-Analysis-
PARIS — It’s a question for philosophers: do all the rights rest with the victim? A year ago, Israel suffered an attack of unprecedented scale and barbarity, directed primarily at civilians. It came as a huge shock to Israeli society, revealing gaping holes in the security of a state whose raison d’être is security, but also because the massacres brought back old traumas.
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It was immediately clear that the Israeli response would come without limits. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared on the same day that Hamas would pay an “unprecedented” price.
One year on, it is not just the Islamist movement that has paid the price. It is the two million Palestinians of Gaza, but also, step-by-step, the whole region.
One year on, the war continues, with some 100 hostages still held captive by Hamas and the escalation continuing at this very moment, in Lebanon, which is undergoing bombardments of rare intensity — and Iran is next. Netanyahu has kept his promise, and then some…
What Biden said
Of all the international reactions a year ago, the wisest was undoubtedly that of Joe Biden, during his visit to Israel a few days after October 7. The U.S. President advised the Israeli Prime Minister to not make the same mistakes as America did. Biden was referring to the American reaction after Sep. 11 , 2001, and the ‘war on terror’ unleashed by the Bush administration, with its two endless conflicts, Afghanistan and Iraq, the Guantanamo prison, torture, a blind and senseless fight against a bonafide enemy.
Netanyahu did not listen to the advice of a friend; he responded to terrorist brutality with State brutality, i.e. to the power of 10, skirting international humanitarian law.
Talking about collective punishment does not mean defending Hamas or Hezbollah.
The fate of Gaza, reduced to rubble, with more than 40,000 dead according to figures from the Hamas health authorities, which are hardly disputed, and a population constantly displaced and deprived of everything, is the symbol of this. And the scenario is being repeated in Lebanon, with a million people on the road, almost a quarter of the total population.
Talking about collective punishment here does not mean defending Hamas or Hezbollah, which are undefendable, any more than Biden, in talking about the mistakes of the post-September 11 era, is defending al-Qaeda.
Right to defense
The first lesson of this year is that, after October 7, no one denied Israel’s right to defend itself. This right is recognized for all states, and it was Israel’s strictest right to respond to what were undoubtedly crimes against humanity.
Israel has, however, weakened its defense and its international stature by committing acts which, in turn, have earned it the mobilization of international justice, and criticism from its allies such as France in recent days. The Jewish state has demonstrated its military and technological superiority, but has it improved the security of its citizens? Not sure… For this reason at least, these wars should have stopped a long time ago.
As former Israeli ambassador to France Elie Barnavi wrote in Le Monde, the real lesson of this tragic year is that “force alone is not enough. It must lead to politics.” In other words, the resolution is needed of conflicts that go back much further than October 7. And that is where Benjamin Netanyahu, one year on from that tragic day, is failing to provide an answer, either to the Israelis or to the world.
