Each empire falls. Its collapse turns into inevitable as soon as its rulers lose all sense of how absurd and abhorrent they’ve change into
There is just one nation on this planet proper now, within the midst of Israel’s slaughter in Gaza, the place Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is assured dozens of standing ovations from the overwhelming majority of its elected representatives.
That nation just isn’t Israel, the place he has been a vastly divisive determine for a few years. It’s america.
On Wednesday, Netanyahu was back-slapped, glad-handed, whooped and cheered as he slowly made his means – hailed at each step as a conquering hero – to the rostrum of the US Congress.
This was the identical Netanyahu who has overseen through the previous 10 months the slaughter– thus far – of some 40,000 Palestinians, round half of them ladies and kids. Greater than 21,000 different kids are reported lacking, most of them doubtless useless below rubble.
It was the identical Netanyahu who levelled a strip of territory – initially house to 2.3 million Palestinians – that’s anticipated to take 80 years to rebuild, at a price of at the very least $50bn.
It was the identical Netanyahu who has destroyed each hospital and college in Gaza, and bombed nearly all of its faculties that have been serving as shelters for households made homeless by different Israeli bombs.
It was the identical Netanyahu whose arrest is being sought by the chief prosecutor of the Worldwide Felony Court docket for crimes in opposition to humanity, accused of utilizing hunger as a weapon of battle by imposing an assist blockade that has engineered a famine throughout Gaza.
It was the identical Netanyahu whose authorities was discovered final week by the Worldwide Court docket of Justice (ICJ) to have been intensifying Israel’s apartheid rule over the Palestinian folks in an act of long-term aggression.
It was the identical Netanyahu whose authorities is standing trial for committing what the ICJ, the world’s highest judicial physique, has termed a “believable genocide”.
And but, there was only one seen protester within the congressional chamber. Rashida Tlaib, the one US legislator of Palestinian heritage, sat silently greedy a small black signal. On one facet it stated: “Battle prison”. On the opposite: “Responsible of genocide”.
One particular person amongst lots of mutely attempting to level out that the emperor was bare.
Cocooned from horror
Certainly, the optics have been stark.
This appeared much less like a go to by a overseas chief than a embellished elder common being welcomed again to the Senate in historical Rome, or a grey-haired British viceroy from India embraced within the motherland’s parliament, after brutally subduing the “barbarians” on the fringes of empire.
This was a scene acquainted from historical past books: of imperial brutality and colonial savagery, recast by the seat of the imperium as valour, honour, civilisation. And it appeared each bit as absurd, and abhorrent, because it does once we look again on what occurred 200 or 2,000 years in the past.
It was a reminder that, regardless of our self-serving claims of progress and humanitarianism, our world just isn’t very completely different from the best way it has been for 1000’s of years.
It was a reminder that energy elites wish to rejoice the demonstration of their energy, cocooned each from the horrors confronted by these crushed by their would possibly, and from the clamour of protest of these horrified by the infliction of a lot struggling.
It was a reminder that this isn’t a “battle” between Israel and Hamas – not to mention, as Netanyahu would have us consider, a battle for civilisation between the Judeo-Christian world and the Islamic world.
This can be a US imperial battle – a part of its navy marketing campaign for “international, full-spectrum dominance” – carried out by Washington’s most favoured shopper state.
The genocide is totally a US genocide, armed by Washington, paid for by Washington, given diplomatic cowl by Washington, and – because the scenes in Congress underlined – cheered on by Washington.
Or as Netanyahu acknowledged in a second of unintentional candour to Congress: “Our enemies are your enemy, our struggle is your struggle, and our victory shall be your victory.”
Israel is Washington’s largest navy outpost within the oil-rich Center East. The Israeli military is the Pentagon’s fundamental battalion in that strategically essential area. And Netanyahu is the outpost’s commander in chief.
What is important to Washington elites is that the outpost is supported in any respect prices; that it doesn’t fall to the “barbarians”.
Outpouring of lies
There was one other small second of inadvertent reality amid Netanyahu’s outpouring of lies. The Israeli prime minister acknowledged that what was taking place in Gaza was “a conflict between barbarism and civilisation”. He was not flawed.
On the one facet, there may be the barbarism of the present joint Israeli-US genocide in opposition to the folks of Gaza, a dramatic escalation of the 17-year Israeli siege of the enclave that preceded it, and the a long time of belligerent rule below an Israeli system of apartheid earlier than that.
And on the opposite facet, there are the embattled few desperately attempting to safeguard the West’s professed values of “civilisation”, of worldwide humanitarian legislation, of the safety of the weak and weak, of the rights of youngsters.
The US Congress decisively confirmed the place it stood: with barbarism.
Netanyahu has change into probably the most feted overseas chief in US historical past, invited to talk to Congress 4 occasions, surpassing even Britain’s wartime chief, Winston Churchill.
He’s totally Washington’s creature. His savagery, his monstrousness is fully made in America. As he implored his US handlers: “Give us the instruments sooner and we’ll end the job sooner.”
End the job of genocide.
Performative dissent
Some Democrats most popular to remain away, together with get together energy dealer Nancy Pelosi. As an alternative, she met households of Israeli hostages held in Gaza – not, after all, Palestinian households whose family members in Gaza had been slaughtered by Israel.
Vice President Kamala Harris defined her personal absence as a scheduling battle. She met the Israeli prime minister, as did President Joe Biden, on Thursday.
ORDER IT NOW
Afterwards, she claimed to have pressed Netanyahu on the “dire” humanitarian state of affairs in Gaza, however confused too that Israel “had a proper to defend itself” – a proper that Israel particularly doesn’t have, because the ICJ identified final week, as a result of Israel is the one completely violating the rights of the Palestinians by means of its extended occupation, apartheid rule and ethnic cleaning.
However the dissent of Pelosi – and of Harris, if that’s what it was – was purely performative. True, they don’t have any private love for Netanyahu, who has so intently allied himself and his authorities with the US Republican proper and former president Donald Trump.
However Netanyahu merely serves as an alibi. Each Pelosi and Harris are stalwart supporters of Israel – a state that, in accordance with the ICJ’s judgment final week, a long time in the past instituted apartheid rule within the Palestinian territories, utilizing an unlawful occupation as cowl to ethnically cleanse the inhabitants there.
Their political agenda just isn’t about ending the annihilation of the folks of Gaza. It’s appearing as a security valve for in style dissatisfaction amongst conventional Democratic voters shocked by the scenes from Gaza.
It’s to deceive them into imagining that behind closed doorways, there may be some kind of coverage struggle over Israel’s dealing with of the Palestinian problem. That voting Democrat will someday – one very distant day – result in an undefined “peace”, a fabled “two-state resolution” the place Palestinian kids received’t preserve dying within the pursuits of preserving the safety of Israel’s unlawful settler-militias.
US coverage in direction of Israel has not modified in any significant sense for many years, whether or not the president has been crimson or blue, whether or not Trump has been within the White Home or Barack Obama.
And if Harris turns into president – admittedly, a giant if – US arms and cash will proceed flowing to Israel, whereas Israel will get to resolve if US assist to Gaza is ever allowed in.
Why? As a result of Israel is the lynchpin in a US imperial challenge for international full-spectrum dominance. As a result of for Washington to alter course on Israel, it will additionally should do different unthinkable issues.
It must start dismantling its 800 navy bases across the planet, simply as Israel was informed by the ICJ final week to dismantle its many dozens of unlawful settlements on Palestinian territory.
The US would want to agree a shared international safety structure with China and Russia, relatively than search to bully and batter these nice powers into submission with bloody proxy wars, such because the one in Ukraine.
The approaching fall
Pelosi, bear in mind, smeared college students on US campuses protesting Israel’s believable genocide in Gaza as being linked to Russia. She urged the FBI to research them for pressuring the Biden administration to assist a ceasefire.
Netanyahu, in his tackle to Congress, equally demonised the demonstrators – in his case, by accusing them of being “helpful idiots” of Israel’s fundamental foe, Iran.
Neither can afford to recognise that thousands and thousands of peculiar folks throughout the US suppose it’s flawed to bomb and starve kids – and to make use of a battle with an unachievable purpose as the duvet story.
Hamas can’t be “eradicated” by means of Israel’s present bout of horrifying violence for a really apparent cause: The group is a product, a symptom, of earlier bouts of horrifying Israeli violence.
As even western counter-terrorism specialists have needed to concede, Israel’s genocidal insurance policies in Gaza are strengthening Hamas, not weakening it. Younger males and boys who lose their household to Israeli bombs are Hamas’s most fervent new recruits.
That’s why Netanyahu insisted Israel’s navy offensive – the genocide – in Gaza couldn’t finish quickly. He demanded weapons and cash to maintain his troopers within the enclave indefinitely, in an operation he termed as “demilitarisation and deradicalisation”.
Decoded, meaning a seamless horror present for the Palestinians there, as they’re compelled to proceed residing and dying with an Israeli assist blockade, hunger, bombs and unmarked “kill zones”.
It means, too, an indefinite threat of Israel’s battle on Gaza spilling over right into a regional battle, and probably a worldwide one, as tripwires in direction of escalation proceed to develop in quantity.
The US Congress, nonetheless, is just too blinded by championing its small fortressed state within the Center East to consider such complexities. Its members roared “USA!” to their satrap from Israel, simply as Roman senators as soon as roared “Glory!” to generals whose victories they assumed would proceed without end.
The rulers of the Roman empire no extra noticed the approaching fall than their fashionable counterparts in Washington can. However each empire falls. And its collapse turns into inevitable as soon as its rulers lose all sense of how absurd and abhorrent they’ve change into.
