I don’t know; compared to the Israelis, I am beginning to think the Chinese are actually pretty humane towards minorities, however flawed Beijing’s policies have been.

And so, here we are, with the horrors unfolding live in Palestine … Still, Western leaders are telling the world, no, no, no, you cannot use words and phrases like genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing. That’s racist, that’s anti-sematic. OK, President Joe Biden and Co, I won’t then.

Israel’s ties with China worked well – until the Gaza conflict exposed limits

Well, actually, it’s worse for Biden. He and his administration are actively supporting Israel’s war, with emergency financial aid, military intelligence, weapons, and diplomatic cover. Israel’s war on Gaza is very much America’s. No wonder some people have been sloganising about “Genocide Joe”. Oh, sorry, I am not supposed to use the G-word.

What many democracy-loving politicians in the US Congress are worrying about at the moment, or at least those who fancy themselves as armchair foreign policy strategists, is that the US is now prosecuting two proxy wars, in eastern Europe and the Middle East. What if there is a new front in the Pacific, over Taiwan? Wouldn’t the US be overextended?

John Mearsheimer, the famous political scientist, summed up this problem for the US rather succinctly in a recent lecture.

“My argument is that the United States is losing focus, and you say to yourself, what exactly does that mean?” he said.

“I believe that the principal threat that the United States faces in the world is the rise of China and the possibility that China might try to dominate Asia.

“And I think we have a deep-seated interest in containing China. But what’s happened is that the United States has lost focus, and it’s got diverted into the Ukraine war in Europe, and it’s now getting diverted into the Middle East with the war between Hamas and Israel and the United States, and therefore is unable to pivot completely to Asia and I think this is a major mistake for the United States.”

‘Let us in’: first evacuees leave Gaza for Egypt amid Israel offensive

Well, that’s no doubt one big problem for the US. But another, though less frequently mentioned, is the complete loss of control of the narrative by the Western powers over Palestine across much of the rest of the world. That will be a big problem down the road, because it’s not just about Israel and Palestine; the very political legitimacy of Western global leadership will be at stake.

Mearsheimer is a political realist or neorealist. That means he considers only the clash of national interests between nations, and their balance or preponderance of power. Questions of right and wrong, or morality, don’t necessarily factor into their calculations.

However, that’s a fundamental problem with political realism as a school of thought. Morality, or considerations of right and wrong, are very much narratives, stories we tell ourselves and others. Which narratives dominate and which disappear or are ignored, in the international arena, are rarely decided on their merits, but by those who control the means of production of news stories, that is, the media. Which or what narrative gets played is very much a question of power, the basic element of political realism. And the global media have long been controlled by the West.

Today, though, that control is being eroded by social and alternative media, and other mass media groups with substantial global following owned and operated out of non-Western states. The Al Jazeera news network, based in Qatar, is a good example.

This is not the first time Israel has gone scorched-earth on the Palestinians. But this time, it feels different because of the global responses of ordinary people who insist on trusting their own eyes and ears rather than buying into the Western-Israeli narrative of evil Arabs and fanatical Palestinians. How totally ironic that all the major Arab states are now calling for a ceasefire leading to a peace settlement, and it’s the Western governments that are resisting their call for the sake of meeting the military demands of the Israelis!

Narrative analysis shows Israel’s borders are safe – for now

When you lose control of the narrative, essentially your ability to justify and legitimise your actions is severely diminished. The moral standing of Western governments is already on thin ice with the never-ending war in Ukraine. It is being destroyed over Palestine, just as Gaza is being razed to the ground.

How bad? Let me quote from the resignation letter of Craig Mokhiber, director of the New York Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

“This is a textbook case of genocide,” he wrote. “The European, ethno-nationalist, settler colonial project in Palestine has entered its final phase, toward the expedited destruction of the last remnants of indigenous Palestinian life in Palestine.

“What’s more, the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, and much of Europe, are wholly complicit in the horrific assault. Not only are these governments refusing to meet their treaty obligations ‘to ensure respect’ for the Geneva Conventions, but they are in fact actively arming the assault, providing economic and intelligence support, and giving political and diplomatic cover for Israel’s atrocities.”

The West is not only doing an unimaginable injustice to the Palestinians, but also undermining the ability of ordinary Israeli citizens to counter their most extreme and far-right government. By destroying their own moral authority, the US and its Western allies will find they have very little power of persuasion or propaganda prowess left with the rest of the world if and when they come around to fighting the Chinese.