John Mearsheimer

I have just watched John Mearsheimer talking to an eloquent young lady in a Black and White Flower print dress on German TV. I wish I were forty years younger. Why? Because as a self-appointed voice for the voiceless, and judging on what I just heard, my voice may still be needed well beyond my current sell by date.

In general I am a big fan of John Mearsheimer, he talks a lot of sense about Ukraine and Palestine, but I find his attachment to the idea that the deterrent value nuclear arms outweighs their inherent dangers is, well, cockamamie. I so hope I’m wrong. It would be something of a pyrrhic victory to not wake up one morning, and in the unlikely event that consciousness transcends death to try to coax my ashes into a coherent heap capable of emailing the Professor to say “I told you so.”

Also, I’m firmly in the Jeffery Sachs camp that believes in the potential of co-operation and conversation with China rather than Professor Mearsheimer’s Shakespearian vision of “Two Mighty Monarchies whose high upreared and abutting fronts the perilous narrow ocean parts asunder.” Not that the pacific ocean is perilously narrow but…………..I’m with Professor Sachs, who if I read him right suggests a move towards the BRICS mode and away from the NATO model would be a move in a good direction. Back to The German TV. The young lady in The Flower Print Dress brings up BRICS and suggests there may be a new cold war because she says The West and BRICS have different values? Interesting what will be the professor’s response? They agree, the young lady and the professor, it’s the West versus the global majority says the Professor. The young lady moves quietly but deftly on to Israel/Palestine. We get sidetracked for a minute, Iran is in BRICS and Israel wants to get the USA involved in a war with Iran. Why? The Professor avows, it’s because Israel is not militarily powerful enough to destroy Iran’s nuclear potential alone. He doubts that even the USA has that power. He also reminds the young lady that the USA took the view in 1949 when the USSR first tested a Nuclear bomb that to attempt to destroy that capability was a fools errand. Moving right along, the Professor says Israel wants a war with Iran to provide conditions for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Aha, here we go.

GAZA
“If they can’t drive them out they’ll murder them all” says the Professor, almost casually, en passant. He’s talking about the genocide in Gaza and The West Bank, the spreading death and destruction in Lebanon and the proxy war in Ukraine as if they’re boxing matches with Israel and USA acting as a tag team. Given all of that inconveniently going on. “How can we pivot to East Asia?” the Professor wonders?

The young lady switches to The Walt/Mearsheimer book from 2007 about the Israeli lobby as a way in to asking about Trump saying he wants the Gaza thing over by January next year when he enters office. The young lady in The Flower Print Dress and the Professor both laugh. They move back to China momentarily, the Professor points to himself when he says USA in the China context. The young lady in the Flower Print Dress now opens pandora’s box. She speaks about what she calls “the Gaza conflict”, she says “I have been quite agnostic about the conflict because I don’t know enough!” She asks the Professor for guidance. Professor Mearsheimer is quietly emphatic. “Condemn Israel they’re committing genocide” he says.

“Phew!” says the voice for the voiceless. “Tell it like it is Professor”

The young German lady is confused, she’s not scratching her head because she doesn’t want to uncover the truth, she’s being quietly tight lipped German establishment. Professor Mearsheimer tells her that Greater Israel, that’s all the land in Israel within the post 1967 war borders, plus Gaza and the West Bank, is an apartheid state. He tells her the population of this apartheid State is approximately 7.2 million Jews and 7.2 million Arabs. The young German is puzzled, how can it be apartheid if it has equal numbers of Jews and Arabs she asks?

Ok, now I must interject, I would have interrupted to interject on behalf of the voiceless billions in the first few minutes of the conversation, but I respect Professor Mearsheimer and……………. My interjection is short. Only three words. The words are: Equal, Human Rights.

If we the voiceless billions could enforce the Universal declaration of Human Rights enshrined in International law by the fledgling UN in Paris on the 10th of December 1948 we could stop all this stuff. Let’s just talk about the right to life and the right to own property, we can get to the rest another day. That’s all, Equal Human Rights for all our brothers and sisters irrespective of their ethnicity or religion or nationality. Jews didn’t have equal rights in Germany between 1933 and 1945, non-Jews haven’t had them in Israel/Palestine since 1948 and still don’t have them now in 2024.

Today in Palestine, every second of every minute of every hour of every day, the Israelis are committing horrific acts of genocide against our brothers and sisters whose homeland they have occupied. Shamelessly and callously, they are slaughtering men women, children and even newborn babies, and razing all their homes to the ground.

Anyone not crying out in rage, not calling out the criminals from the rooftops, is complicit in those dreadful crimes, and I reluctantly include the possibly well-meaning, Miss Black and White blood-stained Flower print dress, in that complicity.
To stand by silent and agnostic is completely unacceptable.
Love
R.