Mainstream voices are changing the song sheet.

After a year and a half of deafening silence and relentless efforts to discredit every voice critical of Israel’s war of extermination and genocide in Palestine, liberal-conservative forces have started to mutter faint condemnations of what they can no longer deny.

French President Emmanuel Macron declared that “the humanitarian situation in Gaza is intolerable”. 

The Guardian and the Dutch newspaper of record NRC are finally reporting what Palestinians and genocide experts have told the world from the beginning of Israel’s latest slaughter: that genocide is genocide. 

A faint admission of genocide is preferable to silence and complicity, and such statements should be welcomed until there is a total and complete proscription on genocide in Palestine or anywhere else.

But at the same time, we must probe the intention and effects of such admissions and condemnations, to ascertain whether they truly represent a rediscovery of humanity - or are merely a last-ditch attempt to neutralize growing indignation over the breakdown of humanity in Gaza.

A chorus of European voices have started to condemn Israel's war of extermination in Palestine, but their rhetoric is not translating into action

The simultaneity and similar register of these condemnations suggest a degree of alignment between governments and establishment media. This does not exclude a genuine awakening and some sort of virtuous domino effect, amid the unbearable realities of the radical evils to which we have all been subjected. 

After all, speaking out encourages others to do the same. Anticipation of others acknowledging something as egregious as genocide when it can no longer be denied might also compel people to switch sides to avoid being the last ones to do so.

But this sudden turn, after nearly 20 months of studied silence or manufactured impotence in the face of a live-streamed genocide, raises questions.

European complicity 

Some have argued that this shift in tone is a too-little, too-late attempt to clear the legacy of European complicity in Israel’s genocide. 

Gaza has been decimated, with Israel dropping more than 100,000 tons of explosives on a population of two million people. As author Omar El Akkad put it: “One day, everyone will have always been against this” - reminding us that people tend to find the courage to be on the right side of history only when there are no longer personal risks involved in saying or doing the right thing. 

It could be that this day has come - except the genocide in Gaza is still ongoing, and expanding towards the occupied West Bank, as these Johnny-come-lately critics of Israel, especially EU institutions and governments, do nothing to stop it. 

Quite the contrary; they are still politically, economically and militarily supporting the genocide. In short, we are witnessing a sudden change of language without an equally sudden change of policy. 

Significantly, this rhetorical conversion is happening at a moment when European publics no longer buy the genocidal hasbara of “self-defense” and “demilitarization of Hamas”, by which Israel and its Western allies have justified the extermination of more than 53,000 people so far. 

It cannot be ruled out that establishment forces within the European Union are seeking to restore the monopoly of the critique of Israel in order to neutralize the critique advanced by the global movement of solidarity with Palestine: the exposure of Israel’s settler-colonialism and apartheid structure, and Tel Aviv’s central role in preserving a global economic system based around the expansion of military capabilities and surveillance technologies, rather than around people.

It is this ideological critique that the EU establishment fears and is targeting, by seemingly relaxing their control over how we can criticize Israel’s transgression of fundamental norms. 

The timid distancing of some EU states from “the Netanyahu government” - the phrase itself being an attempt to hyper-personalize responsibility for the genocide, while shielding the settler-colonial infrastructure that enables it - has amounted to a mere review – not a suspension – of trade ties with Israel, as if this is the only or most significant way to meet their obligations under international law - to prevent, stop and refrain from committing genocide.

Machinery of war

Establishment forces are enticing us to focus on a measure that is almost certain not to come to pass, as a suspension of the agreement would require the unanimous agreement of all 27 EU states, including staunch allies of Israel, such as Germany and Hungary. 

EU states have offered unconditional support to Israel’s war of extermination unilaterally and can withdraw it in the same manner.

They did not pursue the multilateral path to support Israel for the same reason they are now pursuing the multilateral path to supposedly sanction it - because it does not work when rapid response is required.

Hence the choice for the EU multilateral level, which serves to deflect the growing public pressure to do something about the acceleration of the genocide in Gaza, whilst keeping things as they are.

Nowhere do we see establishment forces discussing even remotely the possibility of unilateral measures similar to those adopted in response to Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine since February 2022, which include arms embargoes, unilateral trade freezes, and encouraging universities to cut ties with institutions whose research enables the machinery of war. 

There is a simple way to discern whether these sudden conversions are last-resort attempts to control public thought on the genocide in Palestine - given that it is no longer possible to deny the genocide - or a first step towards ending EU complicity in the ongoing atrocities. 

If these voices call for urgent and concrete measures to halt both the genocide and the complicity of EU states, then we must welcome their support, and use it to galvanize more people to work towards ending the genocide and addressing its structural causes. 

But if these sudden condemnations are limited to admitting what is no longer deniable, without supporting any measures to fight impunity for genocide, then we must treat them as what they are: a treacherous attempt by accomplices of the Israeli genocidaires to preempt the social opprobrium with which they will ultimately have to reckon with the day after tomorrow. 

We must therefore denounce efforts to neutralize the effects of indignation about the ongoing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza and to return to business as usual, as if nothing had happened. This will allow the same establishment forces that have enabled the genocide to continue safely exercising the power of their privilege to pontificate about how we should live our lives and tell right from wrong. 

Marina Calculli is an Assistant Professor in International Relations at Leiden University. She specializes in political violence in the Middle East, with a focus on the ideology and strategy of armed resistance movements, especially Hezbollah. Her current project explores how states and nonstate actors negotiate their visions of the world society in times of global reordering.

Gjovalin Macaj is Assistant Professor in United Nations studies in peace and justice at Leiden University. He holds a DPhil in human rights from the University of Oxford and a PhD in European foreign policy from Free University of Brussels. His research focuses on the theory and practice of human rights, ethics, norms, diplomacy, the European Union as well as the United Nations.

(Source: Middle East Eye)