This is extraordinary because the states
supporting Israel, above all the United States, have claimed the high
moral and legal ground and lectured the states of the Global South about
the importance of the rule of law.
Richard Falk, Common Dreams, Jan 17, 2024
Recall Samuel Huntington’s controversial, yet influential, 1993 Foreign Affairs
article, “The Clash of Civilizations,” which ends with the provocative
phrase, “The West against the rest.” Although the article seemed
far-fetched 30 years ago, it now seems prophetic in its discernment of a
post-Cold War pattern of inter-civilizational rivalry. It is rather
pronounced in relation to the heightened Israel/Palestine conflict
initiated by the October 7 Hamas attack on Israeli territory with the
killing and abusing of Israeli civilians and IDF soldiers, as well as
the seizure of some 200 hostages.
Clearly this attack has been accompanied by some suspicious
circumstances such as Israel’s foreknowledge, slow reaction time to the
penetration of its borders, and, perhaps most problematic, the quickness
with which Israeli adopted a genocidal approach with a clear ethnic
cleansing message. At the very least the Hamas attack, itself including
serious war crimes, served almost too conveniently as the needed pretext
for the 100 days of disproportionate and indiscriminate violence,
sadistic atrocities, and the enactment of a scenario that looked toward
making Gaza unlivable and its Palestinian residents dispossessed and
unwanted.
Despite the transparency of the Israeli tactics, partly attributable
to ongoing TV coverage of the devastating and heartbreaking Palestinian
ordeal, what was notable was the way external state actors aligned with
the antagonists. The Global West (white settler colonial states and
former European colonial powers) lined up with Israel, while the most
active pro-Palestinian governments and movements were initially
exclusively Muslim, with support coming more broadly from the Global
South. This racialization of alignments seems to take precedence over
efforts to regulate violence of this intensity by the norms and
procedures of international law, often mediated through the United
Nations.
Liberal democracies failed not only by their refusal to make active
efforts to prevent genocide, which is a central obligation of the
Genocide Convention, but more brazenly by openly facilitating the
continuation of the genocidal onslaught.
This pattern is quite extraordinary because the states supporting
Israel, above all the United States, have claimed the high moral and
legal ground for themselves and have long lectured the states of the
Global South about the importance of the rule of law, human rights, and
respect for international law. This is instead of urging compliance with
international law and morality by both sides in the face of the most
transparent genocide in all of human history. In the numerous pre-Gaza
genocides, the existential horrors that occurred were largely known
after the fact and through statistics and abstractions, occasionally
vivified by the tales told by survivors. The events, although
historically reconstructed, were not as immediately real as these events
in Gaza with the daily reports from journalists on the scene for more
than three months.
Liberal democracies failed not only by their refusal to make active
efforts to prevent genocide, which is a central obligation of the
Genocide Convention, but more brazenly by openly facilitating
continuation of the genocidal onslaught. Israel’s frontline supporters
have contributed weapons and munitions, as well as providing
intelligence and assurance of active engagement by ground forces if
requested, as well as providing diplomatic support at the U.N. and
elsewhere throughout this crisis.
These performative elements that describe Israel’s recourse to
genocide are undeniable, while the complicity crimes enabling Israel to
continue with genocide remain indistinct, being situated in the
shadowland of genocide. For instance, the complicity crimes are noted
but remain on the periphery of South Africa’s laudable application to
the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that includes a request for
Provisional Measures crafted to stop the genocide pending a decision on
the substance of the charges of genocide. The evidence of genocide is
overwhelmingly documented in the 84-page South African submission,
but the failure to address the organic link to the crimes of complicity
is a weakness that could be reflected in what the court decides.
Even if the ICJ does impose these Provisional Measures, including
ordering Israel to desist from further violence in Gaza, it may not
achieve the desired result, at least not before the substantive decision
is reached some three to five years from now. It seems unlikely that
Israel will obey Provisional Measures. It has a record of consistently
defying international law. It is likely that a favorable decision on
these preliminary matters will give rise to a crisis of implementation.
The law is persuasively present, but the political will to enforce is
lacking or even resistant, as here in certain parts of the Global West.
The degree to which the U.S. has supplied weaponry with U.S. taxpayer
money would be an important supplement to rethinking the U.S.
relationship to Israel that is so important and which is underway among
the American people—even in the Washington think tanks that the foreign
policy elites fund and rely upon. Proposing an arms embargo would be
accepted as a timely and appropriate initiative in many sectors of U.S.
public opinion. I hope that such proposals may be brought before the
General Assembly and perhaps the Security Council. Even if not formally
endorsed, such initiatives would have considerable symbolic and possibly
even substantive impacts on further delegitimizing Israel’s behavior.
A third specific initiative worth carefully considering would be
timely establishment of a People’s Tribunal on the Question of Genocide
initiated by global persons of conscience. Such tribunals were
established in relation to many issues that the formal governance
structures failed to address in satisfactory ways. Important examples
are the Russell Tribunal convened in 1965-66 to assess legal
responsibilities of the U.S. in the Vietnam War and the Iraq War
Tribunal of 2005 in response to the U.S. and U.K. attack and occupation
of Iraq commencing in 2003.
Such a tribunal on Gaza could clarify and document what happened on
and subsequently to October 7. By taking testimony of witnesses, it
could provide an opportunity for the people of the world to speak and to
feel represented in ways that governments and international procedures
are unable to given their entanglement with geopolitical hegemony in
relation to international criminal law and structures of global
governance.
The South African World Court Case, Pariah State, and Popular Mobilization
The South African initiative is important as a welcome effort to
enlist international law and procedures for its assessment and authority
in a context of severe alleged criminality. If the ICJ, the highest
tribunal on a supranational level, responds favorably to South Africa’s
highly reasonable and morally imperative request for Provisional
Measures to stop the ongoing Gaza onslaught, it will increase pressure
on Israel and its supporters to comply. And if Israel refuses to do so,
it will escalate pro-Palestinian solidarity efforts throughout the world
and cast Israel into the darkest regions of pariah statehood.
In such an atmosphere, nonviolent activism and pressure for the
imposition of an arms embargo and trade boycotts as well as sports,
culture, and touristic boycotts will become more viable policy options.
This approach by way of civil society activism proved very effective in
the Euro-American peace efforts during the Vietnam War and in the
struggle against apartheid South Africa, and elsewhere.
Israel is becoming a pariah state due to its behavior and defiance
exhibited toward legal and moral norms. It has made itself notorious by
its outrageously forthright acknowledgement of genocidal intent with
respect to Palestinian civilians whom they are under a special
obligation to protect as the occupying power.
We know what we should be doing.to make amends, yet well-entrenched
special interests preclude such rational adjustments, and the military
malfunctions and accompanying geopolitical alignments persist, ignoring
costly failures along the way.
Being a pariah country or rogue state makes Israel politically and
economically vulnerable as never before. At this moment, a mobilized
civil society can contribute to producing a new balance of forces in the
world that has the potential to neutralize Western post-colonial
imperial geopolitics.
It is also relevant to take note of the startling fact that the
anti-colonial wars of the last century were in the end won by the weaker
side militarily. This is an important lesson, as is the realization
that anti-colonial struggle does not end with the attainment of
political independence. It needs to continue to achieve control of
national security and economic resources as the recent anti-French coups
in former French colonies in sub-Saharan Africa illustrate.
In the 21st century weapons alone rarely control political outcomes.
The U.S. should have learned this decades ago in Vietnam, having
controlled the battlefield and dominated the military dimensions of the
war, and yet having failed to achieve control over its political
outcome.
The U.S. is disabled from learning lessons from such defeats. Such
learning would weaken the leverage of the military-industrial-government
complex, including the private sector arms industry. This would subvert
the domestic balance in the U.S. and substantially discredit the global
geopolitical role being played by the U.S. throughout the entire world.
So, it is a dilemma. We know what we should be doing to make amends,
yet well-entrenched special interests preclude such rational
adjustments, and the military malfunctions and accompanying geopolitical
alignments persist, ignoring costly failures along the way.
We know what should be done, but do not have the political clout to
get it done. But global public opinion is shifting, and demonstrations
globally are building opposition to continuing the war.
Iran
There is a huge U.S./Israel propaganda effort to tie Iran to
everything that is regarded as anti-West or anti-Israeli. It has
intensified during this crisis, starting with the October 7 attack by
Iran’s supposed proxy Hamas. You notice even the most influential
mainstream print media as TheNew York Times routinely
refers to what Hezbollah or the Houthis do as “Iran-backed.” Such actors
are reduced misleadingly to being proxies of Iran.
This way of denying agency to pro-Palestinian actors and attributing
behavior to Iran is a matter of state propaganda trying to promote
belligerent attitudes toward Iran to the effect that Iran is our major
enemy in the region, while Israel is our loyal friend. At the same time,
it suppresses the reality that If Iran is backing countries and
political movements, it obscures what the U.S. is doing more overtly and
multiple times over.
It is largely unknown what Iran has been doing in the region to
protect its interests. Without doubt, Iran has strong sympathies with
the Palestinian struggle. Those sympathies coincide with its own
political self interest in not being attacked and minimizing the U.S.
role in the region. Additionally, Iran has lots of problems arising from
opposition forces within its own society.
But I think dangerous state propaganda is building up this hostility
toward Iran. It is highly misleading to regard Iran as the real enemy
standing behind all anti-Israeli actions in the region. It is important
to understand as accurately as possible the complexity and unknown
elements present in this crisis situation that contains dangers of wider
war in the region and beyond. As far as is publicly known, Iran has had
an extremely limited degree of involvement in the direct shaping of the
war and Israel’s all-out attack on the civilian population of Gaza.
Hamas and a Second Nakba
While I was special rapporteur for the U.N. on Israeli violations of
human rights and international humanitarian law, I had the opportunity
to meet and talk in detail with several of the Hamas leaders who are
living either in Doha or Cairo and also in Gaza. In the period between
2010 and 2014, Hamas was publicly and by back channels pushing for a
50-year cease-fire with Israel. It was conditioned on Israel carrying
out the unanimous 1967 Security Council mandate in SC Res 242 to
withdraw its forces to the pre-war boundaries of “the green line.” Hamas
had also sought a long-range cease-fire with Israel after its 2006
electoral victory for up to 50 years.
Neither Israel nor the U.S. would respond to those diplomatic
initiatives. Hamas, Machel particularly who was perhaps the most
intellectual of the Hamas leaders, told me that he warned Washington of
the tragic consequences for both peoples if the conflict was allowed to
go on without a cease-fire, which was confirmed by independent sources.
Where can Palestinians go as the population suffers from famine and continued bombing? What is Israel’s goal?
All indications are that Israel used the October 7 attack as a
pretext for the preexisting master plan to get rid of the Palestinians
whose presence blocks the establishment of Greater Israel with sovereign
control over the West Bank and at least portions of Gaza.
I see the so-called commitment to thinning the Palestinian presence
in Gaza and to a functional second Nakba. This is a criminal policy. I
don’t know that it has to have a formal name. It is not a policy
designed to achieve anything but the decapitation of the Palestinian
population. Israel seeks to move Gazans to the Egyptian Sinai, and the
Egyptians have already indicated that they don’t welcome this.
This is not a policy. This is some kind of a threat of elimination.
The Israeli campaign after October 7 was not directed toward Hamas’
terrorism nearly as much as it was directed toward the forced evacuation
of the Palestinians from Gaza and for the related dispossession of
Palestine in the West Bank.
If Israel really wanted to deal with its security in an effective
way, much more efficient and effective methods would have been relied
upon. There was no reason to treat the entire civilian population of
Gaza as if it were implicated in the Hamas attack, and there was
certainly no justification for the genocidal response. The Israeli
motivations seem more related to completing the Zionist Project than to
restoring territorial security. All indications are that Israel used the
October 7 attack as a pretext for the preexisting master plan to get
rid of the Palestinians whose presence blocks the establishment of
Greater Israel with sovereign control over the West Bank and at least
portions of Gaza.
For a proper perspective we should remember that before October 7,
the Netanyahu coalition government that took power at the start of 2023
was known as the most extreme government ever to govern the country
since its establishment in 1948. The new Netanyahu government in Israel
immediately gave a green light to settler violence in the Occupied West
Bank and appointed overtly racist religious leaders to administer the
parts of Palestine still occupied.
This was part of the end game of the whole Zionist project of
claiming territorial sovereignty over the whole of the so-called
promised land, enabling Greater Israel to come into existence.
The Need for a Different Context
We need to establish a different context than the one that exists
now. That means a different outlook on the part of the Western
supporters of Israel. And a different internal Israeli sense of their
own interests, their own future. And it’s only when substantive pressure
is brought to bear on an elite that has gone to these lengths that it
can shake commitments to this orientation.
The lengths that the Israeli government has gone to are
characteristic of settler colonial states. All of them, including the
U.S. and Canada, have acted violently to neutralize or exterminate the
resident Indigenous people. That is what this genocidal interlude is all
about. It is an effort to realize the goals of maximal versions of
Zionism, which can only succeed by eliminating the Palestinians as
rightful claimants. It should not be forgotten that in the weeks before
the Hamas attack, including at the U.N., Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu was waving a map of “the new Middle East” that had erased the
existence of Palestine.
Undoubtedly, one of Hamas’ motivations was to negate the view that
Palestine had given up its right to self-determination, and that
Palestine could be erased. Recall the old delusional pre-Balfour Zionist
slogan: “A people without land for a land without people.” Such
utterances of this early Zionist utopian phase literally erased the
Palestinians who for generations lived in Palestine as an entitled
Indigenous population. With the Balfour Declaration of 1917, this
settler colonial vision became a political project with the blessings of
the leading European colonial power.
Given post-colonial realities, the Israeli project is historically
discordant and extreme. It exposes the reality of Israel’s policies and
the inevitable resistance response to Israel as a supremacist state.
Israeli state propaganda and management of the public discourse has
obscured the maximalist agenda of Zionism over the years, and we are yet
to know whether this was a deliberate tactic or just reflected the
phases of Israel’s development.
This may turn out to be a moment of clarity with respect not only to
Gaza, but to the overall prospects for sustainable peace and justice
between these two embattled peoples.
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Richard Falk
Richard Falk is Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International
Law at Princeton University and served as UN Special Rapporteur on
Human Rights in Palestine and is currently co-convener of SHAPE (Save Humanity and Planet Earth).
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