Events in the Middle East continue to dominate the headlines as far away as Britain.
This week, the visit of the Rev. Dr Munther Isaac, Lutheran pastor of Bethlehem, to London was mired in controversy when the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, refused to meet him. It was another example of the kind of timorous attitude Isaac had come to expect from religious leaders.
The Prince of Wales, in contrast, departed from protocol in expressing the hope that violence in Gaza would come to an end. This was a rare intervention for a member of the royal family to make, prompting heavily-veiled criticism from the royalist press, who are more accustomed to moaning about his brother.
Earlier this week, the UK’s parliament was due to discuss a ceasefire, but the proceedings degenerated into farce as members walked out in protest at the way in which voting had been arranged.
The most likely casualty of this is the Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, who ought to be above the fray at all times but who seems on this occasion to have acted in favour of his old party, Labour. The spectacle of a vote on a matter of such gravity being derailed has done nothing to repair the image of Britain’s political class.
Meanwhile, the Hague this week has seen the International Court of Justice back in the news after their recent hearing where South Africa put forward a case that Israel is engaged in genocide.
Flagging the obvious
Some 52 countries appeared at the hearing on whether to declare Israel’s occupation of parts of Palestine illegal. This may sound unnecessary – Israel’s presence in the West Bank is routinely alluded to as illegal already.
However, the UN’s resolution back in 1967, while calling for Israel’s forces to withdraw, did not specifically refer to the occupation as illegal. For this reason, following a UN general assembly vote in 2022, the judges have returned to the matter.
This separate case will inevitably not command the same attention as South Africa’s. Genocide is considered the greatest of all crimes.
Accusing a state which, perhaps uniquely, was born out of a previous genocide of the same crime threatened to add cognitive dissonance to the seriousness of the charge.
However, as Edward Said once observed, the Palestinians are the victims of victims. It is no secret that from its very inception, the ruling Likud party has had a contemptuous attitude toward Palestinian aspirations for statehood.
In fact, to quote English poet, William Blake, with every passing day, it is becoming increasingly evident that a ‘fearful symmetry’ exists between the plight of the Jews in war-torn Europe and that of the Palestinians in modern Israel.
To say so, however, immediately attracts opprobrium, as the South Africans duly found out.
The present case is more limited in its scope — specifically centring on Israel's occupation of Palestinian land after the 1967 war. As a consequence, it has not attracted anywhere near as much attention worldwide.
In Israel itself, according to Gideon Levy, the political analyst and contributor to the Haaretz newspaper, it has been totally ignored: “Israel’s media is helping to ignore it."
"Whatever is inconvenient or unpleasant to Israel, you can always trust the Israeli media to hide it from its viewers and readership. No TV stations saw it as important or interesting enough.”
