Distant solidarity
IT took almost six months for the UN Security Council to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, after the US decided against kiboshing yet another call for peace with its customary veto against any challenge to Zionist belligerence.
In any context involving even a mild reprimand to Israel, outright US rejection has invariably been the default. An American abstention therefore supposedly counts as a big deal. That isn’t any more bizarre than the broader US-Israeli relations. Extensive Israeli interference in domestic US politics — generally unchallenged, unlike the less effective Russian or Chinese initiatives, imaginary or otherwise, that are condemned as threats to a depleted democracy — has been the norm since the 1950s.
It has evolved into more monstrous forms, but in recent decades has also faced vociferous resistance from younger American Jews who resent the idea of their identity being linked to a proto-fascist state that lays claim to their souls. This is not an entirely novel phenomenon. Even in what tend to be recalled as its halcyon days, Israel went out of its way to target diaspora critics — especially in the US, as Geoffrey Levin explains in his recent book Our Palestine Question.
The mission was reasonably successful, but became more or less redundant during and immediately after the 1967 and 1973 wars, when a perceived existential threat to Israel from its hostile Arab neighbours united most American Jews. Succeeding generations developed a less blinkered outlook, with a clearer view of the frequently murderous injustice ‘necessitated’ by Israeli expansionism. It reminded some of them of the atrocities their forebears faced in Nazi-occupied territories during World War II.
It is also worth noting the geopolitical changes in the Middle East since the 1973 Opec oil embargo spearheaded by Arab states in the wake of the Yom Kippur war and directed primarily against the US, which had emerged as Israel’s biggest supporter. It was still in place when its initiators and leading advocates gathered in Lahore 50 years ago for the Islamic summit co-hosted by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and King Faisal of Saudi Arabia but was lifted in March 1974. That may or may not have had something to do with Richard Nixon’s inclination to militarily capture oil fields in Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Kuwait.
Muslim nations have betrayed the Palestinians.
It could be argued that even back then broad Arab support for the cause of Palestinian nationhood was largely a political manoeuvre intended to quell popular resentment, and a pressure tactic against the US perception of Israel as its principal satrapy in the Middle East. It’s complicated. Yet it’s obvious that Arab nations today are far less inclined to push back against Zionism’s excesses. The so-called ‘front line’ states of 50 years ago are broken entities today. The primary oil states are driven exclusively by self-interest, in which Israel plays a bigger part than its Arab victims.
The UAE remains wedded to the so-called Abraham Accords, even as many of the Emirati luminaries who saw money-making opportunities in the open relationship with Israel are compelled to reassess their enthusiasm amid evidence of a multipronged genocide. Saudi Arabia likewise is more keen to formalise commercial ties with Israel than to make any effort on behalf of the diminishing number of Palestinians, notwithstanding the lip service paid to a ‘peace settlement’ or a ‘two-state solution’. With the usual exception of Qatar, no Arab nation with regional clout has stood up to be counted.
Perhaps, after years of debilitating wars, none considers itself capable of taking a stand. For what it’s worth, though, the show of resistance by the Houthis — who have survived a Saudi/ Emirati military campaign intended to obliterate them — should shame others in the region. Nor have other Muslim countries, with the arguable exception of Malaysia under Anwar Ibrahim — offered much more than ‘thoughts and prayers’.
South Africa is the standout nation in this context, with its long history of comparable apartheid and consequent solidarity with the Palestinian cause. Left-leaning South American republics — from Brazil, Colombia, Bolivia and Chile to Mexico — have also resisted pressure to embrace the offensive Zionist narrative. Equally strikingly, European nations from Ireland and Spain to Norway have resoundingly rejected the Western attachment to Zionist extremism, standing far apart from Germany’s determination to be on the wrong side of history once again.
The US in particular could more or less immediately halt the massacres in Gaza by suspending all aid and weapons shipments to Israel. Without that move, any excoriation of the Netanyahu regime as the primary obstacle to peace is mere hogwash. History won’t easily absolve the US — alongside its Arab collaborators — of complicity in genocide.
Published in Dawn, March 27th, 2024