War, Peace and Hypocrisy

Vinod Mubayi

One common feature uniting the Wars raging in various parts of the world is the Hypocrisy of those who have started them. This is most evident in the wars launched by the rogue nation of Israel, hailed by its supporters in the Western nations as the only “democracy” in the Middle East, but it is also clearly present in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

In the wake of the widespread, unprovoked Israeli attacks on Iran, the core leaders of the so-called Free World, the G-7, consisting of the U S, Canada, Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Japan meeting in Canada, issued a statement that read “Iran is the principal source of regional instability and terror” and “Israel has a right to defend itself.” Anything more perverse, illogical, absurd, and hypocritical is difficult to imagine. A commentator, Richard David Hames, cuts through the West’s (and Israel’s) hypocrisy succinctly in a passage that is worth quoting at length:

“The West has perfected a sinister alchemy of psychological inversion–an Orwellian recalibration of language that transforms resistance into terrorism, domination into peace, and sovereignty into existential threat. When Hamas fires rockets, it’s decried as barbarism, while Israel’s 56-year occupation of Palestinian land vanishes from view like morning mist. Apartheid walls that carve up stolen territory are rebranded as “security measures”, their concrete brutality softened by bureaucratic euphemisms. Iran’s civilian nuclear program sparks apocalyptic warnings, while Israel’s arsenal of 90 thermonuclear warheads–never inspected, never acknowledged–sits quietly in the Negev desert. This linguistic jujitsu doesn’t merely describe reality; it manufactures it, ensuring Western audiences see only mirrors and shadows where power and oppression stand plain as day.”

Israel attacked Iran in brazen defiance of international law and the UN Charter while Iran and the U S were engaged in diplomatic talks on Iran’s civilian nuclear programme. These talks were intended to produce a new agreement after Trump, in his first term as President, abruptly and without assigning any reason, abandoned the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal, compliance. While it is hard to deduce from Trump’s obfuscating remarks, it is entirely possible that the U S lulled Iran into a false sense of security that Israel would not attack as long as the talks were going on. This sort of double-dealing is standard operating procedure for imperialist powers. Whether and when Trump may join Netanyahu in attacking Iran is a matter of sheer conjecture. It could happen at any moment, even as these lines are being written.

Apart from the sheer hypocrisy of Netanyahu’s claims of a pre-emptive strike and the G-7 claims of Iran as a terrorist nation, the actual reason for the Israeli attack has been insightfully summarised by the analyst Ori Goldberg in an article in Al Jazeera. He writes that “there is no doubt that Netanyahu planned the strike on Iran for years” to take advantage of “the absolute impunity it has enjoyed since its creation.” While various other reasons such as forcing regime change in Iran are also on the table, Goldberg believes that with the strike, “Netanyahu hoped to re-establish the status quo; Israel can still do whatever it wants. This is Israel’s current definition of “security', the most hallowed principle at its core… ‘Security’ means that Israel can kill whoever it wants for as long as it wants and wherever and whenever it wants without paying any sort of price for its actions. This “security” is what has motivated Israel’s actions from Gaza to Yemen to Lebanon and Syria, and now in Iran. Such a “security regime” must expand continuously, of course. It can never stop. By striking Iran, Netanyahu has gone for broke, staking a claim for complete and absolute impunity for Israel as well as for himself, in The Hague as well as in domestic courts.”

Now the world has to wait and see if the head of the global US Empire, President Trump, who has posed as a peacemaker in the Middle East, will instead become the King of Hypocrites himself by joining Israel in attacking Iran.

Meanwhile, it may be noted that the Vishwaguru (World Guru), NarendraModi, who had proclaimed the present to be “an era of peace and not of war,” has failed to make any statement so far on the Israeli assault on Iran. More shamefully, India abstained on the UN General Assembly Resolution for a ceasefire in Gaza that was passed by an overwhelming majority of 149-12 with 19 abstentions. The resolution strongly condemned the use of starvation as a weapon of war, demanded a full lifting of the Israeli blockade on humanitarian aid and the protection of civilians under international law. The U S and Israel opposed the resolution along with such paragons of democracy as Hungary and Paraguay. India, probably anxious not to offend Trump or Netanyahu, found itself in the company of Romania and Georgia, along with some Pacific Island countries. Its reward for this display of loyalty, however, was decidedly meagre. Modi was unable to meet with Trump on the sidelines of the G-7 summit in Canada and had to be content with a 30-minute phone call with The Donald, while Modi’s bitter enemy, Field Marshal Asim Munir of Pakistan, was given a banquet at the White House.

The Russia-Ukraine war that Putin outrageously launched over three years ago and that shows no signs of ending soon is replete with its own hypocrisies. Putin, who wishes to reconstruct the old Tsarist Empire, blamed Lenin on the eve of his invasion of Ukraine for having created a union of republics that were accorded the democratic right of self-determination, a concept he pours scorn on, which disrupted the mystical, holy bonds between the peoples of Russia and Ukraine. Of course, it was hypocritical of Putin to wage war on a people with whom he claims to have mystical holy bonds. Needless to say, the three decades of NATO creep following the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact and the 2014 colour revolution in Ukraine, creating a ring of anti-Russian states in its proximity, highlight the Western world’s own hypocrisy in provoking Putin to stop NATO expansion.

There is clearly an urgent need for a global movement for peace in opposition to hyper-nationalism, imperialism, and, above all, war. Progressives need to recall and act on the sentiments of the revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg, who denounced the politicians in Europe, including the social democrats and their governments, who voted for war credits to finance the inter-imperialist World War 1 between the British, French, Russian and German, Austrian and Ottoman empires.

21-06-2025

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Frontier
Vol 58, No. 3, Jul 13 - 19, 2025