There is no country in the world – perhaps in history – like Israel. It has done wonderful things like turning deserts into lush agricultural farms. It has also turned itself into a singularly evil state. Its resort to cruelty against Palestinians has few parallels in modern history. Its nuclear hypocrisy is unparalleled too.
Israel’s greatest exceptionality is the immunity it commands in the world. It can do pretty much what it likes – and get away with it. Other countries get damned by “the international community” for all kinds of assorted sins: India is attacked for not signing the nuclear proliferation treaty; Iran is threatened for following a nuclear policy; Iraq was blown up for possessing nuclear arms it never possessed; China and Russia are criticised for persecuting their dissidents; Serbs and African leaders are tried for war crimes.
Israel commits all these sins, but we hardly hear the international community making a noise about it. Israelis have secretly assembled 100 to 200 nuclear weapons. That makes it the biggest nuclear power in the world after the so-called Big Five ( US, Russia, UK, France and China). The Americans who want all kinds of guarantees and inspection rights to participate even in civilian nuclear power programmes in India actually gave clandestine help to Israel to build its arsenal. That help was channeled through apartheid South Africa with which, officially, the US was supposed to have no contacts. It was a march of multiple hypocrisies all the way.
Immunity and double standards were again in evidence when the Israelis used massive military force to attack multinational aid ships going from Turkey to the Gaza Strip. The world’s most persecuted population, huddled in the world’s most crowded strip of territory, has been suffering Israeli terror for decades. According to UN estimates 70 percent of Gazans live on less than one dollar a day, 60 percent have no daily access to water. Hundreds have died for want of medicine.
The ships were carrying water purification systems, wheelchairs, construction materials and so on. Admittedly, there were anti-Israeli and perhaps even jehadi-supporting activists among the 700 passengers on board. But there were also scientists and journalists and an archbishop and three German MPs. There were citizens from the US, UK, Australia, Sweden, Greece, Canada, Belgium, Ireland. These were the people who were attacked by machinegun-wielding Israeli commandos who dropped down from helicopters. Some of the commandos were attacked as they slithered down the rope. Israel cited this to describe the commando attack as “self-defence”.
Israel gets away with international criminal activity on one strength, and one strength alone: American support. Obama, aware of this, had made promises of an even-handed approach to Israel. But that was during his glory days of campaigning. In the less-than-glory days of power, he seems to have understood that the American Goliath is slave to the Israeli David. The Jewish lobby is so powerful in America that no President can ignore it and survive. The Jewish lobby has the power to paralyse American economy.
The current Prime Minister of Israel happens to be the most rigidly hawkish in Israeli history. Benjamin Netanyahu, son of a Zionist extremist, considers himself a professional patriot and defender of Jews. He believes, like many of his countrymen, that Jews are God’s chosen children.
It is also useful to remember that the concept of using terrorism as a political weapon originated with Jews when they started the Zealot Movement (hence the term) against Roman occupiers in the 7th century. It grew steadily into modern times when, in 1946, the early Zionists bombed the famous King David Hotel in Jerusalem where the British administration had its headquarters.
Netanyahu’s Israel can only be a rogue state – and proudly so. World condemnation will mean nothing to it. This can only lead to more terrorism by the terrorised and still more terrorism by immunised state terrorists. One day one patriotic terrorist will use a nuclear bomb. Then?