Hobbes famously wrote about the “state of nature,” when the state fails to provide order and security for individuals. Under the “state of nature” there would be

“no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

Could there be a better description of life in the Gaza strip, imposed by Israel on the Palestinians?

The Stanford University Encyclopaedia of Philosophy furthermore describes the consequences of the “state of nature”:

“People will quite naturally fear that others may (citing the right of nature) invade them, and may rationally plan to strike first as an anticipatory defense…  In this situation where there is no common authority to resolve these many and serious disputes, we can easily imagine with Hobbes that the state of nature would become a “state of war”, even worse, a war of “all against all”.”

The Palestinians live in this state of nature in Gaza. Hamas struck out from the state of nature on October 7^th, 2023 in its Al Aqsa Flood operation. Undoubtedly, the state of nature in which the Palestinians are held by Israel, produced Al Aqsa Flood. After all: “People will quite naturally fear that others may (citing the right of nature) invade them, and may rationally plan to strike first as an anticipatory defense…”

The perpetual threat of war and violence from the Israeli state created the Al Aqsa Flood which it has become obligatory in the West to condemn, before permission is granted to express any sympathy for the tens of thousands of Palestinians as they die under Israeli aerial bombardment.

The state of nature produced Al Aqsa Flood, however, would have had little effect on the West if it weren’t for how Israel has behaved in the aftermath and how the West responded to this behaviour. If Israel had acted differently it might have strengthened its hold over the Palestinians and its ability to keep them in their state of nature. And if the West had acted differently to the Israel punitive operation against the Palestinians the West might have enhanced its values in the world.

But Hamas calculated accurately. And this has resulted in a 300-day Israeli assault on the helpless Palestinians, who have not been provided air defence like the Ukrainians. Instead, Israel has been provided with Western weaponry, US financial support and Western moral cover for its assault on the Palestinians which is justified as a “defence.”  

The Palestinian resistance cannot be accused of being responsible for undermining the West and the Liberal order. Most of the World outside the West realise they were placed in their state of nature by Israel. The Palestinians attempted to escape the state of nature through the creation of Hamas, which Netanyahu and Israel encouraged in order to undermine Fatah. But Israel was determined to keep the Palestinians within a state of nature. So, it is Israel that is the thing that is dramatically undermining the Western liberal order by being the “only democracy in the Middle East” and by acting, and being permitted to act, by Washington as if the “rules based Western liberal international order” is nothing but a sham. And this is undoubtedly having a big effect on the world outside of its white privileged parts, among the bulk of humanity.

In the last 10 months Israel has been seen to break all the principles of the “rules based Western liberal international order” with impunity. It has been doing this for a long time of course but not under such a sustained concentration of view from the international media, including the new media.

Recently, Israel committed a most public and calculated provocation against the main supporters of the Palestinians – Iran and Hezbollah. It killed the Hezbollah chief in Beirut after being told that doing such a thing was a red line to Hezbollah. It assassinated the political head of Hamas when he was a guest of the government of Iran at a most important state occasion. Both of these acts show a wanton disregard and contempt for international law.

Israel used the excuse of the deaths of a dozen teenagers in a rocket attack on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. The victims were all Druze Muslims who were no friends of the Israeli occupation forces and who Jews regard as little higher than Palestinians in their racial hierarchy. No subsequent attempt was made by the Israeli state to provide evidence for the rocket attack being a Hezbollah operation. There were no calls for vengeance from Israelis and absolutely no pressure on Netanyahu to act in response.

The Israeli assassination of the political head of Hamas, Ismael Haniyeh, who was one of the 2 lead negotiators in Qatar, was like the British assassinating Gerry Adams during the peace process in Dublin in order to scotch all possibility of the Good Friday Agreement. It is pretty clear that Netanyahu wanted to use any opportunity to end any possibility there might be of a cessation of hostilities that could be necessary for the return of the hostages. And the West has said nothing at all about this reckless behaviour that reveals Netanyahu’s real intentions to the world. It is clear from recent events that Netanyahu has no intention of trying to save the hostages still held by Hamas. HIs priority is the destruction of Hamas and the Palestinians who produced Hamas – as many as possible as can be got away with. The hostages are evidently just collateral damage for him.

It is becoming clear that Israel believes it has Washington in its pocket. Netanyahu was bolstered in his mission by the 52 rounds of applause he received from the citadel of the great democracy in America, the US Congress. Not many leaders waging open genocidal war on our TV sets could have achieved that. Some people like Kamala Harris decided to stay away from the rodomontade in Congress for electoral purposes. But the same people who stayed away voted all the money and munitions necessary for Israel to wage the war of genocide against the Palestinians. They just felt it impolitic to be seen participating in such extravagant support for Netanyahu and his campaign of genocide which might encourage the liberal and young Americans from coming out in support of the Democrat Party on November 5^th.

It is clear that both Hezbollah and Iran do not want a full-scale war with Israel and these assassinations were meant as a huge public humiliation and provocation to Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran to engage in retaliatory action which could be employed as a device for luring US power fully into the situation. There is every possibility, given the extremity of Israeli provocation, that this retaliation will be of a different character than the choreographed show of April. Israel’s determination to bring about a wider war tends to show that Israel, despite the death and destruction it has visited on the Palestinians, is not happy with the course of its punitive operation, and instead wants a great escalation in killing to enhance it, perhaps because that is the only means of achieving a thorough dusting of the Palestinians and anyone who is inclined to stand up for them.

Washington has warned any state or organisation that seeks to deter Israel that its big brother will come down on them like a ton of bricks. Iran has been warned by Washington to keep out, despite the provocations dealt it by Israel, and the US has let it be known that it is ready to go to war on Iran and preparations are being made to do so with large naval fleets and missiles sent to the region. In its saner form Washington may prefer not to make war, but many in the Washington foreign policy establishment would have no problem bombing Iran “into the stone age” and have been itching to do so for some time now. Lloyd Austin, who has shut up entirely about the debacle in Ukraine, re-emerged to give Israel a public guarantee of support in the event of it provoking war with Iran.

Netanyahu has, therefore, strong incentives to continue the war for the present. It is his stated aim to destroy Hamas and Hamas can only be destroyed if the Palestinians are destroyed. If the Palestinians are not destroyed they will surely reproduce Hamas, even if it has another name or another form. Secondly, Israeli polls tell Netanyahu that the voters only want the national government, which he heads, in power during the duration of the war. If he winds up the war anytime short of total victory he is unlikely to be forgiven for the security lapses that occurred on his watch and resulted in the success of Al Aqsa Flood. And the fact is he has many people to the right in his coalition who will not permit him to stop the war, even if he had any desire to do so – which he doesn’t. As the ex-British Ambassador to Lebanon warned on the BBC it is probably Israel’s intention also to do to South Lebanon what it has done to Gaza.

The United States has given Israel the green light to do what it wishes to the Palestinians, along with all the moral and material support needed for the job. It has now been presented with a period to finish the job, meaning it has months to escalate its punitive operations against the Palestinian population. There is a lame duck president in the White House of unsound mind, his replacement is a weak non-entity and the alternative, Mr Trump, is an enthusiastic supporter of Israel. And it is unfortunately predictable that Israel, being what it is, will attempt to kill as many Palestinians as possible during this time, under the cover of attempting the destruction of Hamas. Republican and Democrat leaders in Congress reportedly told Netanyahu that the new President, of whatever party, did not wish to have this problem on assuming office in January so it was time to finish the job in the window of opportunity presented from now until the end of the year.

There is, therefore, a real opportunity for genocide here, as the Nazis had in 1941-5. It will be accomplished not only by bombing but by the denial of water, fuel, food and water to a population with a large proportion of children who can be wiped out by disease. And it is the Western liberal democracy that is providing this opportunity while Washington makes the minimal pretence that it is trying to restrain Israel.

In 1948 when fierce Jewish terrorism was being directed against the Palestinian population to clear 200,000 from the territories desired for the Jewish state, the US Consul General in Jerusalem wrote:

“In the field of offence, which the Jewish Agency prefers to term ‘preventative defense’ we have seen all three Jewish armed groups in action, Hagenah, Irgun and the Stern Gang. Their offensives generally consist of demolitions of Arab strong points and forays into Arab villages which they believe to have been used as bases for Arab guerrillas. The blowing up of the Old Serail in Jaffa by the Stern Gang, the same type of action against the Semiramis hotel in Jerusalem by the Hagenah and the shooting of Arabs in the Tireh village by the Irgun are all examples of Jewish offensives. Such activities are designed according to the Jews to force the Arabs into a passive state.” (Jeremy Salt, The Unmaking of the Middle East, p.137)

How little changes in the nature of the beast.

The philosopher John Gray is saying that the era of Western liberal democracy is ending in his latest book, The New Leviathans. If it is the collaboration of the US and Europe in what Israel is doing in Gaza, and wants to do in the wider region, is undoubtedly accentuating the decline and fall of the West.