The strictly bilateral ceasefire Washington has agreed with Ansar Allah – see previous post – cannot but alarm a Tel Aviv whose nuclear status has no value other than as the bargaining chip of a madman with his back to the wall. Israel can do genocide in Gaza, ethnic cleansing on the West Bank, 1 and incursions in Lebanon and Syria (the latter overextending its forces to put it on a collision course with Turkey) only for as long as Uncle Sam writes those infamously blank cheques.
Ansar Allah is showing, to the astonishment of the world, just how costly those cheques can be.
It’s far too early to say whether a Houthi ceasefire which halts its attacks on US military vessels but not on Israeli forces, and not on Israel-bound merchant shipping under any flag, signals a sea change (!) in Washington.
Or even that it will hold.
(Having bragged in transparently ridiculous fashion – “the Houthis said ‘please don’t bomb us anymore and we won’t attack your ships'” – what will Trump do if a US merchantman is hit on its way to or from Haifa or Eilat?)
What is clear, however, is that the tide is turning in the court of public opinion even in the West. Never mind for now that the cause of this shift is the growing awareness – by those shamefully silent, if not actively and stridently proclaiming “Israel’s right to self defence” – that “we” are on the wrong side of history and have given de facto – even de jure – blessing to nineteen months of mass murder whose authors have made no secret of their genocidal intent. Never mind that. However ignobly back-covering the motivation, voices once unconditionally supportive of Israel are not only experiencing disgust but voicing it through the most prestigious mouthpieces of a British establishment.
My cue to hand over to Owen Jones – and the Financial Times …
* * *
- See Jonathan Cook’s May 10 piece on the Louis Theroux documentary on West Bank settlers.
On the specific events and issues Jones is commenting upon, he is one hundred percent accurate.
However, implicit in everything he says is a recognition and acceptance of a set of generic values and principles which are Universal regardless of scale or context. In which it is reasonable to anticipate, are applied consistently rather than on an à la carte basis.
Consider the following thought experiment.
One of the parties which have drawn deserved criticism on this issue are those Arab States, other than Ansar Allah in Yemen, who are criticised for failing to come to the aid of their fellow Arabs in Palestine.
Now suppose for a moment that neighbouring Arab States did come to the aid of the Palestinians. To the extent of occupying Gaza and the West Bank with troops and driving the IDF and the settlers out of those areas and re-building them with their own money whilst preventing Israel from re-occupying that land by force and protecting the populace from further harm by the Zionist occupiers who openly and publicly regard the Palestinians as sub-human.
Would it be reasonable to anticipate that in such an event (unlikely as it is) Owen Jones, among others, would support what those Arab States are doing?
Given that I have not heard any criticism of the far more limited attempts by Ansar Allah in Yemen to support the Palestinians in this way – including firing lethal ordinance into Israel itself – from such commentators (and it seems reasonable to remain open to the possibility that I may have missed any such criticism from those sources) it would seem reasonable to anticipate that Jones would be broadly in favour of such an occurrence if it had taken place.
Simply because, from the moral stance which Jones articulates, such an action on the part of other Arab States would have been a practical means by which to save lives and prevent suffering – as well as being supported by the Palestinians themselves.
As it happens, in terms of the regardless of scale Universal values and principles implicit in Jones’s presentation, there exists an example which broadly fits the scenario laid out in the above thought experiment.
Where a population subject to attacks with the intent to murder a specific ethnic and cultural group of people and remove them from the place they reside because they are considered lesser human beings than those who wish to remove them have been physically and forcefully prevented from doing so in the way described in that thought experiment.
Moreover, the same Western sources who are providing the diplomatic and political cover for what Israel is doing in Gaza and the West Bank which Jones identifies; the same Western sources who are actively helping, aiding and abetting Israel to carry out the slaughter of civilians by providing them with weapons, parts, intelligence data, finance etc without which it would not be possible for Israel to continue; and the same Western sources who are using propaganda and lawfare to silence critics; are doing exactly the same in this other example.
Granted, that case is on a far smaller scale than in Palestine. However, we are dealing with Universal values and principles implicit in the position Jones sets out which, for that position to be and remain credible, have to be applied consistently.
As a consequence, it would seem reasonable to anticipate that Owen Jones and others in that section of the political ‘left’ he purports to represent would not only condemn the same actions in the same Universalist tones as he does in this spot on video in regard to this other real life example, but would also, in the absence of any other practical means by which to address the breach of those Universal values and principles Jones condemns, support the practical means employed to prevent the type of actions Jones rightly critiques along with those employing those means?
Otherwise, it would seem reasonable to conclude that he would be falling foul of his own condemnations articulated between 8:00 minutes and 8 minutes 30 seconds in this video. Particularly between 8:27 – 8:30.
I wish you’d stopped there, Dave. It’s not that I disagree with your “however”. Having myself publicly criticised Owen here and here, I too am aware of the inconsistency of his universalism. But I have a “however” of my own – combined with an offer to you.
First the however:
Owen is direct, you are not. If you mean Russia’s SMO in the Ukraine, where another western backed and installed regime waged bloody civil war on territories ethnically “other”, why not say so?
Owen is powerful because concise. Granted, he is a professional communicator who mastered his trade in settings both of us know to be highly compromised. Nevertheless, we can learn from his less-is-more approach, and strive for brevity.
Owen, and this is my most important point, is putting out near daily podcasts on the most blatantly horrific – no disrespect to Donbass suffering – crimes of our time. Let’s keep the focus firmly on those crimes.
That isn’t to say we should never speak of his shortcomings. Hence my offer: why not pen a guest post on the failure, not only of Owen Jones but of the many who rightly support the Palestinian cause, to see how they have been manipulated over Russia and Syria? But let’s keep that separate. Let’s not dilute the impact of his scalding sermons on a subject where, as you say in you opening line, he is one hundred percent on the nail.
Well Dave,
You had me convinced at one point of something entirely different and that is because of this paragraph:
“Where a population subject to attacks with the intent to murder a specific ethnic and cultural group of people and remove them from the place they reside because they are considered lesser human beings than those who wish to remove them have been physically and forcefully prevented from doing so in the way described in that thought experiment.”
Your next paragraphs brought me back down to earth.
Do either of you apply universalism and speak the words no-one dares as to where the paragraph took me?
Very few dare to utter the truth I refer to anymore than did Owen Jones.
Just to say that we all infer things very differently from what has been said (or not) just s I did for a very brief moment.
You are both right for different reasons.
Regards
Susan
Spoken like a true mediator. As a matter of principle, Dave and I see eye to eye on most things. Any difference here is of tactics, nothing more.