Owen Jones: How does opposing Israeli violence make me an extremist?
I'm not referring here to our inability to 'learn the lessons', as the stock phrase goes, of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and indeed Gaza. Even such phraseology suggests these are policy mistakes, or unfortunate messes, rather than grave crimes. No, what we need to learn is that the real dangerous extremists in society are those who incite mass violence with catastrophic human consequences, and stop letting them get away with it.
Iraq really should have finished off the warmongers, and yet here we are, having to listen to diatribes in support of bombing Iran where the so-called 'case' for dropping bombs on fellow human beings is even weaker. Indeed, the US administration this time is even more extreme and clearly deceitful.
Nobody thinks Iran has nuclear weapons. Benjamin Netanyahu has been publicly claiming that the country will imminently develop them for the last three decades. Donald Trump's own Director of National Intelligence declared that the US intelligence perspective was that 'Iran is not building a nuclear weapon' just three months ago.
Smoke rises after an attack on Iran (Image: Majid Asgaripour, via REUTERS) In a rational world, anyone advocating for British involvement in bombing Iran would be dismissed as a dangerous lunatic. Our media outlets would note that Iraq was plunged into a sectarian bloodbath and a playground for al-Qaeda, before that was supplanted by the even more extreme Daesh.
We would recall the hideous war crimes committed by the US there, not least in Fallujah. We would be forced to recall how the triumphalism about Afghanistan gave way to a bloodbath, before the Taliban once again regained power in a stronger position than ever. We would be forced to listen to the hubris that accompanied intervention in Libya, which became regime change in total defiance of the original mandate, and led to the country becoming a violent failed state.
Our media outlets would note that the Israeli prime minister is a wanted man evading justice, subject to an arrest warrant for war crimes and crimes against humanity issued by the International Criminal Court, an institution our country is a founding member of. They would note the consensus among genocide scholars – including those in Israel itself – that genocide has been committed in Gaza. The heinous crimes in the illegally occupied and colonised West Bank would be noted, as well as the mass slaughter of civilians in Lebanon. That Israel is invading, occupying and attacking Syria as a matter of course would be noted, alongside statements by Israeli ministers openly calling for the establishment of a "Greater Israel" illegally annexing land which does not belong to it.
Pressure from the British media – in this context – would go on like this: 'Will the Prime Minister rule out intervening in Iran given the catastrophes in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, the first two causing the needless deaths of hundreds of British service personnel, the wider chaos and destruction aside?' our journalists would demand.
'Will Britain rule out allying with Israel in a war of aggression ruled illegal by experts, given its prime minister is subject to an arrest warrant for war crimes?' they would ask.
'Is the Prime Minister not concerned about Israel's possession of nuclear weapons, given its illegal occupation of land that doesn't belong to it, its openly expansionist commitments, and given it is so credibly accused of grave war crimes and indeed genocide?'
But there is no such pressure, at all. Instead, British media outlets simply bang the drum for war, giving credibility to claims Iran will imminently acquire nuclear weapons and that it poses a unique threat. They present Israel as the victim, even though the country launched an unprovoked war of aggression. Those who oppose this insanity are – as before – portrayed as dupes of a foreign tyranny. The real pressure on Starmer is over whether he will join forces with the US to drop bombs on Iran.
READ MORE: SNP councillor forces Labour to take action against Israeli arms sales
What we've failed to do is to destroy the careers and reputations of genuinely dangerous extremists who have power and influence. If you agitate on behalf of a proscribed organisation such as Hamas, you face being jailed on the grounds you are inciting support for its demonstrable violence. Yet if you use your platform to incite support for what is, in practise, infinitely more lethal violence, you are treated as respectable and indeed mainstream. It is those who oppose Western violence – despite the incontrovertible evidence of bloody disaster – who are instead smeared as dangerous extremists.
When are we going to finally have a reckoning which deals with these people? They should become public pariahs, shamed forever for having helped create catastrophes which left millions dead, maimed, displaced, traumatised.
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Right now, the British Government is moving to proscribe Palestine Action, essentially making them a terrorist organisation, because they spraypainted planes at an RAF Airbase in protest at British complicity in genocide. This is an example of the world turned on its head: That those who are doing all they can to stop UK involvement with objectively obscene violations of international law are officially treated as the real criminals. Well, history will be a savage judge. We have failed, in the here and now, to crush the extremists responsible for death and destruction on an unimaginable scale. If we want to prevent a future of violent barbarism, that failure has to end.
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