ICJ Contests Assertions of Unassailable Moral Purpose, Shaking Western Power-Structures
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Alastair Crooke
- 31 Jan 2024 00:22
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4 Min Read
The explosive issue at the focus of the ICJ rulings likely will become the pivot to the new era -- likely one of struggle and schism in the West.
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In the wake of the ICJ ruling, people will feel freer to speak-out on sensitive issues, where repression of speech has been in practice (Illustrated by Mahdi Rteil to Al Mayadeen English)
The cornerstone to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) rulings made this Friday is that they revoke the ‘Israeli’ project’s assertion of unassailable moral rectitude.
Judged by the West’s own ‘Rules-Based Order’, an overwhelming majority of international judges found that there is first, plausible evidence that "Israel" has the intent to commit genocide; and secondly, that there is plausible evidence that "Israel" is committing genocide. The ICJ did not make a final decision (yet) on the charge of genocide, but stated that there was sufficient substance to order "Israel" to cease those acts that plausibly appear genocidal.
This is a stunning outcome that ultimately will shift the global power-balance. The asserted unassailability and moral irreproachability to Israeli conduct finally has been judged to be (plausibly) genocidal -- and illegal.
The ‘Israeli Project’ has been planted at the very core of Western foreign policy. The subsequent ‘industrialisation’ of the notion of unassailable moral rectitude drew on this (imputed) incontestability to justify, not just Israeli actions per se, but to spawn proxy power-structures across the Westernised world.
The latter essentially took the centrality of the moral rightness of the Israeli State to project a moral superintendency over the US and European Western political matrix. This power-structure -- loosely called the ‘Lobby’ -- inserted itself into the wider polity, assuming disproportionate influence through conflating US interests as congruous with -- and participating in -- the probity of the Israeli ‘cause’.
The moral unassailability claim by key Western power-centres has been punctured, perhaps for good by the ICJ. This has profound implications: The Global South can now voice feelings, and articulate their own histories of repression, that in an earlier era would have been disallowed and whose utterance would have ensured severe penalties.
In Western states, there has come about an informal ‘Holy Inquisition’: Prominent figures in the US are similarly ‘Put to the Question’: Have you ever aligned with unrighteousness? Have you publicly denounced Hamas?
Should the response be equivocal or insufficient, the respondents -- be they Presidents of prestigious US universities or other public figures -- will no longer be tortured (the early ‘lie-detector’ test) and burned alive should they fail; but yet they will be denounced, humiliated and have their careers destroyed (for their near heresy).
Of course, in the Western sphere, the ICJ orders are being ‘disappeared’ from public discourse, and a deaf ear is turned. Politics will not change overnight. Yet everyone in the non-West, and millions in Western societies, owning one of the five billion of extant smartphones, will have had access and watched the succinct and clear rulings handed down by the ICJ’s supreme justice.
The rulings may turn to be absent from the pages of Western MSM, yet they will return, for there is the thirty-day time limit by which "Israel" is required to report back to the Court on the actions taken to prevent all aspects of conceivable genocide. If the report-back is inadequate, the rulings likely will make their appearance at the UN Security Council.
This is a devastating occurrence for certain power-structures in the West: In the wake of the ICJ ruling, people will feel freer to speak-out on sensitive issues, where repression of speech has been in practice. And no one can miss the symbolism of Gaza: Whatever rights or wrongs that have occurred there (maybe plenty), a tiny people are standing defiantly against the overwhelming might of powerful states, seeking liberation.
The explosive issue at the focus of the ICJ rulings likely will become the pivot to the new era -- likely one of struggle and schism in the West -- as the forces of repression continue to impose their régime over those forces against them. The essentials to this conflict will, as it were, go global.
