Document:The 'elimination of Hamas' has always been a genocidal policy
| The current situation – verbal distancing from the genocide whilst continuing to participate in it via surveillance flights, running the air bridge for weaponry via Cyprus, participation in the F-35 programme, etc etc. Effectively, Britain and France are projecting their own involvement in genocide purely onto Israel, as if it were a rogue actor acting all by itself. |
blog post by Dan Glazebrook dated 8 June 2025Subjects: Israeli-Palestinian conflict, UK government, France, Israel, Palestine, genocide
Source: Facebook (Link)
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What explains the recent criticism of Israel by British, French etc governments?
The 'elimination of Hamas' has always been a genocidal policy. Guerrilla resistance can only be defeated if it can be isolated from the masses. The Palestinian resistance is too well-rooted for this to be possible - thus, it can only be defeated through the extermination of the masses themselves, aka genocide.[1]
But the imperial powers supporting Israel, at first, had a narrative to which they could refer, however unbelievably, to justify their support for the genocide - that Israel's war was necessary to defeat Hamas, and whilst here and there there might the odd action of which they disapproved, they essentially supported the 'war against Hamas.'
However, Israel itself is less and less interested in maintaining this pretence. It is openly admitting that the elimination of Palestinian resistance can only be achieved by the elimination of Palestine itself, and is now parading this latter goal as a moral good in its own right. For a long time, Israel's backers could justify the dropping of 2000-pound bombs on crowded refugee camps, hospitals, etc on the grounds that, whilst the civilian fallout was regrettable, they were 'targeting Hamas' and so everything was essentially fine. Even the blocking of aid could be justified as 'necessary checks to prevent war materiel being smuggled to Hamas' etc etc, so long as the odd truck was allowed through now and then. This was in fact, the Yemen model - exactly what was being done to Yemen during the almost decade-long British/US-led 'Saudi' war against that country from 2015 until recently.
But Israel's policy now of openly aiming to force the entire Palestinian population out of northern and southern Gaza can no longer be dressed up in this way - there is not even a pretence of 'targeting Hamas.'
Does this mean what is happening now is a problem for Israel's imperial backers? Yes and no. They understand the logic - they too, seek the elimination of the Palestinian resistance (the obliteration of Arab resistance to imperial control of the region was the reason Britain created Israel in the first place) and they also understand that this can only be achieved through a total war against the population - but they cannot be seen to openly endorse that. (They also, I suspect, seek to put some distance between themselves and the US in order to maintain a moral figleaf for their support for the continued slaughter in Ukraine).
Hence the current situation – verbal distancing from the genocide whilst continuing to participate in it via surveillance flights, running the air bridge for weaponry via Cyprus, participation in the F-35 programme, etc etc. Effectively, Britain and France are projecting their own involvement in genocide purely onto Israel, as if it were a rogue actor acting all by itself.
