Why Doesn't "The World" Want Israel to Win?

You would think that in the wake of the IDF June 8 rescue of four hostages from their imprisonment in the home of a journalist and others in residential buildings, and the Hamas response to fire on Israeli soldiers in a residential area that all the world would convict Hamas of war crimes for using civilians has human shields. Why,

Abdallah Aljamal, a Gaza-based journalist, held three Israeli hostages captive in his home. Aljamal, who was killed in the IDF raid, wrote many stories slamming Israel for human rights violations in the war and killing Palestinians. He also was a spokesman for Hamas.

But no. “The World does not want Israel to win against Hamas” writes Fred Fleitz. The world just echoes Hamas narrative and blames the Jews.

What is going on here?

I call as witness Henry A Kissinger in his book Diplomacy. Kissinger asserts that, following World War I, the world of diplomacy divided into two factions. There was the Realpolitik faction, who we might call the Bismarckians, and there was the human rights and self-determination faction, who we might call the Wilsonians.

Kissinger does not come out for one or the other faction. But I say that, if you read between the lines, Kissinger supports the Realpolitik approach. Experts call this “esoteric” writing, where the writer disguises his ideas, because reasons.

Realpolitik argues that politics is always about power, and the actor with the more power wins. Thus the political scientist Bismarck, in his his triple-blind Realpolitik experiment, showed that the way to create a united German nation was to fight three carefully calibrated wars: first against the Danes, then the Austrians, then France. Each win created a Germany with more of the German states united into a single German Reich.

Human rights and self-determination diplomacy argues that conflicts between political entities should be determined by educated-class ukases arrived at by peace conferences of the best and brightest.

The first effort of this kind was conducted in the Treaty of Versailles, in Kissinger’s telling, under the supervision of President Wilson. The treaty encouraged self-determination and created a lot of small and powerless states between Germany and Russia, that, Kissinger opines, were mown over in World War II because none of them had the power to stand up to Germany, short of invoking Stalin’s assistance, and France was on the other side of Germany.

Oh and don’t forget the Polish Corridor dividing western Germany from Prussia and the ancient and honorable Hanseatic port of Danzig deeded to Poland. Just the sort of thing that human-rights lawyers would come up with, if you ask me.

In other words, Kissinger tells us, the self-determination of all the ethnic peoples of eastern Europe counted for nothing when the great powers had a gripe. And, BTW, Literally Hitler could pick off one self-determined mini-state at a time.

So I would say that “the world’s” response to the Hamas atrocities is par for the course when you reject Realpolitik for the human rights and genocide and self-determination narrative.

You will note that in World War II there was no discussion of the the genocidal implications of bombing Dresden and Tokyo. There has been some kickback on the A-bombs. If you go to Green Lake in north Seattle on August 6 you can join in a remembrance of the Hiroshima bombing and launch paper boats onto Green Lake.

And in the occupation of Germany at the end of World War II, it is said that every German woman east of the Elbe was raped by the Red Army. And west of the Elbe? Good question, senator. We don’t seem to be too interested in the human-rights violations that occurred.

I would argue that the fate of the Palestinians after the wars of 1947 and thereafter demonstrate the bankruptcy of the human-rights doctrine. The human rights of the Palestinians don’t matter. They lost the war; they needed to face reality. But they didn’t, because of the intervention of the United Nations, and UNRWA, and the “international community” and human rights. And so the Palestinians have been living ever since in an artificial world of refugee camps created and maintained by the human rights community. I’d say it has been a disaster. But if you are an educated-class liberal you believe in the human-rights narrative, not the Bismarckian Realpolitik narrative.

And therefore you believe that the Realpolitik of Israel doing what it takes to defend its nation state is, well, Literally Hitler.

“The World” does not believe in Realpolitik, except when using lawfare to prosecute former President Trump. “The World” believes in human rights and self-determination, as prescribed by human rights lawyers and diplomats at peace conferences.