A few days after the Hamas breakout from Gaza last October 7, I raised the question of how far Israel might be permitted to advance along the road to moral turpitude. After almost a year now, there is no doubt that the answer is: a very long way indeed.

With few exceptions Western countries, led by the USA and vigorously supported by the Australian Government, rushed to bolster the brutal Israeli retaliation on Gaza from the very beginning, with an inexhaustible supply of both weapons and rhetorical diplomatic cover. By now well over 50,000 tons of war materiel have been delivered to Israel in the past 12 months. Of course the Palestinians have received nothing.

A signal result is that both the so-called “rules-based international order” and the hubristic Western assumption of a superior moral authority have now been shredded and lie in tatters.

Similarly, the two-state solution has been finally exposed as a hollow fiction. Netanyahu has explicitly stated there will be no Palestinian state, and has subsequently faced wide condemnation after showing a map of Israel that excluded the occupied West Bank in a televised news briefing on Monday September 2. He repeated this performance at the UN later in the month. His response to the ICJ ruling was that “the Jewish nation cannot be an occupier in its own land.”

The Knesset has passed a resolution confirming the same position on two states. As long ago as January, far-right finance minister Smotrich said, in comments reported by Haaretz, “My life’s mission is to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state.”

The sham Western diplomatic cover for Israel’s monstrous retaliation has been shattered by both the World Court ruling of July 19 and the Zionists’ very own disavowals. There is no Israeli intention to even countenance a Palestinian state. Unlike their Western apologists, they don’t even offer a pretence. None of this has made any difference to the Australian Government’s position, which is to cling to the discredited two-state solution in order to avoid taking a clear stand against the ongoing horror.

The two-state solution was always a cynical deception by which Western governments, including Australia, have allowed themselves to be serially deceived by Zionist strategists, who have assumed the divine historical right to create one single Jewish state, a Greater Israel, “from the river to the sea”, at the expense of Palestinian lives, rights, freedoms, land, property, aspirations, and indeed the very existence of the Palestinian nation.

Western hypocrisy now stands unmasked through its venal complicity in the commission of a heinous genocide in Gaza. There is no atrocity the IDF can commit that will merit an unequivocal rebuke, or even a response beyond the feeble expression of “concern” from the US or its “partners”, who are now deeply mired in these egregious crimes against humanity, and flagrant transgressions of international law.

The Australian Government has deployed ab initio a pitiless and relentless presumption of guilt against the Palestinians and, conversely, one of innocence in favour of Israel. This was clearly demonstrated when Israel, without evidence, accused UNRWA workers of participating in the October 7 attacks. The Australian Government and over a dozen other Western donor countries immediately cut funding to that vital Palestinian refugee organisation. The funding was only restored almost two months later, well after it became clear that Israel was not going to provide any proof of UNRWA’s alleged complicity. It has become increasingly obvious that Israel habitually lies and deceives, as a matter of course, to conceal its crimes and advance its illegal colonial project.

When Israel assassinates its enemies in neighbouring states and indiscriminately kills and mutilates thousands of Lebanese citizens, the likes of Blinken and Wong bizarrely urge restraint on Iran and Hezbollah, while refusing to condemn the initial cause: Israel’s savage violations of international law. Again, the presumption is always in favour of Israel. After the synchronised explosions of the booby-trapped communications devices in Lebanon, killing scores and severely wounding thousands, the US cautioned Hezbollah and Lebanon against escalating the conflict. Israel, the prime suspect, wasn’t even mentioned.

Over this past year, and entirely consistent with its previous behaviour spanning decades, the Zionist state has indiscriminately murdered tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children, snubbed its nose at dozens of UN resolutions, defied the ICJ and international law, mocked the requirement of proportionality in its retaliation, and suborned compliant Western governments with powerful........

© Pearls and Irritations