2024: year of hypocrisy abroad and in Pakistan

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This piece is a personal reflection on the expedience and hypocrisy of current Western and Pakistani rulers. The latter fuming with anti-Imran Khan sentiment and complicit in moves that have defaced fundamental rights and stripped the judiciary off much of its independence.

If anything the year 2024 marked a new low in (im)morality both internationally as well as in Pakistan. It left an indelible blot on G7 nations for their indefensible hypocrisy - driven by geopolitical preferences - that killed and maimed tens of thousands in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria.

Their near silence and continued support, which Jeremy Corbyn denounced as "Live Genocide", blew the lid off the human rights and rule of law mantra that Western nations had so fondly peddled until Israel lunged in to demolition of Gaza and its millions of inhabitants in October 2023.

As Israel pounded Palestinians, Lebanese and Syrians with bombs and laser guided missiles, the West showered it with billions of dollars - $17 billion in cash and arms in one year from the US alone. The 45,000 plus deaths in the regions mentioned above hardly mattered for the lead countries' "unflinching support for and solidarity with Israel".

The UK government did take some corrective action upon taking office in July 2024. On 2 September, Foreign Secretary David Lammy announced the suspension of around 30 licences, out of about 350, to Israel. He said that "for certain exports" the government had concluded there was a "clear risk" they "might be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law".

Also in Germany, export approvals for Israel dropped to 161 million euros in 2024, coinciding with a legal challenge by human rights groups concerned about the potential use of weapons in the Gaza war. Last year, Germany approved arms exports to Israel worth 326.5 million euros, including military equipment and war weapons, a 10-fold increase from 2022, according to data from the economy ministry, which approves export licences.

Solidarity with an aggrieved minority group is one thing. Arming and supporting it unconditionally in a genocidal military aggression an altogether different conduct that defies the very principles the Western democracies teach and preach in developing countries. For all their pontifications on alleged human rights in Western China, almost all G7 nations literally indirectly sanctioned for Israel's triangular assault on Gaza, Lebanon and Syria.

The warm welcome that the Hayat Tehrirul Sham (HTS) - a former Al-Qaeda /ISIS affiliate - received in the Western capitals and in Tel Aviv also stripped the geopolitical hypocrisy naked; Afghan Taliban are still on the UN/US sanctions list, while HTS was welcomed and also taken off the terror list within days of seizing Damascus. Both Israel and Turkiye, it seems, joined hands in supporting their proxies to get rid of the brutal Assad regime but in the process also exposed the duplicity of international politics in which human rights and the rule of law are used as weapons.

These nations acted as silent spectators as Israel went about expelling Palestinians from their homeland and eventually moved into the demilitarised zone with Syria - an obvious move as part of realising the Greater Israel project.

In September this year, The Jerusalem Post even published an article with a map of the "Greater Israel as promised in the Torah", only to remove it immediately after a controversy erupted based on what

And here at home, the year 2024 witnessed new lows in hypocritical politics - led by Shehbaz Sharif and Khawaja Asif, and willfully endorsed and amplified by stalwarts of PPP including Sharjeel Memon, Qadir Patel, Sherry Rehman and Bilawal Bhutto Zardari.

Both Defence Minister Asif and Senator Sherry Rehman first ridiculed Richard Grenell, the special envoy-designate by Donlad Trump for his unusual tweets on Imran Khan and then stooped to new levels. Sherry Rehman dismissed Grenell's remarks on the military trials of civilians and called it an interference "in a well-established, independent judicial system of Pakistan". Quite bizarre statement coming from a learned parliamentarian.

Asif stooped even further by linking Grenell's remarks to "Operation Goldsmith for Release of Imran Khan".

Asif's insinuations obviously drew a sharp reaction - via X platform - from the British billionaire Zac Goldsmith: "This is the actual Defence Minister of Pakistan… i.e. a grown man. He has invented something called 'operation goldsmith' which apparently is in the business of recruiting people. I'm not sure what for. But it sounds awful, and VERY Jewish. Looking at the exceedingly long list of crimes Mr Khawaja has been accused of during his political career I'm not surprised by his behaviour… As an aside, I'm also not Israeli, or connected in any way to Israel."

Nothing could be more embarrassing for Pakistanis than the reckless verbal innuendoes that federal ministers and their allies deploy, unmindful of the damage such conduct does to the image of Pakistan in general. Equally disgusting have been the kind of compromises the current parliamentarians have made in democratic rights and the judiciary, which today is divided and toothless like never before.