Tennyson in his famous poem “The Brook,” says, “For men may come and men may go, / But I go on for ever”. That may have been true in Tennyson’s time, but imperialism has not only snatched away the possibility of the survival of humanity but put the nature on the sword as well. The more the technology has advanced the more brutal the human has become.
“The Romans” Gramsci says, “were content with binding their vanquished opponents to their triumphal chariots–then they made the defeated lands their provinces. But now the victors would like all the inhabitants of the colonies to disappear, to make room for the new arrivals”.
This is precisely Israel, a borderless barbaric entity is doing. The ongoing genocide has surpassed 600 days. If killing is an art the “chosen steeples” have chosen the most brutal one. Ganges Khan, notorious for making minarets of scalps of the vanquished decapitated them in one go but the paranoia of the Israelis has transcended all limits. The Jewish but secular-an oxymoron-borderless state has not only mercilessly slaughtered the innocent civilians, including the babies but is starving them from the last more than two months. ” It is the transformation of impotence into the experience of omnipotence” Eric Fromm says, “it is the religion of psychical cripples”.
The entire aim of the killing spree is to finish what was left unfinished in the 1948: the complete annihilation of the Palestinian population- under the malignant gaze and material support of the entire west whose antisemitism pushed the Jews into Palestine. Despite the facades of various pacts enforced occasionally for the opportunistic reasons by the US presidents, Israeli openly flouted all of them brazenly including the recent ceasefire backed by Trump and signed by Witkoff.
“If his (Netanyahu’s) lips are silent” Freud says, “he chatters with his fingertips: Betrayal oozes out of him at every pore” and the guarantor being an ally looks the other way.
Anyone speaking for Palestine is being tried, expelled from the country or jailed for committing a subversive act.
History is rife with the crimes of imperialism especially of the white settler- colonialists which wreaked havoc on the people of Asia and Africa but the dialectics of technology have for the first time given us a live-streamed genocide. It reflects the ruthlessness of the ‘cultured’ nations who first dehumanize the natives and then experiment the lethal means to annihilate them. Australian Aboriginals are living in the same terrible conditions which they are facing from 1770 when Captain Cook arrived. Once he completed their genocide, he immediately became concerned about their GDP which meant nothing to the natives.
After massive public rallies, and global outrage Trump and his financer Miriam Adalson have agreed to feed some of the inmates of Gaza’s concentration camp. But not through the UN or UNWRA but through the private contractors. UNWRA hurts the Israelis because it acknowledges the Palestinians’ refugee status and Israel wants to annihilate the organization before it decimates the Palestinians.
The aid as Max Blumenthal writes is reaching in the Southern Gaza in biometric concentration camps marketed as ‘aid hubs’ run by American mercenaries and paid for by Mossad, Israeli Intelligence via a Swiss shell company founded by the biggest names in the field of humanitarian aid, including the former CEO of World Central Kitchen. Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) is a newly founded organization and has reportedly received $100 million $ by Mossad.
Not only Avigdor Liberman, the former deputy premier of Israel but also Yar Lipid, another former premier and now leader of a friendly opposition have conformed the narrative. According to the latter Israeli government is funding two ‘shell companies’ linked to GHF, and the private mercenary firm Safe Research Solutions founded by a former CIA field operative Philip Relly.
Both Max Blumenthal and Finkelstein state unequivocally that the objective behind the vulgar exercise is to concentrate the entire population of Gaza into South near Egyptian border and to push them in desert Sinai if possible or leave them in a concentration camp to starve and perish. Every leaf of history enacted here is borrowed from the Monro doctrine to Mein Kemp.
“Men” under capitalism Gramsci says, “possess nothing more than a veneer of civilization—one only has to scratch them to lay bare the wolf-skin underneath. Instinct has been tamed but not destroyed and still the right of the might is the only right that is recognized”.
“If you do not like a person” Freud says, “it’s because they remind you of something that you do not like about yourself”.
Isreal claims to be the only democracy in the world but democracy for whom, for the Jews only and not for the Palestinians whose number is equal to if not larger than the Jews across the entire area of “the occupied state of Palestine”. And if only Jews could live in an Israeli entity how come it be a secular one unless Jews unequivocally declare themselves a race and not a religious community for religion and secularism are fundamentally antagonistic. From its inception the Israeli constitution is trapped in this dilemma. An atheist Jew can be a citizen but cannot marry in Israel for Halakha doesn’t permit it. The case of Olympian gold-medalist Artem Dolgopyat is a case in point.
The live streaming of genocide of babies, adults, doctors, paramedics-in one case 15 of them were massacred by the Zionists and were buried in a single grave-and the boasting of Israeli soldiers, making merry on Palestinians corpses, wearing Palestinian women’s clothes, raping and assaulting women and men especially in Sde Teiman detention center were eye-openers but the ‘cultured’ but blind world ignored every act of barbarity until the people of their countries forced them to question the Zionist entity.
The First Amendment in the US has been sidelined. Anyone speaking for Palestine is being tried, expelled from the country or jailed for committing a subversive act. America first has become America last. However, public pressure is unrelenting which is repeatedly forcing Trump to put a halt to the Israeli bloodbath. Trump can stop it with a single call to Netanyahu, but Trump and his poodle are the products and faces of the system which is decaying fast. Capitalism is digging its grave; the honor may go to the Palestinians to push it into its resting place as they have done to the much-hyped western civilization.
The fearful, inept and impotent western leaders, scary of their people are speaking against the Israeli atrocities without stopping the sale of the means of destruction to it, a major source of income to the respective governments. Some optimists are looking towards China for help, but it is no more a Maoist China. Its capitalism or socialism of Chinese characteristics is working well for itself. Though it condemns the genocide but now even the top EU diplomat and EU Commission President Ursala vender Leyen, referred to by Finkelstein the ‘Nazi princess’, and the biggest supporter of Israeli genocide is deploring it.
Germany, which never eliminated fascism but rather passed it on to the US, has its Chancellor condemning the IDF’s barbarity. Two former Israeli premiers Ehud Barack and Ehud Olmert both have condemned the genocide by the present government. Akin to the West they are preparing to push all the blame at Netanyahu’s doorsteps and after his removal intend to resume the genocide.
But the world has changed. Once the genocide is over Israel will become a pariah state and the entire population of the world will demand to punish it. Ilan Pappe has succinctly stated that era of Zionism is over. The International media has also lost its credibility. No one wants to listen to the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN or BBC. “At Nuremberg trail” Liam Cunningham, the famous Irish actor twitted, “Julius Streicher was not convicted of having committed or participated in any crimes or act of violence himself but was convicted on the ground that as a journalist his many speeches and articles supporting and exercising violence made him an accessory. He was hanged”. Would it be the fate of international media once the geocide is over, Tariq Ali wonders.
The writer is an Australian-based academic and has authored books on socialism and history. His Latest Work: “God’s Republic Making & Unmaking of Israel & Pakistan” is available in Pakistan & on Amazon.com. He can be reached at saulatnagi @hotmail.com