Few horrors are harder to describe than scenes of desperate people rushing toward a location in search of food amid a campaign of relentless bombardment and starvation. Harder still, what awaits them there is not relief, but even greater terror. Last week, 31 people were killed at a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation “aid distribution center” in this manner, adding the location to the growing list of “extermination centers” set up by Israel in Gaza. The purpose of the killing could be nothing other than power projection in its most disturbing form, the power of total impunity and unmatched arrogance.
Despite the appalling nature of the event, it was evidently of little concern to those responsible. After all, it is easy to terrorize a defenseless and “stateless” population. Yet Israel apparently exercises the same power over “established” states as well, including supposed “Western allies.” For instance, when Irish President Michael D. Higgins made the obvious observation that legitimate criticism of the Israeli government is routinely conflated with anti-Semitism, he also revealed that Ireland was on the receiving end of a similar “terrorizing” strategy. Higgins described as preposterous “the idea that a propaganda campaign against Ireland is now active in the United States, so that when we are seeking to have meetings with people who are, for example, interested in investing in Ireland, they are being contacted in advance with a suggestion, saying, ‘You must open by asking, why is Ireland so against the U.S.’ position on Israel?’”
Many others have had to put up with similar intimidation tactics over the years. Former U.K. Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn recalled in a recent interview that, while serving as leader of the opposition, he was asked by a hostile parliamentary committee whether he would “agree to support any action Israel takes.” The bizarre expectation of blind commitment itself aside, the fact that such a question could ever be posed to a potential prime minister of Britain ought to be scandalous. However, what was made into a scandal in the end was Corbyn’s alleged “anti-Semitism problem,” which might well have been discovered at that very meeting.
As evidenced by Corbyn’s refusal to bow, however, these intimidation tactics are not entirely “irresistible.” In fact, they should not intimidate the head of a leading European state at all, if it is indeed “leading” in anything in any meaningful way. In his powerful 1998 speech on British foreign policy in Iraq, the great Labour lawmaker Tony Benn invited the British government to take initiative and fully leverage Britain’s privileged status in international organizations, including the U.N. Security Council. He urged them to be courageous, if refusing to slavishly follow whatever the U.S. decides to do indeed amounted to courage. Of course, they would decline even to consider that possibility.
Why has it been so difficult to take heed of Benn’s advice? Why is Europe seemingly incapable of acting independently of the U.S., even when the U.S. is governed by those who, in a sane world, would rightly be considered insane? Perhaps the reason lies in a kind of prisoner’s dilemma, first described by researchers at none other than the infamous American “think tank” RAND Corporation. In simple terms, no one seems willing to take the risk of facing the U.S. alone, and they are not capable of coordinating with each other either, due possibly to mutual distrust or fear of getting “caught” before acting. This illustrates the extent to which the once-powerful European states have been politically “imprisoned.”
Even so, the prisoner’s dilemma presumes that the desire to defect exists. In Europe’s case, that desire is difficult to locate. It is nearly impossible to distinguish between reluctant compliance and open consensus at this point. There is no struggle, no visible discomfort in the face of a live-streamed genocide. Instead, we have the smooth repetition of generic talking points – if this is imprisonment, it is one in which the captives no longer rattle the bars.
