EDITORIAL: We’ve reached the point where Why Israel is out of control even the most conservative editorial spaces of the western media have begun questioning the White House’s control over events in the Middle East, especially the behaviour of its closest ally in the region. So the Wall Street Journal, owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, has also confirmed what much of the world is already shocked at, that Netanyahu’s bullying around the Gulf has reduced the Biden administration to a “silent spectator”.
Israel has not only completely ignored all US warnings against constant escalation of the Gaza genocide, but also repeatedly “blind sighted” the Americans, especially when it expanded the theatre of war into Lebanon. It’s been reported that Washington is still upset about the pager and walkie-talkie operations, since it was put in the uncomfortable position of being forced to defend an international war crime.
And it’s also very unhappy that the order to kill Hassan Nasrallah was issued from US soil, leaving the uninformed hosts scrambling in the thick of a UN summit; and looking very silly in the process.
Now Netanyahu has pushed the Americans to the brink of an all-out war with Iran, jolting even the most committed pro-Israeli American lobbyists into openly questioning their government’s back-foot posture. He has exploited the uncertain pre-election timeframe in American politics, further fuelled by Joe Biden losing his mental capabilities and dropping out of the race, to hijack the main Middle East agenda and increased the stakes every step of the way.
And the Americans have never failed to provide necessary cover, even if some private high-level conversations got a little unpleasant sometimes. It’s also been reported, for example, that Biden has not been willing to talk to Netanyahu since late August.
Yet there’s still no stopping Israel’s madness. And the only reason it can get away with all its crimes is America’s blind support for it, regardless of how far it chooses to go.
But now it’s clear that Israel will settle for nothing less than complete destruction of all its enemies, which requires dismantling of the theocratic regime in Tehran and a reconfiguration of Middle East calculus. That is easier said than done, even if the sole superpower continues to play along with Israel’s barbarism.
In these circumstances it is shocking, even shameful, that Muslim Arab states have still not felt the urgent need for a united front to tell the Americans, very forcefully, to keep Israel in check. All the Gulf states have had to say, even as reports of a possible US-Israeli attack on Iran’s oil facilities was leaked to the international press, was that they would stay “neutral”.
Reports that some of them might have helped intercept some of Iran’s drones during April’s symbolic attack did not sit well in Tehran, and the latter’s veiled threats of “appropriate action” of its own seem to have had some sort of an effect.
But that’s about all. The Muslim world is still too divided to stand as one even as its combined enemies connive with the world’s biggest bullies to rewrite the history of the Middle East; and that too in the blood of its own people. One reason the so-called Jewish lobby is so successful in influencing US Middle East policy is the utter impotence of their rivals, now on open, shameful display.
Nobody wants war, except Israel, yet nobody is able to do anything about it. The Muslim world is unwilling to intervene and the superpower seems simply unable to contain the Jewish state. So a world on edge waits for Israel to deliver its next shock to the global system.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024
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