The language of the era is power and arrogance, the truth of which the parties concerned have tried to obscure through manipulation of collective memory and history.
However, digital media has revealed the truth about this world, which is false in its morals, values, enlightenment goals, and scientific discoveries, behind which all forms of domination, control, and historical falsification are hidden. We are not here to condemn the West as much as we condemn ourselves, whose history is no less bad than Western arrogance and Western centralism.
The failures of Arabs and Muslims are no less significant in their wars over power, sharing influence, and spreading the national and religious caliphate in the name of Islam and the Arabs. This is what the opposition expressed in what was known at the time as the wave of the Arab Spring, the spread of extremist movements, and excommunicating others by considering them part of the infidel group, as Netanyahu does today by describing Arabs as animals. Humanity and all other inferior descriptions.
Let us not forget the experience and control of the Rightly Guided Caliphs and the Umayyad and Fatimid periods in Egypt, in addition to the stage of Arabism and Arab nationalism, one of the reasons for its failure was the elevation of the value of Islam over the rest of the cultures and identities present in the region. The tendency toward empire was shared by all nations and peoples. However, what I am interested in pointing out in this article are the historical and cultural differences and disparities between the Arab Islamic and Western civilizations.
There is no doubt that what the two parties did is humanly and morally condemnable, because the issue of killing and violence is an issue that can be overcome in negotiations and diplomatic and political solutions. But the problem with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is that the patience of negotiations and concessions has run out due to the Israeli party not recognizing the Palestinian partnership, and this is of course legitimate. A new, old is being revived in the region according to new plans that are more comprehensive and destructive than before.
The tragedy of the century today is that you have lost your confidence in the possibility of achieving justice and that whoever holds it is unable to implement it because he is guilty of the Jeffrey Epstein scandals, which have appeared to threaten all who object to Israel’s will and decisions, and this is clear in the way Netanyahu deals with US President Joe Biden and the orders he receives daily.
Regarding his demand to intensify military support and the participation of the United States in a broader war in the region, this is explained by the nature of today’s conflict in the Red Sea and piracy operations, the mutual escalation between Israel and the Houthis, endangering international navigation, and transferring the conflict more broadly to Erbil and Pakistan in an attempt to exhaust Iran in its geographical depth, and exchanging regional messages, in response on the recent Kerman incident in Iran.
Perhaps whoever watches the scene from afar will see the picture more accurately and clearly that the conflict is innocent of the suspicion of moral, humanitarian, and national standards. Rather, it is a war of interests, influence, and historical empires trying to regain their historically acquired rights. However, the big question today is that what the Arabs are doing in order to regain their diminished and oppressed pride. Is the Riyadh season enough to confirm and activate the message that we are fine as long as we are normalized and under Chinese sponsorship?
With its pledges, and Tel Aviv continued to provoke Iran in its geographical depth, or through terrorist groups such as the Baloch and others, with the aim of exhausting it and containing it security-wise and politically? What will happen if the Expo 2030 project does not succeed, especially since the West will not allow stability in this region? Historical experiences are evidence of Britain’s lack of commitment to Sharif Hussein and its promise to him regarding the Arab state and confronting the Ottoman occupation at that time and Turkification, in addition to the background of the Sykes-Picot conspiracy and others, and the promises that Israel made to Egypt after. What did the Camp David Accords achieve? Where is Egypt today in terms of its strategic depth in the Horn of Africa? Where is Sudan today after normalization with Israel and the Sudanese Spring? Where is Lebanon after the October 17 Revolution? Where is Syria after a war that lasted more than 11 years?
Realistically, we are witness to the times and the fact that since October 7 (and for decades before that date), Tel Aviv’s Western and Arabized allies have not only witnessed what Israel did to the Palestinian people, but also supplied them with military equipment and bombs. Ammunition, diplomatic coverage, and historical and moral justifications. On the other hand, the American media provided ideological justifications for the slaughter of the Palestinians and their genocide by describing Israel as a victim. Restarting the Jewish Holocaust and using it in the media to justify war crimes, manipulating collective memory, and falsifying the cognitive narrative of history.
Why is there always more sympathy for the Jewish genocide than other genocides that are no less bad, such as Rwanda, the genocide of the Uyghurs, the Armenians, the Kurds, the Murex Indians, the Ukrainians, and the Sunni Muslims in Darfur, Bosnia, and let us not forget Latin America, Mexico, Peru, South Africa, Bangladesh, Iraq, Nigeria, etc. .
Completely with his Zionism. It is entirely consistent with the worldview that non-Europeans are not fully human, or that they are “human animals,” as Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant has publicly declared.
This absolute disregard for the Palestinians is deeply rooted in the German and European philosophical imagination. The prevailing wisdom is that the Germans, because of the guilt of the Holocaust, developed a strong commitment to Israel, and this is the tragedy of the century in terms of how to improve the course of this arrogance while there was no self-reconciliation, recognition and apology for its crime. This also applies to the reality of France with Algeria and its colonies in Africa. All nations apologize and shake hands. However, the European tendency does not remain arrogant and refuses to apologise.
But for the rest of the world, as is now evident from the remarkable document submitted by South Africa to the International Court of Justice, there is complete consistency between what Germany did during its Nazi era and what it does now during its Zionist era.
I believe that Habermas’s position is in line with the German state’s policy of participating in the Zionist massacre of Palestinians. It is also in line with what is seen as the “German left,” with its racist, Islamophobic, and xenophobic hatred of Arabs and Muslims, and its blanket support for acts of genocide committed by the Israeli settler colony.
We would be forgiven for imagining that what Germany suffers today is not Holocaust guilt, but genocidal nostalgia, as indirectly indulged in the massacres Israel has committed against Palestinians over the past century (and not just the past 100 days).
This moral decline is not just a political misstep or an ideological blind spot. It is deeply written in their philosophical imagination, which remains irremediably tribal.
Here, we must summarize the phrase of the glorious Martinican poet Aimé Césaire: “Yes, it would be useful to study clinically, in detail, the steps taken by Hitler and Hitlerism and to reveal to the very distinct and very humane Christian bourgeoisie of the twentieth century that, without realizing it, has Hitler in it, and that Hitler inhabits him, that Hitler is his devil, that if he criticizes him, he is inconsistent, and this, in essence, is what he cannot forgive. Hitler is not a crime in itself, a crime against man, not the humiliation of man in itself, but the crime against man The whiteness, the humiliation of the white man, and the fact that he applied to Europe colonial measures which until then had been reserved exclusively for the Arab, Indian and African peoples.
In conclusion, Palestine today is an extension of the colonial atrocities that Cesar cites in this passage. Habermas seems to be unaware that his support for the slaughter of Palestinians is completely consistent with what his ancestors did in Namibia during the Herero and Namaqua genocide in Africa, believing that the world does not see them for who they are.
Ultimately, in my view, Habermas did not say or do anything surprising or contradictory; Quite the opposite. It was entirely consistent with the incurable tribalism of his philosophical lineage, which wrongly took a universalist position.
The world has now been liberated from this false sense of universality and has begun to search for its identity and dignity according to a discourse of resistance and a new narrative with which it addresses the colonizers in today’s language. Philosophers like V. Y. Modimbe in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Walter Mignolo or Enrique Dussel in Argentina, or Kojin Karatani in Japan have far more legitimate claims to cosmopolitanism than Habermas and his ilk ever had.
In my opinion, the moral bankruptcy of Habermas’ statement on Palestine represents a turning point in the colonial relationship between European philosophy and the rest of the world. The world has awakened from the false slumber of European racial philosophy. Today, we owe this liberation to the global suffering of people like the Palestinians, whose heroism and long-standing historical sacrifices have dismantled the blatant barbarism on which Western civilization was based.
Author: Ornella Sukkar – A Lebanese journalist specializing in international relations and oriental studies.
(The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of World Geostrategic Insights).
Image Credit: Mahmud Hams/AFP