people of peace. They regurgitate the terms "terrorism" and "terrorists" when referring to Palestinians. Their monotonous pronouncements and lack of variety jar on our ears. Through their shameless repetitions they want to imply that we the citizens of the world do not understand the difference between terrorism and fighting for freedom.
In 2006 during my PhD years at Portsmouth in the UK, I attended two workshops at Royal Holloway and Southampton universities. Thanks to one of my PhD supervisors, I was privileged to join an exclusive group that included established scholars of postcolonial studies. The workshop participants discussed the content of what later became Elleke Boehmer's and Stephen Morton's edited book Terror and the Postcolonial: A Concise Companion (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009). We mulled over how during the colonial period anticolonial fighters were routinely branded as terrorists.
In "Postcolonial terrorist: The example of Nelson Mandela" (2005), Elleke Boehmer maintains:
"Indeed, especially since the publication of Fanon's influential The Wretched of the Earth (1961) which crucially urged an intensification of anti-colonial struggle beyond the Gandhian passive resistance of 1920–50, terror, or terroristic agitation, has been seen by a number of postcolonial critics as inherent to the anti-colonial condition" (p. 46).
Boehmer adds:
"Such questions assume a particular pertinence when refracted through the complex, iconic political legacy of the anti-apartheid, 'rainbow-nation' warrior, Nelson Mandela. In the 1980s, Mandela was, of course, widely branded a terrorist by western world leaders like Reagan, Thatcher and Dick Cheney for his 1950s and 60s endorsement of political violence" (p. 46).
Mandela and those who accused him of terrorism lived in the full light of history. We now know the beauty of Mandela's character – his greater moral height never abandoned him. He will continue to dwarf his detractors in importance and prestige. Equally, further down the line of history, Palestinian freedom fighters will be remembered with respect, admiration, warmth and enduring affection. History will rightly treat Israeli occupiers and their backers, as it did earlier colonial segregationists and apartheid ideologues.
Until then, victory for justice and freedom movements!
Dr Md Mahmudul Hasan is Professor of English at International Islamic University Malaysia. He edits the Scopus-indexed journal Asiatic.
Comments