Daily Times

Lest we forget until recently Ukraine fighting against an “aggressor,” was the only darling of the Western media. Ever since the battleground has shifted to an occupied country, once a peaceful land of historical significance for all three monotheistic religions, stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to the River Jordan named Palestine, Ukraine has lost its significance. Both countries have fallen prey to metropolitan capitalism/imperialism with a tragic history haunting them.

When Boris Yeltsin yielded to international capital and contrary to the result of the referendum, decided to dissolve the Soviet Union, akin to several other Soviets, Ukraine one of the founding members of the Union of Socialist Republic also declared its independence, which barring for a small period, it never had. During its chequered history, initially, Ukraine became a part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Later, it was divided between the Russian and Austrian Hapsburg empires. During 2nd European (World) War, the Ukrainian national- fascists led by Stephin Bandera collaborated with Nazis to build an ethnically pure Ukrainian state by committing the mass murder of Jews, Polish, and the Soviets. Bandera was the continuation of Symon Petliura, who ruled Ukraine briefly in 1918, he was also involved in the mass killing of Jews.

Ukraine found its complete autonomy under the Soviet Union. It not only paved its way out of the famines but became a highly industrialized region, with a special voting right in the UN. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Ukrainian economy crashed, and recession took over, leading to a massive devaluation of its currency. IMF’s prescription of privatization led to the creation of oligarchs. Poverty, corruption, and bankruptcy strengthened the fascist forces. In its urge to expand NATO to the Russian border, the US shoved Ukraine into a suicidal war. The country has so far lost nearly one-fifth of its area, most of its infrastructure, and hundreds and thousands of its soldiers. Following its tradition of betrayal, the US has given up Ukraine to engage in another proxy war in Gaza. Will a rump state of Ukraine survive, is not America’s problem.

Death has lost its horror, and the striptease of Western civilization is dancing and mocking the helplessness of the Global South.

To secure the economic interests of Britain, first the Balfour Declaration and later the Peel Commission cleaved a secular, economically viable Palestinian state into two with a butcher’s knife. The native Palestinians, comprising 94 % of the population, received merely 48 % of the land, while a Zionist state comprising a population of 6% got 52% of the most cultivable land. Such an artificial state could not be created and maintained without internal and external coercion. For the British and later for the US, the creation of a settler-colonial state amidst the oil-rich Arabs was essential to arm-twist the latter into submission.

The Peel Commission divided the Arabs and Jews into two separate, distinct races, oblivious to the fact that both people belonged to the Semitic race. The settler-colonial entity was created on biblical fraud and later a web of further mythologies was woven around it. For instance, Palestine never existed, it was a land without people, for the people without a land. In one sentence, three lies were blatantly spoken. In his book, “A Four Thousand Year History” Palestinian historian, Professor Nur Masalha cites Herodotus, the fifth-century BCE historian mentioning the name of Palestine. The name included the entire land and not only those areas inhabited by the Philistines. Aristotle, the fourth-century BCE Greek philosopher has described “a lake in Palestine” which is understood to be the Dead Sea.

Moving to the Roman era, Professor Nur Masalha cites the first-century CE poets Ovid and Statius, historians Dio Chrysostom, Strabo, Pliny the Elder, and the geographer Pomponius Mela all using the name of Palestine. Palestine, he says meant the entire land: the statement was endorsed by the first-century Jewish philosopher Philo and Jewish historian Josephus.

No claim is as spurious and vulgar as the one depicting Palestine as a land without a people for the people without a land. If that were the case, why did the Zionists commit the hideous crime of Nakba (Catastrophe) in 1948 killing hundreds and thousands of Palestinians and forcing an equal number to seek refuge in the nearby Arab countries? Secondly, the Jews were not people without land. Before Hitler attained power Jews were fully assimilated into German society. Mussolini had no anti-Semitic bias rather he supported Vladimir Jabotinsky, the far-right revisionist Jewish leader, who wanted to liquidate the entire Palestinian population. He was the mentor of Menachem Begin the future Israeli premier. “Ben-Gurion routinely referred to [Jabotinsky] as Vladimir Hitler”. If the landless Jews wanted a homeland in Palestine, why did the majority choose to settle in the US rather than Palestine?

There is no denying that Jews had to face anti-Semitism in Europe, but not in Asia. Even the European phenomenon wasn’t uniform. Those countries such as the US, France, UK, where capitalist relations of production were fully developed, anti-Semitism had lost its venom. The European countries wallowing in precapitalist, or feudal mode continued to suffer from this ailment. The Soviet Revolution of 1917 solved the Jewish question because many of the high-ranking members of the Bolshevik party were Jews. In 1942, a rabbi, Elmer Berger, became the executive director of the American Council for Judaism (ACJ); He bitterly opposed Zionism and the state of Israel and lauded the Soviet Union. For him, Soviet Jews were the most emancipated Jews, for they enjoyed complete freedom under communism, and because of the revolution, they needed neither Palestine nor any other country or place for refuge. He dared to declare Israel as the aggressor state in the 1967 war. It cost him his position as a consultant in ACJ.

The Nakba that started in 1948 continues even today. In September 2023, a smiling Netanyahu waved a map of Ertz Israel at the UN General Assembly erasing Palestine, and gloated on building a new Middle East once Israeli relationships with the Saudis were normalized. Incidentally, Ertz Israel not only denies the existence of a Palestinian state, but claims the territory of Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan as its integral part. “He who has laughter on his side, Adorno says, does not need proof”, but the laughing paper-tiger forgot Brecht’s warning “he who laughs the last hasn’t heard the bad news”.

On October 7, history changed its course when a handful of freedom fighters refusing to listen to the Zionists’ song decided to sing their own. Their poetry wasn’t barbaric, it was intoned with the staccato singing of machine guns, with the war cries of war and victory as Che Guevara suggested. Caged in the largest open-air prison, they did the insoluble task alluded to by Adorno, they neither let the power of their enemy, nor their powerlessness stultify them. They broke the apartheid wall surrounding Gaza and went on to grab as many hostages as possible. In the process, they killed a few Israeli soldiers, though during the crossfire some innocent civilian lives were also lost. No one knows the actual number of Israeli casualties since Israel keeps changing the numbers.

Despite having the latest intelligence-related technology, Israelis were caught unaware. In a few hours, they lost not only nearly four hundred soldiers but the myth of the Israeli army’s invincibility was also blown to bits. The American Navy, ammunition, and even its intelligence moved instantly to defend Israel, the fourth-largest army in the world, from a handful of freedom fighters. The disproportionate revenge followed. The Israeli army unleashed its aerial power to dismantle the infrastructure of Gaza and to annihilate its entire population. Thus far, the death toll has surpassed the figure of 20000, including 6000 babies and women, and the unceasing process of ethnic cleansing continues unabated. “Only a humanity to whom death has become as indifferent as its members, that has itself died”, Adorno says, “can inflict it administratively on innumerable people.”

The genocidal bombing has destroyed Gaza completely and perhaps irreparably. Death has lost its horror, and the striptease of Western civilization is dancing and mocking the helplessness of the Global South. Nevertheless, besides the valiant struggle waged by the Palestinians, it’s the joint effort of the global South and the conscientious people of the global North that will save the suffering humanity in Gaza from annihilation and force the oppressive apartheid regime born out of imperialism’s womb, to concede Palestine.

The writer is an Australian-based academic and has authored books on socialism and history. He can be reached at saulatnagi@hotmail.com