Together, We Can Make Peace Happen
We are all Iranians. We are all Gazans. We are all humans.
This morning, the United States attacked Iran, targeting three of its nuclear energy facilities with cruise missiles and 30,000 pound bombs. It did this a little over a week after Israel started attacking Iran, hoping to sabotage the negotiations about its nuclear energy program and draw the U.S. into the conflict. Because of Trump’s decision to bomb Iran, it seems that Israeli PM Netanyahu’s career-long wish for a direct confrontation with Iran finally got fulfilled. While there is widespread opposition against this war, it seems to be going ahead regardless.
Meanwhile, the genocide in Gaza continues with active support from the West, and NATO is gearing up for massive arms investments. Next week, there is a NATO summit in the Hague. The goal is to agree on a massive ramp-up of military investments among its members, preferably without creating drama like Trump’s infamous confrontation with Ukrainian president Zelenskyy. The U.S. wants NATO, which claims to be a defensive alliance, to become more involved in the Asia-Pacific region and ‘project collective power’ to help the U.S. pivot to Asia. “What we know is that the US, next to Europe, of course, also has to take care of the Middle East, has to take care of the Indo-Pacific,” NATO Secretary-General Rutte said.
All of these conflicts are inter-connected. All of them are symptoms of the rot at the heart of ‘the Free World’, of the contradictions between talking about the importance of human rights and international law and the violence with which it defends its control over much of the world’s resources. That control is slipping, which is why we’re seeing all this extreme violence come out in the open.
Clearly, our leaders are not going to put a stop to any of this. If you don’t draw the line at genocide, you definitely won’t make a peep when the U.S. starts bombing yet another country in the Middle-East. To name just one example, the Dutch PM reacted to the U.S. attacks on Iran by saying how concerned he was… with Iran not getting a nuclear weapon, urging the country to come to the negotiating table that they were already sitting at before they got bombed. Other Western leaders have similarly failed to condemn the U.S.-Israeli attacks as the direct violations of international law that they are, seemingly forgetting how they reacted when Russian president Putin attacked Ukraine. What also tends to be conspicuously missing from these discussions about Iran’s nuclear program is how Israel has had nuclear weapons for many decades while not even being a party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
Establishment media does what it can to obfuscate what is happening by leaving out these kinds of relevant facts or historical context, by cleverly manipulating language to evoke the right emotions, and by framing conflicts in a way that manufactures consent for war and oppression. But there is only so much you can do to turn reality on its head. It is pretty difficult to explain away the never-ending stream of videos of murdered children and bombed hospitals by constantly repeating that Israel has a right to defend itself, or to spin the U.S. and Israel making a mockery of the very concept of international law as them somehow safeguarding it.
With each week of horrible violence, of yet another nail in the coffin of international law, more and more people are asking themselves what they can do to put a stop to the insanity that has led us to this point and is driving us ever further down a path of conflict and ruin. Yesterday, someone reminded me of how empires resort to attacking their neighbors right before they are about to fall, as a way to try to keep everything together while they are falling apart. That is why, they said, it is important not to lose hope in these dark times.
But even when there is little hope of things getting better, I would add, we should do whatever we can to stand up for justice, for peace, and for a better world for all of us. And the best way to do that is together. When people come together, it creates this energy. You can just feel it… It unleashes this incredible power that can make the impossible possible.
Earlier this week, I talked to some of the members of a Palestine solidarity group who had occupied a university building to demand a severing of ties with Israeli universities (to read more about how these universities are complicit in the Israeli government’s apartheid and cultural erasure policies, check out this post I wrote last year), and what struck me the most was the positivity. Someone told me how, even though they did not even know the names of many of the people they were protesting with, they would trust them with their life.
If we are to struggle together, if we want to overcome the forces of hate, violence, and war, it is exactly that kind of trust in each other that is going to get us there.
Peace ☮
In the coming week, I will be sharing my insights from yesterday’s NATO counter-summit, which brought together peace and justice activists from over 20 countries to share different perspectives on how to oppose war and militarism. I am also working on a post about the NATO summit itself, which I am hoping to share with you soon. I want to end this post with footage from today’s protest in the Hague against Tuesday’s NATO summit, an example of the incredible energy that is already alive on the streets.
I agree with you up to a point, Robert. The attacks by the Israeli government on Gaza are atrocities but were provoked by a Hamas atrocity. Let's not forget that. The attacks on Iran were an attack on a repressive theocracy with nuclear ambitions and a stated aim of obliterating Israel. Let's not forget that either. Of course we want 'world peace', like Miss World contestants, but when your neighbours want world war do you just wave banners and protest? I condemn the Israeli government (not Israel) responding to a heinous massacre with an even more heinous massacre. But I don't condemn the attack on Iran's nuclear plants. I feel safer because of it. As for NATO, I wish we didn't need it. I wish we didn't need nuclear deterrents. I wish we didn't need to defend ourselves against aggressors who want our land or to exterminate us. But in this less than perfect world, we do, and I'd rather have imperfect alliances to protect us from aggressors than no alliances at all. And if you're going to protest against an organisation or a government, then you also need a plan for a better organisation or government and a way to implement it. I'm interested to hear what the anti NATO summit comes up with that is workable, realistic and timely.