Peter James Cox – SAID President-
Violence begets more violence. After the barbaric Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians of October 7th 2023 Benjamin Netinyahu’s right wing government was urged by Democrat US President Joe Biden not to make the same mistakes that America made after the events of September 11th 2001.
The dehumanisation and lies that led to the second Iraq war in 2003 have been replicated by Benjamin Netinyahus regime with a similar illegal war in Gaza.
As Israel commits genocide in Gaza it seems that Joe Biden’s words were prophetic – the mistakes that America and Europe made after the Twin Towers attacks killed 3000 people were replied to with the death of 30,000 Iraqis. After the initial Hamas attacks a highly disproportionate use of force against the innocent people of Gaza has been used to kill at least 20.000 men women and children in this amoral Palestinian conflict.
This article will demonstrate that the genocide in Gaza is indicative of a larger global phenomenon. Populism and the rise of the hard right in Europe and America means that domestic scapegoating for international problems is fast becoming an accepted facet of civil life in the seemingly developed world.
In Israel’s persecution of the people of Palestine we are witnessing the dangerous local exposition of a much broader global phenomena – that of the strong oppressing the weak. The present apocalyptic conflict in Gaza is not a question of choosing ancient sides but of seeing international events in a contemporary global perspective.
With short term political gain in mind right wing nationalist leaders surge to power on the back of policies deliberately engineered to create a them and us mentality.
This anti-human mentality generally takes the form of the cowardly scapegoating of the weak, generally in order to gain populist votes. These trends are now seeing their logical termination in the hotspots of the world like Gaza and Ukraine.
As Europe teeters on the edge of the totalitarian abyss and America edges closer to civil war, the so-called developed world pays lip service to the legacy of slavery while the new colonisation of the developing world continues.
As climate change surges, international migration is a consequence of the prejudicial global system. A far more relevant and pressing form of colonisation based on the plundering of poorer and poorer nation states for fossil fuels and raw materials is ignored. Concurrently workers in the West see little point in unionising as many of them are tied into zero hours contracts – draconian obligations fulfilled often by economic migrants desperate for a better life.
As a consequence the cost of living spirals in Europe and minorities like refugees become merely competition for scarcer and scarcer economic sustenance. As if trying to climb the outside of the Eiffel Tower there is no traction for the poor on Masslow’s global Pyramid. Post modern Western electorates – which are becoming less and less educated – look to scapegoats for these problems domestically.
In conclusion then it is fair reinforce that the them and us mentality that now pervades the zeitgeist has seen its logical termination in Israeli state genocide in Gaza.
As the innocent continue to be burned in the fire of conflict, the Palestinian war is fueled and given oxygen by America and Iran.
Despite Western cognitive dissonance given the parallel war of attrition in Ukraine we begin to smell the smoke of global conflict as more and more brave refugees reach our shores and give first hand accounts of conflict. At the same time rich nations profit from the sale of arms in the developing world.
Despite the unparalleled efforts at dialogue made in the kingdom of Qatar, a peaceful solution in Palestine seems less and less likely.
Reconciliatory work like that undertaken by former prisoner Nelson Mandela at the end of the similarly dehumanising colonialist project in South Africa now seems far out of reach in Palestine. The two state solution endorsed by Pope Francis now seems equally remote.
Yitzak Rabin embraced the Israeli – Palestinian peace process and was killed by an extremist bullet in 1995. Due to lack of a political middle ground right wing populism and the concentration of power in the hands of the Israeli executive has meant that the voice of moderation has seldom been heard in postmodern Israel. Nietzsche’s death knell has instead been sounded.
Peter James Cox SAID President
Picture: St John’s Church, Lothian Road, Edinburgh
