The history of the modern state of Israel would be incomplete without mention of its relationship with the West and, in particular, the United States. While Israel has nominally "fought alone" in the majority of her wars since 1948, the invisible hand of American financial and diplomatic support has been an ever-emboldening presence for Zionist ambition. The United States was the principal promoter of Resolution 181, the 1947 proposal which brought about the partition of the then-dying British Mandate of Palestine into distinct Jewish and Arab states. Following the Israeli declaration of independence in the following May, President Truman immediately announced American recognition of the state. In the 75 years of Israel's existence, she has been the greatest beneficiary of American foreign aid, receiving $158 billion (not adjusted for inflation) in this period. Support for Israel and its policy objectives, foreign and domestic, have become a fact of life in Washington DC. Elected officials, irrespective of political party, attend conventions of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in droves; resolutions affirming support for Israeli military action receive bipartisan support; and, until recently, the American voting public joined their representatives in support for this autumn's sequence of Israeli military action.
The attack of 7 October attracted the eyes of the world. Somewhat predictably, the United States and its allies issued statements condemning Hamas. Israel had received the green light; a retributive war, officially against Hamas, ensued. Comparisons between the United States post-9/11 and Israel post-10/7 abounded; Israel had not only the mandate but the duty to incapacitate and eliminate the terrorist threat to its existence. “Israel has a right to defend itself” was an easy conclusion to reach for Western democrats. But much like the United States in the aftermath of 9/11, Israel’s protests of “self-defence” to criticisms of her response soon lost credibility. Keir Starmer’s rehearsed “Israel has a right to defend herself” fared poorly once Israeli defence policy grew to encompass withholding water and electricity from the people of Gaza. The past eighty-two days have showcased immense brutality, so much so that the majority of American voters now support a ceasefire. While damage has been dealt by both sides, the ordinary people of each nation have undergone drastically different fates. Israel, a wealthy country, has smothered the vast majority of further attacks on her citizenry. The Israeli Iron Dome, embodying the wealth and might of the Zionist project, has intercepted air strikes. Despite October’s horrors, Israel’s citizens sleep knowing that they are under the protection of one of the world’s most impressive military apparatuses. The people of Gaza are not so fortunate.
Proponents of Israeli military action rightly identify that the Palestinians are governed by rogue Islamist terrorists; they fail by concluding that this justifies the scale and style of the Israeli campaign. Although superficially elected by Palestinians, Hamas is not the expression of the will of the Palestinian people in the same way that Likud is an indication of Israel's popular mood. At a median age of 18, most Palestinians were not alive, let alone eligible to vote, at the time of the Palestinian Authority’s last general election.
Subjected to governance by crazed despots, the Gazans live in squalor, condemned to the reality that the Israeli state, crushingly more sophisticated in its organisation, size, and technology, is capable of destroying them and their homes at any moment. While most accept that civilian casualties are a reality of war, the number of non-combatants killed draws attention to the intentions motivating Israeli military strategy. Among its alleged peers — the liberal developed West — Israel is not unique in killing non-combatants while at war. Israel is unique, however, in its use of the war as a means to actualise a more sinister, overarching goal: the expansion of its borders.
For all the criticism of Western military interventions in the Middle East and North Africa, the nations of the liberal West do not, upon toppling a dictatorship, displace the local populations and replace them with settlers. Imperialism of this sort is not merely seen as unfavourable in the minds of Britons and Americans; it is incomprehensibly anachronistic. The histories of nations in Western Europe and North America are laced with tales of violent efforts to maintain imperial projects. Whether it be the Amritsar Massacre or the Trail of Tears, the median liberal Westerner is both aware and ashamed of his country’s efforts to fulfil territorial dreams. Wars, he says, should be waged in self-defence, perhaps in defence of the persecuted, but never the result of mere avarice.
The last eighty-two days have demonstrated that Israelis are not liberal Westerners. They are a nation proud of their ethnoreligious identity, bolstered by their survival in the face of historic persecution and taught from birth of their duty to defend their small nation as it navigates a sea of hostile Arab actors. From this mentality, the relentless pursuit of territorial expansion to benefit the Jewish state naturally follows. The Zionists also want a state “from the river to the sea”. Only now realising that Israel is not a country like his own — unconcerned with pushing back its borders — the Western liberal observer is still unaware of the ever-present preoccupation of the domestic Israeli right: the creation of Greater Israel. At present, a significant number of major politicians in Israel’s dominant political party, Likud, unashamedly call for the ethnic cleansing of Arab peoples from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
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| Joe Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv in October 2023 Photo courtesy of Haim Zach |
The attack of 7 October attracted the eyes of the world. Somewhat predictably, the United States and its allies issued statements condemning Hamas. Israel had received the green light; a retributive war, officially against Hamas, ensued. Comparisons between the United States post-9/11 and Israel post-10/7 abounded; Israel had not only the mandate but the duty to incapacitate and eliminate the terrorist threat to its existence. “Israel has a right to defend itself” was an easy conclusion to reach for Western democrats. But much like the United States in the aftermath of 9/11, Israel’s protests of “self-defence” to criticisms of her response soon lost credibility. Keir Starmer’s rehearsed “Israel has a right to defend herself” fared poorly once Israeli defence policy grew to encompass withholding water and electricity from the people of Gaza. The past eighty-two days have showcased immense brutality, so much so that the majority of American voters now support a ceasefire. While damage has been dealt by both sides, the ordinary people of each nation have undergone drastically different fates. Israel, a wealthy country, has smothered the vast majority of further attacks on her citizenry. The Israeli Iron Dome, embodying the wealth and might of the Zionist project, has intercepted air strikes. Despite October’s horrors, Israel’s citizens sleep knowing that they are under the protection of one of the world’s most impressive military apparatuses. The people of Gaza are not so fortunate.
Proponents of Israeli military action rightly identify that the Palestinians are governed by rogue Islamist terrorists; they fail by concluding that this justifies the scale and style of the Israeli campaign. Although superficially elected by Palestinians, Hamas is not the expression of the will of the Palestinian people in the same way that Likud is an indication of Israel's popular mood. At a median age of 18, most Palestinians were not alive, let alone eligible to vote, at the time of the Palestinian Authority’s last general election.
Subjected to governance by crazed despots, the Gazans live in squalor, condemned to the reality that the Israeli state, crushingly more sophisticated in its organisation, size, and technology, is capable of destroying them and their homes at any moment. While most accept that civilian casualties are a reality of war, the number of non-combatants killed draws attention to the intentions motivating Israeli military strategy. Among its alleged peers — the liberal developed West — Israel is not unique in killing non-combatants while at war. Israel is unique, however, in its use of the war as a means to actualise a more sinister, overarching goal: the expansion of its borders.
For all the criticism of Western military interventions in the Middle East and North Africa, the nations of the liberal West do not, upon toppling a dictatorship, displace the local populations and replace them with settlers. Imperialism of this sort is not merely seen as unfavourable in the minds of Britons and Americans; it is incomprehensibly anachronistic. The histories of nations in Western Europe and North America are laced with tales of violent efforts to maintain imperial projects. Whether it be the Amritsar Massacre or the Trail of Tears, the median liberal Westerner is both aware and ashamed of his country’s efforts to fulfil territorial dreams. Wars, he says, should be waged in self-defence, perhaps in defence of the persecuted, but never the result of mere avarice.
The last eighty-two days have demonstrated that Israelis are not liberal Westerners. They are a nation proud of their ethnoreligious identity, bolstered by their survival in the face of historic persecution and taught from birth of their duty to defend their small nation as it navigates a sea of hostile Arab actors. From this mentality, the relentless pursuit of territorial expansion to benefit the Jewish state naturally follows. The Zionists also want a state “from the river to the sea”. Only now realising that Israel is not a country like his own — unconcerned with pushing back its borders — the Western liberal observer is still unaware of the ever-present preoccupation of the domestic Israeli right: the creation of Greater Israel. At present, a significant number of major politicians in Israel’s dominant political party, Likud, unashamedly call for the ethnic cleansing of Arab peoples from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
At this point, all efforts to depict Israel as a society in the same vein as North America or Western Europe collapse. The suggestion that Britain or France expand its territories has been consigned to the 19th century; in Israel, it is a matter to be debated — and the expansionist cause is winning. The past is a different country, the adage goes, they do things differently there. But to observers from Western liberal democracies, Israel, a foreign country, seems much like the past whose values they have criticised. Irrespective of the particular political label which best fits Benjamin Netanyahu, his ideological persuasion has not been popular in the liberal West since the century of Andrew Jackson and Cecil Rhodes. How then might nations who have called for the removal of Andrew Jackson from banknotes and cried “Rhodes Must Fall” respond? The Israeli belief that their entitlement to the land supersedes even the right to life of the Palestinians is incongruent with the creed of the pluralistic West. In this way, Western support for Israel has been fundamentally changed. Expect many more countries to follow the line of Justin Trudeau, who last week warned that the Israeli campaign in Gaza was weakening her international support. In Israel, the West now sees a country markedly unlike herself — democratic, perhaps — but ethnically conscious, illiberal and expansionist.
Here here. Shame your prediction of “expect many more countries to follow the line of Justin Trudeau” hasn’t come true though. Perhaps the West isn’t as liberal and fair minded as you thought…?
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