By Loan Talfryn
Over the past nine months since Hamas’ original attack on Israel and the endless slaughter in Gaza that followed, the leaders of the Democrats and Republicans in the United States and the Conservative Party and the Labour Party here in Britain have been singing more or less from the same hymn book, with very little difference in their official narrative.
That narrative contains two main messages namely that, in the first place, Israel has an unalienable right to defend itself by attacking Gaza and indeed that anyone who opposes that right supports Hamas terrorism and even espouses antisemitic ideas.
The second part of the narrative is that the increasing deaths taking place in Gaza are unfortunate accidents or tragedies, the inevitable but unintended side effects of the justified but complex attempt to target Hamas fighters. Sometimes some individuals go over the top, it is said, but these cases are exceptions, not signs of systemic dysfunction.
The official narrative here is based on a naked lie. Because it is not unfortunate, unintentional accidents or tragedies that are behind the deaths of the approximately two hundred thousand ordinary Palestinians who are likely to have died in Gaza because of the widespread bombing and siege. These deaths are part of an entirely deliberate military strategy by the IDF and Israeli political leaders. How do we know that? Quite simply because they have stated so publicly many times.
The core of the military action in Gaza right now is what’s being called the Dahiya Doctrine, a strategy that was formalised back in 2006 when, in violation of the Geneva convention and international law, Israel decided to target an entire neighbourhood in South Lebanon called Dahiya , completely destroying the place and killing over a thousand innocent people because Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers.
Israel described the strategy quite openly as a conscious attempt to punish the civilian population of the area for Hezbollah’s actions through disproportionate, massive military action. Ever since then Israel, in her dealings with the Palestinians, has stuck to this illegal strategy of deliberately targeting civilian populations and forcing them to labour under the yoke of permanent occupation.
Dahiya Strategy is not about an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth but two hundred eyes for an eye, two hundred teeth for a tooth. It is as if, back in the second half of the last century, the British government responded to a terrorist attack by the IRA by ruthlessly bombing the Catholic areas of North Ireland for months, destroying every hospital, school and church there, blocking the escape of ordinary Catholics to Ireland and then forcing them to live in tents and continually flee as the British air force relentlessly bombed the place.
Had Britain done so the Irish lobby in the United States would surely have ensured that the government there intervened and put an end to British military actions. The British Prime Minister and several of the country’s political leaders would also have been able to be prosecuted by an International Criminal Court as happened to Slobodan Milosevic, Ratko Mladic and as is being recommended in the case of Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, Israel’s Defence Minister.
I’m afraid that the kind of logic behind the Dahiya policy, two hundred eyes for an eye, two hundred teeth for a tooth, is now deeply rooted in Israeli political culture. One former right-wing member of the Knesset, Moshe Feiglin, recently cited a statement by Hitler when calling for drastic action against the Palestinians of Gaza.
“As Hitler said” he commented “I can’t live if one Jew is left. We can’t live in this land if one Islamo-Nazi remains in Gaza.”
Members of Netanyahu’s war cabinet, including Netanyahu himself, have called for the implementation of a policy of mass killing or genocide against Palestinians. These calls have been pieced together in a data base on the Law For Palestine website and were central to the case South Africa brought at the International Court of Justice against Israel in which it accuses the country of committing deliberate genocide.
It’s not just the far-right in Israel who have called for the implementation of a policy of mass killing, unfortunately. Recently, in an article in the left wing Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz, one of the country’s most well known intellectuals, the historian Benny Morris, recently called for a nuclear bomb to be dropped on Iran before that country could develop the capacity to build its own bomb. Some hysterical students at universities around the world might protest against the action, he said, but Israel would be able to cope just fine with that.
But the official narrative about Israel may now be strained in the United States and in Britain as people from different walks of life, including Jews themselves, turn against Israel and accuse it of genocide. Even Trump has acknowledged that Israel is losing the propaganda battle.
To finish, in the midst of all the bad news, here are two news stories offering us glimmer of hope from the perspective of challenging the false narrative of the main parties here in Britain.
The first is the appointment by Keir Starmer for the post of the new Attorney General of a Jewish Lawyer from Wales named Richard Hermer, a man of extremely strong moral tenets, who has been harsh in his criticism of Israel’s actions over the years, and specifically during the war in Gaza.
This is an interesting appointment to say the least given Starmer’s abysmal record on the issue of the suffering of Gaza’s residents. It will be interesting to see whether Richard Hermer will be able to influence the new British government’s policy towards Israel. There are signs that he has already succeeded in changing Britain’s views on some issues regarding Israel’s illegal actions.
The second news item worth highlighting is a recent press interview by Sir Alan Duncan, the former Conservative member of parliament. He had been accused by the Conservative Party of being anti-Semitic after criticising Israel and those Party members who he said had been bribed by Israel to support its actions in Palestine. Eventually, following an investigation by the Party, all charges against him were dropped.
I’m going to finish with a part of the speech he gave about two weeks ago at a press conference, a few days before the International Court of Justice declared that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem was illegal and that it should withdraw its settlers from Palestinian lands and pay reparations to those Palestinians who have lost their homes. His comments were therefore prophetic in their significance.
In conclusion this is the central message of what Alan Duncan had to say and I’m quoting it verbatim. It’s an extremely important one and needs to be repeated every chance we get.
The principal message to Israel is: Get out of Palestine. It’s not your country.
* Loan Talfryn is an author and a member of the North Wales Palestinian Solidarity group
** The views expressed in this article are the writers, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The African
