Vinoth Ramachandra

“Those who make peaceful change impossible, make violent change inevitable.”

These words, attributed to the 18^th-century British statesman Edmund Burke, are relevant to many of the growing number of authoritarian regimes around the world. And never more so than the state of Israel.

I am currently on a short visit to universities in southern California, speaking at meetings of faculty and students. These are some of the top ranking educational institutions in the world, but the levels of historical ignorance and theological naivete found among them is often shocking. American TV news coverage is, of course, the most parochial and partisan in the Western world. It’s reaction to the most recent horrors in Gaza is predictably reminiscent of the reaction to 9/11: a black-and-white narrative of vicious, unprovoked violence.

I have written so often on this Blog (particularly, 26 November 2014 and 09 April 2019) about the indifference of Western governments and publics towards the colonial aggression of the Israeli state that it depresses me to address this topic again, in the light of the recent events in Gaza.

On 26 November 2014, in a post entitled “Eyeless (But Not Speechless) in Gaza” (with apologies to Aldous Huxley) I wrote: “Mainstream Western media are not only highly selective but fickle when it comes to reporting on the Middle East. The 50 day war in Gaza this summer has been quickly forgotten, a war in which Israel killed 2,200 Palestinians, including more than 500 children. Courageous human rights and peace groups within Israel (B’Tselem and Break the Silence) are investigating independently what happened in Gaza, as the official army investigation will be a cover-up.”

I also noted that “Every act of violence by Hamas or unrepresentative Palestinians (as in the recent horrific attack by two axe-wielding men on a Jewish synagogue) is exploited by government propaganda to stereotype and caricature all Palestinians and to tighten its stranglehold on Gaza and the West Bank, crushing Palestinian aspirations for an end to the 75-year dispossession and conquest.”

And, more recently (23 May 2021), in “Israel: A Unique State”: Following the brutal onslaught on Gaza in 2009, hailed by the Israeli government as a “military victory”, one of the wisest political voices in Israel, Uri Avnery, wrote: “What will be seared into the consciousness of the world will be the image of Israel as a blood-stained monster, ready at any moment to commit war crimes and not prepared to abide by any moral restraints. This will have severe consequences for our long-term future, our standing in the world, our chance of achieving peace and quiet.  In the end, this war is a crime against ourselves, too, a crime against the State of Israel.”

For unbiased warnings that Western governments (especially the US and UK) have failed to heed:

Elders warn of consequences of “one-state reality” in Israel and Palestine

How Israel has misused its position as an occupying power

‘Israel and the Zionist enterprise were born in sin’, says heir to an iconic Zionist family

And, for anyone wishing to understand the context of, without necessarily condoning,  Hamas’s attacks on Israel, see:

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/10/8/there-is-nothing-surprising-about-hamass-operation