For Palestine it is the beginning of always

Standing beside the cadaver of Julius Caesar, Marc Anthony says, O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth, That I am meek and gentle with these butchers! Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood!…. All pity choked with custom of fell deeds, And Caesar’s spirit, ranging for revenge. Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice, Cry “Havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war.

On October 7–-the day of “the beginning of always” for Dante— Netanyahu and his coteries came out crying havoc. They unleashed all the disruptive forces at their command, and the dogs of war—the merciless soldiers—to slaughter the innocent people of Gaza “to make the deed smell above the earth, [and] the carrion men, groaning for burial”.

However, those groaning for burial were not only the Palestinian men but also the women and babies who were democratically decimated from the face of the earth without a burial lying under the rubble, making them grave-less martyrs.

Oblivious to the dismal fate that had befallen Anthony, the Zionist leaders committed genocide not only through industrially organized slaughter but by using hunger and starvation as the key instruments.

Ironically, the only choice given to the wretched of the earth was to leave Gaza or to die a painful death. Zionists deeply inspired by Nazism decided to borrow a page from the latter’s history, forgetting that Nazis were native Germans while Zionists were settler-colonialists, and the difference was decisive.

Hitler offered Jews a fistful of Deutsche Marks and ships asking them to leave Germany or to find their fates in the concentration camps. They could never be compared with the Palestinians, for the Jewish population in Germany was negligible–less than 0.7 % of the total German population. In contrast, despite a massive ethnic cleansing, the Palestinian population from river to the sea is equal to the Jews if not more.

“Hope is not enough for me anymore,” the great Marxist poet Nazim Hikmat says, “I don’t want to listen to songs anymore, I want to sing.” On October 7, the Palestinians refused to listen to the beautiful song of peace socked in their blood and decided to sing one of their own, the song of armed resistance by putting their faith in Frantz Fanon. “Colonialism,” Fanon says, “is not a thinking machine, nor a body endowed with reasoning faculties. It is violence in its natural state, and it will only yield when confronted with greater violence”.

Colonialism is about controlling the resources of a powerless people for the colonizer’s benefit. King Leopold of Belgium killed nearly 15 million Congolese. To keep the colonial subjects in submission, the amputation of hands and limbs was used frequently.

Later, American capitalism chose General Mobutu, a butcher of Congo, to assassinate Patrice Lumumba, a Marxist and the father of the nation, and the reign of terror against the people resumed. Do the colonialists/capitalists lack humanity? For Marx, a capitalist is an embodied capital, hence an inanimate object devoid of emotions. If threatened by his people, he can bludgeon them with an identical ruthlessness that he uses against the colonial subjects.

After the Trojan War, when Ulysses was striving to reach Ithaca, his home, he passed the Island of Sirens, a mythical creature, half woman and half bird. Their music was enticing.

To avoid being lured, he plugged his sailors’ ears with beeswax and tied himself to the ship mast, asking his crew not to set him free but to tie him to the mast more firmly if he begged to be released. Adorno simulates Ulysses with a capitalist who in pursuit of purpose and profit not only makes his people deaf but also shuns his pleasure.

Netanyahu, a symbol of imperialism, is acting identically to Ulysses. He has tied himself to the mast of a rudderless ship, which is sinking. By denouncing reason, Zionism has not only strived to dehumanize the Palestinians but through devious indoctrination has clogged the minds and the ears of its “chosen people”, consequently dehumanizing them simultaneously.

The Israeli Jews have been reduced to a mass of rag-tag fascists; a half-crazed creature best suited to the lunatic asylum. While slaughtering the babies in Gaza, they are living in the fantasy of being the “chosen people” of some sadist Yahweh. What else is schizophrenia? “Human beings,” RD Laing says, “seem to have almost unlimited capacity to deceive themselves, and to deceive themselves into taking their own lies for truth”.

What happened on October 7 was a response to seventy-six years of tyranny and occupation. Strangely, instead of recognizing the terrorism perpetrated by Zionism for the last century or so, the Western left and right-wingers are unequivocally condemning the violence of October 7blaming the Palestinian resistance of committing a terrorist act. It would be naïve to suggest that freedom struggles are devoid of violence. Nevertheless, there is a difference between the violence perpetrated by the victim and the victimizer. Violence can be ethically wrong but what about occupation?

During the struggle, history does not follow ethics for it is written with blood and tears of the oppressed and they make history not under ideal conditions, but the one given to them. And if the given conditions are violent how else are they supposed to launch a struggle against their oppressors?

Israel has wilfully chosen the self-destructive path. To become a flag barrier in advancing the interests of the hegemonic power, it has seared and violently wrenched its humanity as “beggars maim their children to make them fit for their future life” (Laing).

The crazy creatures attacked the prison to free the rapist soldiers who sexually assaulted the Palestinians at the Sde Teiman detention, interrogation, and torture centre. They were not only expressing their right to demonize and dehumanize the Palestinians under their occupation for the last 76 years but also challenging the writ of the army, the latter under pressure from the global South is desperately trying to hold a face-saving operation, a show trial of their colleagues in a Kangaroo court.

The infuriated Bezalel Smotrich is demanding “an immediate criminal investigation to locate the leakers of the trending video that was intended to harm the reservists and that caused tremendous damage to Israel in the world…Itamar Ben-Gvir has argued that any action – even gang rape – is permissible if it is undertaken for the security of the state”

Not again Israeli Jews vociferously say, not with the Zionists. The others, including the critical self-hating Jews, are not the part of the elite bloc. They are antisemites and hence must be treated as goyim. The dual nature of this conflict is ironic but revealing as well.

The Israeli apologists in a state of denial, are refusing to recognize the genocide perpetrated by Israel. If it had any intentions, they say, it could have nuked Gaza, decimating everything from the face of the earth. The second, and more interesting one is the claim of the conflagration of anti-Semitism in the US and Europe.

Barring a very few war veterans still alive and living mostly in the West, has anyone seen any nuclear apocalypse in our lifetime? From the war in Vietnam and Korea to the destruction of Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, and Afghanistan, a place from where the US had to escape in a hurry, humiliated and disgraced, losing its face for everyone to see, the weapon has never been used.

The talk of nuking Vietnam was in the air when the American students overwhelmed the streets with massive protests. The American ruling class lost its nerves. Defeated and disgraced, it was forced to leave Vietnam. In the 21st century, in full view of the world, nuking the enemy can be a dream but has nightmarish propositions.

Secondly, stopping the supply of food, water, and medicine for an unlimited time to a besieged community of 2.3 million people comprising half of the babies is nothing but a live streaming of genocide. The act is more sadistic than nuking the people redeeming them from their miseries in one blow.

According to Lancet “Applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death to the 37,396 deaths reported, it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186,000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza”. If the loss of nearly 10% of the population isn’t genocide, what else is the euphemistic name, the guillotine, can have?

The drumbeat of anti-Semitism is incessantly being played, but its noise has developed into a sadomasochist mantra that irritates the ears of all and sundry, even the enlightened Jews are not fascinated by it.

In one of his talks, Norman Finkelstein stating the definition of anti-Semitism says, “Only a Jew, insecure in society because of his faith, suffering discrimination in his/her job, unable to rent/buy a property wherever s/he wishes, and/or is segregated in a community because of his/her beliefs, appearance, or race can claim to suffer from antisemitism”.

When nothing of that sort is happening, on the contrary anyone opposing Zionism is meted out with discrimination, how can Zionism claim to have a massive increase in anti-Semitism?

As the ongoing conflict has exposed many a myth, it has also revealed the fragility of the US rule-based [dis]order. The UN, the ICJ, ICC, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, etc., all have lost their power and authenticity.

Netanyahu, a declared war criminal addressed the US Congress and received as many applauses for as many lies and minutes he spoke. However, the upside is that the biggest Jewish lobby in the US (AIPAC) has not only been exposed but is also facing a complete rejection from the younger generation of the US, especially the conscientious Jews.

All the Western leaders have lost their metaphysical characters. People are unhappy and “unhappy consciousness,” Marcuse says “lends itself easily to political mobilization”.

Sheer coercion can delay the revolt, as it happened in the Western universities where students were forced to leave the encampment as they were arrested, suspended, and even expelled from their universities, seeking heavy grants from the warmongering capitalist lobby, but “thinking” Adorno says, “has a secure hold on possibility. It refuses the secure hold on the foolish wisdom of resignation”. The memory of revolt and its spirit cannot be erased from rebels’ minds.

As intellectuals keep discussing the difference between ethnic cleansing, genocide, and intent of genocide—which Hitler can only be alleged for but cannot be proved of carrying for no authentic source directly attributes the jargon of the “final solution” to him—the babies in Gaza and West Bank are dying without any respite.“There is a singing in dark times,” Brecht says, “about the dark times”. He never says when the “mowing of the lawn” will come to an end. He never had a crystal ball, for he wasn’t a Rothchild.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2024