While the world scrutinises the sky above Tehran and Tel Aviv, Israeli offensives on Gaza and the West Bank are intensifying.In Palestine, in fact, the war has never ceased. Over the past two years, Israel has dropped the equivalent of six nuclear bombs on the already drained enclave.
And yet, diplomatic attention is not focused there. No. It is bogged down in the intricacies of a deterrence war, in the shadow cast by nuclear weapons, where powers play at being firefighter-arsonists. The Israeli offensive against Iran, which claims to be preventive against an "existential threat," comes at a time when no real or imminent Iranian military threat actually weighed on Israel. How can one justify, therefore, striking a country in the name of preventing a nuclear disaster, whilst at the same time inflicting destruction of a far greater scale on a civilian population?
This conflict arises at a critical moment when world public opinion was gradually shifting against Israel, which was weakened on the diplomatic scene and increasingly criticised for its crimes in Gaza. The confrontation with Iran thus offers Israel a strategic and symbolic reprieve: it re-centres the discourse on regional security, marginalises the Palestinian cause, and strengthens its position vis-à-vis its Western allies.
Selective Indignation
The reaction of Western countries to this new crisis is revealing: when Iran retaliates, condemnations pour in, from the Capitol to the Élysée,all chanted in the name of the age-old "Israel's right to defend itself" (and thus, to attack in order to "defend" itself!). But faced with the closed-door massacres in Gaza, the massive destruction of civilian infrastructure, and the occupation of the West Bank, it is a silence that has ceased to be diplomatic and has become complicit. This double standard explodes any Western moral pretensions. Human Rights Watch speaks of hypocrisy. The word is weak. It is institutionalised contempt.
Israel, the Outlaw Atom
This selective indignation extends to the nuclear domain.In this tragic comedy, Iran, a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, is accused of wanting to cross the nuclear threshold, whilst Israel, a non-signatory and possessor of an unofficial nuclear arsenal, estimated between 80 and 300 warheads, has systematically refused IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) inspections.
The cynicism reaches its peak when one recalls that the only power to have used nuclear weapons against civilians was the United States, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.What legitimacy, then, to dictate who deserves the bomb or not? What morality remains when the gravediggers adorn themselves in judges' robes?
Gaza, Mirror of International Failure
This conflict is not a mere confrontation between two rival states. It exposes a deeply fractured world order, gangrened by colonialism, imperialism, and political cowardice.An order built on violence, the competition of powers, and a fierce struggle for the strategic control of territories. Behind the moralising discourses, a war of predation is being played out, targeting the natural resources of a crucial region where economic and energy stakes are major.
And if this violence continues without massive indignation, it is also because it falls upon non-"white" bodies, perceived as expendable, eraseable, peripheral. Gaza has become the mirror of our failure: humanitarian, moral, civilisational. Hope is being murdered there, and the West looks away so as not to see its own reflection.
As long as the fate of Palestinians is relegated to a strategic adjustment variable, as long as the principles of international law are applied inconsistently, as long as the possession of nuclear weapons remains the privilege of those who have imposed their hegemony by force, there will be neither peace nor justice.
Illustration image: "Israeli Air Force (IAF) F-35I Adir stealth multi-role fighter jet", photograph from June 12, 2023, by Israeli Defence Forces Spokesperson’s Unit (CC BY-SA 3.0) – cropped image
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