Alain Gresh and Sarra Grira, Orient XXI, 30/9/2024
Translated by Fausto
Giudice, Tlaxcala
Alain Gresh (Cairo 1948) is a French journalist
specialising in the Mashreq region and director of the OrientXXI website.
Sarra Grira is a doctor in French literature and
civilisation, with a thesis entitled Roman autobiographique et engagement:
une antinomie? (XXe siècle), and is editor-in-chief of OrientXXI.
How far will Tel Aviv go? Not content with reducing
Gaza to a field of ruins and committing genocide, Israel is extending its operations to neighbouring Lebanon, using
the same methods, the same massacres and the same destruction, convinced of
the unfailing support of its Western backers who have become direct
accomplices in its actions.
The number of Lebanese killed in the bombardments
has exceeded 1,640, and the Israeli ‘exploits’ have multiplied. Inaugurated
by the episode of the pagers, which caused many Western commentators to swoon
over the ‘technological feat’. Too bad for the victims, killed, disfigured, blinded, amputated, written off. It will be
repeated ad nauseam that, after all, it was just Hezbollah, a ‘humiliation’,
an organisation that, let's not forget, France does not consider to be a
terrorist organisation. As if the explosions had not affected the whole of
society, killing militiamen and civilians alike. Yet the use of booby-traps
is a violation of the laws of war, as several specialists and humanitarian
organisations have pointed out [1].
The summary assassinations of Hezbollah leaders,
including that of its Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, each time
accompanied by numerous ‘collateral victims’, do not even cause a scandal.
Netanyahu's latest thumbing of his nose at the UN was to give the go-ahead
for the bombing of the Lebanese capital at the organisation's own
headquarters.
In Gaza and the rest of the occupied Palestinian
territories, the members of the UN Security Council are ignoring the opinions
of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) more and more every day. The
International Criminal Court (ICC) is delaying issuing a warrant against
Benyamin Netanyahu, even though its prosecutor reports pressure ‘from
world leaders’ and other parties, including himself and his family[2]. Have we heard Joe
Biden, Emmanuel Macron or Olaf Scholz protest against these practices?
For almost a year now, a handful of voices - who
would almost seem to be the village fools - have been denouncing Israeli
impunity, encouraged by Western inaction. Such a war would never have been
possible without the airlift of USAmerican - and to a lesser extent European
- weapons, and without the diplomatic and political cover of Western
countries. France, if it wanted to, could take measures that would really hit
Israel, but it is still refusing to suspend the arms export licences it has
granted. It could also lobby the European Union, with countries like Spain,
to suspend the association agreement with Israel. It is not doing so.
The never-ending Palestinian Nakba and the
accelerating destruction of Lebanon are not only Israeli crimes, but also
Western crimes for which Washington, Paris and Berlin bear direct
responsibility. Far from the posturing and theatrics of the UN General Assembly
over the last few days, let's not be fooled by Joe Biden's anger or Emmanuel
Macron's pious hopes for the ‘protection of civilians’, who has never
missed an opportunity to show his unwavering support for Benyamin Netanyahu's
extreme right-wing government. Let's not even forget the number of diplomats
who left the UN General Assembly hall when the Israeli Prime Minister took
the floor, in a gesture that had more to do with catharsis than politics. For
while some Western countries bear primary responsibility for Israel's crimes,
others, such as Russia and China, have taken no action to put an end to this
war, whose scope is expanding daily, spilling over into Yemen today and
perhaps Iran tomorrow.
This war is plunging us into a dark age in which the
laws, the law, the safeguards, everything that would prevent humanity from
sinking into barbarism, are being methodically torn down. An era in which one
side has decided to put the other side to death, judging it to be ‘barbaric’.
‘Savage enemies‘, in Netanyahu's words, who threaten ’Judeo-Christian
civilisation’. The Prime Minister is seeking to drag the West into a war
of civilisation with religious overtones, in which Israel sees itself as the
outpost in the Middle East. With undoubted success.
Through the arms and munitions they continue to
supply to Israel, through their unwavering support for a spurious ‘right to self-defence’, through their rejection of the Palestinians' right to
self-determination and to resist an occupation that the ICJ has declared
illegal and ordered to be halted - a decision that the UN Security Council
refuses to implement - these countries bear responsibility for Israel's
hubris. As members of such prestigious institutions as the UN Security
Council and the G7, the governments of these states endorse the law of the
jungle imposed by Israel and the logic of collective punishment. This logic
was already at work in Afghanistan in 2001 and in Iraq in 2003, with familiar
results. Back in 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon, occupied the south, laid siege
to Beirut and oversaw the massacres in the Palestinian camps of Sabra and
Shatila. It was this macabre ‘victory’ that led to the rise of Hezbollah,
just as Israel's policy of occupation led to 7 October. Because the logic of
war and colonialism can never lead to peace and security.
