Tag: iran

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Canadian Dimension / July 9, 2025 / 17 min read

Displaced Palestinians roam the shattered streets of the Gaza Strip. Photo by Jaber Jehad Badwan.

As I write this, the press are reporting that a third ceasefire in Gaza is imminent, with Donald Trump committing to “ensuring negotiations continue until a final agreement is reached.” Whether this will end Israel’s “war,” which began on October 7, 2023 and has now raged for 21 months, killing a documented 57,012 Palestinians (as of July 2) and in all likelihood many thousands more, remains to be seen.

In the meantime, a stocktaking of some of the key events of the last momentous month seems in order.

The “12-Day War”

Israel launched what it called a “pre-emptive strike” against Iran during the night of June 13. More than 200 IDF fighter jets hit more than 100 nuclear and military facilities and residential neighbourhoods in Tehran and other cities, and Israel assassinated 30 of Iran’s top military commanders and 11 of its nuclear scientists in targeted individual strikes.

Between June 12 and June 23 Israel carried out at least 146 air strikes on Iran. By the time the “12-Day War” ended with the US-brokered ceasefire of June 24, the Israeli air force had hit over 900 targets.

Iran retaliated by attacking Israel with successive barrages of ballistic missiles. As of June 24, the IDF had killed 610 people in Iran, including 49 women and 13 children, and injured 4,746. Iran’s missiles killed 28 people in Israel and injured 3,238.

The excuse for Israel’s unprovoked attack—for which, as has become customary for Israel, no evidence was ever provided—was that Iran was “on the verge of acquiring a nuclear weapon.” Benjamin Netanyahu has periodically made this claim since 1992.

Though US National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard told Congress in March that Iran “was not building a nuclear weapon, and its supreme leader had not reauthorized the dormant program even though it had enriched uranium to higher levels,” Donald Trump chose to disregard his intelligence agencies’ assessment. “I don’t care what she said,” he told reporters on June 17. Heknew Iran was “very close” to having a nuclear bomb.

The US entered the conflict directly on June 22, dropping big, beautiful™ bunker-buster bombs on Iran’s Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan nuclear facilities. Trump claimed that the strike had “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program, but the US’s own intelligence assessments (which the White House soon trashed) suggested the program had maybe been set back at best by a few months. For whatever it is worth, the latest Pentagon assessment is that “We have degraded their program by one to two years.”

At the point when Israel attacked, Iran was engaged in ongoing talks with the US to renew the nuclear agreement Donald Trump torpedoed in 2018. One of those targeted in Israel’s first strike was the lead Iranian negotiator, Ali Shamkhani. The IDF bombed his Tehran home, leaving him buried under the rubble with serious injuries. Three weeks earlier Trump boasted of “real progress, serious progress” in the talks, describing them as “very, very good.”

None of this inspires confidence in Israel or the US as trustworthy negotiating partners in any future peace process. Why should Iran—or anyone else—believe a word they say?

Circling the wagons

After Israel reneged on its ceasefire agreement with Hamas and launched a renewed Gaza offensive on March 18, killing over 400 people in one single night of terror, and imposed a complete blockade on power, food, and medical aid to the Strip, sections of the press and other influential opinion in the West had increasingly challenged its “self-defence” narrative. For a time at least, political leaders appeared to be listening.

This changed abruptly after June 13. Despite the fact that Israel, not Iran, was the clear aggressor—and notwithstanding the well established principle that pre-emptive actions are permissible under international law only “if the threat is imminent, overwhelming, and leaves no alternative but to act”—most Western states swallowed whatever misgivings they had previously expressed about Gaza and once again fell in line behind Israel.

The calls for “all parties to exercise maximum restraint and to de-escalate” (Emmanuel Macron) were invariably accompanied by reiterations of “Israel’s right to defend itself”—which is not, on any reasonable view, what it was doing—and an insistence that (in the words of Canadian Foreign Minister Anita Anand) “Iran cannot obtain nuclear weapons.”

Nothing was said about Iran’s right to defend itself, even though it was the attacked party. Nor did it seem to matter that unlike Iran, Israel does possess nuclear weapons, has never signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and refuses to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IATA) to inspect its nuclear facilities.

Despite Israel carrying out what international organizations, leading Israeli academics and genocide scholars agree is a genocide in Gaza for nearly two years—during which time it has also invaded Lebanon and southern Syria and bombed Yemen—the West portrays Iran as (to quote Anand again) the “persistent threat to regional stability.”

Absurdly, the politicians took the fact that Iran responded militarily to Israel’s aggression—which is to say, defended itself—as confirmation of this alleged threat.

Writing on behalf of the EU on June 18, Kaja Kallas insisted that “Israel has the right to protect its security and people, in line with international law,” while “Iran must take decisive steps to return to negotiations and pave the way for a diplomatic solution.” What law she had in mind she didn’t say. Article 51 of the United Nations Charter only recognizes the “right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs.”

“Canada condemns Iran’s attack on Israel” began Anand’s June 13 post, without any mention of the Israeli strikes that provoked it. Germany, too, “strongly condemn[ed] the indiscriminate Iranian attack on Israeli territory,” adding that “Iran’s nuclear program violates the Non-Proliferation Treaty and poses a threat to the entire region—especially to Israel.” Once again there was silence on the threat posed by Israel’s nuclear arsenal.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the quiet bit out loud during the G7 summit on June 17, letting slip to a journalist: “This is dirty work that Israel is doing for all of us.”

A “Zionist Palestinian state”

On June 24 Mark Carney told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour the Iran-Israel ceasefire offered an “opportunity” not only to end the war in Gaza but for “lasting peace in the Middle East” built around—wait for it—“a Zionist, if you will, Palestinian state.”

This goes beyond anything ventured by Carney’s predecessors Justin Trudeau (who proudly declared “I am a Zionist” on March 3, the same day as Israel cut off Gaza’s electricity supply and blockaded all aid for 11 weeks), and Stephen Harper. At the least, it is tone deaf. Worse, as the Canadian Muslim Public Affairs Council (CMPAC) put it:

By suggesting that Palestinians must be a “Zionist” state as the condition for their own statehood, Carney denies them the basic right to define their own national character and political future. Self-determination is a core principle of international law, affirmed in the UN Charter and multiple human rights treaties, and it cannot be made contingent on adopting the ideological identity of their occupier.


The UN General Assembly resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and “strongly condemning the use of starvation as a weapon of war, demanding a full lifting of the Israeli blockade on humanitarian aid, and insisting on the protection of civilians under international law,” which passed with an overwhelming majority of 149 to 12 on June 12—the day before Israel’s attack on Iran—with the backing of the UK, France, Germany, Canada, Italy, Australia, and New Zealand, was quietly forgotten.

So was an international conference co-hosted by France and Saudi Arabia scheduled to take place on June 17-20 at the United Nations in New York, at which, it was suggested, all parties should accept that “Palestinian statehood should not be a result of peace, but rather its prerequisite.” It was even briefly hinted that France might recognize Palestine at the conference pour encourager les autres. But after June 13 all bets were off.

The conference has now been indefinitely postponed. As Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro has written, this “has left a critical void in multilateral leadership, precisely when it is needed most.” The only Palestinian statehood still left on the table seems to be Mark Carney’s “Zionist Palestine.”

Shifting public opinion

Notwithstanding this backtracking to business as usual on the part of Western leaders, Western publics seem less and less willing to overlook the continuing genocide in Gaza. The genie is out of the bottle, and the gaslighting isn’t working any more.

A YouGov EuroTrack survey conducted in Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy and Spain published on June 3 found that while there was little evidence of support for Hamas (only five to nine percent of respondents believed the October 7 attack on Israel was justified), just six to 16 percent believed Israel was “right to send troops into Gaza” and “responded in a proportionate way to the Hamas attacks.” Between seven and 18 percent said they sympathized with Israel, while 18–33 percent said their sympathies lay with the Palestinians. Germany was the only country where the results were evenly matched (17 percent for Israel, 18 percent for Palestine).

In Britain, in a poll conducted on June 18 by YouGov for Action For Humanity and the International Centre for Justice for Palestinians, over half of respondents opposed Israel’s military campaign in Gaza (55 percent) and only 15 percent supported it. A large proportion of those opposed to the campaign thought Israel was committing genocide (82 percent).

Even in the US, where support for Israel has long been an item of faith for both major political parties, the landscape seems to be shifting. A Quinnipiac University poll in early June showed 37 percent of Americans sided with and 32 percent opposed the Israelis—which is a historically narrow margin. This is consistent with several other polls earlier in 2025. 

A Harris-Harvard poll commissioned by the Israeli Knesset reported in the Jerusalem Post on June 26 showed a drop from 53 percent to 41 percent in the percentage of Americans who view Israel favourably, and—most worryingly for Israel’s supporters—found young people were closely split (53 to 47 percent) between supporting Israel and supporting Hamas.

An upset in New York

Zohran Mamdani’s decisive victory over establishment candidate Andrew Cuomo in the June 24 Democratic primary election for mayor of New York City has been universally described as a major upset not only because he is a member of Democratic Socialists of America campaigning on an avowedly progressive platform, but—above all—because of his unequivocal support for the Palestinian cause.

Despite refusing to back down on his criticism of Israel’s “genocidal” conduct of its Gaza campaign and being comprehensively vilified as a Muslim (which he is) and a jihadist supporter of Hamas (which he is not), Mamdani won 56 percent of the vote to Cuomo’s 44 percent. His 545,000 votes are the most in a Democratic mayoral New York City primary since David Dinkins beat incumbent Ed Koch in 1989.

Nobody is suggesting that Mamdani’s stance on Gaza is the only reason he won—though his victory does lend weight to the argument that Kamala Harris’s refusal to deviate from Joe Biden’s “ironclad” support for Israel played a significant part in the Democrats’ loss to Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election.

But that a candidate who supports the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, called for the release of detained Columbia activist Mahmoud Khalil, and promised to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu if he ever sit foot in New York, could win so emphatic a victory in the most Jewish city in America, attracting broad-based support across different ethnic groups—including large numbers of Jews—testifies to just how out of touch with the public the official narratives have become.

Predictably, Republicans responded to Mamdani’s win with outraged pearl clutching and unconcealed Islamophobia. But what is most concerning is that while the success of Mamdani’s campaign might point to a road back to power for a Democratic Party still reeling from its 2024 defeat, establishment Democrats were no more enthusiastic.

“Top Democratic donors” are quoted as finding the primary outcome “disgusting,” and Barack Obama has declined to congratulate Mamdani. House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, New York’s Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul, and New York Congressman Tom Suozzi are all holding backon endorsing Mamdani in the mayoral election.

They prefer to confine their “resistance,” it seems, to the gestural theatrics of renaming Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” and making marathon speeches to which nobody listens. Just as in November’s presidential election, they would rather lose than antagonize Israel.

The protests grow

In Britain, judges, lawyers, and legal academics and prominent writers have issued open letters condemning the UK’s complicity in Israel’s genocide and government and media attempts to quash dissent. Even the august British Medical Association voted by large majorities at its annual conference on July 3 to break off relations with the Israel Medical Association and seek its suspension from the World Medical Association over Gaza.

On the eve of the Cannes Film Festival, more than 370 actors and filmmakers proclaimed that “As artists and cultural players, we cannot remain silent while genocide is taking place in Gaza,” condemning “propaganda that constantly colonizes our imaginations.” The signatories included Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Juliette Binoche, Rooney Mara, Omar Sy, Jim Jarmusch, Richard Gere, Mark Ruffalo, Guy Pearce, Javier Bardem, Ralph Fiennes, Michael Moore, David Cronenberg, Pedro Almodovar, and Guillermo del Toro.

On June 9 “532 Canadians, including academics, lawyers, former and retired ambassadors (including to the United Nations), ministers and public servants, UN human rights experts, and civil society, labour and faith leaders,” wrote to Mark Carney urging “decisive action to end genocide in Gaza.” On July 5 the Anglican Church of Canada adopted a resolution “calling on the Canadian government to uphold their moral responsibilities and impose full and immediate arms embargo on Israel.”

Protest marches continue across the world.  From London and Paris to Sydney and Melbourne, from Athens and Barcelona to Dublin and Toronto, hundreds of thousands have hit the streets. This year’s bull-running San Fermin festival in Pamplona, Spain, turned into a massive show of solidarity with Palestine. On June 15, in one of the biggest demonstrations ever seen in the Netherlands, 150,000 people dressed in red and marched for Gaza in The Hague. On June 21, for the first time on such a scale, 50,000 people marched for Gaza in Berlin.

Revulsion at Israel’s genocide in Gaza is no longer confined to student activists and “lunatic left” professors at Columbia and Harvard, and it can no longer be dismissed as the result of “antisemitism.” The chasm between Western political establishments and the people they claim to represent grows wider by the day.

This is a pervasive crisis of legitimacy.

Ructions at the BBC

Nowhere is that crisis better illustrated than in recent events at the British Broadcasting Corporation.

A recent report by the Centre for Media Monitoring, based on analysis of more than 35,000 pieces of BBC content, found that despite Palestinians suffering 34 times as many deaths as Israelis since the present Gaza “war” began, Israeli deaths were given 33 times more coverage and described in much more emotive language. The BBC interviewed significantly fewer Palestinians than Israelis, and presenters shut down interviewees’ claims of genocide while making no mention of Israeli leaders’ genocidal statements (including Benjamin Netanyahu’s notorious invocation of the biblical Amalek).

In May the corporation fired Gary Lineker, Britain’s most popular soccer commentator and longtime host of Match of the Day, the BBC’s equivalent of Hockey Night in Canada, for social media posts critical of Israel. Lineker had previously blotted his copybook by daring to speak out over government heartlessness toward refugees and migrants.

On June 20, after months of delays, the BBC cancelled a documentary it had itself commissioned on Israel’s attacks on Gaza’s health service on grounds that showing the film would create “a perception of partiality.” Based entirely on first-hand testimonies, the film detailed “how hospitals in the territory have been overwhelmed, bombed and raided. Medics recount being detained and claim to have been tortured.”

Channel 4 showed Gaza: Doctors Under Attack in the UK on July 2 and Mehdi Hassan’s Zeteo media platform made it available for streaming internationally. It was widely hailed as “a crucial film” that “the world needs to see.”

On the same day as the film was broadcast, more than 400 BBC staff, freelancers and industry figures, including 111 BBC journalists—who signed anonymously for fear of reprisals—wrote an open letter to BBC management expressing “concerns over opaque editorial decisions and censorship at the BBC on the reporting of Israel/Palestine.”

The letter expressed particular concern that board member Robbie Gibbs, “an individual with close ties to the Jewish Chronicle… has a say in the BBC’s editorial decisions in any capacity, including the decision not to broadcast Gaza: Medics Under Fire [sic].”

Death, death to the IDF

In the midst of the row over Gaza: Doctors Under Attack, a new confrontation erupted over the BBC’s coverage of Glastonbury, Britain’s most popular music festival, which regularly attracts over 200,000 spectators and has long been televised live by the BBC.

In the weeks preceding the festival, pressure was put on the organizers by members of the government, including Keir Starmer, as well as the Conservative opposition leader Kemi Badenoch, to drop the Irish band Kneecap from the roster. Kneecap had made themselves notorious with their earlier performances at the Coachella music festival in California, at which they led the audience in chants of “Free, free Palestine.”

On June 18 Kneecap fans “mobbed sidewalks outside a London court” as the trial opened of band member Mo Chara under Britain’s draconian Terrorism Act. His offense was waving a Hezbollah flag at a concert in North London on November 21 “in a manner that aroused ‘reasonable suspicion’ he supported the Lebanese militant group.”

The Glastonbury organizers refused to cancel Kneecap’s performance, and the band took the stage on June 28. Reportedly “thousands of fans chanted ‘free Palestine’ and waved Palestinian flags,” but BBC viewers were not allowed to see this because the corporation pulled the plug on the live feed. The broadcaster later uploaded an edited version of the performance to BBC iPlayer as part of its on-demand Glastonbury sets.

Kneecap performs at Glastonbury. Photo by Katherine Hajiyianni.

Unfortunately for the BBC, another even more controversial set, by the punk-rap duo Bob Vylan, slipped under the wire. Looking out from the West Holts stage on a sea of Palestinian flags, rapper Bobby Vylan led the 45,000-strong crowd in chants of “Free, free Palestine” and “Death, death to the IDF.”

Bob Vylan’s entire performance was broadcast live, although “a warning was issued on screen about the very strong and discriminatory language” and it was decided not to make the set available on demand via iPlayer. This did not stop pressure mounting on the BBC, as the police announced a criminal investigation into Kneecap and Bob Vylan’s performances and lurid headlines filled the conservative and tabloid press.

Whacking the moles

Two days later, BBC Chair Samir Shaw issued a contrite statement, which apologized “to all our viewers and listeners and particularly the Jewish community for allowing… Bob Vylan to express unconscionable antisemitic views live on the BBC” and acknowledged that continuing the broadcast was “an error of judgement.”

He promised that “The Executive have agreed to put in place a set of strengthened editorial practices and policies for live music programming” and was “initiating a process to ensure proper accountability for those found to be responsible for the failings in this incident.”

On July 7, the Times reported that Lorna Clarke had resigned her position as BBC director of music “after UK Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy condemned the “appalling and unacceptable scenes,” adding that “other senior BBC staff have also temporarily relinquished their day-to-day roles over the Glastonbury controversy—pending an investigation.” Needless to say Robbie Gibbs is still in place.

Clarke’s is not the only scalp Nandy is after. She is also demanding to know why nobody had yet been fired at the corporation for permitting an earlier documentary, Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone, to slip through the censorship net and be broadcast in February.

The BBC pulled the program from its iPlayer after it emerged that its 13-year-old narrator was the son of a deputy agriculture minister in the Hamas-controlled Gaza administration. By then the damage was done. Palestinian children had been allowed to speak of their own experiences in their own words, and we can’t have that, can we?

Nandy told the Times that:

I have asked the question to the board [of the BBC]. Why has nobody been fired? What I want is an explanation as to why not. If it is a sackable offence then obviously that should happen. But if the BBC, which is independent, considers that it is not, I think what all parliamentarians want to know is why.


It seems not to have occurred to her that if parliamentarians—or a government minister—can interfere in the BBC’s internal affairs to the extent of demanding to know why staff have not been sacked, its independence is (to say the least) seriously compromised.

Doubling down

Bob Vylan have now been dropped by their agency, banned from several music festivals in the UK and elsewhere, had a number of European gigs cancelled, and seen their US visas revoked by the State Department, scuppering their upcoming US tour. Their following on Spotify has meantime soared and their 2024 album Humble as the Sun has re-entered the charts. Currently it is number one on the UK hip-hop and R&B albums chart, and number seven on the album downloads chart and number eight on the independent albums chart.

It is difficult to think of a clearer indication of today’s societal rifts over Israel and Gaza.

On the one hand, we have ever-growing public revulsion over Western complicity in the Gaza genocide. On the other, we see the political establishment doubling down on a narrative of Israeli self-defence that is losing whatever emotional purchase it once had—a doubling down that is increasingly enforced by the full power of the state.

In the US, they are deporting pro-Palestine activists and withholding research funding from universities they falsely accuse of being “antisemitic.” In Britain, parliament has just proscribed Palestine Action, a protest group whose most violent action to date has been throwing red paint over military aircraft, as a “terrorist organization”—on a par with al-Qaida, Hezbollah, or Hamas. To support it now carries a sentence of 14 years in prison.

The first arrests have just been made by the Metropolitan Police. They include an emeritus professor, several health professionals, and a 83-year-old retired priest, Sue Parfitt, who said the ban was “a very dangerous move that has to be challenged.”

Wither the West?

On June 21, 75 German professors published a letter to the German government arguing that “Your current actions, like those of the previous government, are violating international law and are politically highly dangerous: Germany is actively undermining the international legal system that was established after the Second World War, partly as a response to German crimes.”

It concluded by demanding “an immediate end to the restrictions on academic freedom and freedom of speech in Germany”:

Currently, critical voices on Israel’s actions and its occupation are being defamed using scientifically questionable definitions of antisemitism, events are being cancelled, and protests—including student protests at universities—are being criminalized … The systematic suppression and marginalization of voices expressing criticism and solidarity contribute to Germany’s complicity in Israeli violations of international law—both those already committed and those ongoing—and must end.


The point does not only apply to Germany—or to academia. The demolition of the rule of law in the international arena goes hand in hand with the destruction of liberties at home.

We might well ask, as the Irish poet W.B. Yeats did in an earlier time of troubles:

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

By on

First published in Canadian Dimension / June 17, 2025

Aftermath of Israeli airstrike in Tehran, June 13, 2025. Photo courtesy Tasnim News Agency/Wikimedia Commons.

Gaslighting, noun: psychological manipulation of a person usually over an extended period of time that causes the victim to question the validity of their own thoughts, perception of reality, or memories and typically leads to confusion, loss of confidence and self-esteem, uncertainty of one’s emotional or mental stability, and a dependency on the perpetrator. (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

I woke on Saturday, June 14, to Guardian headlines explaining: “Strikes on Iran ease pressure on Israel to end starvation in Gaza. Critics of war will be more reluctant to press for its end while missiles from Tehran are killing people in Tel Aviv.”

I had two immediate reactions. Both were accompanied by a strong desire to vomit.

First reaction: speak for your f***ing self. I am not going to keep my mouth shut about Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza just because Benjamin Netanyahu has chosen this moment to launch a “pre-emptive strike”—that is, an unprovoked act of war—against Iran, nor because Iran, not altogether surprisingly, is defending itself against this aggression.

Initial reports suggest that as well as the military commanders and nuclear scientists Israel individually targeted (whose families were “collateral damage”), the first strike killed at least 60 people in residential neighbourhoods in Tehran and other Iranian cities, including 29 children, and injured many more. This is par for the Israeli course.

By the end of Sunday, Israel’s continuing strikes had killed at least 224 people in Iran and wounded another 1,277. Netanyahu promises the world that this is just the beginning, warning: “We will hit every site and every target of the Ayatollahs’ regime and what they have felt so far is nothing compared with what they will be handed in the coming days.”

Meantime, the carnage in Gaza has not stopped but intensified. On Saturday June 14 alone, reports Al Jazeera, “Israeli fire and air strikes… killed at least 58 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip, many of them near an aid distribution site operated by the United States-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).” This brought the number of those killed while attempting to obtain food for their families through the controversial GHF sites (which Israel reluctantly set up under international pressure after banishing UNRWA, the principal supplier of aid to Gaza) to at least 274 people, with more than 2,000 wounded.

Second reaction: what does it say about us that these headlines can be true? That these things can be said at all? Into what new moral abyss has “Western civilization” fallen?

Are we—Canada, the US, Germany, France, the UK—really so morally bankrupt that we will allow Netanyahu’s cynical maneuver, an act of naked aggression in flagrant breach of international law, to divert us from our responsibilities to end Israel’s genocide in Gaza?

Do we really want to say that the relative handful of deaths so far reported in Israel from Iran’s response (13, as of June 15) count for more than the hundreds of deaths Israel has already caused with its latest strikes on Iran—let alone the more than 55,000 people, the majority of them women and children, Israel has killed in the last twenty months in Gaza? That when the chips are down, Israeli lives are worth that much more than Iranian lives or Palestinian lives—irrespective of the fact that Israel initiated this latest round of fighting?

From the first responses of Western political leaders, it would appear that the answer to all of these questions is unfortunately an unhesitating and emphatic yes.

Was the West getting cold feet about Israel’s genocide?

Significantly, Israel’s attack on Iran came against a backdrop of the beginnings of a sea-change in Western media coverage of Israel’s conduct of its “war” in Gaza and the Israeli government’s encouragement of settler violence in the West Bank. Coincidence? Some might suspect that the attack was designed to nip this dangerous shift in the bud.

Recent weeks had seen a widespread acknowledgment that since its declaration of “war” on Hamas following the latter’s attacks of October 7, 2023, Israel has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity—and likely genocide—not as aberrations but as de facto state policy. This tectonic shift in media coverage was echoed by a number of political leaders in Israel and the West (the US apart), who adopted a more critical stance toward Israel’s conduct of the “war” than they had at any point during the last two years.

Within Israel, former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who had long rejected charges that Israel was guilty of war crimes or genocide in Gaza, wrote an editorial for Haaretz on May 27 in which he recorded his recent change of mind. He didn’t mince his words:

What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians. We’re not doing this due to loss of control in any specific sector, not due to some disproportionate outburst by some soldiers in some unit. Rather, it’s the result of government policy—knowingly, evilly, maliciously, irresponsibly dictated. Yes, Israel is committing war crimes.


A week earlier, Yair Golan, a retired general and the leader of the Israeli opposition Democrats, caused outrage among Netanyahu’s supporters when he told Reshed Bet radio: “A sane country doesn’t engage in fighting against civilians, doesn’t kill babies as a hobby and doesn’t set for itself the goals of expelling a population.”

Similar misgivings were expressed by some of Israel’s staunchest Western allies—though notably not by the Trump administration or the Democratic leadership in the US.

Having told the UK parliament on March 17 that Israel’s blockade on aid to Gaza, which began on March 2, was a “breach of international law”—only to be rebuked at the time by PM Keir Starmer and forced to backpedal—Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Lammy gave a passionate speech in the Commons on May 20 in which he denounced Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s dreams of “‘cleansing’ Gaza, of ‘destroying what’s left’ and of resident Palestinians being ‘relocated to third countries.’” He too did not mince his words:

We must call this what it is: it is extremism, it is dangerous, it is repellent, it is monstrous and I condemn it in the strongest possible terms… Israel’s plan is morally unjustifiable, wholly disproportionate and utterly counterproductive…

An entente cordiale

The previous day Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney had issued a joint statement which offered the most unequivocal condemnation of Israeli actions in Gaza by any G7 leaders yet. It began:

We strongly oppose the expansion of Israel’s military operations in Gaza. The level of human suffering in Gaza is intolerable. Yesterday’s announcement that Israel will allow a basic quantity of food into Gaza is wholly inadequate. We call on the Israeli Government to stop its military operations in Gaza and immediately allow humanitarian aid to enter Gaza. This must include engaging with the UN to ensure a return to delivery of aid in line with humanitarian principles…

The Israeli Government’s denial of essential humanitarian assistance to the civilian population is unacceptable and risks breaching International Humanitarian Law. We condemn the abhorrent language used recently by members of the Israeli Government, threatening that, in their despair at the destruction of Gaza, civilians will start to relocate. Permanent forced displacement is a breach of international humanitarian law.


The three leaders went on to express opposition to “any attempt to expand settlements in the West Bank,” insisting that “Israel must halt settlements which are illegal and undermine the viability of a Palestinian state.” If Israel continued in its “egregious actions,” they threatened, “we will take further concrete actions in response… including targeted sanctions.”

“By asking Israel to end a defensive war for our survival before Hamas terrorists on our border are destroyed and by demanding a Palestinian state, the leaders in London, Ottowa [sic] and Paris are offering a huge prize for the genocidal attack on Israel on October 7 while inviting more such atrocities,” Benjamin Netanyahu responded in a post on X.

Netanyahu added: “Israel accepts President Trump’s vision and urges all European leaders to do the same.” That “vision” is to turn an ethnically cleansed Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East” under American auspices. As Trump says, he’s a real estate guy at heart. So is Israel, which has been gobbling up Palestinian land and “displacing” its owners since 1948.

On May 29, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced approval of 22 new settlements, some of which already existed as illegal “outposts”—the biggest such expansion in decades. Katz was clear that the point was to “prevent… the establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger Israel.”

Destruction in the Gaza Strip. Photo by Jaber Jehad Badwan/Wikimedia Commons.

The Western dilemma

Though disappointingly little in the way of “concrete actions” has followed the British, French, and Canadian leaders’ entente cordiale, the UK did suspend talks on a trade deal with Israel and impose individual sanctions on a few extremist settlers in the West Bank.

Of greater import—though still more of a symbolic gesture than anything else—on June 12, the foreign ministers of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, and the UK jointly announced “sanctions targeting [Israeli ministers] Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich for inciting violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.” They noted that:

Today’s measures focus on the West Bank, but of course this cannot be seen in isolation from the catastrophe in Gaza. We continue to be appalled by the immense suffering of civilians, including the denial of essential aid. There must be no unlawful transfer of Palestinians from Gaza or within the West Bank, nor any reduction in the territory of the Gaza Strip.


The problem with this position is that Ben-Gvir and Smotrich are not rogue extremists, but key ministers in Netanyahu’s government. They respectively hold the ministerial portfolios of national security and finance. The policies and words for which they are being individually censured are collectively those of Israel’s government as a whole.

The statement concludes: “We will continue to work with the Israeli Government and a range of partners,” but the main obstacle to its attaining its objectives, “an immediate ceasefire, the release now of the remaining hostages and for the unhindered flow of humanitarian aid including food,” and “a reconstructed Gaza no longer run by Hamas and a political pathway to a two-state solution,” is precisely the Israeli government itself. As, of course, Messrs. Carney, Starmer, and Macron very well know.

Their position, like much else in the West’s response to Israel’s actions since Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attacks, is incoherent. But the incoherence is revealing. The West is being tossed on the horns of an irresolvable dilemma—as it has been, in one form or another, since the foundation of the State of Israel and the Nakba of 1947-1948. This dilemma has assumed acute form since October 7.

If the West continues to support Israel’s “right to defend itself” as Israel interprets that “right,” then—as has become crystal clear over the last twenty months, and has once again been proven by Israel’s latest “pre-emptive strike” on Iran—it can do so only at the cost of trashing the norms of international humanitarian law and the cherished “Western” values of human rights and the universal rule of law upon which they supposedly rest. The supreme irony here is that Israel has repeatedly claimed to be waging this “war” in defense of the humanist values of Western civilization and against Islamist barbarism.

If, on the other hand, Western democracies are seriously to uphold those values and enforce the rule of law, they are morally and legally bound not simply to condemn Israel’s crimes but to take whatever concrete actions lie within their power to prevent them—including, at a minimum, stopping all arms supplies and applying economic and other sanctions (as has been done in the case of Russia following its invasion of Ukraine).

Stronger action might include international military intervention under United Nations auspices, like that which followed Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

As just one example of this, in its landmark judgment on the legal status of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories—within which it counted blockaded Gaza—of July 19, 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that “Israel’s continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is unlawful,” and Israel must “end its unlawful presence… as rapidly as possible,” “cease immediately all new settlement activities, and… evacuate all settlers from the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”

The court unambiguously spelled out the resulting obligations of all UN member states, including Canada:

all States are under an obligation not to recognize as legal the situation arising from the unlawful presence of the State of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by the continued presence of the State of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.


In the same way, all 125 countries that signed the 1998 Rome Statute that established the International Criminal Court (ICC)—the US is not among them, but Britain, France, Canada, the rest of the G7, Australia, New Zealand, and most members of the EU and NATO are—are legally bound to execute the court’s arrest warrants against Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity, whether they approve of them or not.

The West cannot have its cake and eat it. Either it supports Israel, or it supports the rule of law. Israel’s “right to self-defense” does not permit war crimes or genocide, period.

More theatre for public consumption?

Two other recent initiatives that signalled apparent shifts in Western attitudes toward Israel’s ongoing Gaza “war” are worth mentioning here. Both have now been rudely sidelined by events.

The first was a conference, co-hosted by France and Saudi Arabia under UN auspices and scheduled to take place on June 17-20 in New York, at which it was hoped to make progress toward a two-state solution to “the Palestinian problem.” This “solution” is one to which Israel and its Western supporters have been nominally committed since the Oslo Accords of 1993-5, even though Netanyahu has repeatedly stated his opposition to any “attempt to coerce us to a reality that would endanger the state of Israel” on grounds that Israel “must have security control over the entire territory west of the Jordan River… That collides with the idea of [Palestinian] sovereignty. What can we do?”

It was widely rumoured that France and Britain might recognize a Palestinian state at the conference in order to maintain pressure on Israel to stop the war in Gaza and return to the negotiating table. This led Donald Trump to call upon the world’s governments on June 10 to boycott the conference and threaten “diplomatic consequences” if they took “any steps that would unilaterally recognise a conjectural Palestinian state.”

Faced with this US threat, Macron was already backtracking on recognizing Palestine when Israel launched its “pre-emptive strike” on Iran. The new situation gave him the perfect off-ramp. On the same day as Israel attacked Iran, he announced that the two-state conference was indefinitely postponed “for logistical and security reasons.”

The second initiative—a poignant one, in retrospect—occurred at the UN. Meeting in an emergency session on June 12 , “the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly adopted a resolution demanding an immediate, unconditional and lasting ceasefire in Gaza,” which:

strongly condemn[ed] the use of starvation as a weapon of war, demand[ed] a full lifting of the Israeli blockade on humanitarian aid, and insist[ed] on the protection of civilians under international law.


A week earlier a similar resolution had failed to pass at the Security Council due to a lone veto by the US. Secretary of State Marco Rubio explained that the US government could not support any resolution that “draws a false equivalence between Israel and Hamas, or disregards Israel’s right to defend itself.” The rest of the UNSC voted in favour.

The General Assembly resolution passed with 149 votes in favour, 12 against, and 19 abstentions. Joining Israel, the US, and a sprinkling of US Pacific dependencies in the No lobby were Argentina, Hungary, and Paraguay—hardly paragons of liberal democracy. The rest of the G7, and most members of the EU and NATO,1 supported the motion.

The day after this near-universal condemnation of Israel by the international community, Israel attacked Iran. And everything changed overnight.

Come back Bibi, all is forgiven

“Game on. Pray for Israel,” posted the reliably odious US Senator Lindsey Graham on X upon hearing the news of Israel‘s strikes on Iran. His recent contributions to peace in the Middle East included the post “Hope Greta [Thunberg] and her friends can swim!”—an invitation for the IDF to attack the Madleen, on which activists were sailing to Gaza to draw attention to Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon of war.

Before long, the mantra “pray for Israel” was broadcast far and wide, and sob stories of poor Israeli families having to spend the night in air-raid shelters began to appear in the Western press.

One could be forgiven for believing that Iran had launched a pre-emptive strike on Israel that killed and wounded hundreds of civilians in Tel Aviv and Haifa rather than the other way around.

Worse was to follow. Speaking with Israeli President Isaac Herzog “concerning the escalating situation in the Middle East” on June 13, President of the EU Commission Ursula von der Leyen“reiterated Israel’s right to defend itself and protect its people.” She made no mention of the fact that Israel struck first.

On the same day Emmanuel Macron called “on all parties to exercise maximum restraint and to de-escalate” in an English-language statement on X that began: “France has repeatedly condemned Iran’s ongoing nuclear program” and continued “France reaffirms Israel’s right to defend itself and ensure its security.” He made no mention of Iran’s right to self-defense against Israeli strikes.

In a still more blatant masterpiece of Orwellian doublespeak, the German foreign ministry squarely blamed Iran for Israel’s latest aggression:

The situation in the Middle East has escalated dramatically overnight. Israel has carried out targeted strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities. Iran is responding with hundreds of drone attacks on Israel. This development is more than alarming.

We strongly condemn the indiscriminate Iranian attack on Israeli territory. Iran’s nuclear program violates the Non-Proliferation Treaty and poses a threat to the entire region—especially to Israel.

Israel has the right to defend its existence and the security of its citizens. At the same time, we call on all parties to avoid further escalation. Germany remains committed to diplomacy—together with our partners in Europe and the United States.


This conveniently overlooks the facts that unlike Iran, Israel declines to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty, possesses a nuclear arsenal, and has refused to let the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspect its facilities; that in 2015 Iran agreed a deal with China, France, Russia, the UK, the US, and Germany to limit its nuclear program in exchange for relief on sanctions, which Donald Trump unilaterally scuppered in 2018; that negotiations between Iran and the US to renew such a deal were well advanced when Israel launched its attack (one of those assassinated in the first wave of targeted missiles was the leader of the Iranian negotiating team, Ali Shamkhani); and that as the IAEA has emphasized in a statement of June 13, “any military action that jeopardizes the safety and security of nuclear facilities risks grave consequences for the people of Iran, the region, and beyond.” But who cares when Germany’s Staatsräson, as Angela Merkel famously defined German support for Israel, is at issue?

UK Finance Minister Rachel Reeves joined the chorus of condemnation of Iran, telling Sky News on June 15 that British military assets—including fighter jets—were being moved to the conflict zone “to protect ourselves and also potentially to support our allies.” While “this does not mean we are at war,” she said, these assets could “potentially” be used to help defend Israel and the government is “not ruling anything out.”

Canada’s about-turn is perhaps the most despicable of all. At least Germany had the honesty to acknowledge that Iran’s “indiscriminate attacks” came in response to Israel’s “targeted strikes.” Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand’s June 13 post fails to admit even this. For all we are told, “Iran’s attack upon Israel” came out of nowhere.

The sheer chutzpah boggles the mind. Anand remained silent on Israel’s attack on Iran. But as soon as Tehran retaliated, she was quick to announce that:

Canada condemns Iran’s attack on Israel, and urges restraint on both sides. Further actions can cause devastating consequences for the broader region. The US-Iran negotiations represent the best path to achieving a lasting and peaceful resolution to Iran’s nuclear program. Diplomatic engagement remains essential to ensuring long-term regional stability and international security. Iran cannot obtain nuclear weapons. Iran’s continued efforts to pursue nuclear weapons, support for terrorists, and direct attacks on civilian centres embody Iran’s persistent threat to regional stability and to Israel, which has the right to defend itself.


Once again, Israel’s absolute right to possess nuclear weapons, support terrorists, and direct attacks on civilian centers in Iran and elsewhere (Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen …) in the name of “self-defense” goes unquestioned. If these are not “persistent threats to regional stability” I don’t know what that phrase means.

The next day Anand thanked Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar “for the conversation this evening,” adding: “Thank you to the brave firefighters who helped a Canadian embassy staff member in a building that was struck by a missile in Tel Aviv. She was eventually rescued, along with other occupants of the building, and is safe and sound.” How sweet.

They say a week is a long time in politics. As Nesrine Malik wrote in the Guardian on June 16, two days after I was nauseated by any such suggestion:

Stories of people dying of starvation in Gaza or of the hungry being killed while queueing for food, have fallen away from the headlines. The relentless assault on the West Bank and the expansion of illegal settlements has receded from view. The pressure that was beginning to build on Israel to let in more aid and honour a ceasefire has been replaced with the same mealy-mouthed defences that we saw in the early days of the war in Gaza, plus the same pabulum of urging “restraint.” The clock is reset.


Hats off to you, Bibi. With one small act of war, you’ve gaslit the whole Western world into dancing to your genocidal tune yet again.