I’ll keep this short, first, because it’s obvious and second because the advocates of colonialism and imperialism love nothing better than for good people to feel things and express their disquiet over the excesses of empire in what seems to them an ineffectual display of naivete and sobbing misguided moralizing.
I’m not here to cry. I’m here to tell you how you’ve fucked up. In challenging even the ICC’s involvement in what any objective observer understands to be willful, intentional ethnic cleansing on the part of the Israelis and their partners in the US and Europe, and crimes of war on the part of Hamas, Biden, and his administration, and the colonial beneficiary vanguard in Europe, are giving away the game.
I was speaking with someone earlier and we were talking about how colonizers and imperial ideologues react when challenged, when even the slightest criticism is leveled against their disregard for the legal and human status of others. You are seeing that in action in the United States, in Europe, and in Israel. Like any fascists, they will lash out, violently if they feel it necessary, for they are simply the arm of fascism that chooses to obscure its daily practice in more palatable rhetoric.
Western civilization is the abomination child of colonialism, racism, and capitalism, which, as history and current events teach us, becomes fascism when practically challenged. Israel is the proxy battlefield, not just for Netanyahu, for his government, for Zionism (itself a supremacist, colonial ideology), but for the entire idea and fundamental foundations of the colonial, supremacist empire spanning the Atlantic. This is ‘the’ proxy war for the idea of the whole system.
But, make no mistake, the historical implications of this are not minor. This decision means that there will be no legal consequences for Russia in its campaign of erasure against Ukraine. There will be no consequences for China and the atrocities it will commit if it invades Taiwan. There will be no consequences for the United States in its next major war, and make no mistake there will be another. And that is precisely the point. The law exists for those who are subservient, not the powerful.
You can see it in real time as they express sympathy with dictatorial Iran after some of its fascists died, as they stop Ukraine from winning its war with Russia as they profiteer off the conflict, as France struggles to hold on to one of its colonies, as they use violence to invade places of learning, as they tighten the borders, including those around Gaza and the West Bank, that protect elites and their functionaries and constituencies from the people they exploit all over the world.
Remember this when they preach nonviolence, when they use the words ‘law and order’ to shame you, when they talk about equality, justice, or morality. These are just words to the elite. They are meaningless. The only rights you will have are those you choose to take and keep by force. The only humanity to be had is in challenging this monstrosity of capitalism that strangles the world, to take any opportunity to strike at the heart of empire.
And remember that neither your life, your so-called rights, your dignity, the quality of your existence, nor indeed the concept of law itself mean anything whatsoever to these so-called leaders and owners. It’s rhetoric meant to preserve the system and destroy those who would challenge it. And each time their rhetoric fails, they resort immediately to violence, in the streets or on the battlefield (which is just someone’s streets). It’s not about justice. It’s not about law. It’s about power.
TL;DR version: placing aside the extensive ethical and consistency considerations already mentioned, and taking the matter simply in tactical sociopolitical terms, you couldn’t have done a bigger favor for the so-called ‘radical’ left had your teleprompter been written by ruthless anti-colonial, anti-capitalist anarchists. You are less, even, than the rulers who came before you, because you aren’t even trying to tell a pretty, holistic lie, anymore. The less the oligarchy pretends, the less we all feel the need to.