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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://consortiumnews.com/2023/12/14/west-fears-atrocity-upsurge-while-ignoring-gaza/">consortiumnews.com</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">West Fears ‘Atrocity Upsurge’ While Ignoring Gaza</h1>
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<p><span><strong>The problem isn’t “global inaction” to prevent mass atrocities, as <em>The Guardian</em> claims, writes Jonathan Cook. It’s intense U.S. and U.K. support for atrocities so long as they bolster their global power.</strong></span><span id="gmail-more-104074"></span></p>
<div id="gmail-attachment_103703" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-103703" src="https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Fars_Photo_of_Destruction_in_Gaza_Strip_during_2023_War_16.jpeg" alt="" width="440" height="293" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 0px;"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-103703" class="gmail-wp-caption-text"><span>Gaza, Oct. 17. <span>(Saleh Najm and Anas Sharif/Fars News/Wikimedia Commons)</span></span></p></div>
<p dir="ltr"><strong><span>By <a href="https://consortiumnews.com/tag/jonathan-cook/"><span>Jonathan Cook</span></a></span></strong><br>
<em><span><a href="https://www.declassifieduk.org/the-west-agonises-over-an-atrocity-upsurge-while-backing-israels-genocide-in-gaza/">Declassified UK</a></span></em></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span><span><strong>H</strong></span>ow
do politicians, diplomats, the media and even the human rights
community keep us politically ignorant, docile and passive – a
collective mindset that prevents us from challenging their power as well
as the status quo they benefit from?</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>The answer: By constantly misrepresenting reality to
us and their own role in shaping it. And they do it so successfully
because, at the same time, they gaslight us by flaunting the pretence
that they crave to make the world a better place — a better place where,
in truth, the unspoken danger is that, were it to be realised, their
own power would be severely diminished.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>A perfect illustration of how this grand deception works was provided in a report at the weekend in the supposedly progressive <em>Guardian</em> newspaper, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/law/2023/dec/08/un-and-us-efforts-to-stop-mass-atrocities-have-waned-activists-warn">headlined,</a> “World faces ‘heightened risk’ of mass atrocities due to global inaction.”</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>The opening paragraph reports that human rights
activists fear the “international community has given up on intervention
efforts to stop mass atrocities, leading to fears that such occurrences
may become the norm around the world.”</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>In practice, this “failure,” according to the report,
has manifested in an abandonment by Western states of the principle of
R2P — or “responsibility to protect.” This principle and related
“humanitarian” pretexts were used to justify the U.S. and its allies
meddling since the 1990s variously in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya
and Syria, with disastrous consequences.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Millions were killed as a result of R2P-type
interventions and tens of millions displaced, leading to mass movements
of people that are seen today by Western states in terms of an “illegal
immigration threat.”</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong><span>Sustained Massacre</span></strong></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>The context for the human rights community’s
concerns, we are told, are growing abuses of the Genocide Convention and
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Both were adopted in the
immediate wake of the Second World War to prevent a repeat of the Nazi
holocaust and widespread atrocities committed against civilians on both
sides of the fighting.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>One might have assumed, at this point, that such
fears have been heightened — resulting in their being raised at the
United Nations — by the most egregious genocide of modern times: the
sustained massacre over two months of Palestinian civilians in Gaza and
the wanton destruction of the vast majority of their homes to drive the
survivors out of Gaza and into Egypt.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>At least 17,000 Palestinians are known to have been
killed by Israel so far, most of them women and children. More than
100,000 homes have been made uninhabitable. Some 2.3 million
Palestinians have been herded into a tiny, ever shrinking space, close
to the border with Egypt, denied water, food and fuel.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>This combined act of genocide and ethnic cleansing is
the most intense, visible and industrial — using the very latest and
most powerful weaponry available — in living memory.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>But extraordinarily, that does not appear to be the central concern of the “international community.” According to <em>The Guardian</em>, the following are the global crises primarily driving a steep rise in atrocities:</span></p>
<blockquote>
<p dir="ltr"><span>“The mass killing of civilians in Syria and Ukraine,
and the internment of over a million Uyghurs and other Muslims in China,
have been followed by war crimes in Ethiopia, and a resumption of
ethnic cleansing in Sudan’s Darfur province, 20 years after the start of
the genocide there.”</span></p>
</blockquote>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Notice anything significant about this list? It
comprises only mass atrocities being committed by those not firmly
within the U.S. imperial sphere of subservience.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>The mass slaughter of civilians in Gaza, which has
been in the headlines for many weeks, cannot be credibly overlooked. So
it is mentioned — but notice how the spotlight is sharply directed away
from the present, highly pertinent events in Israel and Palestine. The
genocide in Gaza, which has driven many millions of protesters on to the
streets across Europe and North America, becomes an afterthought:</span></p>
<blockquote>
<p dir="ltr"><span>“The 7 October Hamas killing of 1,200 Israelis,
mostly civilians, and the consequent Israeli invasion of Gaza, in which
women and children have accounted for most of the estimated 16,000 dead,
have added to the bloody chaos.”</span></p>
</blockquote>
<p dir="ltr"><strong><span>Manifold Deceptions</span></strong></p>
<div id="gmail-attachment_102880" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-102880" src="https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Damage_in_Gaza_Strip_during_the_October_2023_-_37.jpg" alt="" width="440" height="293" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 0px;"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-102880" class="gmail-wp-caption-text"><span>Medic carries an injured Palestinian child into Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City following an Israeli airstrike on Oct. 11. <span>(Atia Darwish, Palestinian News & Information Agency — Wafa — for APAimages, CC BY-SA 3.0)</span></span></p></div>
<p dir="ltr"><span>The deception here is manifold, and not just because Gaza ought to be top of the list of concerns, not at the bottom.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>The formulaic framing in this paragraph is designed —
as ever in Western reporting — to create a false equivalence between
Hamas’ actions and Israel’s, and engender a sense that Israel’s mass
slaughter of Palestinians is caused, and excused, by Hamas’ preceding
mass slaughter of Israelis.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>It should hardly need restating that Hamas’ breakout
of the prison that is Gaza — and its predictably dire consequences — was
preceded by decades of Israeli military abuses of Palestinians under
military occupation and an illegal 16-year siege of their territory
depriving more than 2 million people of their freedom, basic rights and
dignity.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong><span><span>Please</span> <a href="https://consortiumnews.salsalabs.org/ClassicDonationPage1/index.html"><span>DONATE </span></a></span></strong><strong><span><span>to</span><span> </span><span>CN’S</span> <span>Winter</span><span> </span><span>Fund</span> <span>Drive</span></span></strong></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>There has been a constant, slow-motion atrocity in
Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem for decades — long before the
human rights community, the U.N. and <em>The Guardian</em> raised their new concerns about “a heightened risk of atrocity crimes.”</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>There is, too, a clear difference between the
exceptional, one-off violence Hamas was able to wreak on Oct. 7 because
of dramatic and unexpected failures in Israel’s surveillance and control
of the Palestinian population in Gaza and Israel’s intensification of
the structural violence of a decades-long occupation and siege.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>These, all too obviously, are not the same things —
and they do not pose even vaguely comparable threats to the status of
the Genocide Convention and Universal Declaration of Human Rights.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>To suggest otherwise — as all Western reporting does
constantly — is to exaggerate the threat posed to international law by
the atrocities committed by Hamas and dramatically underplay the
significance of Israel’s genocide and ethnic cleansing.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong><span>Weapons Testing Lab</span></strong></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>But there is a far deeper problem with the framing of
these concerns. The critical problem is not “global inaction” over mass
atrocities. It is the opposite: intense Western — chiefly U.S. —
support for, and complicity in, such atrocities.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>This problem is highlighted only too clearly by
events in Gaza. Which is precisely why it is included reluctantly, and
only as an afterthought, in the list of threats to international
humanitarian law. The U.S. is not helpless in the unfolding genocide. It
is actively facilitating it. In fact, Israel’s genocide and ethnic
cleansing would be impossible without not just U.S. collusion but active
participation.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>The mass slaughter of civilians in Gaza is occurring
because the U.S. has supplied many of the heavy-duty bombs razing Gaza’s
high-rises and killing its children. The slaughter is occurring because
the U.S. has sent warships to the region to intimidate neighbouring
Arab states and militant groups into remaining quiet as Gaza’s civilians
are murdered. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Lebanon’s Hezbollah, for example, is quite capable of
ending “global inaction,” by engaging Israel militarily and drawing
Israeli firepower away from Gaza. But no one in the “international
community” presumably wants that kind of “action.”</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>The mass slaughter in Gaza is occurring because the
U.S. used its veto at the U.N. Security Council last Friday to block a
ceasefire. It is occurring because the U.S. has funded the Iron Dome
missile interception system that stops Hamas being able to fire rockets
on Israeli communities — mirroring on a tiny scale Israel’s destruction
in Gaza — to raise the political pressure in Israel for a ceasefire. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>The slaughter is occurring because Washington has for
decades propped up Israel’s military with the bulk of the U.S. overseas
aid budget, and let Israel use the Palestinian territories as a
profitable <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2023/11/17/israels-weapons-industry-is-the-gaza-war-its-latest-test-lab">laboratory</a> for testing new weapons systems, surveillance techniques and cyber technology. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong><span>Peace Talks Blocked</span></strong></p>
<div id="gmail-attachment_80275" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-80275" src="https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/51992919668_f57a71fc76_b.jpg" alt="" width="440" height="293" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 0px;"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-80275" class="gmail-wp-caption-text"><span>Boris Johnson, then-U.K. prime minister, left, meeting Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kiev, April 9, 2022. <span>(Ukraine government)</span></span></p></div>
<p dir="ltr"><span>The problem here is most definitely not “inaction.”
It is that the U.S. picks and chooses when and how it wants to be active
in creating, sustaining and ending conflicts around the globe.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Noticeably absent from the list of concerns about the
spread of atrocities is the suffering of Yemen, where Saudi Arabia has
been waging a genocidal war for years. On average, four Yemeni <a href="https://www.unicef.org.uk/press-releases/more-than-11000-children-killed-or-injured-in-yemen-unicef/">children</a> have been killed or maimed each day over the past eight years by Saudi atrocities. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Why is Yemen overlooked? Because factions there are
seen as allies of Iran and therefore enemies of the West whose lives
count for nothing. Because Riyadh is a critically important U.S. ally
and supplier of oil. And because the U.S. and Britain have been arming
the Saudis to the hilt to commit the genocide there. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Similarly, in Ukraine. The vast majority of the
casualties on both sides of the fighting might have been avoided if
peace talks had not been <a href="https://responsiblestatecraft.org/ukraine-russia-talks/">blocked</a> by the U.S. and Britain in the first weeks after Russia’s invasion.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>It was that “action” and others — such as the <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/russia-ukraine-us-invasion-paved-how">threatening</a>
expansion of NATO to Russia’s borders and the West’s flooding of
Ukraine with weapons on the false promise that Nato would have Kyiv’s
back — that ensured nearly two years of war and its tragic death toll.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>As with Gaza, the problem has not been inaction, it’s
been far too much action from the U.S. and its lapdogs in Europe of the
very kind designed to assist in slaughter and genocides.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong><span>‘You Must Obey’</span></strong></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>There is, however, a reason why the “international
community” is raising concerns about “atrocity crimes” now, while
downplaying or denying the worst possible atrocity crime – genocide – in
Gaza.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>And that is because Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7
signifies a dangerous moment for Western domination of the so-called
global, rules-based order. The concern is not really about a rise in
mass atrocities. The West is just fine with atrocities when it commits
them or it helps others carry them out.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>It is about the West’s increasing difficulty of
keeping the rest of the world weak, intimidated and subdued through the
use of its own atrocities. U.S. military failures in Afghanistan, Syria
and Ukraine — and the growing self-assurance of Russia and China — are
marking out new limits to Washington’s supremacy.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>The truth is that Hamas’ attack on Israel — horrific
as its consequences were — served as a signpost to a different future
for many of those who have lived for decades under the thumb, or more
often the boot, of the U.S. and its allies. They see that it is
possible, even as an oppressed, weak, abused party, to give the bullying
global hegemon and its sidekicks a bloody nose.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>What is seen by privileged, complacent Westerners
purely in terms of senseless, barbaric violence is understood by others
as a slave revolt – as an “I am Spartacus” moment.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>[See: <em><a href="https://consortiumnews.com/2023/11/09/john-pilger-we-are-spartacus/">JOHN PILGER: We Are Spartacus</a>]</em></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Which is why, just as happened after Russia’s
invasion of Ukraine, so much of the rest of the world is failing to join
the West in its self-righteous chorus of outrage and condemnation. They
view these professions of indignation as pure hypocrisy.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>It is the reason, too, why the U.S. is being so
indulgent as Israel goes about its genocidal rampage in Gaza. The
importance for Washington is not stopping Israel’s atrocities but making
sure Israel reasserts its famed “deterrence” to provide a lesson to
those who might be inspired to wage their own slave revolt.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>In front of the cameras, the Biden administration is
calling for restraint and urging Israel to minimise civilian casualties.
But behind the scenes, it is carefully calibrating just how much
savagery Israel needs to unleash to send the right message to the
non-Western world: You cannot win. You must obey.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong><span>Jonathan Cook is the author of three books on
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and a winner of the Martha Gellhorn
Special Prize for Journalism. His website and blog can be found at <a href="http://www.jonathan-cook.net/">www.jonathan-cook.net</a></span></strong></p>
<p><em><span>This article is from </span></em><span><a href="https://www.declassifieduk.org/">Declassified UK</a></span><em><span>.</span></em></p><br></div></div></div>
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