World News: Macron, Netanyahu, and The Dark Shadow of History

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Category: World News - Europe

Published on Wednesday, 16 October 2024 11:06

Written by Olivier Longhi

French President Emmanuel Macron and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continued to trade jabs in a verbal skirmish which illustrates the complexity of criticizing the State of Israel and its military actions without engaging the tool of memory.

By responding to Emmanuel Macron that "it was not the UN resolution that established the State of Israel, but rather the victory achieved in the war of independence with the blood of heroic fighters, many of whom were survivors of the Holocaust – notably of the Vichy regime in France", Benjamin Netanyahu cuts short any discussion of the wars waged against Hezbollah in Gaza and Lebanon.

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Using the guilt of Western nations in view of the atrocities committed against the European Jewish people during the Second World War, which were also very cynically instrumentalized here by the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu knows that no one will then challenge his military action carried out in the name of Israel's security.

However, if the latter is legitimate and recognized by all, the question arises as to whether Israel has the right to martyr civilian populations, whether Gazans or Lebanese, always in the name of its security?

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Intervention and Judgment

Some will argue that the answer is in the question, and that without obviously calling into question its security, Israel is demonstrating militaristic excesses to the point of beginning to irritate the North American ally who, through Joe Biden, has condemned the intervention in Lebanon.

At the same time, it has also become extremely thorny today to talk about the actions of the State of Israel at the risk of being accused of anti-Semitism. However, the two notions are different but skillfully instrumentalized by Benjamin Netanyahu because if anti-Semitism is meant to be the hatred nourished towards the Jewish people, a most reprehensible position, criticizing Israel amounts to making a neutral and objective judgment on the policy of a state that since 1967 flouts the UN resolutions ordering it to leave the territories occupied since the Six-Day War.

Thus, by recalling that the State of Israel was created with the blood of heroic fighters, many of whom were Holocaust survivors, Benjamin Netanyahu weighs down the debate with strong and indisputable emotional and carnal considerations that refer to a dramatic history; Understand: those who criticize Israel's military actions today are also attacking its security and its future in the light of the past known to all.

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 As such, the Israeli Prime Minister knows that he is untouchable, supported by the United States, an ally not involved in the Jewish genocide, which can afford to adopt a posture of lecturer in front of the Western Europeans, and sure of his fact because these same Europeans, consumed by guilt, will never dare to cross the border of a clear and declared opposition to Israel.  punished and compelled as they are by an indelible past.

Does this mean that this conflict will never find an end? No one can say to this day, as the wounds of the Second World War remain alive, the political and geopolitical alliances shifting, constantly renewed in a region where history and politics have been forged and unraveled for nearly 4000 years.

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Bio: Olivier Longhi has extensive experience in European history. A seasoned journalist with fifteen years of experience, he is currently a professor of history and geography in the Toulouse region of France. He has held a variety of publishing positions, including Head of Agency and Chief of Publishing. A journalist and recognized blogger, editor, and editorial project manager, he has trained and managed editorial teams, worked as a journalist for various local radio stations, was a press and publishing consultant, and was a communications consultant.