Gaza war has exposed Western double standards

The latest move by the US to restrain Israel as it continues its wanton destruction of Gaza (though there is nothing left to be destroyed in the besieged enclave) comes in the form of a stern warning to the Jewish state by the Biden administration.

On Tuesday, Washington issued its strongest public warning yet to Israel against invading the crowded city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip, saying that such a ground operation would deepen the humanitarian crisis in the territory.

President Joe Biden personally warned that the Rafah invasion would be ‘a mistake’, and several Western governments echoed the same sentiment, using tough words to warn Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

But hardly had the ink dried in the newspapers which published Biden’s warning when Netanyahu unleashed precisely what he had been warned against: he surreptitiously started attacking the crowded Rafah, with aerial bombardments that killed close to a hundred Palestinians.

The message? There is no force in the current world order that can restrain Netanyahu in his brutal ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

That’s the first message. The second is that Joe Biden, and his Western allies, wouldn’t dare do anything that would force Netanyahu to follow international law and stop the massacre of Palestinians.

Netanyahu knows that he doesn’t have to listen to Biden because rejection carries no price, and a few days ago, Biden himself sent out abundant signals that his warnings to Israel were hollow and lack heft.

In an interview with MSNBC, Biden unequivocally said he would not use US aid and weapon transfers as leverage to pressure Israel to end its abuses against Palestinians.

If Gaza war now threatens to become a forever war, the main reason is this disconnect between the action and words of Western governments, especially America.

Or, in other words, if this war has exposed anything, it’s the double standards of the West in its dealings with Palestinians and Israelis. The West has given a carte blanche to Netanyahu to commit the worst war crimes in modern human history.

The world now knows that the West’s proclamations of adherence to lofty principles like freedom of expression, democracy, human rights, equality and justice are hollow, insincere and just a tool to advance their interests, and don’t apply to people outside their clique.

The world also knows that Western governments have scant respect for public opinion and outcry when the culprit is Israel.

The Gaza war is being fought on several fronts, one of which is on the social media, and the clear winner here has been the Palestinian side, which has enraged Israel and the US.

This has even been acknowledged by The New York Times, an eloquent mouthpiece of Israeli propaganda.

“But this war, on its current course, is leading to the wholesale killing of Palestinians while Hamas gains in international standing and the remaining Israeli hostages remain captive,” the NYT wrote in a recent editorial.

The scenes from Gaza are heartrending. More than 31,000 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the war on October 7, and the territory is now facing a famine of unprecedented proportions and mass deaths.

Images of emaciated children cuddled up on hospital beds in Gaza would move even the stony-hearted. But America and its Western allies continue to support Israel and Netanyahu. With even ceasefire talks, led by Qatar, stuck in a cul-desac, nobody sees an immediate end to this war.

But it’s not Israel alone that must be held accountable for the continuation of this war, but the US and its Western allies, too, whose criminal complicity the world is helplessly watching.