Who Will Say “Enough Is Enough” to Israel?
Germany, which committed genocide against the Jews between the two world wars based on anti-Semitism and theories of racial hierarchy, still carries the burden of the past today.
Public hearings in South Africa's genocide case against Israel began on Thursday at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, Netherlands on January 11, 2024. Photo by Anadolu Images.
T
hree months have passed since the genocide launched by Israel against civilians in Gaza on October 7, 2023. According to the latest figures announced by the Palestinian Ministry of Health on January 7, 2024, 22,835 Palestinians have lost their lives in the past three months, 70% of them women and children. In other words, 7 in every10 people killed by Israel so far are either women or children.
Israel, one of the most important perpetrators of the continuous chaos in world politics for the last 75 years, aims to destroy all of Palestine under the so-called fight against terrorism. In this context, with the help of its collaborators, it is hiding under the mask of “the right to self-defence” to legitimize its ongoing genocide.
Who has the responsibility to fight against Israel which is committing a clear genocide? The answer is simple. This responsibility belongs to everyone except Israel. In other words, the international community, global actors, and regional powers bear this responsibility. However, why do they all avoid taking the responsibility? The answer to this is simple again. Everyone avoids taking responsibility or tries to avoid doing so by assigning it to others. The concept of buck-passing, which has long been included in International Relations dictionaries, offers us an explanatory perspective.
To understand this concept, it is helpful to look at its dictionary definitions. For example, the definition in the Oxford Dictionary of Politics and International Relations is as follows: “Buck-passing is the unwillingness or failure to accept responsibility for the consequences of a policy decision and blame another person or institution instead.” Cambridge Dictionary defines it as “to blame someone or make them responsible for a problem that you should deal with.”
We can briefly define the concept as not taking responsibility for the solution of an issue, assigning the responsibility to someone else, or deferring the responsibility. The action of passing the buck can be expressed verbally or implicitly by remaining silent; in any case, the issue or issues remain unresolved because everyone avoids taking responsibility.
In international politics, the term “buck-passing” is essentially used to describe the strategy of states to avoid taking responsibility for stopping another state that has an aggressive attitude or preventing an approaching threat, and to shift this critical responsibility onto other states. In this respect, buck-passing is primarily related to interstate relations. However, when we take a broader approach, we can also use the concept when states or the international community are reluctant to end a crisis or refrain from taking initiative on such an issue. Buck-passing is the perfect way to describe the fact that the international community, global actors, and regional powers are unwilling to stop Israel’s massacres in Gaza and constantly shift the responsibility for this issue to others.
Global powers are among the actors that have to put a stop to the massacres that Israel has committed not only in Gaza, but also all across Palestine. The most important such powers are undoubtedly the U.S., Russia, China, France, and the UK, which have veto power in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). UNSC members Russia and China do not take any responsibility for stopping Israel’s genocide in Gaza, just as they do not take responsibility for issues that do not directly concern them.
The United States, the dominant power of the current international system, is Israel’s protector in every matter; far from reacting to the genocide in Gaza, it supports Israel to the end. Thus, instead of taking responsibility for the fight against Israel, the U.S. prevents others from taking this responsibility by using its veto power in the UNSC. France, on the other hand, is a very “experienced” country in this regard, as it is a state with a record of genocide. For this reason, France defends the lie that “Israel has the right to protect itself” and supports Israel’s genocide in Gaza. In fact, France does not even see a situation that requires taking responsibility.
Another global power, the UK, is the country that set forth the “Israel issue.” As is widely known, the first step towards the establishment of a Jewish state in the Palestinian territories was taken in 1917 by the British Foreign Minister of the time, Arthur Balfour. The process, which started with the famous declaration identified with Balfour’s surname, resulted in the establishment of Israel in 1948. In other words, the UK is the party primarily responsible for the ongoing Israeli oppression of the Palestinian people. Despite this, the UK, like other Western actors, resorts to the lie that Israel has the right to protect itself against Hamas and avoids taking responsibility for stopping the genocide in Gaza. In short, each of the great powers ignores the massacres in Gaza and becomes complicit in all the crimes committed by Israel.
Other global powers that have a unique weight in international politics are no different from the members of the UN Security Council. The best example of this is Germany. Germany, which committed genocide against the Jews between the two world wars based on anti-Semitism and theories of racial hierarchy, still carries the burden of the past today. Due to the taboos created by the Holocaust, it is forbidden in Germany today to make even the slightest insinuation that might disturb Israel, let alone to speak against it.
Moreover, as clearly stated in Germany’s National Security Strategy published last year, Israel’s right to exist remains an enduring obligation for Germany. In other words, Germany stands by Israel no matter what it does. Under these conditions, Germany is trying to rid itself of the burden of the genocide it committed against the Jews in the past by remaining silent about the genocide committed in Gaza now under the fallacy that “Israel has the right to protect itself.”
Regional actors are no different from global powers. The book Palestinian Policies of Regional Actors (İdeal Kültür Yayıncılık: 2023), which we recently compiled and published in English and Turkish, offers satisfactory content on this subject. The question of how the countries in the region cannot stop Israeli oppression, even though almost all of them consist of Muslim-dominated societies, led us to prepare this book.
A very understandable conclusion emerges from the book, which thoroughly analyzes the policies followed by countries in the region from Algeria to Iran, Iraq to Libya, and the Gulf to Turkey. Regional countries are not willing to fight against Israel because almost all of them approach the issue from the perspective of interests. A limited number of countries, such as Turkey, approach the issue from a humanitarian perspective and take various initiatives to resist this oppression. However, at the end of the day, they remain helpless because the solution to the issue is physical/military power; taking responsibility, does not have much practical value.
The international community also remains silent in the face of Israel’s oppression. For example, the UN, which claims to protect world peace, is literally turning a blind eye when it comes to Israel’s genocide in Gaza. What is more, the U.S., one of the permanent members of the UN Security Council, is an unconditional supporter of Israel and prevents the council from making any decisions against Israel. For this reason, the UN cannot take any responsibility to stop the genocide in Gaza.
The European Union (EU), which set out to build permanent peace in Europe, is in a similar situation. The EU and its members, which try to teach the world a lesson about human rights at every opportunity, ignore Israel’s human rights violations in Gaza. Both the EU administration and its member states refrain from taking responsibility by resorting to the fallacy that Israel has the right to defend itself against Hamas. The clearest statement on this issue was made by EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell when he said, “The EU does not have the capacity to solve this problem. The only actor that can do this is the U.S.” Thus, Borrell, on behalf of the EU, passes the buck to the United States.
To sum up, everyone and every state undoubtedly has a responsibility to stop Israeli oppression. However, except for a limited number of countries, including Turkey, no one wants to take responsibility on this issue, or they constantly shift the responsibility to others. Unfortunately, every day, Palestinians are more and more oppressed under Israel’s apartheid state. Nevertheless, with the belief that this oppression will surely end one day, when that time comes, history will judge those who turned a blind eye to Israel’s genocide.
