‘War Crimes’ in today’s Anti-Israel Newspeak

‘War crimes’ accusations are supposed to respect the criteria of intentionality and proportionality. Or so one might think from legal theory. But not in reality. Or not any longer.

Nowadays the accusations of war crimes are directed not primarily on the criterion of guilt of the accused, but primarily for attacking the party that’s designated in the media and intelligentsia as the party to be hated and attacked.

The world is divided into a new ruling class and underclass: the party of accusers and the party-to-be-accused.

Which party is to be accused? In any situation of conflict or disagreement in the world, or for that matter in domestic politics, it almost always turns out to be the party that’s considered Western, or more Western than the opposing one.

Accusing the Western party becomes a badge of honor. It does not matter if the accusation is made with reckless disregard for the truth. In fact, the more dishonest the accusation, the greater the social honors and rewards that the accusation brings. This is logical: the very illogic of the accusation shows how strong is the will to make the accusation against the designated target of hate.

Israel as designated target of Hate Week

Accusing Israel has become a routine part of this ritual of Hate Week. It is applauded. It is rewarded socially and institutionally. It is encouraged to be made everywhere and at every opportunity. It is made in a loud, assertive, power-laden tone. The language of supreme authority is used, such as that Israel is “unacceptable” and there must be “zero tolerance” for what it does: a language that goes beyond authoritarianism, with its pragmatism and cautious limitations, to total exclusion and absolute discrimination, or totalitarianism; a language of absolute prioritization of hostility to the designated target of the hate.

Refuting an accusation against the target of hate: this is, by the same logic, discouraged. It is demonized in advance as being a justification for absolute evil. It is made to seem unacceptable even before it is uttered. When voiced at all, it is usually in an undertone, with none of the force of the human personality and willpower put behind it. It is penalized with protests, institutionalized isolation, and social shaming and shunning.

The “war crimes” of the most law-abiding military on earth

That explains why Israel is accused of wars crimes and genocide on a daily basis. It explains why it has been accused on the media for the strikes that killed several Hamas and Hezbollah leaders. It explains why Israel investigated for war crimes for having hit 3000 Hezbollah combatants with historically unique precision, through their cell phones, with almost no civilian casualties. What is its alleged crime? That some civilians were nonetheless also hit, unintentionally.

It was a uniquely small – disproportionately small – piece of what in other wars is called, unpleasantly but accurately, the inevitable collateral damage of war. But under the new rules – the de facto rules, the ones that are in fact regnant in the global institutions of legal authority and public communications, and that have long since overridden the formal legal rules – it clearly merits bringing forth a charge of war crimes against Israel.

The charges merit a medal for reckless disregard for the truth.

That is why the predominant media – BBC, ABC, NBC, CNN, PBS — regularly focus primarily on the death of civilians in the present war. Even when it is only a single civilian, in any Israeli strike against an enemy infrastructure or against a terrorist leader, that is what the media focus on. They interview the family, they show relatives wailing, they show as much ruin in the vicinity as they can, they discuss how terrible life will be for the family and friends – and they portray the victim as a purely innocent and noble victim. And Israel’s statement about the legitimate military object of the strike? It is mentioned briefly, without emphasis or emotion; with rather a preframing to view it as an interested lie.

Israel’s words don’t sink in. They’re not meant to.

Israel is not “given voice” in the meaning of the media — forceful voice, a voice boosted by the media. It’s only the anti-Israel party is “given voice” – as much voice as it can be. It is the only voice that can be “heard” on the media — heard frequently, heard deep-down, heard in a way that penetrates.

Meanwhile the media pat themselves on the back, with a lack of self-awareness that would be comic were it not so damaging, for “giving voice to the voiceless”. They praise themselves and for “courageously” platforming those who are “never heard”, when they once again platform and “give voice” to those who are the faction that is heard on the media day in day out.

The media in this manner swing into motion upon every military encounter in the world, making clear to everyone which party it is that is supposed to be accused. The institutionalized apparatus of accusation, from street protests to legal charges, proceeds to swing into motion on its signal.

It is a kind of joint apparatus, from the heights of the media to the pits of the street. It acts forcefully against Israel, and against anyone in the public square who supports Israel or even merely quietly refutes the calumnies. It acts by authority of the collective designation of Israel and its supporters as the Party to be Accused and Abused. It acts with all the mechanisms of legal discrimination, social pressure, and institutional penalty that it can bring to bear.

An intertwined apparatus of anti-Israel social power

Is it the media that tell the protesters and NGOs and lawyers and bureaucrats what to do? Or is it the street and the NGOs and academics who tell the media what to say?

It goes both ways. The causation goes between these parts in a continuous loop. It forms an intertwined mechanism of factional authority.

Israel is the designated target of the day of this combined authority. It is the object of hate in this year’s Hate Week. But it is not the underlying target.

The Underlying Target: the West

Who is the underlying target? Probably everyone understands, at least subconsciously, that it is the West. And its equivalent, the Global Right.

The West is given several definitions and designations by the socially dominant authorities in our public discussion channels. It is equated with imperialism, capitalism, colonialism, the white… But is in all cases understood as the Global Right, the power center against which new generations have been brought up to define themselves for more than half a century. It is the “power and privilege” in the world that must be brought down. It is the pole against which people are encouraged from childhood to define their moral orientation in the world.

From the easy answer to the real, not easy answer

And the West is in fact the traditional predominant power center in the world, the mainstay of the world order, the main hierarchy. It has been for half a millennium. It is the mainstay of stability, peace, progress, and development. It is the benign hierarchy. The Resistance allies itself with every malign hierarchy in order to bring it down.

That is why it is not a mistake, or a result of ignorance, when the Global Left attacks Israel with a reckless disregard for truth. It is not a mistake when the social justice arguments for this orientation can be subject to ridicule for self-contradiction and for extreme distortions of fact. It is a completely rational, completely logical outcome of the underlying intention and orientation of the forces that make this attack.

The sometimes absurd rationalizations are only rationalizations; the orientation is the actual rationale. The orientation is the problem, not how it is rationalized. It is irrelevant to answer the rationalizations with seemingly decisive facts, or with arguments from the purportedly shared values of the Left. That method has until now been the mainstay of the effort to combat the new antisemitism. It is why the effort has proved so ineffective.

It is the entrenched orientation that will have to be changed, the one that motivates the rationalization, if the entrenched dishonesty toward Israel is to be changed. It is the only way to overcome also the Newspeak against Israel. And the habitual international lawfare. And the Hate Week sessions.

And it is also the only way to overcome the related habits of hating and attacking when they are directed, in a slightly more cautious style, against the West.

The orientation against the West has been allowed to grow deeply embedded in the major institutions of the West. We see it daily as a powerful social wind among Western youth, expressed in its anti-Israel form for the moment.

It is a daunting task, to overcome this orientation. But it is the only task relevant to solving the problem of the new antisemitism.