THE walls are closing in around Israel in the blood-spattered room in which they stand. Beside them is a small and dwindling band of US and European allies who have surrendered their moral authority so completely to the Israel lobby that even if they were to take the clearly marked exit now, the crimes they have committed and condoned in Gaza will continue to stain their names.
The condemnation of the decision by the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to seek warrants for the arrest of Israeli (and Hamas) leaders has given a new depth of meaning to the word hysterical. Neither the US nor Israel is a signatory to the Rome Statute which gives the ICC its authority, but both have furiously lied that the ICC has no jurisdiction in the Israel-Palestine case, even though the State of Palestine signed up to the treaty in 2015.
The baleful influence of the Israel lobby on the politics of the world’s greatest power was never more vividly illustrated than at the end of last month, when a cabal of 12 Republican senators sent a threatening letter to the ICC chief prosecutor, British jurist Karim Khan, promising to punish him should he make the decision that he has just made. In an extraordinary outburst, the senators said that any attempt to seek warrants against the Israeli regime would be viewed as “not only as a threat to Israel’s sovereignty but to the sovereignty of the United States”. The dozen legislators weren’t acting for the United States, they were acting for the Israel-backed groups which fund their election and re-election campaigns, but so thorough is the corruption of the US’s system of government by Israel that no-one in any position of influence in the Joe Biden administration batted an eyelid at the unilateral decision of twelve right-wing Trumpites to speak on the world stage for the United States.
The good news is that the threat has been ignored. Mr Khan has done his job despite the efforts of the US to cow him into submission – and he did so for a reason that the Israel placemen in Washington and London can never understand. He did what he felt was right because he is a senior figure in an organisation which represents a huge swathe of the planet and encompasses both the northern and southern hemispheres, an organisation which speaks for wealthy states and poor states alike.
Western powers hear no voices but their own, they have no imperatives except the imperatives of their own material and political interests. President Biden, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak simply don’t understand the urge to act according to what is moral and what is right – an urge that is still recognised and obeyed by states the world over which either recently or some time ago cast off their colonial and imperial shackles. Impotent in the face of the world’s disgust, those leaders can only do what they are doing: railing against the irresistible surge towards justice.
