The Time of Israeli Impunity is Over

President Luis Ignacio Da Silva announced on 22 Feb 2024 that - in response to the genocide in Gaza - Brazil is severing all diplomatic relations with Israel. He has decided to expel Israel’s ambassador to Brazil and recall its ambassador to Tel Aviv. To mark the occasion, artist Yousef Katato created this powerful image on the news website Pressenza.

South Africa has already asked The International Court of Justice to condemn Israel for acts of genocide (not the country and people of Israel, but the neo-fascist regime led by Benjamin Netanyahu) in its deliberate destruction of Gaza. On January 26, 2024, the ICJ ordered Israel to take action to prevent acts of genocide as it wages war against Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip, to avoid any action that could fall under the Genocide Convention, and to ensure its troops commit no genocidal acts in Gaza. The Court stopped short of calling for an immediate ceasefire. Together with most of my friends, I profoundly regret the failure to demand a ceasefire – a failure of the ICJ, the US, UK, and EU. Refusing to call for a ceasefire is accepting the ongoing destruction of Gaza by Israeli bombs, many of which are supplied by the US and UK and EU.

Lula has compared the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza to the Holocaust for which Netanyahu declared him persona non grata. The news agency Pressenza reports that, in support of Brazil’s position, Gustavo Petro, President of Colombia, commented on his X account (formerly Twitter):

“I express my total solidarity with President Lula of Brazil. In Gaza there is genocide and thousands of children, women, and elderly civilians are being cowardly murdered. Lula has only spoken the truth and the truth must be defended or barbarism will destroy us. The whole region must unite to stop the violence in Palestine immediately. The ruling of the International Court of Justice on Israel must be implemented and have consequences in the diplomatic relations of all the countries of the world”.

Every Israeli Critic is Attacked as “Anti-Semitic”

I know how quick Israeli officials are to defend appalling actions by accusing their critics of being anti-Semitic. I felt the effect of this when I was teaching Virginian undergraduates about The Modern Arab World while refusing to include Israelis and Palestinians in my course. I focused my course on the other 300 million Middle-Easterners. Of course I am not anti-Semitic. I am anti-genocide. I am against war. I have spent my life trying to promote peace.

Netanyahu cannot accuse The International Court of Justice of “anti-Semitism” which is his favorite form of attack-defense because the Court was created after the Second World War to prevent the repetition of the Holocaust, the Nazi-fascist genocide against Jews.

While the Hamas attack against Israel in October 2023 was appalling, brutal, savage, and unacceptable, the Netanyahu response has been worse. Hamas created a criminal, disgusting massacre. Netanyahu created war.

The Hamas attacks caused 1,139 horrible deaths—695 Israeli civilians (including 36 children), 71 foreign nationals, and 373 members of the security forces. Some 250 Israeli civilians and soldiers were taken as hostages to the Gaza Strip, including 30 children: some have been released, some have been killed by Israel’s bombing and (in one case) three Israeli male hostages who had escaped from Hamas and were waving white flags were executed in cold blood by Israeli soldiers. Presumably the Israelis thought they were three Palestinians whom they could kill with impunity.

Israel has destroyed most of Gaza and killed some 30,000 Palestinians. The Judaic concept of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” leads to a land of blind and toothless people.

How Much Responsibility is Shared by Americans and Europeans?

Let there be no doubt: accusing the Israeli nation of genocide means also accusing the United States of America and Europeans of aiding and abetting genocide. Young people in the West deplore the Israeli massacres in Gaza and they blame president Joe Biden for defending the government of Benjamin Netanyahu. This Gaza genocide could cost Biden the election in November.

There is another aspect to “responsibility”: the Hamas attack was a result of Netanyahu’s policy to weaken the Palestinian Authority and to empower Hamas to run Gaza as a vast military concentration camp in order to sabotage the idea of a Two-State Solution. Netanyahu created the conditions for the Hamas attack, which we know was predicted by Israeli intelligence and facilitated by the failure of the Israeli army to defend the area of attack.

The Hamas attack was also a response to America’s promoting diplomatic relations between the Israeli, Saudi, and other Muslim governments. Palestinians felt abandoned. America’s Middle East “peace” can no longer ignore Palestine, nor abandon Gaza to permanent concentration camp status.

And we must not forget that the creation of Israel had its origins in the Balfour Declaration of 1917, issued by the British Government announcing its support for the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine.

Of course Hamas is responsible for the October 7th massacre, but Israel and the USA and Europe share responsibility for half a century of failure to create the conditions for Palestinian prosperity and peace.