So the United Nations has decided to wag its bony finger at Israel, blacklisting the Jewish state for alleged sexual violence in warzones. The UK, ever the eager choirboy in this moral pantomime, demands a ‘credible investigation’. One must chuckle at the sheer audacity of it all.
We live in an age where international bodies have become little more than forums for performative indignation, a sort of diplomatic Kabuki theatre where the script is written by a committee of the sanctimonious and the strategic. Let us not pretend this is about justice for victims. If it were, the UN would have long ago blacklisted every single actor in the Syrian civil war, the various militias in the Congo, or the drug cartels that have turned Central America into a charnel house.
But no, the spotlight falls on Israel, the one democracy in the Middle East that dares to defend itself. The UK’s demand for a ‘credible investigation’ is rich, given its own recent history of sexual violence scandals within its armed forces and its cozy relationships with regimes that treat women as property. This is not about moral clarity.
This is about moral theatre. The Victorians would have recognised this: a public flogging of the outsider to reaffirm the virtue of the accuser. It is a disgusting spectacle, but a predictable one.
The cycles of history turn, and the West’s intellectual decadence continues its slow rot. The question is: will anyone have the courage to call this what it is?
