Western reactions to Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023 sound familiar. Publicists aptly compare this event to the experience of Americans on September 11, 2001 – but similarities are alternatively different than they think. Without doubt, both acts of aggression created an atmosphere in which rationality completely evaporated from the public debate and replaced it at best with emotions, and at worst hysteria and scapegoat searching.
Many observers blame Benjamin Netanyahu and his government for the events of October 7. However, criticism is primarily about the national safety paradigm – for example, the fact that Israeli troops were stationed mainly in the West Bank to defend settlers alternatively of guarding the border with the Gaza Strip.
Such a communicative does not cover many crucial problems. After all, something more has happened than the defeat of defence – it is intellectual The fall of all anti-terrorism doctrine, having a long past and consistently defended by Netanjah during his political career.
Long-term obsession with combating terrorism
In 1986 Netanjahu with co-authors (including Israeli generals and orientalist Bernard Lewis) published a book titled Terrorism. How the West can win (Terrorism. How the West Can Win). It sets out its knowing of terrorism and its method of combating terrorism.
The book is said to be He took well then US president Ronald Reagan, who was to “ urge it to all advanced authoritative of his administration and trust on its influence, justifying illegal financing of the Nicaraguan Contras.” Almost 40 years later, the triumph of terrorism does not come.
The first publication was followed by the second, in 1995, under the same title – Fighting Terrorism: How Democrats Can Defeat home and global Terrorists (Fighting terrorism: How democracies can defeat terrorists in the country and abroad) – spreading precisely the same vision. In the conclusion of the first book, the current Prime Minister of Israel posted this crucial passus:
"The work of terrorism is tamed violence. It can be derived from the view that any ideological and spiritual goals justify the release of moral restraints and even require it. In this context, the reflection that terrorists are the primary origin of terrorism becomes more than a tautology."
According to this definition, terrorism is essential. It's impossible to understand, it just exists. any people are violent due to the fact that they are, and there's no another explanation. There is besides no sense of contextualization, reflection, nuance. And the only appropriate answer can be given from the point of view of defence and military.
This explanation is implicitly the same for all armed groups, even if they are fundamentally different. Organizations as distinct as Hamas, Hezbollah, muslim State, Al-Ka’ida, Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and the Kurdistan Workers organization can so be thrown into 1 bag.
In a venomous review This publication, Edward Said, stated that “the full book unfortunately relies on the premise that Western democracies and leaders are naive, soft and stupid, and the only remedy for this condition is to abandon the “western” essence and adopt a violent, hard and ruthless attitude.”
Said besides pointed out 1 key consequence of Netanjah's book's focus on the arabian population, peculiarly Muslim, legitimizing the mass usage of violence: "Who will show that Libyans, Muslims, Palestinians and Arabs do not see any another reality than those which tautologically confirm their terrorist being as Libyans, Muslims, Palestinians and Arabs will be able to constantly attack them and their “terrorist” states without questioning their own behaviour". Said's words stay highly applicable to the present situation in Gaza.
Return point: September 11
After September 11, 2001, Netanjah's imagination triumphed ideologically. There has been a crisis of civilization between the West (i.e. the free world) and the barbarians on the another hand; the war against the “axis of evil” on Anti-terrorist laws restricting civilian liberties, to the illegal war in Iraq without UN legitimacy and to marginalize demands from Palestinians and Palestinians.
In a speech before the United States legislature Committee in September 2002 Netanjah mentioned a group of countries that he believes should be bombed and their regimes overthrown. They were Iraq, Iran and Libya. 2 of them (Iraq and Libya) actually began to drop bombs, the consequences of which are inactive felt today.
Even if he failed to add Iran to this list, Netanyahu, thanks to Donald Trump, yet managed to breach Nuclear agreement signed with Tehran. Speaking about Iraq, Netanyahu promised Congress: "If you destruct Saddam's regime, I warrant that this will have immense affirmative consequences in the region." Knowing present The consequences of the Iraq War, it must be admitted that it was objectively 1 of the most compromising statements always made by the leader in the past of politics.
Politics led by George W. Bush and neoconservatives after September 11, 2001 She changed the planet deeply. For worse. The invasion wars with Afghanistan and Iraq were a political, military, strategical and humanitarian disaster. From the Iraq War, the muslim State and its horrors were born, both in the arabian planet and Europe. And “terrorism” has inactive not been defeated – on the contrary.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict excluded all political solutions. The Americans allied themselves solely with the Israeli government, and Palestinians and Palestinians paid a advanced price for it during the second intifade and its hard suppression.
New Test and fresh Failure
Netanyahu has ruled Israel almost continuously since 2009. His doctrine has not changed, and he had adequate time to apply it methodically. And yet on October 7, there were attacks. It didn't substance that the Prime Minister locked 2 million people in a prison in the open air, built walls and barriers utilizing state-of-the-art technology – in a fewer hours everything fell apart like a home of cards.
The apparent failure, however, has inactive not proved to be a strong adequate incentive to challenge the "war against terror". In the dominant discourse of the West Bush and neoconservatives, he is widely criticized and dismissed from them. However, their legacy remains, and many political actors, even liberal or progressive, inherit their reflexes.
US president Joe Biden warned Israel"not to repeat mistakes made by the United States after 9/11". At the same time, Biden called Hamas' attack "pure evil", and this is the rhetorical continuation of Bushowski's "fighting good against evil".
Leader of the British Labour organization Keir Starmer saidThat Israel has the right to cut off Gaza's electricity and water. specified a message from a human rights lawyer says a lot about how much we have been accustomed to utilizing armed force since 2001 and how low the rules of global law have fallen.
Between the inability to respond to any reaction another than to express regret over losses among the civilian population (but without a political reading of the situation) and the indifference to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza or the unhidden support of the Israeli government, the majority of progressive votes in the West cannot offer a clear political consequence different from the right-wing usage of force.
For the last 40 years, everything Netanyahu has been trying to do: a defence approach without a deficiency of political imagination and reflection, mass usage of force, suspension of fundamental rights and freedoms. Yet we are inactive waiting for the “win” which has been promised since 1986 (even without defining it properly). Meanwhile, the same man is at war in Gaza at a fresh level of force – and according to the global Court of Justice This war even gives origin for concern that There is genocide in Gaza Palestinian population.
In this case, the logic of genocide is not just the content of a frightening hypothesis, but is besides a perfectly probable destination of Netanjah's thinking. erstwhile a man believes that bare force is enough, and if the force does not work, he must usage even more force, falls into a spiral with which the only way is simply to annihilate the opponent.
The world’s consequence is no uncertainty to the fact that the destiny of the full nation is at stake in Gaza. But now the word "genocide" has yet been spoken, and this should fundamentally change the parameters of the debate. Although we can inactive realize the cynicism of real politics, it is hard to realize and explain why so many leaders and leaders in the West have not stopped taking sides with Netanyahu, who has proved them systematically incorrect for 40 years.
On the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 bombings, "Washington Post" published a summary of Carlos Lozada under the following header: 9/11 was a test. The literature of the last 2 decades shows that America has failed him. The seventh of October was besides a test. And so far, the full West doesn't.
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Hédi Attia is simply a polytologist and programme manager at the Friedrich Ebert Foundation office in Tunisia.
Article published in stock IPS Journal. In English she translated Aleksandra Paszkowska.
