Bernard Spiegal

If ever there were an international rules-based system, it is trashed now. Drained of authority and meaning, it is singularly unable to do what it is supposed to do.

The Geneva Conventions, upon which the rule of law is supposedly based, their high-principled intent now made mockery. Even as their courts pass judgment on Israel’s barbarous acts, in practice, thus far, they are sidelined, subject to the convoluted casuistry of special pleading. Gaza and the Occupied Territories hear only too clearly the death rattle of international justice.

The international rules-based system has a prayerful quality, prayers addressed to the mighty titans that dominate the international stage. And like the gods, who incline their ear to what they wish to hear, and direct their sight to what the wish to see, these titans exert themselves to serve their own interests. And in the wake of their actions, or quiescence, death and destruction follow.

Thus it is that the Palestinians of Gaza and the OPT are killed, maimed and displaced as America stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Israel, protecting it from censure or consequence as it pursues its genocidal aims.  And falling-in behind, is the UK and the West more generally.

Israel, of course, is the direct perpetrator and sustainer of its crimes, crimes woven out of a cruelty, a callousness that can barely be conceived even as we are struck dumb by what we see on our screens. 

But, pursuing for a moment a theme of the last blog article, Israel conceived as a spoiled child – spoiled in its double-meaning: spoiled as in soiled and diseased; spoiled, as in over-coddled, privileged and unchecked – we see a country that has been allowed to satisfy its fantasies of supremacy, to pursue its avaricious consumption of others’ land; to lie without consequence, to claim black is white, to be self-congratulatory, preening itself in the distorting mirror of self-justification.

And here are Israel’s parents, cheering it on, proffering without limit harm-causing gifts, patting it on its head, protecting it from rebuke.

Consider where we might now be if the USA, the UK and the West had not granted Israel immunity from growing-up. It would perhaps have had the opportunity to develop the emotional maturity and political wisdom to see that it is ultimately destructive of everyone – Palestinians, Christians, Muslims, Jews – to pursue the barren fantasy of a Jewish state.

That opportunity was never allowed to find anchor. So, instead, coming to that realisation will take its toll in more misery, death and destruction.