The Axis of Genocide

Cross-posted from Pearls and Irritations by Eugene Doyle

The West, “will stand by the Israeli regime until they exterminate the last Palestinian”, says Mohammad Seyed Marandi, an American-Iranian academic. “They will allow the extermination of the people of Gaza. And then if the Israelis go after the West Bank, they will allow for that to happen as well. Under no circumstances do I see the West blocking extermination…”

Despite being appalled at my government, I winced as a New Zealander to hear my country described as part of the Axis of Genocide. With increasing frequency I hear commentators on West Asia/Middle East news sites hold the collective West responsible for the genocide. It’s a big come-down from the Global Labrador Puppy status New Zealand enjoyed recently. Australia too has a record of being viewed as a country with soft-power influence, albeit while a stalwart deputy to the US in this part of the world. That is over.

Regrettably, Australia and New Zealand have sent troops to support US-Israel in the Red Sea (killing Yemeni people), failed to join the ICJ case against Israel, shared intelligence with the Israelis, trained with their forces, provided R&R to soldiers fresh from the killing fields of Gaza whilst blocking Palestinian refugees, and extended valuable diplomatic support to Israel at the UN. British planes overfly Gaza to provide data, a German freighter arrived in Alexandria this week laden with hundreds of thousands of kilograms of explosives to kill yet more Palestinian civilians. Genocide is a collective effort of the Collective West.

Australia and New Zealand, along with the rest of the West, “will stand by the Israeli regime until they exterminate the last Palestinian”, says Mohammad Seyed Marandi, an American-Iranian academic. What our governments do is at best “light condemnation” he says, but when it counts they will be silent. 

“They will allow the extermination of the people of Gaza. And then if the Israelis go after the West Bank, they will allow for that to happen as well. Under no circumstances do I see the West blocking extermination,” Marandi says. Looking at our performance over the past seven decades and what is happening today, it is an assessment I would not argue against.

But why should we listen to someone from the Islamic Republic of Iran, you might ask. Who are they to preach at us? I see things differently. In our dystopian, tightly-curated mainstream mediascape it is rare to hear an Iranian voice. We need to listen to more people, not fewer. I’m definitely not a cheerleader for Iran or any state and I most certainly don’t agree with everything Professor Marandi says but he gives me richer insights than me just drowning in the endless propaganda of Tier One war criminals like Joe Biden, Benjamin Netanyahu, Antony Blinken and their spokespeople.

Marandi, Professor of English Literature and Orientalism at the University of Tehran, is a former member of Iran’s negotiating team that brokered the break-through JCPOA nuclear agreement (later reneged on by the Trump and Biden administrations).

He is no shrinking violet. He has that fierceness of someone who has been shot at multiple times. A veteran of the Iran-Iraq War, Marandi was injured four times, including twice with chemical weapons, key components of which were likely supplied by the US to their erstwhile ally Saddam Hussein.

Marandi was in South Beirut a few weeks ago when the US-Israelis dropped dozens of bombs on residential buildings killing hundreds of civilians to get at the leader of Hezbollah (a textbook war crime that will never be prosecuted). It killed people he knew. To a BBC reporter who said, yes, but they were targeting Hezbollah, he replied:

“That’s like saying of 7/7 [the terror bombings in London]: ‘They bombed a British regime stronghold.’ How would that sound to people in the UK?”

Part of what people find discomforting about Marandi is that he tears down the thin curtain that separates the centres of power from the major news outlets that repeat their talking points (“Israel has a legitimate right to self-defence”, etc).

The more our leaders and media prattle on about Israel’s right to defend itself, the more we sound like the Germany that terrorised Europe in the 1930s and 40s. And the rest of the world has noticed. As TS Eliot said: “Nothing dies harder than the desire to think well of oneself.”

To his credit Piers Morgan is one of the few who have invited Marandi to do an extended interview. They had a verbal cage fight that went viral. 

Marandi has been masterful at pointing out the racism inherent in the Western worldview, the chauvinism that allows Western minds to treasure white lives but discount as worthless hundreds of thousands of Muslim lives taken in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen and elsewhere.

“There is no reason to expect that a declining and desperate empire will conduct itself in a civilised manner. Iran is prepared for the worst,” he says.

“In this great moral struggle, in the world that we live in today – meaning the holocaust in Gaza – who is defending the people of Gaza and who is supporting the holocaust? Iran with its small group of allies is alone against the West,” he told Nima Alkhorshid from Dialogue Works recently. 

Marandi draws a sharp distinction between our governments and our populations. He is entirely right in pointing out that the younger people are, in countries like Australia and New Zealand, the more likely they are to oppose the genocide – as do growing numbers of young Jewish Americans who have rejected the Zionist project.

“All people within the whole of Palestine must be equal – Jews, Muslims and Christians. The Islamic Republic of Iran will not allow the US, EU, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the Zionist regime to exterminate the Palestinians of Gaza.”

I heard Mohammad Seyed Marandi extend an interesting invitation to us all in a recent interview. He said the Axis of Resistance should be thought of as open to all people who oppose the genocide in Gaza and who are opposed to continued Western militarism in West Asia.

I would never sign up to the policies of Iran, especially on issues like women’s rights, but I do find the invitation to a broad coalition clarifying: the Axis of Genocide versus The Axis of Resistance. Whose side are you on?

Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz.