Tearing It All Down

Nesrine Malik:

Once that authority is gone, the system is rocked from within. The mainstream political consensus on Israel and Palestine long held that Israel’s actions ought to be staunchly supported, and that the plight of Palestinians is either paralysingly complex or – at worst – the fault of their own terrorists. That consensus is now being challenged, not only by faceless protesters, but from within the bastions of liberal media. In recent weeks, both CNN and the New York Times have been reportedly riven with internal discord after some employees deemed their coverage too credulous and sympathetic to Israel’s actions.

Gaza has become the expression of a legitimacy crisis for an Anglo-American political class who preside over already fragile systems that deliver less and less to their populations, and whose main offering is that the alternative is worse. Things may look stable, but underneath lurk managed discontents about costs of living, diminished social mobility and the ravages wreaked by rightwing governments to which centrists provide no real answer.