Derek Sayer
Gaslighting,
noun: psychological manipulation of a person usually over an extended period of
time that causes the victim to question the validity of their own thoughts,
perception of reality, or memories and typically leads to confusion, loss of
confidence and self-esteem, uncertainty of one’s emotional or mental stability,
and a dependency on the perpetrator. (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)
Aftermath of Israeli airstrike in Tehran, June 13, 2025. Photo courtesy Tasnim News Agency/Wikimedia Commons.
I woke on Saturday, June 14, to
Guardian headlines explaining:
Strikes
on Iran ease pressure on Israel to end starvation in Gaza. Critics of war will
be more reluctant to press for its end while missiles from Tehran are killing
people in Tel Aviv.
I had two immediate reactions.
Both were accompanied by a strong desire to vomit.
First reaction: speak for your
f***ing self. I am not going to keep my mouth shut about Israel’s ongoing
genocide in Gaza just because Benjamin Netanyahu has chosen this moment to
launch a “pre-emptive strike”—that is, an unprovoked act of war—against Iran,
nor because Iran, not altogether surprisingly, is defending itself against this
aggression.
Initial reports suggest that as
well as the military commanders and nuclear scientists Israel individually
targeted (whose families were “collateral damage”), the first strike killed at
least 60 people in residential neighbourhoods in Tehran and other Iranian
cities, including 29 children, and injured many more. This is par for the
Israeli course.
By the end of Sunday, Israel’s
continuing strikes had killed at least 224 people in Iran and wounded another
1,277. Netanyahu promises the world that this is just the beginning, warning:
We
will hit every site and every target of the Ayatollahs’ regime and what they
have felt so far is nothing compared with what they will be handed in the
coming days.
Meantime, the carnage in Gaza has
not stopped but intensified. On Saturday June 14 alone, reports Al Jazeera,
“Israeli fire and air strikes… killed at least 58 Palestinians across the Gaza
Strip, many of them near an aid distribution site operated by the United
States-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).” This brought the number of
those killed while attempting to obtain food for their families through the
controversial GHF sites (which Israel reluctantly set up under international
pressure after banishing UNRWA, the principal supplier of aid to Gaza) to at
least 274 people, with more than 2,000 wounded.
Second reaction: what does it say
about us that these headlines can be true? That these things can be said at
all? Into what new moral abyss has “Western civilization” fallen?
Are we—Canada, the U.S., Germany,
France, the UK—really so morally bankrupt that we will allow Netanyahu’s
cynical maneuver, an act of naked aggression in flagrant breach of
international law, to divert us from our responsibilities to end Israel’s
genocide in Gaza?
Do we really want to say that the
relative handful of deaths so far reported in Israel from Iran’s response (13,
as of June 15) count for more than the hundreds of deaths Israel has already
caused with its latest strikes on Iran—let alone the more than 55,000 people,
the majority of them women and children, Israel has killed in the last twenty
months in Gaza? That when the chips are down, Israeli lives are worth that much
more than Iranian lives or Palestinian lives—irrespective of the fact that
Israel initiated this latest round of fighting?
From the first responses of
Western political leaders, it would appear that the answer to all of these
questions is unfortunately an unhesitating and emphatic yes.
Was the West getting cold feet
about Israel’s genocide?
Significantly, Israel’s attack on
Iran came against a backdrop of the beginnings of a sea-change in Western media
coverage of Israel’s conduct of its “war” in Gaza and the Israeli government’s
encouragement of settler violence in the West Bank. Coincidence? Some might
suspect that the attack was designed to nip this dangerous shift in the bud.
Recent weeks had seen a
widespread acknowledgment that since its declaration of “war” on Hamas
following the latter’s attacks of October 7, 2023, Israel has committed war
crimes and crimes against humanity—and likely genocide—not as aberrations but
as de facto state policy. This tectonic shift in media coverage was echoed by a
number of political leaders in Israel and the West (the U.S. apart), who
adopted a more critical stance toward Israel’s conduct of the “war” than they
had at any point during the last two years.
Within Israel, former Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert, who had long rejected charges that Israel was guilty of
war crimes or genocide in Gaza, wrote an editorial for Haaretz on May 27 in
which he recorded his recent change of mind. He didn’t mince his words:
What
we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless,
cruel and criminal killing of civilians. We’re not doing this due to loss of
control in any specific sector, not due to some disproportionate outburst by
some soldiers in some unit. Rather, it’s the result of government
policy—knowingly, evilly, maliciously, irresponsibly dictated. Yes, Israel is
committing war crimes.
A week earlier, Yair Golan, a
retired general and the leader of the Israeli opposition Democrats, caused
outrage among Netanyahu’s supporters when he told Reshed Bet radio:
A sane country doesn’t engage in fighting against
civilians, doesn’t kill babies as a hobby and doesn’t set for itself the goals
of expelling a population.
Similar misgivings were expressed
by some of Israel’s staunchest Western allies—though notably not by the Trump
administration or the Democratic leadership in the U.S.
Having told the UK parliament on
March 17 that Israel’s blockade on aid to Gaza, which began on March 2, was a
“breach of international law”—only to be rebuked at the time by PM Keir Starmer
and forced to backpedal—Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Lammy gave a
passionate speech in the Commons on May 20 in which he denounced Israeli
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s dreams of “‘cleansing’ Gaza, of ‘destroying
what’s left’ and of resident Palestinians being ‘relocated to third
countries.’” He too did not mince his words:
We
must call this what it is: it is extremism, it is dangerous, it is repellent,
it is monstrous and I condemn it in the strongest possible terms… Israel’s plan
is morally unjustifiable, wholly disproportionate and utterly
counterproductive…
An entente cordiale
The
previous day Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, and Canadian Prime
Minister Mark Carney had issued a joint statement which offered the most
unequivocal condemnation of Israeli actions in Gaza by any G7 leaders yet. It
began:
We
strongly oppose the expansion of Israel’s military operations in Gaza. The
level of human suffering in Gaza is intolerable. Yesterday’s announcement that
Israel will allow a basic quantity of food into Gaza is wholly inadequate. We
call on the Israeli Government to stop its military operations in Gaza and
immediately allow humanitarian aid to enter Gaza. This must include engaging
with the UN to ensure a return to delivery of aid in line with humanitarian
principles…
The
Israeli Government’s denial of essential humanitarian assistance to the
civilian population is unacceptable and risks breaching International
Humanitarian Law. We condemn the abhorrent language used recently by members of
the Israeli Government, threatening that, in their despair at the destruction
of Gaza, civilians will start to relocate. Permanent forced displacement is a
breach of international humanitarian law.
The three leaders went on to
express opposition to “any attempt to expand settlements in the West Bank,”
insisting that “Israel must halt settlements which are illegal and undermine
the viability of a Palestinian state.” If Israel continued in its “egregious actions,” they threatened,
we
will take further concrete actions in response… including targeted sanctions.
“By asking Israel to end a
defensive war for our survival before Hamas terrorists on our border are
destroyed and by demanding a Palestinian state, the leaders in London, Ottowa
[sic] and Paris are offering a huge prize for the genocidal attack on Israel on
October 7 while inviting more such atrocities,” Benjamin Netanyahu responded in
a post on X.
Netanyahu added: “Israel accepts
President Trump’s vision and urges all European leaders to do the same.” That
“vision” is to turn an ethnically cleansed Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle
East” under American auspices. As Trump says, he’s a real estate guy at heart.
So is Israel, which has been gobbling up Palestinian land and “displacing” its
owners since 1948.
On May 29, Israeli Defence
Minister Israel Katz and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced approval
of 22 new settlements, some of which already existed as illegal “outposts”—the
biggest such expansion in decades. Katz was clear that the point was to
“prevent… the establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger Israel.”
The Western dilemma
Though disappointingly little in
the way of “concrete actions” has followed the British, French, and Canadian
leaders’ entente cordiale, the UK did suspend talks on a trade deal with Israel
and impose individual sanctions on a few extremist settlers in the West Bank.
Of greater import—though still
more of a symbolic gesture than anything else—on June 12, the foreign ministers
of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, and the UK jointly announced
“sanctions targeting [Israeli ministers] Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich
for inciting violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.” They noted that:
Today’s
measures focus on the West Bank, but of course this cannot be seen in isolation
from the catastrophe in Gaza. We continue to be appalled by the immense
suffering of civilians, including the denial of essential aid. There must be no
unlawful transfer of Palestinians from Gaza or within the West Bank, nor any
reduction in the territory of the Gaza Strip.
The problem with this position is
that Ben-Gvir and Smotrich are not rogue extremists, but key ministers in
Netanyahu’s government. They respectively hold the ministerial portfolios of
national security and finance. The policies and words for which they are being
individually censured are collectively those of Israel’s government as a whole.
The statement concludes: “We will
continue to work with the Israeli Government and a range of partners,” but the
main obstacle to its attaining its objectives, “an immediate ceasefire, the
release now of the remaining hostages and for the unhindered flow of
humanitarian aid including food,” and “a reconstructed Gaza no longer run by
Hamas and a political pathway to a two-state solution,” is precisely the
Israeli government itself. As, of course, Messrs. Carney, Starmer, and Macron
very well know.
Their position, like much else in
the West’s response to Israel’s actions since Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attacks,
is incoherent. But the incoherence is revealing. The West is being tossed on
the horns of an irresolvable dilemma—as it has been, in one form or another,
since the foundation of the State of Israel and the Nakba of 1947-1948. This
dilemma has assumed acute form since October 7.
If the West continues to support
Israel’s “right to defend itself” as Israel interprets that “right,” then—as
has become crystal clear over the last twenty months, and has once again been
proven by Israel’s latest “pre-emptive strike” on Iran—it can do so only at the
cost of trashing the norms of international humanitarian law and the cherished
“Western” values of human rights and the universal rule of law upon which they
supposedly rest. The supreme irony here is that Israel has repeatedly claimed
to be waging this “war” in defense of the humanist values of Western
civilization and against Islamist barbarism.
If, on the other hand, Western
democracies are seriously to uphold those values and enforce the rule of law,
they are morally and legally bound not simply to condemn Israel’s crimes but to
take whatever concrete actions lie within their power to prevent them—including,
at a minimum, stopping all arms supplies and applying economic and other
sanctions (as has been done in the case of Russia following its invasion of
Ukraine).
Stronger action might include
international military intervention under United Nations auspices, like that
which followed Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
As just one example of this, in
its landmark judgment on the legal status of the Israeli occupation of
Palestinian territories—within which it counted blockaded Gaza—of July 19,
2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that “Israel’s continued
presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is unlawful,” and Israel must
“end its unlawful presence… as rapidly as possible,”
cease
immediately all new settlement activities, and… evacuate all settlers from the
Occupied Palestinian Territory.
The court unambiguously spelled
out the resulting obligations of all UN member states, including Canada:
all
States are under an obligation not to recognize as legal the situation arising
from the unlawful presence of the State of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian
Territory and not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation
created by the continued presence of the State of Israel in the Occupied
Palestinian Territory.
In the same way, all 125
countries that signed the 1998 Rome Statute that established the International
Criminal Court (ICC)—the U.S. is not among them, but Britain, France, Canada,
the rest of the G7, Australia, New Zealand, and most members of the EU and NATO
are—are legally bound to execute the court’s arrest warrants against Benjamin
Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes
against humanity, whether they approve of them or not.
The West cannot have its cake and
eat it. Either it supports Israel, or it supports the rule of law. Israel’s
“right to self-defense” does not permit war crimes or genocide, period.
More theatre for public
consumption?
Two other recent initiatives that
signalled apparent shifts in Western attitudes toward Israel’s ongoing Gaza
“war” are worth mentioning here. Both have now been rudely sidelined by events.
The first was a conference,
co-hosted by France and Saudi Arabia under UN auspices and scheduled to take
place on June 17-20 in New York, at which it was hoped to make progress toward
a two-state solution to “the Palestinian problem.” This “solution” is one to
which Israel and its Western supporters have been nominally committed since the
Oslo Accords of 1993-5, even though Netanyahu has repeatedly stated his
opposition to any “attempt to coerce us to a reality that would endanger the
state of Israel” on grounds that Israel “must have security control over the
entire territory west of the Jordan River… That collides with the idea of
[Palestinian] sovereignty. What can we do?”
It was widely rumoured that
France and Britain might recognize a Palestinian state at the conference in
order to maintain pressure on Israel to stop the war in Gaza and return to the
negotiating table. This led Donald Trump to call upon the world’s governments
on June 10 to boycott the conference and threaten “diplomatic consequences” if
they took “any steps that would unilaterally recognise a conjectural
Palestinian state.”
Faced with this U.S. threat,
Macron was already backtracking on recognizing Palestine when Israel launched
its “pre-emptive strike” on Iran. The new situation gave him the perfect
off-ramp. On the same day as Israel attacked Iran, he announced that the two-state
conference was indefinitely postponed “for logistical and security reasons.”
The second initiative—a poignant
one, in retrospect—occurred at the UN. Meeting in an emergency session on June
12 , “the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly adopted a resolution demanding an
immediate, unconditional and lasting ceasefire in Gaza,” which:
strongly
condemn[ed] the use of starvation as a weapon of war, demand[ed] a full lifting
of the Israeli blockade on humanitarian aid, and insist[ed] on the protection
of civilians under international law.
A week earlier a similar
resolution had failed to pass at the Security Council due to a lone veto by the
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio explained that the U.S. government could
not support any resolution that “draws a false equivalence between Israel and
Hamas, or disregards Israel’s right to defend itself.” The rest of the UNSC
voted in favour.
The General Assembly resolution
passed with 149 votes in favour, 12 against, and 19 abstentions. Joining
Israel, the U.S., and a sprinkling of U.S. Pacific dependencies in the No lobby
were Argentina, Hungary, and Paraguay—hardly paragons of liberal democracy. The
rest of the G7, and most members of the EU and NATO,1 supported the motion.
The day after this near-universal
condemnation of Israel by the international community, Israel attacked Iran.
And everything changed overnight.
Come back Bibi, all is forgiven
“Game on. Pray for Israel,”
posted the reliably odious U.S. Senator Lindsay Graham on X upon hearing the
news of Israel‘s strikes on Iran. Lindsay’s recent contributions to peace in
the Middle East included the post “Hope Greta [Thunberg] and her friends can
swim!”—an invitation for the IDF to attack the Madleen, on which activists were
sailing to Gaza to draw attention to Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon of
war.
Before long, the mantra “pray for
Israel” was broadcast far and wide, and sob stories of poor Israeli families
having to spend the night in air-raid shelters began to appear in the Western
press.
One could be forgiven for
believing that Iran had launched a pre-emptive strike on Israel that killed and
wounded hundreds of civilians in Tel Aviv and Haifa rather than the other way
around.
Worse was to follow. Speaking
with Israeli President Isaac Herzog “concerning the escalating situation in the
Middle East” on June 13, President of the EU Commission Ursula von der Leyen
“reiterated Israel’s right to defend itself and protect its people.” She made
no mention of the fact that Israel struck first.
On the same day Emmanuel Macron
called “on all parties to exercise maximum restraint and to de-escalate” in an
English-language statement on X that began: “France has repeatedly condemned
Iran’s ongoing nuclear program” and continued “France reaffirms Israel’s right
to defend itself and ensure its security.” He made no mention of Iran’s right
to self-defense against Israeli strikes.
In a still more blatant
masterpiece of Orwellian doublespeak, the German foreign ministry squarely
blamed Iran for Israel’s latest aggression:
The
situation in the Middle East has escalated dramatically overnight. Israel has
carried out targeted strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities. Iran is
responding with hundreds of drone attacks on Israel. This development is more
than alarming.
We
strongly condemn the indiscriminate Iranian attack on Israeli territory. Iran’s
nuclear program violates the Non-Proliferation Treaty and poses a threat to the
entire region—especially to Israel.
Israel
has the right to defend its existence and the security of its citizens. At the
same time, we call on all parties to avoid further escalation. Germany remains
committed to diplomacy—together with our partners in Europe and the United
States.
This conveniently overlooks the
facts that unlike Iran, Israel declines to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty,
possesses a nuclear arsenal, and has refused to let the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) inspect its facilities; that in 2015 Iran agreed a deal
with China, France, Russia, the UK, the U.S., and Germany to limit its nuclear
program in exchange for relief on sanctions, which Donald Trump unilaterally
scuppered in 2018; that negotiations between Iran and the U.S. to renew such a
deal were well advanced when Israel launched its attack (one of those
assassinated in the first wave of targeted missiles was the leader of the
Iranian negotiating team, Ali Shamkhani); and that as the IAEA has emphasized
in a statement of June 13, “any military action that jeopardizes the safety and
security of nuclear facilities risks grave consequences for the people of Iran,
the region, and beyond.” But who cares when Germany’s Staatsräson, as Angela
Merkel famously defined German support for Israel, is at issue?
UK Finance Minister Rachel Reeves
joined the chorus of condemnation of Iran, telling Sky News on June 15 that
British military assets—including fighter jets—were being moved to the conflict
zone “to protect ourselves and also potentially to support our allies.” While
“this does not mean we are at war,” she said, these assets could “potentially”
be used to help defend Israel and the government is “not ruling anything out.”
Canada’s about-turn is perhaps
the most despicable of all. At least Germany had the honesty to acknowledge
that Iran’s “indiscriminate attacks” came in response to Israel’s “targeted
strikes.” Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand’s June 13 post fails to
admit even this. For all we are told, “Iran’s attack upon Israel” came out of
nowhere.
The sheer chutzpah boggles the
mind. Anand remained silent on Israel’s attack on Iran. But as soon as Tehran
retaliated, she was quick to announce that:
Canada
condemns Iran’s attack on Israel, and urges restraint on both sides. Further
actions can cause devastating consequences for the broader region. The
U.S.-Iran negotiations represent the best path to achieving a lasting and
peaceful resolution to Iran’s nuclear program. Diplomatic engagement remains
essential to ensuring long-term regional stability and international security.
Iran cannot obtain nuclear weapons. Iran’s continued efforts to pursue nuclear
weapons, support for terrorists, and direct attacks on civilian centres embody
Iran’s persistent threat to regional stability and to Israel, which has the
right to defend itself.
Once again, Israel’s absolute
right to possess nuclear weapons, support terrorists, and direct attacks on
civilian centers in Iran and elsewhere (Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen …) in the
name of “self-defense” goes unquestioned. If these are not “persistent threats
to regional stability” I don’t know what that phrase means.
The next day Anand thanked
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar “for the conversation this evening,”
adding: “Thank you to the brave firefighters who helped a Canadian embassy
staff member in a building that was struck by a missile in Tel Aviv. She was eventually
rescued, along with other occupants of the building, and is safe and sound.”
How sweet.
They say a week is a long time in
politics. As Nesrine Malik wrote in the Guardian on June 16, two days after I
was nauseated by any such suggestion:
Stories
of people dying of starvation in Gaza or of the hungry being killed while
queueing for food, have fallen away from the headlines. The relentless assault
on the West Bank and the expansion of illegal settlements has receded from
view. The pressure that was beginning to build on Israel to let in more aid and
honour a ceasefire has been replaced with the same mealy-mouthed defences that
we saw in the early days of the war in Gaza, plus the same pabulum of urging
“restraint.” The clock is reset.
Hats off to you, Bibi. With one
small act of war, you’ve gaslit the whole Western world into dancing to your
genocidal tune yet again.
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