As 2023 and the following year
made clear, the world still faced additional challenges in rebuffing incursions
that violate human rights, including crimes against humanity. Russia’s invasion
of Ukraine and Israel’s military incursion into Gaza both demonstrate how easy
it had become, especially with advanced military technology, to kill civilians
so as to decimate an entire population so the land could be filled with the
people of the aggressors. If this sounds like Hitler’s policy to make room for
the German people in Eastern Europe, you are not far from touching on the real
motives behind the aggression. It would be a pity were such motives to become
the norm while the world looks on. I contend that the U.S. enabling of Israel has
unwittingly contributed to the establishment of such a norm, and that therefore
a stronger E.U. was needed not only domestically, but also internationally, as
a counter-weight in defense of the human rights of civilians in Gaza.
UNRWA Gaza director Scott
Anderson, speaking on the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza as of November,
2024, said, “We haven’t been able to get food to those people for over a month.
If we don’t do something quickly, it could devolve into a full-blown famine,
which would be a manmade condition and something that could easily be corrected
if we just get enough aid in to take care of everybody.”[1]
The key here is the word, manmade, for as officials in the Israeli
government had been openly admitted, including the president, everyone in
Gaza is culpable and thus deserves to suffer the consequences. Ironically, as
the case of Nazi Germany demonstrates, it is very easy to go from the
supposition that a certain people is subhuman to the sordid instinctual urge to
exterminate the group. The “meta-premise” is that identity-politics by group is
valid and based on ontological rather than merely cultural differences.
A month earlier, the “Famine
Review Committee [had] called the situation in the north of the Strip ‘extremely
grave and rapidly deteriorating’ and said all actors in the war much take
immediate action ‘within days not weeks’ to avert a humanitarian disaster.”[2]
During that month, the amount of aid entering Gaza dropped dramatically due to yet
another offensive by Israel’s military in the north of Gaza.[3]
“By the end of October, an average of just 71 trucks a day were entering Gaza,”
whose population at the time was over a million.[4]
Anderson’s assessment in mid-November
suggests that his demand had not been heeded, especially by Israel, but also,
and this is important, by its strongest ally, the United States. Even though
less than a week before the U.S. presidential election, the Biden
administration “accused Israel of ‘not doing enough’ to answer international
concerns over indiscriminate strikes on Gaza,” which in turn was a factor in
the reduction of food-aid getting into Gaza, “Israel’s military chief . . .
said the Israel Force needs to be larger, as the war expands to different
fronts.”[5]
U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said of the Israeli government
officials, “They are not doing enough to get us the answers that we have
requested.”[6]
Of course, the token U.S. resistance to Israel did not win Michigan for Harris,
as Arabs in Grand Rapids did not take the bait.
A few weeks after the U.S.
presidential election, the Biden administration declared that Israel was not
violating U.S. law after all in terms of killing and limiting food-aid to the residents,
who by then were almost all displaced, and thus homeless, of Gaza. Back in May,
the administration had said “that Israel’s use of U.S.-provided weapons in Gaza
likely violated international humanitarian law.”[7]
Of course, the administration provided for itself a caveat that would enable a
reversal after the election: Wartime “conditions prevented U.S.
officials from” collecting enough evidence to go beyond stating that Israel likely
violated international humanitarian law, which, by the way, would mean that
Israel had been violating U.S. law too. Even at the time, the media noticed
that “the caveat that the administration wasn’t able to link specific U.S. weapons
to individual attacks by Israeli forces in Gaza could give the administration
leeway in any future decision on whether to restrict provisions of offensive
weapons to Israel.”[8]
In November, 2024, after the election, the Biden administration stated
that the U.S. would continue to supply Israel with weapons. Exactly a week
after the election, the administration announced “that it would not without
weapon shipments to Israel,” even though the “30-day deadline” for Israel to “significantly
alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza [had] expired.”[9]
U.S. State Department spokesmn Vedant Patel said that Israel had not violated
the U.S. law that “bars offensive weapons from being transferred to countries
that block aid from reaching civilians.”[10]
A report written by aid groups and requested by the Biden administration “determined
that Israel had failed to meet the vast majority of the requirements laid out
by” the administration—Israel having failed to comply with fifteen of the 19
measures that the U.S. had indicated must be met to avoid a delay in weapons
shipments, and yet the administration announced that the U.S. would continue to
ship weapons to Israel.[11]
That this occurred just after the election is relevant, as this strongly
suggests that the strategy was based on domestic U.S. politics—namely, trying
to get as many votes as possible for Harris from Muslim Americans.
It is also significant that on
the very same day, Josep Borrell, the European Union’s foreign minister, “proposed
formally to suspend political dialogue with Israel over the country’s alleged violations
of human rights and international law in the Gaza Strip.”[12]
Unlike the U.S., the E.U. was not politically beholden to AIPAC, the American
Israeli Political Action Committee. Even by the report that the Biden administration
had requested, the Israeli government had been violating humanitarian law by
restricting humanitarian aid into Gaza, perhaps to rid the Strip of its remaining
population as the final solution. The world needed an active E.U. with sufficient
competencies (i.e., enumerated powers delegated to the E.U. by the states) to stand
against U.S. policy in defense of humanitarian law—even that which had been
enshrined in U.S. law! Especially with Russia invading Ukraine with many
civilian casualties there, the world very much needed a world-power, which the
E.U. could be, to push back on violators.
Clearly, the world could not
count on the allies of violators, such as China and North Korea in the case of
Russia, and the U.S. in the case of Israel; in fact, those allies went beyond
merely standing quietly by to actively enable the aggressors. With regard to
Muslims, I suspect that the U.S. Government was still too oriented to
redressing the attack that took place on September 11, 2001, to accurately and
fairly even perceive the one-sided over-kill being committed by
Israel in Gaza.
The Israeli government’s
perception was biased, which is why John Locke argued that government should
exist to impartially judge cases of injury because victims tend to exact too
much punishment by being swayed by emotion (hatred). Following Locke, Adam
Smith wrote that the administration of justice should be “exact,” meaning not
disproportional, and “equal and impartial.”[13]
Victims who have been injured are in no position to determine and dispense
justice in such a matter; hence the need for government. But what if
governments are themselves the victims?
Holding onto resentment more than twenty years after the Muslim attack on the World Trade Tower in New York City may explain why the Biden administration was tacitly going along with Israel’s excessive “pay-back,” also known as punishment-as-vengeance, against the civilians residing in Gaza. Even allies should not be entrusted with being able to reasonably assess and contribute to punishment. Israel had been woefully excessive in inflicting suffering on the civilians in Gaza, acting with impunity in part because the E.U.’s states had not transferred enough sovereignty to the union in foreign policy and defense for the E.U. to be able to act as a counterweight to the United States.
It is dangerous when a sovereign country, such as Israel, can act with the presumption of de facto impunity internationally. That the rest of the world had not acted with sufficient force to arrest Israel’s aggression and deflate the sense of impunity suggests that if the UN could not be given real power, at least the European Union should be strengthened at the federal level. More to the point, the delusion that the E.U. is but an international organization or alliance and thus should not be given more power by its states has cost not only the E.U., but also the world.
2. Euronews, “UN Warns Famine Is ‘Imminent’ in Northern Gaza as Israel Siege Continues,” Euronews.com, September 11, 2024.
3. Euronews, “14 Killed in Israeli Strike on UNRWA School Used as Shelter for Displaced Gazans,” Euronews.com, August 11, 2024.
4. Ibid.
5. Euronews, “US Accuses Israel of ‘Not Doing Enough’ to Address Concerns over Strikes in Gaza,” Euronews.com, October 31, 2024.
6. Ibid.
7. Ellen Knickmeyer, Aamer Madhani, and Matthew Lee, “US Says Israel’s Use of US Arms Likely Violated International Law, but Evidence Is Incomplete,” The Associated Press, May 11, 2024.
8. Ibid.
9. Jacob Magid, “US Says It Won’t Withhold Weapons to Israel, as Deadline to Address AidCrisis Passes,” The Times of Israel, November 13, 2024.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Shona Murray and Jorge Liboreiro, “Borrell Proposes to Suspend E.U.-Israel Political Talks over Gaza War,” Euronews.com, November 13, 2024.
