“the Western world will no longer have any human rights lessons to teach”

The large-scale destruction of Gaza and the death by Israeli bombs of more than 41,000 Palestinians, the vast majority of whom were civilians, took place under the passive gaze of the main Western countries. A “moral abdication”, according to researcher Didier Fassin, who deciphers in a recent essay the genesis of “acquiescence in the annihilation of Gaza”.

The Eiffel Tower went dark for a few minutes on Monday evening to commemorate the approximately 1,200 victims of the series of October 7 terrorist attacks in Israel. “This despicable attack, the first pogrom of the 21st century, plunged the Middle East into chaos where civilian victims numbered in the tens of thousands,” indicated the Paris town hallwithout specifying that the latter were in the majority Palestinian women and children killed by the Israeli army. In a year of bombings on Gaza, the Parisian authorities have not used the Iron Lady to denounce the terrible human toll in the Palestinian enclave.

The extreme violence of the attack by Hamas, an organization considered terrorist by the European Union and the United States, immediately provoked a wave of support for Israel. The intensity of the destruction in Gaza and the unprecedented human toll of Israeli retaliation ultimately led several Western leaders to call for a ceasefire. “I think that today, the priority is that we return to a political solution, that we stop delivering weapons to carry out the fighting in Gaza, declared French President Emmanuel Macron during the program “Etcetera” on France Interrecorded on October 1.

For Didier Fassin, teacher at Princeton and professor at the Collège de Francewhere he holds the chair “Moral questions and political issues in contemporary societies”, it is first of all the moral sense of the West which has been extinguished since the terrorist attacks of October 7.

In his recent work “A strange defeat – on consent to the crushing of Gaza”the sociologist and anthropologist examines how many Western officials have accepted “the statistical reality that Palestinian civilian lives are worth several hundred times less than Israeli civilian lives and the assertion that the former’s deaths are less worthy of honor than that of the latter”.

Samia al-Atrash clutches the body of one of her sister's children, killed in an Israeli bombing of Rafah on October 21, 2023. According to the UN, the number of children killed in four months in Gaza is higher
Samia al-Atrash clutches the body of one of her sister’s children, killed in an Israeli bombing of Rafah on October 21, 2023. According to the UN, the number of children killed in four months in Gaza is higher than the number of children killed in four years in all conflicts around the world. © Said Khatib, AFP

The researcher lists the multiple reasons which pushed many Western leaders to provide “unconditional support” to Israel, while emphasizing that this military and diplomatic support, combined with restrictions on solidarity movements with Palestiniansdistinguish the destruction of Gaza from other major massacres committed elsewhere in the world.

FRANCE 24: In your book, you return to the two interpretations of the October 7 attacks: anti-Semitic massacre or revolt against an occupying power. How did the interpretation of the anti-Semitic massacre favor support from Western countries?

It is indisputable that October 7 was experienced in Israel and among many Jews in the diaspora as a deep and lasting trauma. The interpretation of the bloody attack as a pogrom was immediately imposed, not only by the Israeli government but also by political leaders and part of the intellectual elites of the Western world, including by the French President who spoke of the most serious massacre anti-Semite of our time. According to this analysis, the soldiers and civilians killed on October 7 were not killed as enemies or oppressors, but as Jews.

This heinous crime then justified an exemplary punishment, especially since the argument of the right to self-defense, which had nevertheless never been mentioned in connection with the Palestinian victims of the violence of the Hebrew State, was put forward by the Western rulers.

View of a neighborhood in Gaza City after Israeli bombings, October 11, 2023
View of a neighborhood in Gaza City after Israeli bombings, October 11, 2023 © Fatima Shbair, AP

The second interpretation has provoked a lively debate in Western countries. One year later, what are the consequences of rejecting this interpretation?

The second interpretation of the deadly incursion made it an act of resistance – which does not justify the abuses against Israeli civilians. This offensive had been made inevitable by the blockade which asphyxiated the territory and its population, a brutalization which caused more and more victims, an arbitrariness which allowed imprisonment without charge and above all a disappearance of the question of Palestine from international agendas.

According to this analysis, which corresponds to the document published by Hamas, the Palestinian organizations, ignored and isolated, deprived of the possibility of negotiating respect for their rights, found themselves cornered, having no other solution than a military operation. . This story is the subject a ban by the authorities and stigmatization in the mediawhich could even lead to legal action.

The thought police, which imposed the first interpretation and condemned the second, had two consequences: the exclusion of any historical perspective to understand the facts and the legitimization of unlimited reprisals to punish them.

You show in your book several examples of how certain major media outlets in the United States and France have taken up the Israeli narrative. Does this mean that they have a responsibility in what you call the fabrication of consent to the annihilation of Gaza?

The mainstream Western media initially experienced a phenomenon of astonishment after the bloody attack of October 7. They took over the communication from the Israeli government, talked about pogrom against Jews, avoided any mention of the decades of occupation and oppression of the Palestinians, reproduced the discourse on the existential threat weighing on the Jewish state and reported almost exclusively on the real trauma of the Israelis, contenting themselves with mortality statistics in the Gaza Strip without showing the suffering of the inhabitants. They thus contributed to the representation of the facts which legitimized the war of annihilation.

An illustration of the bias of the mainstream media is the designation of the war in Gaza by the expression “Israel-Hamas war”, as if civilians did not in fact constitute the bulk of the victims and as if certain Israeli leaders had not Never announced their desire to erase this territory from the map through the use of force.

Funeral of Palestinian journalist Mohamed Abu Hatab on November 3, 2023 in Khan Younes. The reporter was killed along with 11 members of his family in a strike on his home.
Funeral of Palestinian journalist Mohamed Abu Hatab on November 3, 2023 in Khan Younes. The reporter was killed along with 11 members of his family in a strike on his home. © Mahmud Hams, AFP

In your work, you affirm in this regard that “the annihilation of Gaza” was openly announced by several Israeli officials

There is little doubt about the genocidal intent of the Israeli government, many political leaders and certain military leaders, echoed by numerous messages from soldiers and ordinary citizens. The President of the Hebrew State says the entire Palestinian nation is responsible and must be overwritten. The Prime Minister mentions a biblical enemy whose punishment consists of the killing of men and women, infants and newborns. The Minister of Defense talks about human animals and calls for action. The Minister of National Security considers that all are terrorists and must be destroyed. The leitmotif is that there are no innocent people. Even the killing of children finds justification in the fact that they would become terrorists.

And this intention is clearly reflected in actions, through the massacres of civilians by bombs, the reduction of inhabitants to starvation by the blockade of humanitarian aid, the devastation of the territory and everything that makes life possible there.

This is what led the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to ask Israel to prevent any possible act of “genocide” in Gaza?

The intention and the acts are sufficiently conclusive for the ICJ, despite its caution, to declare plausible genocide. Nevertheless, pressure from many Western countriesincluding the United States, Germany or France, so that this crime is not recognized, are all the more intense as their leaders risk finding themselves accused of complicity, which has already happened in the context of trials.

Looking at history, it is difficult to imagine that, in the future, we can challenge the genocide of the Palestinians by the Jewish state. In this regard, the work of researchers is not conditioned by the decisions of judges.

U.S. attorney Joan Donoghue (center), the president of the International Court of Justice, and several judges arrive in the courtroom on May 16, 2024 to listen to the arguments of the
American lawyer Joan Donoghue (center), the president of the International Court of Justice, and several judges arrive in the courtroom on May 16, 2024 to listen to the arguments of the South African legal team, which accuses Israel of genocide in Gaza. © Nick Gammon, AFP

After several months of war, certain Western countries like France demanded a ceasefire and a political solution that would involve the creation of a Palestinian state. How credible are these statements?

These are statements without consequences. It costs nothing to do them, since they do not commit to anything and are not followed by any measures aimed at their concrete translation, such as the boycott of arms sales and the international sanctions which played an important role in the fall of the apartheid regime in South Africa. These are therefore harmless statements and Israel knows it well, even if its Prime Minister pretends to be indignant.

In the case of France, they are even inconsistent since its vote at the United Nations in favor of the creation of a Palestinian state was contradicted by the head of state who indicated that the moment was not appropriate.

What are the consequences in terms of international relations of what you describe as a “moral abdication” by the West regarding the devastation of Gaza?

A chasm has opened up between the Western world and much of the rest of the world. It is clear that the former will no longer have any human rights lessons to teach the latter. His credibility in this matter was already strongly contested. It will be lastingly affected by its involvement in the destruction of the Palestinians in Gaza. It is therefore a loss from the point of view of this moral authority that Western countries claim. But they still have strength, which they manage to impose in many places on the planet both militarily and economically.

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