Palestine & the Collapse of Western Moral Authority

 

Dennis Ignatius

 

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Palestine & the Collapse of Western Moral Authority

03FridayMay 2024

Posted by Dennis Ignatius in Human rights, International Affairs, Middle East

Vivid television coverage of heavily armed police moving into US campuses to quell peaceful student demonstrations is not what one expects to see in a nation that prides itself on 1st amendment rights – the right to free speech and peaceful assembly. No less shocking is hearing the Speaker of the House of Representatives egging the police on against student protestors.

For those with a bit of years behind them, it brings back memories of the anti-war protests of the late 1960s when American campus became a hotbed of resistance to what many felt was an immoral war of aggression against Vietnam. 

Although the student demonstrators were vilified at the time, they turned out to be on the right side of history. Today, we look back at the Vietnam War as a murderous, unprovoked war of aggression that devastated much of Indochina and killed millions.

We are now at another such moment in history with Palestine in the eye of the storm. Long years of global apathy over the plight of the Palestinian people are now being replaced with growing revulsion and horror over Israel’s war of aggression in Gaza. A fire has been lit on American campuses; it won’t die down so easily. 

It’s not hard to understand why. Israel, the US, and other Western powers have gone too far; they have crossed every line of human decency and international law. Their callous disregard for the lives of the long-suffering people of Palestine have awakened the conscience not just of US students but of people across the globe. 

It’s just too much to watch the daily slaughter of innocent civilians, the mass starvation of non-combatants, the wanton destruction of homes, schools, hospitals, and civil infrastructure. In less than 7 months, the Israeli army – generously stocked and supplied by the US and other Western backers – have dropped more than 25,000 tons of explosives on Gaza, the equivalent of two nuclear bombs. Some 34,000 Palestinians have been killed and tens of thousands wounded or maimed since October 7th. Gaza itself has been reduced to a barren wasteland.

The global fallout will be profound. Israel, the US, and western democracies have lost what’s left of their moral legitimacy. The world now sees through their hypocrisy, their double standards, their prejudice as never before. The great ideals they long preached apparently apply only to themselves. They are quick to rally world opinion when American, Israeli, or Ukrainian lives are lost but have scant regard for the slaughter of Palestinians.  Why? Do Arab or African or Asian lives matter less?

Israel has often been defended in Western capitals as the only democracy in the Middle East, but that narrative can no longer be sustained. What democracy incarcerates thousands of people including children without trial? What democracy carries out genocide or engages in brutal and illegal occupation? What democracy humiliates its people, subjects them to apartheid conditions and steals their land in defiance of UN resolutions? 

Of course, Israel is quick to accuse anyone who opposes Israel as anti-Semantic but that is nonsense. One can support Israel’s right to exist – as I do – while at the same time demanding that Israel respects international law and the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people. The Palestinian people deserve to live free in their own state as much as Israel does. 

Sure, Hamas ought to be condemned as a terrorist organization, but Hamas does not exist in a vacuum. Hamas is but a creature of Western and Israeli hypocrisy and their failure to offer the Palestinians a viable way forward to peace and freedom.

The complicity of Palestine’s Arab neighbours is also staggering. They talk about brotherhood and revel in their common faith but sit as mute witnesses to occupation, destruction, and annihilation. What does it say of Arab governments and the wider Arab and Muslim world when American campuses erupt in anger over Palestine while they remain silent?

Gaza has brought home in vivid detail the stunning hypocrisy of Western democracies. Their claim to moral superiority on the global stage now stands exposed as hollow and trite. The true keepers of the global moral code are the ones – like those student protestors on US campuses – that now fight for justice for the Palestinian people.

Whatever it is, one thing is certain: the world will not be the same again. 

[Dennis Ignatius |Kuala Lumpur |Friday, 03 May 2024]