For years, Israel has propagated the idea that its army is “the most moral in the world.” Israel sometimes warns civilians in Gaza on their cell phones that their homes will be destroyed and that they must leave if they want to live. What other army shows such kindness to civilians before killing them?
Rachad Antonius[i]
Translated from French by PAJU
For years, Israel has propagated the idea that its army is “the most moral in the world.” Israel sometimes warns civilians in Gaza on their cell phones that their homes will be destroyed and that they must leave if they want to live. What other army shows such kindness to civilians before killing them? This reminds me of a caricature of an executioner showing his kindness by warning a condemned man that the steps of the scaffold he is about to climb are slippery because of the rain and that he must be careful while ascending to the scaffold.
The promoters of genocide and their intermediaries here want us to believe now that the ongoing massacres in Gaza are an eminently moral undertaking, aimed above all at eliminating the evil that is eating away at Gaza and threatening the Jews: the Islamist Hamas. But under the pretext of fighting Hamas, the civilian population and institutions are being bombed, and children, journalists, and medical personnel are being explicitly targeted, facts well established by numerous sources, ignored or downright censored. It would be, in a way, the most moral genocide in history. When German Chancellor Friedrich Merz declares that “Israel is doing the dirty work for all of us,” 2 he is not only referring to the bombing of Iran, but also of Gaza and Lebanon, which are also part of the ‘axis of evil’. If he concedes that it is “dirty work,” he implicitly affirms that it serves a higher objective, that of defending our security. The highly moral enterprise of killing civilians has no limits.
This feeling that Israel is in the right—often expressed within political and media elites—is produced by a few sleights of hand that allow it to maintain a façade of respectability while supporting genocide. The proponents of this discourse could, at the limit, admit that Israel is exaggerating a little in the violence it uses, but that, fundamentally, it is right. This stance results from assumed political choices that are part of colonial history, as well as from media tactics that give a semblance of legitimacy to this propaganda.
The weight of history
Israeli strategies are part of a long history of colonial relations. But we forget history. We present Israel as fighting for its survival against aggressors who want to destroy it, forgetting that Palestine was entirely Arab a little over a hundred years ago (which does not exclude the existence of small Jewish communities). The desire to build a state for the Jews there inevitably resulted in the expulsion of the Palestinians in well-documented ethnic cleansing operations and then, faced with their will to resist, through a genocide recognized as such by all international bodies. The political and media elites represent the conflict as a symmetrical struggle in which the Palestinians not only refuse to make the necessary compromises, but rely on the criminal violence of Hamas to achieve their ends. Israel, according to them, is therefore “only defending itself,” a claim repeated by all politicians in power. The notion of symmetry is fundamental in the representation of the conflict. Thus, in a Point de Vue (RDI) program on June 19, following the mention of Guillaume Lavallée’s book, Gaza avant le 7, which underlines that the dehumanization of the Palestinians began well before October 7, columnist Josée Legault found nothing else to say except that the dehumanization was “mutual”!
The choice of words
This narrative is supported by a choice of terms which serve to try to make it appear as an objective reality.
The first element is the characterization of the conflict as between Israel and Hamas. Even after 18 months of massacres, major daily newspapers headlined their news articles or columns with the phrase “Israel-Hamas War.” On channels such as RDI and Noovo, televised interviews on this issue took place on a panel bearing the headline, “Israel-Hamas War.” Since Hamas is classified as a terrorist group by the Canadian government, the inevitable consequence of this designation is clear: if you don’t support Israel, you support those it opposes, that is, you are “apologizing for terrorism.” This has the effect of stigmatizing any criticism of Israel and justifying anything Israel might do. I have asked several journalists and columnists: How many tens of thousands of civilian deaths will it take for you to understand that the objective is not the destruction of Hamas, nor the repatriation of the hostages, but rather the expulsion of the Palestinians with a view to seizing the territory? I have never received an answer.
The over-extension of the term ‘antisemitism’ constitutes another method of stigmatizing critics of the genocide. In addition to genuine cases of anti-Jewish racism, the term is used indiscriminately to refer to any opposition to the genocidal policies of the Israeli government. Even a course on Palestinian literature is accused of encouraging antisemitism. Demonstrations against the ongoing massacres are labeled “antisemitic” by many commentators. The latest international controversy to this effect was sparked by the chant “Death to the IDF” by the punk rapper Bob Vylan during a concert in Great Britain. There are many reasons to criticize such militant expressions. But by putting the news under the heading “Antisemitism,” as most political forces in power do, the prestigious newspaper Le Monde operates a double reduction: one that stems from the identification of all Jews with Israel, and one that reduces the whole of Israeli society to the actions of its army. Any criticism of the army’s criminal actions then becomes not only a criticism of the Israeli government (which is obviously defensible) but a hateful criticism of all the Jews of the world!
And that’s that! Don’t condemn the authorities (such as the Israeli army) that are carrying out this highly moral genocide. Above all, don’t call it “genocide”: calling it that is ‘antisemitic’.
[1] Associate Professor, UQAM. Rachad Antonius was Professor of Sociology at the Université du Québec à Montréal until his retirement in December 2020. He has a background in sociology (Ph.D., UQAM) and mathematics (M.Sc., University of Manitoba). He is the author of several books on quantitative methods applied to the humanities. His recent research has focused on the theoretical definition of the notions of minorities and majorities, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the relationship to land and water in Lebanese agriculture, Arab minorities in Quebec, and certain ideological aspects of political Islam. His latest book is entitled, La conquête de la Palestine, de Balfour à Gaza, une guerre de cent ans (Éditions Écosociété, 2024).
[2] https://www.franceinfo.fr/monde/conflit-israel-iran/israel-fait-le-sale-boulot-pour-nous-tous-en-iran-polemique-en-allemagne-apres-les-propos-du-chancelier-friedrich-merz_7324038.html
The opinions expressed in the article are those of the author
