West’s eroding credibility due to unconditional support for Israel

Since the very first moments of the latest Hamas attacks against Israel and the Israeli attacks against the Gaza Strip, the global Western powers have declared their unconditional support for the Israeli security forces in the form of military, political, diplomatic and economic support. After the latest wave of the escalation of violence and tension in the Palestinian lands, the Israeli side and its Western allies started to blame and demonize Hamas and other Palestinian actors as the only responsible actors in the cycle of violence. As usual, no big Western power, namely the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany, has tried to hold Israel responsible for the violence committed against innocent civilians in the Gaza Strip (or in the West Bank).

However, observers of the region and readers of Middle Eastern politics know well that the Israeli violence against civilians did not start with the establishment of Hamas in the late 1980s. On the contrary, the violence in Palestine started decades ago after the creation of a convenient atmosphere for Israel to pursue these policies in Palestine. Mass killings of Palestinians by Western-supported Israel started immediately after the Palestinian lands had fallen under the control of the British mandate regime in the wake of World War I.

The leading Western countries were behind all these unilateral and oppressive policies. For instance, contradicting with basic norms of international law and decisions made by the United Nations, the U.S. government recognized the whole of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and the annexation of the Golan Heights by Israel. Taking all these developments into consideration, the first actor to blame for the continuous atrocities and oppression is Israel. However, global Western powers are equally responsible for crimes committed in Palestinian lands.

Unwavering Western support for Israel

Recently, Western countries have been criticized for their unconditional support to Israel, the aggressor that does not take into account any U.N. decision or any principle of international law. Therefore, more and more actors have begun blaming Western countries for their unilateral and unjust policies toward the Israeli-Palestinian issue. During the latest attack against the Gaza Strip, many states have held the Western countries equally responsible for Israeli crimes. Naturally, the more responsible the West is held, the more cost the biased Western policies will create for the West in the near future.

In this short piece, I will discuss some possible implications of unconditional Western support for Israel. First of all, the unconditional Western support for the occupation and apartheid policies of Israel has eliminated the moral discourse of Western superiority. As long as the West gives unconditional support to Israel, it cannot claim universal moral values, international norms or principles of international law.

Furthermore, Israeli atrocities against Palestinians further increase the already existing mistrust against Western countries. Therefore, most of the non-Western states did not follow in the footsteps of Western countries during the Ukraine-Russia war. They know well that the West is not against the occupation in principle, as in the case of Palestine. The non-Western part of the world knows that the West is using the invasion of Ukraine to wear down Russia.

Second, the Western support for the mass killing of civilian Muslim Palestinians and attacks against the symbols of Islam by Israeli security forces caused the rise of anti-Westernism in Muslim states. With the increase in the deterrent power of Muslim countries and the rise of non-Western powers in the global system, the cost of anti-Westernism will generate new costs for the West. The U.S. was believed to have disengaged itself from the Middle East. However, the latest developments such as sending huge warships to the region indicate that Israel dragged the U.S. into the region again.

Considering the Western support for Israel and the rise of anti-Islam sentiments in the West, the current stance of the West has turned into a “total war of attrition” against Muslim states and peoples worldwide. This seems to be only a “lose-lose war” and a “civilizational clash” between Muslims and the West. Since the Western countries have lost the trust of Muslims, non-Western global powers will become peacemakers in the region. In addition, non-Western global powers such as China will intensify their cooperative relations with Muslim states and peoples.

As a reaction to the unconditional Western support for Israel, Muslims will take a united stance against Israeli atrocities. The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) will meet next week to discuss the mass killings in the Gaza Strip, since almost all Muslim states and peoples, including the Shiite and Sunni communities in non-Muslim countries, have taken a united stance over the attacks against innocent Palestinian Muslims.

Third, the unconditional Western support for Israeli atrocities has ended the normalization process in the Middle East. As a matter of fact, all these policies have shown that the Western countries do not want normalization, that is political stability and economic development, in the region. They want a region in chaos and dependent on external powers, i.e., the Western countries.

However, regional countries have learned from previous experiences as they know well that as long as they remain dependent on the Western powers, they will not attain real political independence in their foreign relations, and accordingly, they will continue to invest in the diversification of their respective foreign policies. In the end, the West may lose the Middle East to other global powers such as China and Russia, which have already begun infiltrating and increasing their influence in the region.

All in all, although Israel and its Western allies have been otherizing any person, group or state who opposes aggressive Israeli policies, they have failed to convince the international community. Eventually, this will increase the cost of their traditional unilateral policies.

[Daily Sabah, October 18, 2023]