How Israeli genocide in Gaza exposed the West's liberal delusion

One question that might puzzle future historians who scrutinise the current juncture is why the democracies of the West did nothing to stop Israel from committing genocide in Gaza.

They might find their inaction perplexing as the language of human rights has been a bedrock for the US and its allies and an essential feature of western hegemony. It has long been a tool of soft power and justifies the use of military force.

Why, then, have they risked this valuable stature by supporting Israel's war crimes in Gaza?

The US and its European allies, such as Germany, the UK and the Netherlands, have been integral to Israel's onslaught. They have transported weapons on a daily basis, attempted to protect Israeli leaders from prosecution, and done nothing to stop murderous attacks on Palestinian civilians.

Generally, the explanation for this complicity belongs to two different camps. One argues that the Israel lobby has captured western decision-making to ensure that Israel enjoys impunity and support. The other argues that the US deems Israel a vital part of its imperial strategy in an oil-rich region, thus viewing its survival as essential to its interests.      

But there is another explanation that has less to do with Israel and more to do with the way in which the West sees itself and its role in the world.

Liberal hegemony

Since the end of the Cold War, liberalism has dominated western foreign policy. This is what realist international relations scholars such as John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt describe as "liberal hegemony".

The foreign policy of the US and its key western allies assumes that liberal democracies and free markets are the best means to achieve stability and peace.

The US and UK invasion and occupation of Iraq is a clear case in which the spread of liberal democracy was used to legitimate self-interest

This axiom is rooted in political scientist Francis Fukayama's notion of "The End of History", in which he proclaimed that the end of the Cold War and the triumph of the West would lead to the "universalisation of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government".

The language of liberalism has been a constant in US and European foreign policy since 1945 and was adopted across the political spectrum.

The US empire has acted as the night watchman of liberal values to transform other societies into democracies and open markets. Imperialism utilised the language of rights to justify military intervention: Afghanistan was based on the rights of women, while Iraq was based on human rights.

The belief that US and western policy is liberal runs very deep and has two implications: first, states and actors considered to be western adversaries are framed as morally defective.

Countries' human rights records and undemocratic behaviour delegitimise them within the international system. They are not considered to be rational actors with legitimate security and economic interests but are dismissed as immoral and devious.

The "Axis of Evil", the term the Bush administration gave to Iran, Iraq and North Korea, is an example of this, but Russia and China are also given the same treatment. This has become a dogma for western elites.

Rather than acknowledge that countries challenging the West may have some rational considerations that should be addressed, they are dismissed on the basis that they are not liberal democracies.

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This is habitual among foreign policy professionals, academia and media, and dissenting voices are rare, in part due to the large industry formed around this belief and the career opportunities it has presented. According to Stephen Walt, "liberal hegemony, in short, was a full-employment policy for the foreign policy elite".   

The second implication pertains to western elites' genuine belief in their own moral superiority and use of liberalism to police the world.

This deeply held belief system has endured despite numerous examples that contradict the notion of the West's moral foreign policy. The US and UK invasion and occupation of Iraq is a clear case in which the spread of liberal democracy was used to legitimate self-interest in a manner that was hugely detrimental to the lives of Iraqis.

However, liberals have remained undeterred.

The question of Palestine

In 2021, following President Joe Biden's defeat of Donald Trump (possibly the only recent US president who does not adhere to this liberal vision), his administration argued that the international community was happy to see the return of the US to the world.

According to Biden's Secretary of State Anthony Blinken: "America at its best has a greater ability than any country on Earth to mobilise others for the common good and for the good of our people."

How does this liberal hegemony manage the question of Palestine?

This case poses a problem because Israel, a close western ally, is not a liberal democracy, nor is it run by liberal democrats.

It is a settler colony that, since its inception, has been intent on usurping the indigenous population. It is responsible for one of the longest military occupations in modern history, and it uses a system of apartheid to segregate and control Palestinians.

For western foreign policy, the answer is to deny this reality by framing its role as intervening in a conflict between two equal sides, one of which is "the only democracy in the Middle East".

By branding it the "Israeli-Palestinian conflict", which the interminable peace process is attempting to resolve, it becomes possible to conceive the role of the West as positive, rational and beneficial rather than complicit in violent settler colonialism.

The Oslo process has all but died. It has become a "zombie" but remains a convenient tool of deception. It provides the West the ability to window dress the system of apartheid and occupation that was imposed on the Palestinians.

In doing so, Israel can be presented as a palatable democracy and a suitable partner for the liberal project. Rather than any need to call out Israel for its military occupation, the West could instead rely on the chimera of a settlement that would bring concord and stability.

'Liberal delusion'

Gaza has revealed the full extent of the liberal delusion and its inability to contend with reality.

The territory on the Mediterranean has long been regarded as a concentration camp, in which the majority of its residents are refugees from earlier Zionist ethnic cleansing campaigns in 1967 and 1948.

Since 2007, the territory has been under blockade, meaning that its residents have had no freedom of movement, no access to markets and have been subject to ongoing Israeli military attacks.

Contrary to Israeli claims, the withdrawal of its forces from Gaza in 2005 did not end its occupation, and Palestinians have no sovereignty over its borders, airspace, or sea. The people of Gaza had essentially been left to rot, contained behind the wire and forgotten.

Western governments disregarded this reality. The rule of Hamas, which was democratically elected in 2006, became a convenient scapegoat for the misery that Palestinians faced in Gaza. One common hypothesis was that the root of the territory's problems was not the military occupation and state of incarceration but the poor governance of Hamas.

Were it not for Hamas, some would claim, the territory could have become an affluent entrepot akin to Dubai or Singapore, belying an assumption that economics determine politics, as opposed to the reverse, a characteristically liberal response.

The situation in Gaza was unsustainable, but Palestinian objection, peaceful or otherwise, was given no quarter.

In March 2018, a series of protests known as the Great March of Return was held at the fence between Gaza and the rest of historic Palestine.

A peaceful attempt at breaking the siege, the demonstrations were brutally repressed by Israel. Army snipers killed 226 people and injured 9000. More than 150 people had limbs amputated as a result of being shot. Despite the brutality, the protests continued until December 2019.

For many in Gaza, conditions had become so miserable and dehumanising that there was a prevailing sense that there was nothing left to lose.

One activist in Gaza who helped organise the protests said: "[We are] a people that want life and nothing more. Nothing can delay this idea but the shackles of our self-delusions. We are dying in this tiny besieged place, so why not bolt before the knife reaches our throats?"

Instead of reading these protests and Israel's brutal response as a warning light, the West remained indifferent.

It is a sign of the power and strength of the liberal delusion that no one in the West dared suggest that 7 October attack was rational

The protests were given little media coverage, and western governments blamed Palestinians for Israel's violence: "The responsibility for these tragic deaths rests squarely with Hamas. Hamas is intentionally and cynically provoking this response, and as the secretary of state said, Israel has the right to defend itself," one White House spokesman said.

Then came the explosion. On 7 October 2023, Hamas launched a devastating attack on the Israeli army and civilians in the colonies surrounding Gaza. In retrospect, the unsustainable reality in Gaza meant that such an eruption was inevitable.

According to one high-ranking member of Hamas: "The people in Gaza, they had one of two choices: either to die because of siege and malnutrition and hunger and lacking of medicine and lacking of treatment abroad, or to die by a rocket. We have no other choice."

But 7 October was an enormous shock to Israel and the western world. Israel's infallible image was shattered, and with it, deeply held assumptions about the West's geopolitical strategy in the region.

It is a sign of the power and strength of the liberal delusion that no one in the West dared suggest that the attack was rational. There was no question that sovereignty, security and liberation may have impelled the assault. The liberal creed was so strong that Hamas and the Palestinians were expected to be an exception in human history.

The ontological need for security, the universal right to self-defence and the historical law of resistance to colonialism were all denied.

Rather than acknowledge that Israel's occupation and apartheid were unsustainable and are responsible for this explosion of violence, it has been easier for the western foreign policy establishment to paint Hamas, a designated "terrorist" group in the UK and other countries, as irrational and immoral fanatics.

Denying reality

The refusal to conceive rationality was mood music for the genocide incitement that swept across the western world in the weeks that followed 7 October.

The propaganda machine went into overdrive.

The Israeli prime minister referred to Palestinians as the "children of darkness", and other government officials made similar comments.

Western politicians and media did nothing to counter these accusations, and they repeated the propaganda of the Israeli government without question. The unconfirmed stories about Hamas burning babies alive and Hamas' organised campaign of mass rape were repeated by western leaders. Instead of self-defence and resistance, the motive for Hamas and Palestinians was vilified as nihilistic, hateful and lustful violence.      

The incitement has had genocidal consequences. The reality in Gaza is now so horrific that it is difficult to fathom.