Israel is not committing genocide in Gaza
Imraan Buccus’s article (“Glaring liberal double standards on Palestine and Ukraine”, Mail & Guardian, 15 October 2024) contains conspicuous oversights, misinformation and questionable conclusions that must be addressed.
He seems to be under the impression that the British handed over the area of modern-day Israel and Palestine to the Israelis, in an effort to continue the dominance of colonial Western powers over the area.
This is far from the truth. In World War I, the British made three contradictory agreements for how the region would be divvied up after the war.
The Balfour Declaration promised land to the Jews. The McMahon-Hussein correspondence saw Britain promise an independent Arab state, including Palestine, in exchange for support against the Ottomans. And, finally, the Sykes-Picot Agreement saw Britain, France and Russia secretly agree to divide the Middle East according to their own colonial ambitions.
The agreement which came to fruition was the Sykes-Picot Agreement. Britain and France (Russia had fallen to revolution before the war ended) did not care to fulfil their promises to the Jews or the Muslim Arabs.
Palestine, as the British called it, became a colony. A mandate, in their terminology. No independence was granted. Britain never fulfilled their promise in the Balfour Declaration or the McMahon-Hussein correspondence.
After the Holocaust led to a major influx of European Jews, joining the already settled Jewish natives in the Palestinian Mandate, the demand for an independent Jewish state grew. This made sense, as no state had made any concerted effort to end the Holocaust (which they knew about) until Germany was directly threatening their interests.
Jews knew that the only people who they could rely upon to defend their existence were other Jews. So, they needed a Jewish state. All other land in this world was already claimed, if not uninhabitable.
The historical land of ancient Israel already had precedent as a Jewish polity and had a sizeable population of Jews already — so it made complete sense that there would be a desire for it to become an independent Jewish state.
Britain didn’t grant independence to Israel. Independence was seized in a war of independence. The British didn’t put up much of a fight, as their empire was crumbling and the nation was struggling to recover after World War II.
Despite this, the conflict between Israeli independence fighters and the British military saw 141 British servicemen killed and 475 wounded. More than 55 Israeli fighters were killed in action, with seven executed.
Britain lost the war and retreated. They didn’t happily hand over the territory to continue some conspiracy theory of white Western colonialism by proxy.
Rather, in a last-ditch effort to save face, the British divided the territory into two before leaving. The Jews were relegated to the barely habitable swamp and desert regions while the Arabs were given the rest.
Multiple Arab armies invaded the area, with local Palestinian Arabs retreating to the sidelines and choosing to wait for the local Jewish population to be decimated before moving back.
But instead, the Jews defeated the Arab armies, declaring independence over much of the area. Yet, the Arab Muslim states of Egypt, Syria and Jordan did make territorial gains. Gains which they kept to themselves and did not even consider ceding to a Palestinian state.
Since then, Israel has repeatedly reasserted its will to survive and thrive, while also being willing on many occasions to negotiate for a two-state agreement with Palestinian nationalists — who have repeatedly rejected terms and demanded full annexation of Israel. Terms that are completely unreasonable.
It must be added that the fascism of Nazi Germany and its allies was shared by powerful and influential Palestinian leaders. Amin al-Husseini was a Palestinian nationalist and religious leader, acting as one of the political and religious heads of Muslim Arabs in the region.
He was a firm supporter and friend of Adolf Hitler, siding with the Axis powers against the Allies, and working with the Nazis to oust and exterminate Jews across Europe and mandatory Palestine.
Photographic evidence and records show al-Husseini visiting concentration camps, lauding the method in which the Nazis were eliminating and torturing Jews.
Later, al-Husseini encouraged Yasser Arafat to take over the Palestinian Liberation Organisation and to “liberate Palestine”.
Buccus lacks crucial historical context and facts in his article. No doubt, this has led to his troublesome conclusion that there is some grand global conspiracy among Western nations to push a racist agenda to dominate the world. He points to double standards in Western liberals in supporting Israel, while condemning Russia.
Yet, the two cases are different. Vladimir Putin’s Russia invaded Ukraine, engaging in overt attacks on civilians and well-documented abductions of children, without provocation.
Gaza’s Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, on the other hand, triggered the present conflict by repeatedly attacking Israel, over and over. Pointing to events that happened almost a century ago to justify such provocation doesn’t change matters.
Israel is not committing genocide in Gaza or Lebanon. It is not attempting to exterminate civilians. Civilian deaths have been a tragedy but are far below the amounts recorded for many modern wars. In fact, if one were to take the deaths of 7 October, all happening in a single day, and compare it to the alleged death toll in Gaza and Lebanon taking place for over a year, 7 October led to more deaths a day.
I urge Buccus to set aside his knee-jerk distaste for the West and for Israel.
The West has its problems but its values are what has led to Buccus himself having the right to have his views aired in public. Without Western liberalism and democracy, there would be no free press in which to criticise the civilisation in which he resides. Only autocracy, where only one ideology is allowed to be supported.
Nicholas Woode-Smith is a political analyst, economic historian and author.
