How the West’s rulers make you believe Muslims are less than human

From the 25th commemoration of 9/11 to the 3^rd anniversary of the 7/10, there is plenty of room for mourning the victims of terrorism. We mourn the dead; we mourn with their bereaved relatives; we mourn with the first responders who suffer. We must also reckon with how the memorials have been weaponised to make the slaughter and mass deportation of Muslims acceptable.

“Necro” means death. In 2003, philosopher Achille Mbembe developed the idea of necropolitics. That is the conception of a politics defined by who is free to be killed. He depicted it as central to colonialism: classification of people in categories of different human worth enabled colonisers to steal land and resources without imagining they were taking from, or killing, actual people. Mbembe described Palestine – in 2003 – as “the most accomplished form of necropower.” Discussing how Biblical mandate is meant to vindicate the creation of Israel on Palestine, Mbembe said, “colonial violence and occupation are profoundly underwritten by the sacred terror of truth and exclusivity (mass expulsions, resettlement of ‘stateless’ people in refugee camps, settlement of new colonies).”

Warren Montag built on that in 2005 with the idea of “necro-economics,” in the way neoliberalism in particular, but capitalism in general, justifies who can die “slowly or quickly” and “with impunity,” in the name of the “rationality and equilibrium of the market.” In Palestine right now, resource extraction deals are being done, and the technology of death and surveillance earn Israeli and multinational businesses gargantuan profit over the “valueless” corpses of Muslims. 

Israel is facing a reputational disaster as vast tracts of the global population see the bloodthirsty villainy of three years of genocidal violence and ethnic cleansing, primarily in Gaza, but also in the West Bank. That’s not all: imperial Israel continues ethnic cleansing in Lebanon, stealing land from that country and Syria.

Israel and America’s violence against the Iranian people, just like the violence against Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians, requires that “The West” despises Muslims as our implacable enemy. If we don’t see Israel as “the West’s first line of defence” against demonic Muslim terrorists, then we might see Israel as a toxic zone in West Asia, spreading hatred of itself and us as it undermines those it labels a threat.

Around the world, far right pro-Israel strategists work to maintain the official Israel line and support for its decades of ethnic cleansing, which has escalated so dramatically of late. Far right supporters of Israel have two main strategies: one is the Silencing Squad seen recently with Macklemore; the other is the Make Muslims Hated Mob. The far right of any community is always far wrong.

In 1984, Benjamin Netanyahu introduced that framing which would be used to legitimise Israel’s machinations. At his Jonathan Institute conference in Washington DC, he told those gathered that Islamic terrorism was an inherent feature of Islam, rather than a reaction to (Western) colonial and neocolonial interventions. Fear of Muslims would protect Israel. Donors and strategists built an industry out of that idea. They call it “Counter Jihad.” We can call it the Islamophobia Network.

Australia has newly become more closely linked to that northern hemisphere Network. 

Wendy Bacon and Yaakov Aharon have tracked the pro-Israel astroturfing working to distort Australia’s voting patterns. Bacon has recently shown that the Minority Impact Coalition (MIC) is active in New South Wales.

At the pro-Israel-dominated Royal Commission, a new group, the Australian Cohesion Forum, produced Roz Mendelle and Simonne Whine to speak for them. MIC is an insidious project out of Mendelle’s Queensland Jewish Collective. It describes itself as “minority and refugee-led grassroots advocacy.” It works to bring together other radicalised-trending minority ethnic communities in Australia so that fomenting anti-Muslim fear is presented as a Hindu/Monarchist Iranian activity rather than just a (far right) pro-Israel project. 

Just when we are aiming not to conflate Israel’s shocking crimes with Jewish people more broadly, Simonne Whine made herself the co-author of a project to have Jewish diaspora communities label themselves Israeli-Australian (or Israeli-American) to underscore their indigeneity to that region.

Building tight links between the Christian and Jewish world, tilted against Islam, is a key part of that project. It has had a bloody history in the Middle East with the Israeli military aiding Christian Phalangists in Lebanon to commit the Shabra and Shatila massacres. Israel continues to foster such ethnic tensions in Lebanon in order to fracture the country. 

Israel has a “Special Envoy to the Christian World.” That is George Deeks, a Christian Arab who is clearly not terribly concerned about the Christian Palestinians being obliterated alongside their Muslim countrymen and women.

Then there is Amichai Chikli, who is the Minister of Diaspora Affairs. Chikli is renowned for attending far right conferences in Europe, where he normalises antisemites as well as Islamophobes by his presence. One (far-right Jewish) node of the Islamophobia Network, Daniel Pipes, spoke at a 2019 NatCon conference to say that European Neo Nazis were amongst his “civilisationalist allies” against Muslims.

The Tikvah Fund is amongst the various civil society bodies working to bond Christians to Israel’s interests. 

The far right “intellectuals” across the northern hemisphere are driven by an Israeli-founded “philosophy” called national conservatism which is spread and networked at NatCon events, from the Israeli-run Edmund Burke Foundation. The “slippery” public intellectual at the heart of that is Yoram Hazony, who has worked since he was Benjamin Netanyahu’s speechwriter and advisor in the 1990s to embed the interweaving of the Christian West with Jewish supremacy in Israel.

Hazony is quick to underline, including to Australia’s former Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson, that nationalism is virtuous, even Biblical. Hitler wasn’t a real nationalist, Hazony argues, because he was an imperialist. The two, he argues, are incompatible. Imperialism is also the UN, the International Criminal Court, and any other supranational body that might impede Israel (and any other nation) exercising full sovereignty. Even if sovereignty means allegedly turning children to component particles in a flash.

Nationalism, for Hazony, isn’t racist. Nationalism is based around an in-group that is culturally, linguistically, religiously united. And all the far-right factions involved, Christian Nationalist Westerners, Hindutva Indians around Modi, Iranian monarchists, all are united in demonising Muslims. 

Hazony’s book, The Virtue of Nationalism, is considered the nearest thing to a bible for Trumpist “intellectuals.” Peter Thiel and JD Vance are amongst them. Hazony is described as “a key ideologue of the new global right.”

Hazony has expressed support for the Messianic Jewish supremacist figure and convicted terrorist Meir Kahane (although he dissociates himself from Kahane’s violence). Kahanists in the Israeli government include the (almost) International Criminal Court indicted Ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.

Shaul Magid has recently speculated whether the progressive Jewish diaspora community in the US is becoming a “Kahane nation.” Compared to a late 1950s survey where Israel was not on the Jewish American radar, Magid says, “Today, the question of support for Israel is the very centrifuge of the American Jewish operating system. It is a question that is suffocating American Jewry. Kahane would have loved that.” 

Now, is the same true for Australia?

CPAC Australia labelled its October conference a NatCon event. There seems no evidence in the reporting on the event whether that NatCon label changed anything. Failed UK PM Liz Truss was one of the Western Civilisationist speakers, and warned the Hansonite crowd to beware “Islamo-communism.”

In one of his interviews, Australian national conservative “statesman” John Anderson declared, discussing Muslims, that the “barbarians” were already “inside the gate.” On 7/10, Anderson stood on a stage in Jerusalem, the first Australian speaker at a real NatCon event, marking that anniversary. In doing so, he took the same stage as Smotrich, Chikli, Deeks, Hazony and a raft of Islamophobic figures from the global far right.

Australia is facing a truly frightening moment. We see the Silencing Squad all around us. Will we allow the Make Muslims Hated Mob do to Australia what they have done to the UK? We cannot pander to the worst of us who would embrace seeing bloody pogroms here. We cannot have our friends terrified by the burning down of their homes by raging gangs. We cannot have our politicians writing that their friends are finding safe havens abroad in case their Australian homeland becomes a 1930s Germany for Muslims. Australia is best when we work together: we must unite to disrupt the powerful’s toxic game.