Stephanie

People are saying that the US/Israeli assault on Gaza is shredding international law. This is obviously true, but it also misses a key point: international law was always primarily intended for the imperial core. This arrangement arose in the wake of WWII, largely because the imperial powers wanted to avoid a repeat of the egregious destruction they had inflicted on one another. But it did not stop them from inflicting (or continuing to inflict) precisely this kind of violence on the people of the periphery. The ink had barely dried on the Geneva Convention when the imperial powers conducted or actively supported mass death campaigns in Indonesia, Korea, Guatemala, Vietnam, East Timor, El Salvador, etc; they assassinated or couped elected leaders in Chile, Ghana, Iran, Brazil, the DRC, etc.; they enabled apartheid South Africa and its violent counter-insurgency operations across the continent; and then Iraq, Libya, Yemen... Truly spectacular violence was inflicted - with mass civilian casualties - in most cases against people who wanted nothing but to regain control of their own land, labour and resources, because these movements conflicted with the interests of imperial capital. All of it was done in violation of international law, and all of it with zero consequences for the perpetrators. US, British and European war criminals walk among us. They do prime-time talk shows and retire peacefully to their ranches and villas. International law, such as it is, is generally utilized only against their enemies. We cannot continue to live in such a world. The double standards are obscene and intolerable. It dehumanizes all of us. But the lesson we must take from Gaza is that moral progress and the realization of human rights will never come from the ruling classes of the imperial core. The vision of universal values will never be a gift from Western elites. It was articulated by working class movements and in the crucible of anti-colonial struggle, by people who insisted that rights are for all and not just for a few. The world we yearn for, as our souls scream against the dehumanization of the Palestinians, will only ever be realised with the success of that struggle. That is the horizon. That is the objective.