Israeli leaders keep saying the quiet part out loud

Ishaan Tharoor
| Washington Post

The war in the Middle East cast a pall over an already somber occasion far away in Japan. Western ambassadors, including the top US envoy in Tokyo, participated in a de facto boycott of a Friday ceremony in the city of Nagasaki that commemorated the United States’ dropping of the atomic bomb there in 1945. The reason for their no-show was the decision by local municipal authorities not to extend an invitation to Israel, a snub that was allegedly done to avoid potential disruptions or disturbances amid anger over the war in Gaza.

“We only want to hold the ceremony in a peaceful and solemn atmosphere,” Nagasaki Mayor Shiro Suzuki said on Thursday. “It is absolutely not because of political reasons.”

That was not the interpretation of the US Embassy and its Western counterparts in the Group of Seven nations; their envoys jointly signed a letter to the mayor decrying the decision to link Israel with another snubbed nation, Russia, which is waging its war of aggression in Ukraine. Never mind the scale of destruction in Gaza inflicted by Israel, which in terms of ordnance dropped and rubble produced may dwarf what the Kremlin has unleashed on its neighbour. Per one assessment, the mass of explosives dropped on Gaza is equivalent to multiple times more firepower than what was unleashed by the atomic bomb deployed by the United States over Hiroshima in 1945.

From the outset of Israel’s war against the Gaza-based militant group Hamas, which launched a shocking, deadly terrorist strike on southern Israel on Oct. 7, Western governments have championed Israel’s right to defend itself even as the civilian death toll in the Palestinian territory spiraled. More than 10 months of relentless Israeli bombardment have led to almost 40,000 people killed, tens of thousands more missing, much of Gaza flattened, disease spreading and famine conditions in parts of the territory.

The United States and its allies have taken these stands, even as top Israeli officials make it awkward for them. This past week, far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich complained that foreign powers and international public opinion were preventing Israel from more effectively immiserating the Palestinian territory in pursuit of its war aims. “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages,” Smotrich said, indicating his support for an even more crippling siege.

His comments drew a quick backlash. “International law could not be more clear – the deliberate starvation of civilians is a war crime,” tweeted British Foreign Secretary David Lammy. “There can be no justification for Minister Smotrich’s remarks.”

Yet, Smotrich’s rhetoric echoes the declaration made by Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 attack, when he called for a total siege of Gaza, and the complete denial of fuel, electricity and food as Israel waged war against “human animals.” Those comments have loomed over the conflict. The International Criminal Court has sought arrest warrants for Gallant and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom the court’s chief prosecutor accuses of war crimes, including the deliberate starvation of civilians. The Biden administration has denounced the investigation, and US lawmakers have threatened to enact sanctions against the ICC.

The Biden administration denounced Smotrich last week for a separate set of remarks in which he contended that a diplomatic deal with Hamas over a possible cease-fire and the release of remaining hostages in Hamas captivity was tantamount to “surrender.” Smotrich “essentially suggests that the war ought to go on indefinitely without pause and with the lives of the hostages of no real concern at all – his arguments are dead wrong,” said White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby. “They’re misleading the Israeli public.”

Smotrich is not as much of an outlier as some US officials wish. Along with fellow far-right cabinet minister Itamar Ben Gvir, he has emerged from the extremist fringe to amass considerable power and influence within Netanyahu’s hard-right coalition. Their view of the war is uncompromising and brutal, and their contempt for the Palestinians living in Israel’s midst is not veiled.

Ben Gvir, in his role as national security minister, has presided over the shocking torture and dehumanization of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli detention, which the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem detailed in a graphic report last week. Testimonies documented by the group reveal how, since Oct. 7, the prison system in Israel has transformed, in B’Tselem’s words, into “a network of camps dedicated to the abuse of inmates as a matter of policy” and facilities where “every inmate is deliberately subjected to harsh, relentless pain and suffering .” (Israel denies these claims.)

When footage emerged on Israeli media last week of soldiers carrying out an alleged gang rape of a Palestinian detainee, Smotrich denounced the leak of the footage rather than the hideous apparent crimes. Ben Gvir cheered on the storming of Israeli facilities by far-right protesters and sympathetic reservists (and at least one Israeli lawmaker) after Israeli authorities detained a handful of soldiers implicated in assaults on Palestinian prisoners. A lawmaker in Netanyahu’s Likud party declared that all abuse of detainees was “legitimate” in Israel’s struggle against Hamas.

Smotrich and Ben Gvir’s emphatic rejection of the prospect of a Palestinian state or even the principle of Palestinian self-determination is broadly shared by Netanyahu and more mainstream Israeli politicians. As much as the Biden administration, Arab interlocutors and European allies profess their support for a “two-state solution,” their vision for a lasting peace is repeatedly undercut by the Israeli political establishment. Earlier this summer, the Israeli parliament, or Knesset, passed a resolution rejecting Palestinian statehood outright. The vote had the backing of, among others, Benny Gantz, Netanyahu’s more centrist rival who many in Washington hope can soon replace him.

Netanyahu and his allies have spent years ensuring a Palestinian state would be unviable, carving up the occupied territories with settlements and segregated roads and jurisdictions. Israeli commentator Gershom Gorenberg noted that in part because of this, the International Court of Justice, the United Nations’ top court, determined last month that Israel’s 57-year occupation of the West Bank was illegitimate and ought to end.

“When the ICJ opinion states that ‘for all intents and purposes,’ Israeli has annexed parts of the West Bank ‘while hiding behind a fiction’ of temporary occupation, it is describing the uncomfortable truth,” Gorenberg wrote in the Atlantic, calling out the conspicuous role that ardent settlers like Smotrich and Ben Gvir have played in underscoring this reality. Yet last month, the Biden administration issued a mealy mouthed critique of the ICJ ruling, saying it “complicated” efforts towards peace even as top Israeli politicians scoff at the Biden administration’s stated goals.

The cumulative effect here is profound: Israel is frequently shielded from censure on the international stage by Western powers whose arguments defending Israel get undermined by Israeli officials themselves. And then there’s the deeper sense that many in the West’s political establishment don’t seem to mind the severity of punishment that Israel has meted not just on Hamas, but on Palestinians writ large.

Just a month into the war, Israel’s far-right Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu suggested in a radio interview that dropping a nuclear weapon from Israel’s clandestine arsenal was an option. His comments were swiftly rejected by Netanyahu and Gallant, but his other remarks – casting the entirety of Gaza’s populace as culpable and calling for the emptying of the territory – have been echoed by myriad Israeli politicians.

In the United States, top Republicans also invoke the nuclear option, if metaphorically. At a May hearing where he attacked the Biden administration’s deliberations over halting the transfer of certain US munitions to Israel – the deliveries have flowed mostly uninterrupted – Sen. Lindsey Graham (RS.C.) also decided to point to that apocalyptic chapter in Japanese history.

But he summoned the past as a motivating factor, not a cautionary tale. “Give Israel what they need to fight the war,” Graham said. “This is Hiroshima and Nagasaki on steroids.”

—

Video Embed Code

Video: In an 84-page filing with the ICJ, South Africa accused Israel of “genocidal intent” against the Palestinian people, pointing to statements made by top Israeli officials and military leaders. Israel denied the allegations.(c) 2024 , The Washington Post

Embed code: