Israel Risks Sinking Stock

In a clear reflection of global discontent with Israel’s policy on Palestine, scores of representatives at the United Nations General Assembly walked out during Netanyahu’s address in September. NATO member Turkey and Iran warn Israel that they might have to intervene. South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa, Brazil’s President Lula da Silva and Barbados’s Prime Minister Mia Mottley bluntly asked Israel to quit Gaza. The trio condemned Israeli action and exposed the hypocrisy of the Jewish state’s supporters and financiers.

Mounting concern from different quarters over Israeli action has begun to exert greater pressure on Tel Aviv’s key foreign supporter, the US, to do something concrete for peace. For the world realises that without Washington’s unconditional support, money and weapons, Israel could not prolong the war for so long. A netizen made a cryptic remark: “[Antony] Blinken is the best Foreign Minister that Israel would ever have dreamed of.” Malaysia’s Foreign Affairs Minister Mahmud Has pointed out that the world community has “run out of excuses” for failing to reach ceasefire in Gaza. 

Veto is a mechanism much misused and needs to be reformed. Israel “has breached every international law, including the Geneva Convention”. Australia, Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom have seen large demonstrations condemning Israel, marked by counter rallies that lambasted “anti-Semitism” by Islamists and other immigrants who are the “trouble makers” in the once harmonious society with an indigenous “identity intact”. Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, has reiterated: “Palestine is our homeland. It is the land of our forefathers, our grandfathers. It will remain ours.”

Too deep to digest

Irate crowds set fire just outside Israeli embassy in Mexico City and pelted stones at the building inside the embassy compound in summer. Berlin saw similar rage on the rampage over Israel’s Rafah attack. Turkey’s capital, Ankara, too, witnessed large demonstrations in condemnation of the havoc in Gaza.  In return, Benjamin Netanyahu told his military to “fight with full force”. Netanyahu faces serious corruption charges. Al Jazeera Bureau office in Gaza was raided by Israeli troops in September and ordered to close for 45 days. The situation in the ravaged Palestinian territory can be gauged by the fact that 42,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed since October 2023 as against 58,000 American troops killed in the decade-long Vietnam War in the 1960s and into the 1970s.

As a result, cracks are seen in countries that for long and almost invariably supported Tel Aviv’s actions. Angry reactions to what they see as Israel’s intransigence to an early ceasefire and meaningful dialogue have been pouring in from an increasing number of governments and organisations. In July, US Vice-President Kamala Harris expressed serious concern over the humanitarian conditions in Gaza. If elected president, she said, “I will not be silent.” That was a departure from the Joe Biden administration’s policy held on for months.  

French President Emannuel Macron in summer stepped out to declare that peace in West Asia would not arrive without a Palestine state. “The war Israel is waging in Gaza has gone far too long. The tens of thousands of Palestinian civilian casualties are unjustifiable and inexcusable. These deaths are also an outrage on humanity. The war must end.” NATO and EU member Slovenia’s Prime Minister Robert Golob asked Israel “to stop the bloodshed and the occupation of Gaza”.

Israel’s third largest city, Haifa was attacked by Hezbollah with nearly 100 rocket attacks on September 22, causing a huge damage and loss of at least 30 lives. Houthis, Hezbollah and Islamic State in Iraq, operating from Lebanon and Syria, launched a series of attacks in recent weeks. ISIS is also targeting US military facilities with renewed vigour in Iraq and Syria of late. Iraqi resistance warns of blocking oil supply to US allies if they side with Israel in action. This is a textbook copy of what the US and its close allies did to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and his associates following Moscow’s military intervention in Ukraine in February 2022. 

Nations and leaders learn to borrow a leaf or two from the pages of, ironically, from and against a script writer. Independent thinkers in much of the West appears shaken to the core. Failure to reconcile and redesign strategy would invite disastrous developments that humankind would survive only to regret for eternity. Media conglomerates and chain owners are empires that exercise biases and news blackouts if the outcome threatens their dubious interests. 

Media colonialism was very apparent during colonial rule, when indigenous populations were brutally suppressed and mercilessly exploited. Only citizens of mother countries were entitled to freedom of various nature. Little has changed in the 21st century. The media are complicit or even supportive of their governments breaching smaller nations’ sovereign rights and control over local resources are not for all countries in equal measure. 

Enough is enough

Israel’s political stock is sinking. Ukraine gave lessons to China just as the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq gave lessons to the world at large, particularly the US-led West. France, Italy, Germany and the United Kingdom issued a joint statement on October 15 warning of serious consequences if it did halt attacking peace keeping forces in Lebanon. Missiles originating in Iranian, Syrian, Iraqi and Lebanese territories have been raining on military installations inside Israel. Tel Aviv no longer inspires fear, awe or respect it once used to among many countries. 

Iran’s missiles hit Israeli military bases and the intelligence agency Mossad Headquarters in October. Western media did not show where the more than 100 rockets landed. They were subdued in reporting Israeli losses. In a pained and angry reaction to the humiliating attack, a visibly shaken Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed that Tehran would pay the price for the sin. Hamas in Gaza has lasted for more than a year. The protracted war has divided Tel Aviv’s traditionally staunch supporters.

There might be acquiescence or connivance through a complicated web of connections pertaining to Washington’s basically unqualified support for Israel. This might not be the case if an arrangement for peace and subsequent arrangement of enduring quality were delayed further. The protracted war in Gaza will have its costs as a precedent to use and abuse in future. Hezbollah showed its fighting capacity to last a long war, inflicting a deep dent on Israel’s reputation of invincibility. 

(Professor Kharel specialises in political communication.)