Cui bono?

October 21, 2023

In early September that year he was on the fast track to becoming a thoroughly unpopular one-term president. Then came 9/11. Suddenly the US was in a forever war with an ideology. Bush Jr was transformed and got his two terms. If you want to ask cui bono, who benefited most from the Al Qaida attacks, it was definitely him. And to hell with the consequences for the ordinary people of Afghanistan and (with no justification whatsoever) Iraq.

I’ve been thinking about that in the past couple of weeks since the atrocities committed by Hamas in Israeli.

Before I say anything else, let me make a couple of things clear.

I absolutely support the state of Israel as it was established in the aftermath of the Second World War. One hundred percent. (As for the ongoing colonisation of the occupied territories and the deliberate threat this poses to ever achieving a two state solution to this tragedy, not so much.)

As far as I am concerned, the answer to cui bono in the case of the unfolding tragedy in the Middle East is unquestionably Hamas. The fanatics have elicited exactly the response they wanted from Israel’s right wing government. They do not give a damn about the loss of innocent lives in Gaza. They wanted the Israeli government to overreact. They wanted just the sort of collective punishment Netanyahu is happy to serve them on a platter. They want the Arab world to be so outraged that they will take action to wipe Israel off the face of the map. And to hell with the consequences.

It’s tragically predictable. Hamas violently goads the Israel government and its response is to go everything but nuclear.

What has been done in Gaza in the past week is a war crime. Absolutely no question about it. How it can be made to stop, how the pain and suffering inflicted first on Israelis and now on Palestinians can ever be healed is a much bigger and challenging question. And one that can never be answered as long as religious zealots on both sides hold sway.

In case you didn’t know, there is an international peace conference going on in Cairo at the moment. It is being attended by high level representatives of many countries around the world – except the USA who’ve hauled some former diplomat out of retirement. This is one meeting Blinken should be at, but he isn’t and he can’t be because it doesn’t include Israel. That wouldn’t do at all, would it?

I decided when I closed my book last night to have a quick look at the news before I went to sleep and thus I stumbled across this speech King Abdullah II of Jordan was at that moment giving in Cairo.

And he’s right.

So was Joe Biden, who did say the words “two states” despite the pressure to be seen as unequivocally on Team Israel. There is one thing he could do to signal a commitment from the US for a two state solution. He could reverse the inexcusable decision made by his excremental predecessor and move his country’s embassy back to Tel Aviv where it belongs. Will he do it? Unlikely. But wouldn’t it be an important step if he did?

Several days ago a friend shared this on Facebook.