Lessons of Rafah

In a horrible sense, Israel’s latest major massacre in the Gaza Strip is Zionist genocide-as-usual. A massacre-by-bombing of already displaced and traumatized refugees in flimsy tents, crowded together in a designated (by Israel) “safe area” in Rafah is really just ordinary Israelis at work. Western politicians – such as Germany’s Robert Habeck and France’s Emmanuel Macron, who have supported almost 8 months of genocidal slaughter to now discover that Israel is crossing red lines and breaking international law cannot be taken seriously. Their real worry, we must assume, is that Israel has not finished its “job” quickly enough, so that, at long last, the facts of genocide are becoming so blatantly obvious that Western accomplices, too, may face legal or, at least, political accountability.

Siding with Israel, they should – and could (easily) – have known more than half a year ago, means siding with war crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. Yet Habeck was telling the German public that it was Germany’s almost mystical “reason of state” to practice unquestioning, unconditional loyalty toward Israel, no matter what happens. Perversely, anchoring support for an ongoing genocide in German responsibility for an earlier one. Historically speaking, how very German: putting a deeply misguided, nationally defined “loyalty” above elementary ethics.