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Sunday, January 14, 2024

Brendan O'Neill: These accusations of ‘genocide’ bring shame on humanity


South Africa’s case against Israel is the most absurd and sinister spectacle of the 21st century so far.

The more you think about the genocide case against Israel, the more horrendous it becomes. First there’s the hypocrisy. It is an orgy of cant. Turkey has noisily joined the ranks of shameless governments pointing a collective finger at Israel. This is the same Turkish government that denies that its nation carried out the Armenian Genocide of 1915, when a million people were wiped from the face of the Earth. As part of a programme of tyrannical Islamisation, Armenian Christians were forced on to death marches in the desert during which unimaginable numbers perished. Now the genocide deniers are genocide judges. It would be funny if it were not so repulsive.

Turkey is providing ‘documents’ for South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice this week. ‘I believe that Israel will be convicted’, says Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. This is the same Erdoğan who locks people up for speaking of the Armenian Genocide. Article 301 of Turkey’s penal code, which forbids ‘insulting Turkishness’, has been used to prosecute people who mention 1915. Writers and publishers have been banged up for the sin of saying ‘Armenia’ and ‘genocide’ in the same breath. Now this tyrant who ruthlessly punishes discussion of his own nation’s genocide loudly accuses Israel of genocide. These are Kafkaesque levels of moral fraud.

The Organisation of Islamic Countries has likewise joined the genocide chorus against Israel. This includes Saudi Arabia. Fresh from its slaughter of thousands in Yemen. Surely it will be a cold day in hell before any nation takes lectures on violence from these fanatics who whip and kill their own citizens for such crimes as apostasy, homosexuality and being a woman who wants rights.

Iran has lined up with South Africa, too. It’s getting ridiculous now. Vastly more people have perished in Iran’s wars of the past 40 years than in the wars Israel has been involved in since 1948. Just last year Iran slaughtered hundreds of its own citizens for the crime of believing women are human beings. Kurds in particular got it in the neck. Masses were murdered. ‘They tried to wipe us out’, said one Kurd. For Iran to sit in judgment on any nation is a nauseating spectacle, an inversion of morality of Orwellian proportions.

Then there’s South Africa, the nation that brought the case against Israel. Its imperious judges reeled off charge after charge against the Jewish State at the ICJ this week. You’ll forgive my gagging. ANC-run South Africa is one of the most corrupt regimes in the world. The heirs to Mandela have catastrophically failed to make good his promise of a new, fair nation. South Africa under their rule has some of the highest rates of murder and rape in the world. Poverty is rampant. The ANC has massacred black workers who were merely campaigning for better pay. It failed to counter murderous pogroms against Zimbabwean immigrants. It presides over a country where, for millions, life is brutish and short. Perhaps it should save some of the fashionable sympathy it feels for the people of Gaza for its own long-suffering citizens.

Who will be called up next to give evidence? An old Hutu commander, perhaps? Maybe they’ll dig up Pol Pot and let him rage against the Jews. The ICJ trial of Israel is one of the most absurd and sinister events of the 21st century so far. Israel is being accused of unconscionable violence by the practitioners of unconscionable violence. It is being charged with reckless disregard for civilian life by the self-enriched rulers of nations in which thousands of civilians die every year from preventable disease, political violence and execution. It is being charged with war crimes by nations that beat to death young women who want to show their hair. It is being called criminal by criminals.

And still the West’s woke left laps it up. They’re glued to the ICJ proceedings. They appear to derive a perverse relish from seeing the Jewish State in the dock. They ask not one critical question about the moral credentials of Israel’s accusers, for to do so would muddy the moralistic waters they swim in; it would add irritating complexity to the infantile narrative they have fashioned in which Israel is evil incarnate, and thus anyone who opposes Israel is good.

Any mention of Turkey’s suppression of its genocidal history, Iran’s theocratic barbarism or the South African regime’s supercilious disregard for the economic and spiritual wellbeing of its own citizens would do something unforgivable: distract attention from what they consider to be the unique wickedness of the Jewish State. And so they just nod along, cheer along in fact, as the corrupt and despotic accuse Israel of sin.

These Western activists are as hypocritical as the nation states pointing a blood-stained finger at Israel. In Britain, radical members of Labour are giddily cheering the showtrial at The Hague. These are people who pay dues to a party which, last time it was in power, killed vastly more people in the Middle East than Israel has. They quaff wine with Labour MPs who will have voted in favour of Britain’s calamitous intervention in Libya, which plunged much of northern Africa into a violent, vacuous hell that makes Gaza seem relatively stable in comparison. Try to explain this double standard, this perfidious situation where the bourgeois left is happy to sup with British warmongers while ostentatiously vomiting over Israeli warmongers, without using the word ‘anti-Semitism’. It can’t be done. I’ve tried.

Here’s what I say to the ICJ trial of Israel and its morally blind cheerleaders: ‘J’accuse.’ That is what Emile Zola famously said in response to the Dreyfus Affair in France in the 1890s. This was the case of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, an army officer of Jewish descent, who was charged with treason for sending French military secrets to the Germans. It wasn’t true. The accusations, and the storm they stirred up, were driven by anti-Semitism. The affair became a scandal that rocked the Third Republic to its core. The great Zola risked it all when he wrote an open letter about the affair that appeared on the front page of a newspaper. ‘J’Accuse…!’ was the headline. You accuse Dreyfus of treason, I accuse you of lurid lies, anti-republican behaviour and anti-Semitism, he roared. We need a similar cry today.

Dreyfus is the victim of your ‘lurid imagination’, Zola thundered at the rulers of late 19th-century France. He is the victim of ‘the “dirty Jew” obsession that is the scourge of our time’, he said. You made Dreyfus a scapegoat for your own sins, he continued, leading to this ‘infamous spectacle’ where we have ‘men lost in debts and crime whose innocence is proclaimed’ while ‘the very honour is struck [from] a man with a spotless life!’.

Now, not even Israel’s most fervent defenders would describe it as ‘spotless’. Like every state, it makes mistakes, it does wrong. But the showtrial of the Jewish State eerily echoes the showtrial of the Jew Dreyfus. Again we see the deployment of ‘lurid imagination’, where every single thing Israel does is pored over and judged nefarious. Again we see men – or in this case, nations – that are ‘lost in debts and crime’ projecting their own sense of guilt on to a Jewish scapegoat. And again we see not one nation this time, but many nations seeking to distract attention from their own inner turmoil through the creation of a spectacle of accusation – only now it’s not a Jew in the dock; it’s the entire Jewish nation.

We have heard quite enough of your lurid accusations against Israel. Now it’s time you heard ours against you. I accuse South Africa of joining the holy war against Israel in order to cynically curry favour with the woke elites of the West. In order to try to repair its global image as a just, radical nation despite its cataclysmic failing of its own population who still await the enrichment and equality they were promised following the fall of Apartheid 30 years ago. I accuse Iran of backing the legal crusade against Israel as a furtherance of its violent anti-Semitism. As yet another opportunity to defame and isolate the Jewish State in order that the Jews there might feel compelled to leave.

I accuse Turkey of backing the showtrial in order to disguise its own past genocidal crimes. In order to pool its genocidal guilt, and project it on to others, in particular the supposedly evil ‘Zionist entity’. I accuse Turkey of spying in these kangaroo proceedings an opportunity to rearrange power relations in the Middle East to its own tyrannical advantage. To strengthen the Turkey-Iran alliance on the back of what they hope will be the international court’s reprimand of the Jewish State. I accuse Turkey of sacrificing the safety of Jews in Israel at the altar of its own demented regional ambitions.

And I accuse the Western left of being the running dogs of all this global Israelophobia. Of forfeiting their right to be treated as serious moral actors by aligning with the demagogues, Islamists and outright racists who have dragged the world’s only Jewish nation to court on the most trumped-up charge imaginable. Of flagrantly abandoning their supposed commitment to anti-racism by whitewashing Hamas’s orgy of racist violence that gave rise to the current war. And of emboldening the fascists of Hamas by promoting the libel that says Israel is a genocidal state. After all, if Israel is guilty of the worst crime known to man, why should Hamas not attack it again, and again, and again, until the Nazi-like threat it poses to the Palestinian people has been eradicated? I accuse you of giving moral succour to fascists.

Let’s be clear: to accuse the Jews of genocide is the gravest calumny. To drag the historical victims of genocidal mania to court in order to bark the accusation of genocide in their faces is, to me, unconscionable. To liken these survivors of the Nazi derangement to the Nazis – as so many leftists and Islamists are doing – is an unforgivable inversion of morality, history and truth. To use the Genocide Convention that was brought in following the Nazis’ extermination of six million Jews against the nation in which many of the descendants of those Jews now reside is nothing more than act of cruelty. It reorders history itself. It whitewashes the sins of the Western world by putting those sins on to their historic targets. It is self-serving absolution dressed up as radical critique. The Final Absolution, we might say.

The public shaming of Dreyfus was driven by a lust for ‘hunting down “dirty Jews”’, a lust that ‘dishonours our times’, said Zola. Few would even dream of saying ‘dirty Jews’ these days. But they do say ‘evil Israelis’, ‘blood-lusting Israelis’, ‘uniquely murderous Israelis’. And they do dishonour our times. That’s it: I accuse you of dishonoring the values of Enlightenment, truth and reason by falsely accusing the survivors of genocide of being genocidal.

Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer. This article was first published HERE

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Over 23,700 Palestinians, including over 10,000 children, have been killed in Gaza since Oct. 7, when Hamas and other resistance fighters breached the security barriers around Gaza. Some 1,200 people were killed – there is strong evidence that some of the victims were killed by Israeli tank crews and helicopter pilots that intentionally targeted the some 200 hostages along with their captors. Thousands more Palestinians are missing, presumed buried under the rubble. Israeli attacks have left over 60,000 Palestinians wounded and maimed, the majority of them women and children. Thousands more Palestinian civilians, including children, have been arrested, blindfolded, numbered, beaten, forced to strip to their underwear, loaded onto trucks and transported to unknown locations.
The South African lawyers told the court the “first genocidal act is mass killing of Palestinians in Gaza.” The second genocidal act, they stated, is the serious bodily or mental harm inflicted on Palestinians in Gaza in violation of Article 2B of the Genocide Convention. Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, another lawyer and legal scholar representing South Africa, argued that “Israel’s political leaders, military commanders and persons holding official positions have systematically and in explicit terms declared their genocidal intent.”
Genocide is not a political problem. It is a moral one. We cannot, no matter what the cost, support those who commit or are accomplices to genocide. Genocide is the crime of all crimes. It is the purest expression of evil. We must stand unequivocally with Palestinians and the jurists from South Africa. We must demand justice. We must hold Biden accountable for the genocide in Gaza.

hughvane said...

•Mr O’Neill has his brightest blue&white vision aids on. Those who criticise and condemn Israel do so for a number of reasons. Many are grossly hypocritical, examples of which are stated; and he’s right to call them out. He blithely brushes over and/or ignores however the reality of what is happening on the ground in Gaza. Supporting Israel is one thing, supporting its slaughter of uninvolved civilians is entirely another.
•An online dictionary defines genocide as: “the deliberate and systematic killing or persecution of a large number of people from a particular national or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.”
In the present Israeli military campaign, one might quibble about the last (italicised) part of that quote.
•Mr O’Neill goes on to say “not even Israel’s most fervent defenders would describe it as ‘spotless’. Like every state, it makes mistakes, it does wrong.” How magnanimous!
•No matter what Mr O’Neill says about criticising Israel’s current campaign of elimination, or supporting peaceful Arabic causes, it is NOT anti-Semitism, or anti-Jewish state. It is anti-warfare, and anti-slaughter of human beings.

Anonymous said...


A lucid critique which has grave implications due to the " wokeness" of the situation.

Anonymous said...

Oh Brendan you are a wonderful manifestation of sanity in a pretty stupid human race (I pause here to be fair to all the other intelligent rational human beings on this planet).
Jesus wept.

EP said...

Hamas is responsible for the agony of the people of Gaza, as it sets them up to be slaughtered so that Israel will be blamed. And simpletons in the free world buy it!!

Anonymous said...

South Africa abstained from condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It is obvious that South Africa is aligning with the anti western bloc of countries.

Rickoshay said...

This from a Government openly waging a war of racial hatred against white farmers, SA keep yer Anti White Anti Jewish racial bias to yourselves and mind your own genocide

Peter Agnew said...

What I find particularly distasteful in South Africa’s attempt to label Israel’s actions as genocide is that the ANC, back in Mbeki’s time, pursued a kind of passive genocide against its own citizens when it denied its HIV positive patients access to western medications that could have saved them. More than three million South Africans died of AIDS as a result. Apartheid never committed an atrocity like this.

F. Sharp said...

The first anonymous commentator (0938 today 14 Jan) obviously does not understand the meaning of the word "genocide". Please examine the correct definition of the word and then replace your ignorant rant with facts. And do not hide behind anonymity.

F. Sharp

Peter said...

A case well put, Brendan. While I'm not religious, South Africa would de well to consider what Jesus said about casting the first stone. As for Anon@9.38, I'm with you F Sharp.

Anonymous said...

Two wrongs never make a right. It may not meet the courts definition of genocide but people recognize what they see. At the least this is ethnic cleansing and war crimes. Attacking the accuser is never a good argument legally. This is Trump's tactic. Hamas is gulity no question but Israel is dropping the most bombs in the shortest time frame on a largely civilian population ever. These are 'dumb'bombs. Israel is reponsible for these choices. They have target bombs which they used in Beirut twice. They could use those to get Hamas and did not. Depriving a population of food water and electricity is also a war crime.

Anonymous said...

Ask what you would demand from your Govt. if you had a child held as hostage by Hamas.

Barbara McKenzie said...

I'm embarrassed and disappointed this dishonest claptrap here.

1) Criticising Israel is antisemitism: Any literate person one who correlates antisemitism with criticism of Israel is a pathological liar. Jews around the world are leading protests against Israel's actions at least, and many oppose Israel's existence. Is Israeli journalist Gideon Levy an antisemite? Ilan Pappe?
The countries most negatively affected by Israel's existence and in support of South Africa's case are those of the Middle East, such as Syria and Iran Sorry, but those are the countries that pre-1948 had no history of antisemitism (in the common sense). Listen to Avi Shlaim growing up as an Arab Jew in Baghdad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EXB7NnMNMs When I was last in Damascus, traders in the Old City would tell me how traditionally Christians did the inlaid wood, Muslims the textiles, and Jews the metalwork. I didn't detect hate, maybe a note of regret. Iran still has thriving Jewish and Christian communities.
Arab Jews in the 40s and 50s had most to fear from Zionists, not their fellow Arabs. In the 1950s Zionists were blowing up the premises of Jews in Baghdad and elsewhere, to force Jews to relocate to Israel.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/iraq-jews-attacks-zionist-role-confirmed-operative-police-report?fbclid=IwAR0dMr0DKwZ6JAcLiKpP5vobLnZg9v3K-xHhBtj3G6z4Mw9s-ox6h0IGV2M

2) Hypocrisy: so what? Surely this case will bring genocide to the fore, maybe make it easier to argue the case re the Armenian genocide.
My parents' generation rewarded the Stern, Irgun and Haganah thugs for their terrorism by giving them most of Palestine - leaders of those gangs all became prime ministers of Israel. Am I therefore a hypocrite for condemning Israel now?

The most startling (hilarious even) example of hypocrisy is Netanyahu in his defense of Israel: ' Where was South Africa when millions of people were being murdered and uprooted from their homes in Syria and Yemen, by whom? By Hamas's partners.' https://www.gov.il/en/departments/news/statement-by-pm-netanyahu-11-jan-2024 Netanyahu, leader of the biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the ME, visited al Qaeda soldiers when they were being cared for in Israeli hospitals on the Golan. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5doeBEyjVDg

3) You can't criticise Israel because of the holocaust - the perpetual victims, the only victims, with complete and eternal license. See Gideon Levy, 'How Israelis Live so Easily with Occupation', 6:45mins. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EtNFXL_ykg

4) 'Vastly more people have perished in Iran’s wars of the past 40 years than in the wars Israel has been involved in since 1948.' Hullo? Is O'Neill referring to the invasion by NATO ally Saddam Hussein? Estimates of casualties range between 1 and 3 million, with Iran suffering the greatest losses. Or is he referring to Iran's attacks on our ally ISIS in the West's proxy war on Syria? (nb ISIS never attacks the US or Israel) 'an inversion of morality of Orwellian proportions' - I couldn't agree more.

5) 'Hamas’s orgy of racist violence that gave rise to the current war'

Interesting the suggestion that the attack was inspired by racism (antisemitism) rather than by the occupation.

The claims of burned and decapitated babies were quickly debunked, it turns out that the only burned bodies were those in houses and cars shelled by the IDF.

It's over: the evidence is just about incontrovertible that Hamas planned a raid to take hostages in order to force the release of the hundreds of children held without charge in Israeli prisons; the Israelis knew in advance, allowed it to happen and then orchestrated a massacre in order to justify the murderous ethnic cleansing of Gaza. https://new.thecradle.co/articles-id/18526?fbclid=IwAR3dx-jlB7urse77SI1SCljFupswKNsSYjN2RSspJfClD-VUkQpLezl-5N8