Martin Jay
Do the people in Gaza have no legal pretext to defend their rights being stripped away while the West increasingly gives Israel its tacit approval to a new holocaust which Palestinians wake up to every day since 75 years?
The attacks and subsequent war are nearly all from the West's goading of Israelis to do whatever they want to Palestinians to get what they need. And now watch how western media portray Israel as a victim needing to "defend" itself.
It was simply inevitable. How much longer did Israel and the West in general think they had in Palestine with the daily slaughter of its citizens, unlawful arrests, land and property grabs and the general dehumanisation of the people? While western observers seemed to be shocked by the scale and seriousness of the attacks, many in the Arab world are shrugging their shoulders and saying "we told you so" to the Israeli government and Benjamin Netanyahu.
One such pundit who was quick to respond was Saudi Arabia. Ironically this country was about to sign a normalisation accord with Israel which would have been the starter's pistol for not only other Arab countries but even Muslim countries like Indonesia to respect the state of Israel and milk the new relation for what it was worth - mainly arms and spying software.
But now with the bloodbath which the Palestinians have carried out, there can be no more "normalisation" as countries like Bahrain, Sudan, UAE and Morocco now will have to rethink everything while Netanyahu will undoubtedly throw everything he has at taking over Gaza in a full military operation while going to full-out war with Hamas fighters.
Perhaps somebody should tell him though that this is exactly what Hamas wants: to bring the war to their doorsteps. Surely Hamas have been planning this for years as the detail and coordination of the attacks were impressive. And yet there will be some who will say that the trap that Netanyahu is being pulled into - a full-on war in Gaza backed on the Palestinian side by Iranian money - is not a trap at all. Perhaps this is what the Israeli leader has been dreaming of all his life and that he wasn't taken off guard by the attacks at all. It is entirely feasible that Netanyahu learned of them and prepared for a response which would justify a new 'state of emergency' where a swathe of new emergency laws can be passed while he goes to war with Iran and Hamas. A dream come true.
It is not at all far-fetched to imagine this scenario given that sacrificing his own people to infuse such a scenario is already there as evidence for many to see with video clips on social media of his own air force attacking Hamas vehicles speeding away with captive IDF soldiers inside.
But if he didn't know about it, then he should be prepared for a second major shock when Hezbollah in Lebanon engages in the battle with its long-range, precision rockets aimed at hundreds of Israeli government and military installations, airports, power stations and other infrastructure. Can Israel really believe it can carry out a guerrilla war in Gaza which they have not seen before as well as fight Hezbollah and Iran in Lebanon and in Syria respectably? Is Netanyahu dreaming or does he have an ace up his sleeve? He may well believe that Biden will back him financially and militarily although the relation between the White House and Netanyahu's administration is hardly one which would step up to the mark in such a war with Iran. It's unlikely that Biden will want his name carved into the history books as the first American president since Iran's revolution to actually go to war, albeit a proxy one, with Tehran.
International law should play a key role in Palestine and yet it has been largely airbrushed out of the entire equation for 20 years, along with any kind of objective viewpoint from EU countries who long ago could look at the situation objectively. These days though the message is clear from both the EU's gardener-in-chief, the hapless Josep Borrell and from EU member states individually: We are with Israel no matter what the details of this are.
Amazingly, the Abraham Accords and also the blinded ignorance of western countries to not even accept the appalling occupation of Gaza - supported by media giants like BBC for example - is what has collectively contributed to the Palestinians going this far. They literally have nothing to lose. The Abraham Accords were perhaps a tipping point, a marker in the timeline of the ultimate betrayal by the Arab world and one which twisted a knife even further in the Gaza gut. The Palestinians could not take any more.
Prepare yourself to be shocked even further how absurdly one sided and bigoted the reporting will be from western MSM who will send their top journalists to cover the new war with their shiny new Israeli press accreditation badges who have already latched on to the key phrase offered by western leaders "the right of Israel to defend itself". Defend is an interesting word to use. Do international laws simply not apply to Gaza? Do the people there have no legal pretext to defend their rights being stripped away while the West increasingly gives Israel its tacit approval to a new holocaust which Palestinians wake up to every day since 75 years? Defend?