IF you are looking for a synonym for Israel, the world's only pseudo-state, try impunity. Impunity, the dictionary tells us, is freedom from punishment, harm or loss for laws flouted.
How perfectly the Zionist regime in Tel Aviv fits the bill. As Al Jazeera once put it, a majority of Israelis are sold on the idea that Israel is "a villa in the jungle", despite its brutality. Small wonder, the government, judiciary, army and even those who man the highest "moral" office advocate for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
The international community must remember that impunity comes with two dangers.
First, impunity leads to lack of accountability. Second, impunity encourages more ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. Consider lack of accountability. This itself "erodes the foundation of international order", as Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on occupied Palestinian territories, put it thus in a recent video interview with the Middle East Eye (MEE). Justice is for everyone, or it is for no one, she reminded the international community.
Palestinians can't be denied justice just because they are Palestinians.
Take the most recent Israeli airstrikes on Aug 6. Tel Aviv said it bombarded Gaza to "deter" possible retaliation by the Palestinians for the arrest of one of its leaders.
The Zionist regime's narrative has changed in just days, as it always does. First it was a preemptive strike against Palestinian fighters. Now it is against "retaliation". You can't tell the same lie twice, can you?
Like Albanese, we remind the Zionist regime and its Western sponsors that international law only permits the use of force in self-defence. Israel's Operation Breaking Dawn is a flagrant act of aggression. And it must be labelled as such. Instead, Israel and its cybertroopers are accusing Albanese of being "an activist who promotes outrageous libel and advocates for the de-facto destruction of the nation state of the Jewish people".
Talk of false narratives. If the West wants to be on the right side of history, it must take the advice of Albanese before Israel's impunity completely erodes the very foundation of international order, which was painstakingly built over two world wars. Impunity doesn't end ethnic cleansing. It nurtures more of it, the second danger of impunity.
The United States, Britain and France (as their statements to the media after the Israeli airstrikes hint at) are sending a wrong message to Israel: we will fight every attempt to make Israel accountable for crimes against humanity, even if it is brought by the UN or the International Criminal Court.
David Hearst, one-time foreign leader writer with The Guardian, rightly puts it thus in his op-ed in the MEE: "There can be no clearer demonstration of the hollowness of Western values than in the persistent, cynical and criminal failure to bring Israel to book for its actions." There is yet another danger, the op-ed argues.
By giving the Zionist regime in Tel Aviv the green light to kill Palestinians at will, Western leaders are sending an even more dangerous message to the next generation of Israeli leaders who are openly talking of killing Arabs: go ahead and kill them come what may.
We wish they had a look at the faces of the 16 children killed in the first three days of the Israeli airstrikes. How low can the West go? Very low, it appears.
