History is Watching: Will the War on Iran Legitimize Israel?

By Ilan Pappé

US President Donald Trump and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. (Design: Palestine Chronicle)

Fortunately, history has taught us that such projects of elimination fail when they are met with resistance and resilience.

When the British Prime Minister justifies the American-Israeli aggression against Iran by citing Britain’s alliance with both countries, he is saying much more than that. His statement also implies that Britain does not regard the Palestinians as allies.

This should come as no surprise. It was, after all, British hostility and enmity toward the Palestinian people that enabled the colonization of Palestine and the dispossession of its indigenous population.

I have often wondered whether my recent observations about the particularly low caliber of today’s British politicians were an exaggeration. And yet, once again, a statement like this comes along and proves me right. Starmer’s response reveals not only ignorance but also a disturbing lack of compassion and a complete absence of moral backbone.

But he is not alone. Those who held power in recent years in Britain and Europe, from both Left and Right, have consistently been exposed in such moments—moments in history that demand knowledge, humanity, and moral courage. We are in such a moment now, as we were in 2003.

We are witnessing an unprovoked Israeli aggression against a state that does not have, to put it mildly, the best record of respecting civil and human rights. A state that supports the Palestinian struggle, while many other countries in the region are normalizing relations with Israel and allowing it to continue its destruction of Palestine.

This is a complex situation, as is the broader reality of civil and human rights in the Middle East. Western leaders lack the capacity to engage with such complexity, because their policies are shaped by narrow electoral interests and capitalist expediency, not by moral values.

If they did, they would need to be able to distinguish between key aspects of the current reality. For example, they would have to recognize the difference between people who are oppressed by their regimes—some in the most extreme ways, others more subtly—and people who are the object of elimination and extermination. This is the crucial distinction between those who suffer from abuses of rights in many Middle Eastern countries and the Palestinians.

They would also need to recognize the difference between repression and lack of freedoms in the decolonized Middle East and life within the only part of the region that is still under colonial rule: Palestine.

They would have to acknowledge that the ongoing colonization of Palestine is not just an Israeli project, but first and foremost a Western-Israeli venture. And as long as Palestine is not decolonized, two unfortunate phenomena will continue to trouble the people of the region.

First, it will allow unscrupulous regimes to use support for Palestine as an excuse for not improving the freedom of their own citizens; and second, it will provide the West with a shield of impunity for the project of eliminating the Palestinians.

Israel chooses allies to normalize the colonization and dispossession — Palestinians cling to anyone who, at this point in time, might help prevent their elimination as a country and as a nation.

Western politicians, quite astonishingly, use the most disturbing yardstick for deciding which of the oppressive regimes in the Middle East should be condemned and which should be regarded as allies. There is only one test that either includes or excludes you from the family of “civilized nations”: your regime’s willingness to normalize the colonization and dispossession of Palestine.

This seems to be too complex for Keir Starmer. Iran is against Israel, and therefore it is deemed an abuser of civil and human rights—not because of its poor record of respecting its citizens’ basic rights. The horrible truth is that, should the Shah or his ilk return to power in Iran and continue their old regime of oppression, they would once again become the West’s and Britain’s best allies—as long as they renew Iran’s alliance with Israel and normalize the project of eliminating Palestine.

What we demand from Western politicians is not just that they end their double standards and exceptional hypocrisy, but that they internalize a few facts of life—which, I am sorry to say, this current political elite is as unable as it is unwilling to do.

First, they must clearly see the connection between ending the oppression in Palestine and the West’s ability to intervene constructively in matters of civil and human rights in the region. These two are inextricably connected. The more Palestinians are liberated from oppression, the more likely it is that other people in the region will be liberated as well.

Secondly, it is important to adopt a universal approach to civil and human rights—one that is not based on capitalist or strategic interests, but rather on values—and to apply it globally, without exceptionalism. This includes its application to the West, where oppression is perhaps more subtle, yet remains institutional, and becomes far more visible when Western societies dare to show solidarity with the Palestinians.

Finally, there is no doubt that we should all stand with those who are imprisoned, tortured, or executed for opposing repressive regimes. But this must not overshadow the urgent need to prioritize ending an ongoing genocide unfolding on our doorstep.

As members of society, we can—and must—do both: fight for the rights of citizens under oppressive regimes worldwide, and work relentlessly to stop an ongoing and escalating genocide.

For governments, the choice is even clearer: they must act more urgently and decisively to end a genocide, while continuing to strive for a better world in which no regime is allowed to abuse its citizens under any pretext.

The Anglo-American bombing of Iraq in 2003 led to the death of one million Iraqis and was based on the false accusation that the Iraqi army possessed weapons of mass destruction ready to be used against the UK.

Today, Iran is being bombed under the false pretext of preparing a nuclear attack on Israel. In essence, both attacks were carried out as part of a broader effort to strengthen Israel—that is, to further normalize the project of colonization and dispossession.

Europe—and Britain in particular—refuse to come to terms with the fact that their idea of building a European Jewish state in the heart of the Arab world, at the expense of the Palestinians, was a bad idea. It also failed to resolve the very problem it claimed to address: Europe’s inability to accept its Jews as Europeans.

This project became an established fact because it appealed to Christian fundamentalists, who saw it as a prelude to the return of the Messiah, and attracted Islamophobic imperialists, eager to dominate the Arab world and build a bastion against the “barbarians” who, in their view, threaten the “civilized world.”

It had to be established and maintained through the constant use of violence and force. Bombing Iran is just another chapter in this maintenance work. But it will not make Israel any safer or more legitimate in the eyes of much of the world, because its main outcome will be an Israeli assertion that the project of eliminating Palestine can now proceed without hindrance.

Fortunately, history has taught us that such projects of elimination fail when they are met with resistance and resilience—resistance supported by millions of people who still possess a modicum of decency. The Palestine they envision is one that serves as a model of a country free from oppression of any kind.

Will our politicians in Britain ever be part of this group of people? Or will they find themselves on the wrong side of history, leaving us to wait for more decent human beings to help end this terrible chapter in our shared human story?

– Ilan Pappé is a professor at the University of Exeter. He was formerly a senior lecturer in political science at the University of Haifa. He is the author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, The Modern Middle East, A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples, and Ten Myths about Israel. He is the co-editor, with Ramzy Baroud of ‘Our Vision for Liberation.’ Pappé is described as one of Israel’s ‘New Historians’ who, since the release of pertinent British and Israeli government documents in the early 1980s, have been rewriting the history of Israel’s creation in 1948. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.

The views expressed in the article do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of The Palestine Chronicle.