After the war on Gaza Israel would have established itself as the pariah of the international system. No more teasing about its ‘democratic’ trappings, no more sayings about its parliamentary voice and representation.
It would be as it is now! Think Israel think genocide, think Israel think cleansing, think Israel think mass bombings of its people on an incredible scale. Israel outdid itself now. For the past three months Israel willfully and with vengeance destroyed every semblance of a civil society while eliminating Palestinian institutions, urban settings, markets, schools, mosques, churches, hospitals, universities and colleges.
Israel, its leaders, politicians, institutions and army has gone stark raving mad, way above their heads or anything they have done before. This time it was going out for blood, callous revenge with no holds barred.
For them it became think Gaza, think bombing, think Gaza think killing its people, think Gaza think murder of Palestinian women, and their children, shootings of its pregnant women and those in labor. A heinous set of crimes.
Here, there is no mercy, in fact many Israelis believe Palestinians, including its women and children must be eliminated – this is a new wrapped mentality shamelessly spelled out by Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Bin-Gvir.
Israel outdid it self this time around. It will be even harder for it now to regard itself as a member of the community of nations simply because civilized countries don’t do atrocities on this level in front of the international stage without a care in the world about what it’s doing.
The well-known Israeli journalist Gideon Levy is already saying he is ashamed to be an Israeli and I am surely many people are thinking the same. Take the thousands who protest against the Israeli government in Tel Aviv and outside the Knesset in occupied Jerusalem but to no avail.
The extremists dominate politics while all other politicians are too weak and feeble.
This time around, Israel would be a hard sell even for its western conspirators, especially the Unites States and Britain who have been supplying it, their demonic baby, with mass bombs, missiles, rocket launchers and much more sophisticated weaponry to kill Palestinians, women, toddlers and babies and children with unbelievable savagery.
Privately, I am sure western leaders like Joe Biden, Emmanuel Macron, Rishi Sunak and Olaf Scholz ‘are saying what the hell is Netanyahu doing’. ‘Has he gone mad?’ And ‘were is this going to.’ But the Israelis have long hijacked the West with a stranglehold and numerous summersaults.
To speak against genocide needs world statesmanship, it needs wisdom and courage and a sense of action and to speak on right and wrong. What it doesn’t need is leaders to continue to hide behind a decades-old holocaust which the Palestinians had nothing to do with but are paying for with their lives and existence.
It’s really a travesty of justice for the West now to look at Benjamin Netanyahu as their chummy friend when many previous reports in Western newspapers pointed to the loathing and altercations whenever his name came up including from Barack Obama and Nicholas Sarkozy in their presidential years.
But after 100 days into the war the silence on genocide is set to continue. The only way Israel will stop is for it to keep getting punched and kicked in the nose, the groin and the back. Only the Palestinians will stop the genocide despite the heavy price they paid over the past three months.
Dr Marwan Asmar is a long-time journalist based in Amman, Jordan
