Opinion | Israel's war of impunity

By Tom Fowdy

On Monday Israel bombed the Embassy Compound of Iran in Damascus, Syria, killing a senior commander of the Iranian guards corps. The attack is a violation of international law under the Vienna Convention. Such is of course, just one of many war crimes Tel Aviv has committed since October last year as part of its war of annihilation against Hamas, yet is also the most unambiguous violation of an international norm in the process without all else considered. Such an attack of course will not be met with Western condemnation, even as Israel killed citizens of America, Australia, Canada, and the UK who were working as aid workers.

It is obvious that the motivation for the attack lies in Benjamin Netanyahu's decision to try and offset the (minimal) Western pressure against himself and force the hand of the United States to back him by deliberately initiating a confrontation with Iran, although it remains unclear to what extent Tehran will respond. The Israeli government after all was facing some opposition to its planned invasion of Rafah, the southernmost city of the Gaza Strip bordering Egypt. Here over 1 million Palestinian refugees are concentrated, but Netanyahu has not budged on his ambitions to occupy the strip in its entirety and effectively occupy it.

The longer this war continues, the more the moral credibility of the West diminishes as they fail to make any serious effort to halt the conflict. Actions speak louder than words, and for all intents and purposes the backing of Tel Aviv by Western elites has been unconditional, with Benjamin Netanyahu continually calling their bluff. The UN Special Representative for Human Rights has called the situation a "genocide", but this is ironically ignored by the same Washington D.C who opportunistically used that title to describe events in the Xinjiang autonomous region of China. Similarly, it is now believed the embattled and bombarded Gaza Strip is in a state of famine, with aid only being drip-fed into it and hardly enough to accustom the millions trapped in there.

This is Israel's war of impunity, which has all but destroyed the "Two-state solution" to the Israel-Palestine conflict. This is all while the US calls itself the defender of the so-called "Rules-based order" of which it likes to bash China and others with, and brand it as a threat to, yet what we see here is that when it comes to Tel-Aviv, there are no rules. It does effectively what it wants, when it wants and how it wants, and Netanyahu in particular is a hardline nationalist who has learned to press this impunity to maximum advantage and even create a situation where paradoxically it actually suits Western leaders to back Israel less, yet they are still unwilling to do so.

Netanyahu of course still must face domestic opposition, and we should note to that degree there are large numbers of Israelis who scathingly oppose the direction he has taken the country in, and thus there have been demonstrations against him. In the face of national unpopularity and criticism, he is subsequently proving himself to be ever more dangerous by effectively doubling down on war as the solution, attempting to force through the ideological sentiment he so desperately requires for his own political survival. In doing so, he frames the situation as an existential conflict for Israel's survival and has effectively jettisoned the Palestinian question altogether, while also seeing a potential war with Iran as beneficial.

Ironically, these methods make him even more akin to an authoritarian leader, and yet the West is just happy for this to continue unabated even as he becomes a massive liability in the process. This represents a grave threat to peace not only in the Middle East, but on a global scale. It is obvious now that since 2022 a much darker and more uncertain international environment has emerged now wherein US unipolarity has disintegrated amidst conflicts with other states, and with it has come several catastrophic wars. It is generous to describe Netanyahu's Israel as anything less than an effective rogue state that is violating international law as it pleases, but usually such states are met with overwhelming opposition by the US as a challenge to its interests, not this one seemingly.

The author is a well-seasoned writer and analyst with a large portfolio related to China topics, especially in the field of politics, international relations and more. He graduated with an Msc. in Chinese Studies from Oxford University in 2018.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.

Read more articles by Tom Fowdy:

Opinion | China's economy is picking up, the media said it was finished

Opinion | How the British government plays 'the China card' tactically

Opinion | How the western media deliberately hypes HK's downfall

Opinion | The obsession with HK's downfall, and the denial of history