Retreat from Reason: Palestine in the Time of Monsters

By M. Reza Behnam

November 20, 2024

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.




Our times are fraught. This is especially glaring in the Middle East as the United States wrestles to maintain its control over this rich and complicated region.

Today’s ethos of convulsion is aptly reflected in the words of 20th century Italian philosopher, Antonio Gramsci, “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”

We are indeed living in a time of monsters. Israel’s contemptible leaders, empowered by the United States, have done their utmost to erase Palestinians and all memories of Palestine.

In Gaza, Israel has killed a reported 43,972+, wounded 104,408+ and has left the Strip in ruins. At least 17,400 children have been killed in Gaza and in Lebanon,

more than 200 children, an average of three a day, have died since Israel began its bombing campaign two months ago.

Unabated, the Tel Aviv regime continues its unremitting crimes against humanity. Its leaders have given the world what the Romans called “digitus impudicus.”

The international community can no longer remain passive. The fate of the Palestinians is now tied to the fate of global justice. That sentiment was correctly articulated by the prime minister of Malaysia, Anwar Ibrahim, at the 11 November 2024 Arab-Islamic Summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia:


“Israel no longer belongs within the civilized community of nations, and its barbarism demands nothing less than decisive action to safeguard not just the Middle East but the entire global order….the severity of Israel’s assault on humanity’s most basic rules of the international compact deserves consideration of a more serious response. For the sake of not only the Palestinians but of humanity itself, we must punish and deter Israel’s repeated violations of international law and norms. We should, therefore, build a consensus towards suspending or even expelling Israel from the United Nations itself.”

Israel is not and has never been a “normal” state. The racism and supremacy inherent in its fabric has its roots deep in the ideology of Zionism—the Jewish nationalist movement which culminated in the establishment of Israel by force on Palestinian land in 1948—and in its relationship with Western imperialism.

Zionist ideologues believed that an independent separate Jewish state was the solution to centuries of European anti-Semitism. Ironically, by opting for Jewish separatism, Zionists adopted the arguments employed against them by their anti-Jewish European oppressors, who argued that because they were different, Jews, as a group, were unassimilable. Ironically, the only difference between the two arguments was that the anti-Semite added that Jews were not only different, but also inferior. On the other hand, the Zionist position implied or stated explicitly that Jews were superior.

Zionism has not afforded security to the Jews who discarded their nationalities in favor of a Jewish one; it has, however, turned the once oppressed into oppressors.

The United States, as an extension of its imperium, has helped Israel become the subjugator and regional predator it is today. Washington’s indifference to the death and devastation Israel has inflicted on Palestinians and on the Lebanese is a testament to its similar predatory and racist nature.

For Washington, Arab and Muslim lives are apparently expendable. Researchers at Brown University’s Watson Institute have documented that disregard in their “Cost of War Project.” According to the report, America’s post-9/11 wars (Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen and Somalia) have resulted in the deaths of at least 4.5 to 4.7 million, including both military personnel and civilians.

Washington’s callous indifference was revealed again in a CBS “60 Minutes” interview on 12 May 1996 with then-U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright:


Interviewer Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: “We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?”

Madeleine Albright: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price, we think, the price is worth it.”

U.S. and Israeli wars in the Middle East have not only killed and maimed millions; they have also contributed to the deterioration of political cultures, economies, health care, and have caused long-term ecological contamination and damage.

In January 2021, newly-elected President Joe Biden told the nation that he aspired to “restore the soul of America.” He departs in 2025 leaving America’s soul in tatters.

Sixty-one years ago this month, the nation’s soul was tattered after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. To a nonplused American polity, Nation of Islam leader, Malcolm X, asserted that the president’s death was a case of “chickens coming home to roost.”

What Malcolm knew is that turmoil in and out of the country were linked. Today, America’s trail of brute power and violence—from Vietnam to Gaza—have come home to roost in the election of the Trump regime grounded in right-wing populism, authoritarianism, ultraconservatism, racial supremacy, xenophobia and anti-immigration sentiment.

On 20 January 2025, President-elect Donald Trump will take office with the goal, as he said, of “finishing the job” in Gaza; a job that Biden made possible because of his cooperation with a regime intent on entrenching Zionist supremacy, exterminating Palestinians and annexing all of the West Bank. The Trump agenda, with regard to the Middle East, portends to be an exemplar of the horrific Biden policy taken to its extremes.

The cast of characters Trump has selected to be in charge of U.S. foreign policy, are, like their counterparts in the Biden regime, pro-Israel war hawks, committed to apartheid, settler-colonialism, occupation and it appears, annexation of the West Bank; although their brutal intentions are barefaced.

Trump’s choice for National Security Advisor, Congressman Mike Walz (R-FL), a fierce Israel advocate, wrote in an Economist essay, “The next administration should, as Mr. Trump argued, ‘let Israel finish the job’ and ‘get it over fast’ against Hamas.” And his candidate for U.N. ambassador, Congresswoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY) in an address before the Israeli Knesset called for wiping those responsible for 7 October “off the face of the earth.”

Former Arkansas governor and Christian Zionist, Mike Huckabee, Trump’s nominee to be ambassador to Israel, declared that Palestinians, “settlements” and the occupation do not exist, and that Israel should annex the West Bank. In service of the U.S. imperium and his religious beliefs, Huckabee, like most Israelis, appears willfully blind to the commandments of the Hebrew Bible—thou shalt not murder; thou shalt not steal; and thou shalt not covet.

Both Biden and Trump have shown no concern for the suffering of Palestinians. While Biden has had the power to end the carnage, he has instead encouraged it. And while Trump has said he wants to stop the wars, it is the war hawks who will have his ear.

Israel, empowered by the United States, has gone beyond the pale, beyond reason and beyond humanity. Palestine is a test of our morality.

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M. Reza Behnam
Dr. M. Reza Behnam is a political scientist who specializes in comparative politics, with a focus on West Asia.

 

Moral Suicide

by Michael Brenner / November 21st, 2024

Western societies are committing moral suicide in Palestine. Collective suicide always is an ugly business to observe – especially when it’s your own country debasing itself. Yet, we seem unfazed. Indeed, we redouble our acts of inhumanity as if reiteration somehow normalizes the perversity of what we have done. The systematic insulating of ourselves from the magnitude of our turpitude is all the more remarkable for its requiring the constant filtering of graphic images of odious criminality to which we are accomplices. There may be some faint recognition, subliminally, of our culpability in the diligence with which dissenters and truth-tellers are suppressed and punished. That repression, an insult to our supposedly hallowed civic principles, is the most immediate price Western societies are paying for this depravity.

Other deleterious consequences will register down the road. For the disconcerting truth is that the majority of the world sees our sins for what they are, and scorns out gross hypocrisy. In America and Europe, we pay scant attention to what the ‘others’ think – out of long habit. They are discounted. Our elites in particular seem to feel that – like the proverbial tree falling in the silent forest – if we don’t hear it, there is no sound made. There is a sound, of course. We soon will learn that the falling tree has brought down power lines and blocked roads. That is to say, the reactions of the ‘others’ – China, Russia, India, Brazil, Indonesia along with the rest of South/Southeast Asia, the greater Middle East, Africa, and most of Latin America – will cause us considerable, tangible harm. The ensuing impact on Western governments’ status and influence in the world is being greatly accentuated by the collapse of their moral authority.

So, our overall losses will be profound – in practical terms, in the serious degradation in public discourse and civil liberties at home. Any move toward restoration will be retarded by lost self-esteem accompanied by a deep reluctance to face the shame were our deeds exposed and recognized. For once one has demonized Palestinians in general as guilty, thereby justifying gruesome acts, it becomes almost impossible to retreat into a position of condemning those selfsame acts of criminal vengeance that you previously blessed since that means inculpating oneself.

What this tells us is that the phenomenon that we are describing is most pronounced among Western political elites. There:  mutually reinforcing collective emotion, uniform attitudes and entrenched reference points combine to produce perverse behavior. The extremity of callousness toward the genocide of Palestinians, the enthusiastic cheerleading for the Israeli atrocities, the tangible support for this most grotesque campaign of elimination, the deaf ear to desperate pleas for humanitarian aid, inflicting additional pain by the summary defunding of UNHCR – together form a pattern of behavior that borders on the sadistic. It obliges us to ask a painful question: are we witnessing the final playing out of the West’s long felt (and more recently sublimated) compulsion to abuse ‘other’ peoples in order to affirm their own superiority and prowess? A contemptuous Parthian shot as Westerners sense the turn of the historical wheel of fortune – with the Jews providing the perfect cover?

Explanations of how we willfully inflicted these wounds upon the body politic, and our moral foundations, without evident cause or interest do not come readily at hand. For the tangled causal threads lie deep within ourselves. Self-reflection is always discomforting, often agonizing, and – in the West these days – simply intolerable.

As to America, isn’t it fanciful to imagine a society that has selected a freakish Fascist like Trump – for a second time – as its leader (while deluding itself that there is no historic deviation from its honored path of enlightened politics) could have the emotional stability and strength of character to admit its heinous sins committed against the Palestinians?

One singular feature of the current situation stands out: it is all about Israel and Jews. That evokes a host of deep emotions that shape attitudes and actions. The following essay addresses that topic. It was written a year ago. The first part focuses on Europe. It then expands the analysis to cover the United States in the context of Western societies’ historical condescendence of the non-West.

I. Europe -Jews-Muslims
Europe has an obsession about Jews. For nearly 2 millennia, it shunned them, despised them and persecuted them. Now, after a respite of a few decades, it condemns and abuses Muslims in a similar way – all in the name of supporting Jews.  Israel’s inhumane treatment of the Palestinians – culminating in their massacre and mass eviction from Gaza – leaves Europeans unmoved. European political elites above all.  Instead, they cheer on the Israelis, outdo themselves in effusive displays of solidarity, in the quick dispatch of weapons so that the IDF can better carry out their odious campaign, in providing instant validation for the most outrageous lies in the wake of the most outrageous atrocities.  Propinquity has accentuated their moral support. Leaders scurry to Tel Aviv to get as close to the action as possible and to steal a photo of themselves embracing Bibi Netanyahu – a copy for the evening news, a copy for the next campaign brochure, a copy for the eventual memoir.

The West generally clearly has a big problem with matters of religion, race and ethnicity. It is multiform, it mutates, it waxes and wanes, it shifts focus and fixation – but it remains lodged in the collective psyche. While this obviously is not universal among Europe’s population of 400 million, it is manifestly prevalent and deep-seated. When the stimulus is strong and acute, it flares like a gas field when the drill hits paydirt. The entire panoply of institutions – public and private – rise up as if choreographed to vent the same emotions, make the same harsh, unqualified judgments, use the same crude slogans, drape themselves in the same banners of self-righteousness and self-proclaimed moralism. Government leaders, politicos, media, pundits, make the same cacophonous noises, aggressively impose the same uniformity of opinion, and punish the few dissenters.

Thus, the exaltation of the Jews of Israel – honored and cosseted – is matched by the dehumanization of Palestine’s Muslims. Of course, it is not just the long-suffering Palestinians who are at once denied – in principle – the right to the privileged status of victimhood and collectively are condemned as guilty of the most heinous crimes committed by al-Qaeda, the Islamic State or Hamas. Men, women, children – without exception. It is all Muslim communities – Islamo-phobia.

What are the sources of this psychopathology? Some are immediately identifiable. 1) The residual, latent desire to absolve Europe of the sins committed against the Jews ever since they were stigmatized as the killers of the Christians’ Lord & Saviour. It took roughly 1,900 years for the truest Jew-haters to take the final, macabre act of revenge. Volunteers from 16 European countries formed SS divisions that participated – directly or indirectly (the largest contingents made up of Ukrainians). That holocaust had a powerful sobering effect on the contemporary soul of European Christians whether believers, practicing or nominal. The fears, wounds and pangs of conscience associated with it gradually have faded into the background and discrimination of Jews largely has gone away  – despite the attempts in recent years to inflate every minor incident as part of an campaign to conflate criticism of Israel with old-fashioned anti-Semitism. As a consequence of the campaign’s success, antipathy toward Israel aroused by its actions in Gaza, the number of those incidents has risen. The confected identity of Judaism with a rogue Israeli state is a boon for the die-hard anti-Semites.

The very words ‘Jewish’ and ‘Israel’ have the power to paralyze European minds and consciences. Again, most strikingly among the political class. Hence, Britain’s most erudite commentator renowned for his frankness and rare skill at cutting through official cant and mendacity, declares himself unable to pronounce on who destroyed the hospital in Gaza – hiding behind the weasel words ‘we should await the outcome of an impartial United Nations investigation.’ Who did the evil deed? The people who already had dropped 1,500 bombs on Gaza City or Ali Baba & the 40 Thieves? Make your choice – personal preference. Hence, French President Emmanuel Macron bans all protests that express sympathy for the Palestinians on the grounds that they cause Jews/Israel emotional distress. He then makes a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to urge the Israelis to pursue Hamas “without mercy” – adding, for the record, “within the law.” (His recent conversion ‘On The Road To Damascus/Berlaymont/Turtle Bay’ lifts the ban only on himself).  One is reminded of Peter O’Toole (aka T.E. Lawrence) shouting the command “no prisoners!” as he drives his Arab army to throw themselves on a retreating Turkish column. Without the hypocrisy of adding “within the law”.

Hence, German authorities ruthlessly enforce their own ban on Gaza-sympathy protests and threaten criminal prosecution of participants. Foreign Minister Baerbock uses a Tel Aviv platform to inform the world that “Israel cares about the welfare of Gazans.” Hence, the Prime Minister-designate of the U.K., Keir Starmer, conducts Stalinist-style purges from the Labour ranks of anyone who utters a word critical of Israel – that includes Corbyn now obliterated from party annals. No surprise that he now demands explicitly, and in a public interview, that the party’s official position is to give license to the Israelis to continue their bombing; to cut off all food, water, electricity; to expel the Gazans into the Sinai desert where Qatar is pressed to finance a tent city for a million or two.

Hence, on November 11 2023, the EU Foreign Ministers’ issued an official statement that “[the] EU condemns the use of hospitals and civilians as human shields in Gaza” – in what amounts to an eerie resemblance to the holocaust deniers. Hence, Joe Biden struck the same note in declaring that civilian casualties have been exaggerated by Hamas. This was the starkest evidence at that we had left the realm of reasoned and reasonable discourse for the nether world of psychopathology.

Second, relations between Europeans and Muslim communities have become increasingly fraught. Above all, the growth of large immigrant communities, settled mainly in Western Europe, has generated a host of social problems arising from the complications of imperfect cultural assimilation and the intrusions of influences from the external Muslim world. They are all too familiar: the rapid spread of intolerant, fundamentalist Islam; the threats posed by violent jihadist groups whose tentacles have reached into European cities; the turbulent state of politics across the Middle East; the periodic oil crises that made the region a tense arena for great power politics; and – by no means least – the lingering effects of Western colonialism that never have been expunged.

The two most striking features of that 450-year experience are: 1) the profound superior-inferior relationship on which it was grounded and which it entrenched in European minds; and 2) it was the ‘whites’ who were dominant and the ‘colored’ peoples who were subordinate. That too readily devolved into the racist belief that the latter were inherently inferior — somehow not quite fully human. Tho enduring psychic scars never have entirely faded — on both sides. Let’s recall that it is within our lifetime that the imperial dependents liberated themselves from thralldom – with much blood-shedding — in North Africa, Indo-China, Kenya, Angola, Indonesia, Mozambique, Iraq. More recently, wars between the West and Muslim societies have been fought in several places: Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Libya, the Sahel. All on Muslim soil. Domestic terrorists across Western Europe cite as their immediate motivation those attacks on Muslims — rather than their devotion to a Quranic jihadist creed per se.

II.
That brings our attention to the biggest external factor: the United States. More specifically, Europeans’ enduring dominant/subordinate relationship. European countries have been denatured by America, in the sense that they are shed of sovereign status and its attendant political will. That perverse trans-Atlantic bond has been cultivated by both sides. It’s significance for understanding the European attitude towards Israel/Palestine is two-fold. One, there is an eerie inversion of roles for European polities who participate in dominant-subordinate relations with both America and Arab Muslims. It matches the classic profile of the “Authoritarian Personality.” Toward the superior one is docile, obedient, obsequious; toward the inferior one is arrogant, demanding and patronizing. The latter compensates for the former in terms of maintaining a positive sense of self.

 A variation of this psychological pattern is visible in the attitude of Western government leaders toward their own populace. In effect, they assume the dominant role in treating their citizens as subordinates from whom deference is expected on matters of state. Strikingly, today we see overwhelming and growing popular advocacy of a ceasefire in Gaza while the political elites – those holding official positions, the media and the punditry – vigorously suppress the dissent. Example: London has seen an unprecedented demonstration of half a million, a reflection of public opinion that favors the ceasefire by a 3:1 margin (roughly the same in the U.S.) That in the face of bitter, slanderous denunciation from both Prime Minister Sunak and Labour leader Keir Starmer who vies to surpass him in passionate embrace of Bibi Netanyahu and who ruthlessly purges anybody who is disobedient to his hard line. Hence, not a single Labour or Tory M.P. joined an historic march on a Saturday at the risk of losing access to the Members’ Bar at Westminister.  [The dramatic event was all but ignored by the Establishment print media. By Sunday, all had airbrushed the story out of existence; no photo showing the massive crowd].

In more concrete ways, Europe’s vassalage to the United States obliges it to follow Washington down whatever policy road the seigneur takes – however reckless, dangerous, unethical, and counter-productive. In predictable fashion, they have walked (or run) like lemmings over whatever cliff the United States chooses next under its own suicidal impulses. So it’s been in Iraq, in Syria, in Yemen, in Afghanistan, in regard to Iran, in Ukraine, on Taiwan and on all matters involving Israel. The string of painful failures and heavy costs produces no change in loyalty or mindset. It cannot – for the Europeans have asimilated totally the habit of deference, the Americans’ worldview, their skewed interpretation of outcomes, and their shamefully fictious narratives. The Europeans no more can throw this addiction than a life-long alcoholic can go cold-turkey.   

That condition impels them to downplay the ominous trends in American politics and foreign policy. The choice of mentally unstable and/or incompetent leaders, erratic actions by unhinged political forces, high risk ventures abroad, the baiting of designated rivals – none of it moves Europeans to throw off the yoke placed on their minds, their emotions, and their morals.

Moreover, we should bear in mind that contemporary America has become hysteria prone. First came the Global War On Terror that for twenty-odd years had it rampaging around the globe on the hunt for jihadis from the Hindu Kush to the Sahara desert while shredding its Constitutional guarantees of individual rights and due process. Then, the manic Russo-phobia: Dostoyevski removed from literature courses, Anna Netrebko summarily cancelled in all Western opera houses on the grounds that she once accompanied Putin to a fundraiser for refugees from Donetsk who fled Ukrainian artillery strikes that killed 14,000 of their fellows, boycotts of Russian goods including sewing needles, etc. etc.

Simultaneously, the conjured China ‘menace’ has been stoking our fevered imaginings. That hysteria triggered the ‘spy’ balloon psychodrama. Congruent with this psychopathological syndrome, America today is a culture where draconian measures are taken, by all manner of institutions under pressure from braying militants, to rid themselves of persons who as much as suggest that gender identity is not just a matter of personal preference.

The Europeans, for their part, are no less hysteria prone. It spreads from the United States at epidemic speed. Imagine a convent circa 1623. The most emotionally flammable young woman loses it in declaiming that she is possessed by a lecherous demonic agent. Soon, the other nuns are infected and mass hysteria breaks out. Today, when a whole society is dissociated from reality, there are no Mothers Superior or exorcists around to contain the ensuing bedlam. Indeed, the universal hysteria serves the purpose of those who calculatingly promote and use that hysteria to draw a “line of blood” between the collectivity and responsible, humane behavior. For once one has demonized Palestinians in general as guilty, thereby justifying gruesome acts, it becomes almost impossible to retreat into a position of condemning those selfsame acts of criminal revenge that you previously blessed since that means inculpating oneself. Even those prominent public figures who simply have kept silent in the face of atrocity thereby fall into this trap.

The stunning, frightening truth is that Western societies – American & European – are behaving mindlessly. For the Senate in Washington to pass a near unanimous resolution condemning what it called “anti-Israel, pro-Hamas student groups” is a clear sign of abnormality. It is unmistakable from statements by supporters that the label is applied to anyone who protests the onslaught in Gaza or expresses support for the Palestinian people. Widespread denunciations and purges of individuals who voice those sentiments confirm that. Some might question how one can describe as hysterical the actions of private institutions and governments as well as individuals of being part of an irrational mass psychosis – and on a matter that does not concern them directly.

After all, these countries are composed of educated, autonomous, diverse members schooled in civic ethics – the majority secular and unattached to any dogmatic creed or movement. We are not speaking of medieval cloisters or theocracies or totalitarian societies. That is exactly the point. The observed phenomenon meets all of the criteria for a diagnosis of mass hysteria – speaking objectively.  Manifest hysteria where you do not expect to see it at once underscores the psychopathology and raises the most profound questions as to what species of social entity we have become. The few, very rough historical analogies are not ones we want to contemplate.

Collective hysteria does have predictable effects. One is that participants cease to think independently – some, including leaders, are unable to think at all. That is to say, to interpret reality in ways other than that dictated by the fixed, unqualified and simplistic narrative of what is happening, why it is happening, as well as with whom the rights and wrongs lie. Uniformity of outlook impervious to observed facts is what we have seen in the impassioned Russo-phobia, and now regarding the Palestinians. This phenomenon, orchestrated at the top by leaders who themselves are prey to dogmas and irrational emotions, stifles critical thought and judgment even when faced with the most stark, most bloody and gross sins against the very principles that we celebrate as underlying our morally superior Western societies.

A related effect is that deception and self-deception blend into a homogenous mindset. It is insulated from encroachments by a mental Hepa filter which keeps out anything – even the smallest particle of truth – that could stimulate doubt or self-awareness. Consider the likes of Biden, Trudeau, Sunak/Starmer, Schulz, Macron, Rutte, von der Leyen et al. Their endorsement, and thereby encouragement, of mass murder in Gaza – once expressed – becomes imprinted. Thus, if you were to probe for justification in a quiet one-on-one exchange, you would get the same canned, elusive sloganeering that marks their public statement. The mental faculty has become paralyzed. Sustaining this unnatural state is helped by the systematic suppression of dissent. Doing so serves two purposes: it keeps at bay any dissonant, reality-based idea or evidence challenging the fixed mindset, and unjust suppression/punishment of dissenters creates an additional disincentive to critical reflection since that threatens to evoke feelings of shame for those revealed misdeeds.

What this tells us is that the phenomenon that we are describing is most pronounced among Western political elites. There: hysteria, mutually reinforcing collective emotion, uniform attitudes and entrenched reference points combine to produce perverse behavior. The extremity of callousnesstoward the genocide of Palestinians, the enthusiastic cheerleading for the Israeli atrocities, the tangible support for this most grotesque campaign, the deaf ear to desperate pleas for humanitarian aid, inflicting additional pain by the summary defunding of UNHCR – together form a pattern of behavior that borders on the sadistic. It obliges us to ask a painful question: are we witnessing the final playing out of the West’s long felt (and more recently sublimated) compulsion to abuse ‘other’ peoples in order to affirm their own superiority and prowess? A contemptuous, ruthless Parthian shot as Westerners sense the turn of the historical wheel of fortune?

[The one aspect of the situation that shows a measure of conscious cerebration is the political – in particular, the electoral. It is Biden’s worries about his faltering Presidential campaign that led him to the surprise declaration that Israel was at risk of exceeding its (generous) quota in killed Palestinians. That is accompanied by a cavalier rewriting of the earlier record of when Washington promoted unrestricted Israeli retaliation and lobbied neighboring governments to accept the expelled Gazan population. Accommodating media are only too happy to go along with the mendacity since it erases memory of their own cheerleading for those draconian actions.

We should understand Emmanuel Macron’s sudden advocacy of a ceasefire in the same vein. It is a mistake to imagine that this shift was the outcome of a somber reflection on the moral and diplomatic issues involved. Macron is another one of those self-designated messiahs without message or mission – like Barack Obama – whose sole concern is self-promotion and self-advancement. In Macron’s case, he has his eye on an even bigger position than President of France – Secretary-General of the United Nations or President of the European Union. Preferably the former. So, presenting himself as a Gaza humanitarian could win him votes in the global South and also make him more palatable to Russia and China. The rest of the French political elite are still insisting that protesting crimes against humanity in Gaza is tantamount to an act of anti-Semitism.]

Back to Europe. In the Middle East, the net effects are 1) that Europe is burdened with the heavy baggage of interventions that inflame Muslim hostility toward the West, and 2) to create the psychological imperative to find some way to assuage their own sense of guilt by finding, and magnifying, the sins of their victims. That dubious enterprise acquires a thick veneer of contrived virtue by making a tight embrace of Jewish Israel the ultimate symbol of their good intentions and by blinding themselves to the transference of their accumulated guilt for historical abuse of the Jews into empathy for their former victims’ abuse of Arab Muslims.  

P.S. The internal dynamics of the United States are very similar to those of Europe – with three exceptions. One, guilt regarding historical mistreatment of Jews is largely absent. Yes, individuals may feel something about the Christian scapegoating of ‘Christ-killers,’ but generally speaking it is far more abstract. The empathy for Israel has arisen, and intensified, mainly from an instinctive sympathy for the underdog threatened by people you view negatively (1956, 1967) – a heart-wrenching narrative that has been vastly strengthened by vivid accounts, cinematic and written, of the tragic 20th Century Jewish saga. Moreover, there is the exceptional influence exerted by the powerful pro-Israel lobby.

Two, the dramatic growth in the influence of a politicized Evangelical movement has added a significant factor to the equation. The Book of Revelation is their guide and inspiration. Therein, they are told that the Second Coming of Jesus Christ and Armageddon will be signaled by the restoration of the Jews in their Hebrew homeland. What happens next, of course, is blurred by both Israelis and the Evangelicals.

Three, the United States’ rededicated project to entrench its global dominance has spurred American assertiveness around the world. Its long-time focus on the Middle East for multiple reasons inclines Washington to secure what it sees as prized assets. That strong impulse is accentuated by its declining influence elsewhere in the region – especially the Gulf. With creeping doubts as to its prowess, and of its presumed calling to be the prophet of progress for all the world’s peoples, America compulsively grasps every occasion in order to confirm that it is Destiny’s child and to be reassured that its national mythology is inscribed in the heavens.FacebookTwitterRedditEmail

Michael Brenner is Professor Emeritus of International Affairs at the University o Pittsburgh and a Fellow of the Center for Transatlantic Relations at SAIS/Johns Hopkins. He was the Director of the International Relations & Global Studies Program at the University of Texas. Brenner is the author of numerous books, and over 80 articles and published papers. His most recent works are: Democracy Promotion and Islam; Fear and Dread In The Middle East; Toward A More Independent Europe ; Narcissistic Public Personalities & Our Times. Read other articles by Michael.

 

Stare Into Gaza: The Horror Was Not What I Expected

by Matthew Hoh Posted onNovember 21, 2024

That is Gaza behind me.

The fence line is 600m away. The northern part of Gaza, where Israel is carrying out a genocide within a genocide, systematically starving 300,000 Palestinians to death, is about 2km further.

The absurdity and the obscenity of being able to be this close to 20,000 murdered children, their bodies “prophetic voices from under the rubble” as a colleague called them, is difficult to accept.

The grotesque horror of a school field trip arriving at this location from two hours away to watch the mass slaughter from an observation deck was a shock I am overwhelmed by. The first wave of boys pumped celebratory firsts and thrust middle fingers upon their sight of Gaza.

There were no warplanes or drones visible. The school kids and other audience members of a genocide who gawked and put money into a telescope left disappointed as they saw no bombs or missiles, no artillery or tank fire. There were no blast waves from controlled demolitions to wash over them, and the numbers of smoke pillars from smoldering and cratered homes and schools were in the single digits, their fires not vigorous enough to be smelled. It must have been underwhelming and a let down; not much to boast about or revel in on the school bus ride home.

It was quiet. The sounds of those buried under rubble don’t reach the observation deck. No torn and wrecked bodies could be seen, no sunlight reflected in pools of blood, and no strips of clothes snagged on exposed bones fluttered in the strong wind. We were as close as we could be but so separate and so safe from it. It was sanitary and septic, picturesque.

I felt I was a voyeur, a tourist, a spectator. I felt disgust and disbelief. And I felt an absence within me that I cannot articulate.

To be that close to the cleansing and destruction of 2.2 million people and to be centering now my words on my feelings doesn’t escape me. Perhaps a well-achieved purpose of that observation deck of genocide.

The Nietzsche-ism, stare into the abyss and the abyss stares back at you, struck me as I stood there.

Stare into Gaza and Gaza stares back is what I am left with now, comfortable in my Jerusalem hotel, just hours after looking into their genocide as if I were on a platform at a national park or on the boardwalk at the shore.

The horror of the genocide I expected but did not see. I thought I might curse and cry. I did neither. The cruel and so very human spectacle of a caged people being destroyed as a display for school children was what I encountered. I did not expect that and I don’t know how to respond.

Note: Americans partially funded this observation deck.

The observation deck in Sderot looking into Gaza.

A school field trip assembled at the observation platform overlooking Gaza.

These are my first thoughts on standing that close to Gaza. I may need to revisit them.

I am in Palestine this week as part of a delegation to be in solidarity with and learn from those engaged in Palestinian liberation. Today, in addition to this visit to the border of Gaza, we met with Rabbis for Human Rights and an October 7th survivor in the Sderot settlement, as well as a Palestinian Lutheran minister in Bethlehem.

Yesterday, we were in Jerusalem’s Old City. Here are my reflections from that visit:

A post shared by @matthewphoh

Please comment and share. I will try and post more from this visit.

Viva Palestina.

Reprinted with permission from Matt’s Thoughts on War and Peace.

Matthew Hoh is the Associate Director of the Eisenhower Media Network. Matt is a former Marine Corps captain, Afghanistan State Department officer, a disabled Iraq War veteran and is a Senior Fellow Emeritus with the Center for International Policy. He writes at Substack.

Trump’s Outrageous Disregard for Climate Change Endangers the World

Chloe Atkinson

 November 21, 2024
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Image by Li-An Lim.

World leaders, negotiators, lobbyists and NGOs are meeting in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, for COP29.

COP (Conference of Parties) is comprised of approximately 200 countries that ratified the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) in 1992. The representatives of these countries meet every year to negotiate the best approaches to tackling the root causes of climate change.

But this year, a black cloud hangs over the conference as the United States is expected to pull out of climate discussions under a Trump administration.

President-elect Donald Trump aims to give a free pass to polluting nations while ignoring the catastrophic weather changes such as massive fires, floods, and storms that have devastated cities and communities around the world.

Many experts see this as not just irresponsible but downright dangerous, risking lives and livelihoods for the sake of short-term political gains.

The UN climate conference – the 29th such gathering, which will run from 11-22 November – has been billed as the “finance COP” as countries are due to set a new global climate finance goal this year.

Ahead of COP30 in Brazil next year, representatives will be submitting strong national climate commitments – known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).

More than 100 heads of state and government have confirmed their attendance, according to UN sources.

But several world leaders and government officials have said they won’t be attending the conference.

The UN’s decision to host COP29 in Baku has been criticized, given the ongoing tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

As the BBC noted, Azerbaijan plans to expand gas production over the next decade. Many experts believe that with such a goal, Azerbaijan should not be hosting a conference that aims to transition away from fossil fuels. Azerbaijani officials are being accused of using the climate conference as a tool to boost investment in the country’s national oil and gas company.

There are also deep reservations about holding this key event in a country with a poor human rights record, where political opposition isn’t tolerated.

Naturally, Armenian NGOs are boycotting COP29, accusing Azerbaijan of “greenwashing” its dismal human rights record and environmental damage in Nagorno-Karabakh.

The NGOs accuse Azerbaijan of engaging in deforestation, landmine planting, and the destruction of cultural heritage in the occupied territories.

Aside from the anger over hosting COP29 in Baku, Trump’s return to the White House in January means we can expect a second U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement and a weakened global front against climate change.

During his first administration, in 2020, Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement, arguing that it imposed unfair economic burdens on the country.

But Trump’s disengagement from the Agreement damaged America’s international reputation and leadership on climate issues.

Contrary to his views, most countries support active participation in global climate initiatives such as the COP meetings and the Paris Agreement, seeing collaboration as essential for addressing the scale of global warming.

Under the Paris agreement signed in 2015, world leaders pledged to try to collaborate on preventing global temperatures rising by more than 1.5C. Without this concerted effort, climate change will only worsen.

Trump’s withdrawal is a retreat from global responsibility and will only weaken international efforts to reduce greenhouse emissions. By favoring fossil fuel industries over renewable energy investments, Trump willfully ignores the economic benefits of clean energy and environmental protection.

The point of COP is to underscore the urgency of cutting emissions and to emphasize that the climate crisis requires immediate, collaborative action. Now, Trump’s own actions will encourage other nations to disregard COP’s importance.

The right thing to do would be to remain in the Paris agreement and participate in COP summits. By doing so, the U.S. would be able to maintain its role as a global leader on climate change, influencing other countries to follow suit and collectively achieve meaningful emissions reductions.

But nothing will come of COP29 if Trump dismisses the urgency of the climate crisis, undermines global cooperation, and puts America at odds with the rest of the world in combating an existential threat.

Trump’s approach to the Paris Agreement isn’t just wrong; it is a reckless, short-sighted betrayal of responsibility, a shameful abdication of leadership, and an outrageous disregard for the catastrophic impacts of climate change that are already evident today.

Chloe Atkinson is a climate change activist and consultant on global climate affairs.