In his seminal book, The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of World Order, Samuel Phillips Huntington warned of the danger of not recognising and respecting multicultural civilisations by the West led by the United States of America. The champions of democracy and human rights have exposed once again the precipitous decline in principles, values, morals and beliefs in relation to the hellish and tragic developments in Gaza strip of Palestine. Instead of giving it a chance to flourish, multicultural ideal has been killed ever since the creation of Israel on Palestinian land. Admitted that Hamas, considered a terrorist Islamist outfit by the West, fired the first shot but the retaliatory brutal military drives launched by Israel for weeks now have surpassed all limits of civilised norms and violated the United Nations (UN) conventions.
The overriding concern for lording over the rest of the world has made the US blind. Ever since the World War II, the US has assumed the role of leading the rest of the world. It is exactly at this point, Huntington has warned of the danger of falsely becoming aware of the cultural superiority of the Western civilisation. The man of prophetic vision has identified eight civilisations the world has ever known.
The emergence of culturally, economically and militarily strong nations with China representing the Sinic culture closely followed by Vietnam and South Korea is going to challenge US superiority. Huntington's much anticipated coalition and cooperation between Sinic and Islamic cultures as demonstrated by China's brokering of peace between Iran and Saudi Arabia, between Israel and Middle Eastern Muslim countries were certainly not to the liking of the Biden administration. It did not wait to snap the tie before China and ME powers could take any advantage of the bonhomie about to take shape.
The result is a humanitarian crisis in the small land strip of Gaza where the Palestinians have been confined with no route to escape and are being hunted in their holes like rats. Bodies of babies and children in parents' arms or heaps of bodies of men and women on donkey carts carried to graveyards everyday in a frenetic rush, lest the carriers turn into bodies like those they carry, are nothing but the bodies of civilisation. Those who have taken the agency of espousing democratic values and human rights have exposed their moral bankruptcy here. The poisonous seed they planted 75 years ago has now borne fruits that are vitiating every possible positive human quality. All that emerges as an output of the claustrophobic conflict for the Palestinian civilians is anti-life where survival depends on chances and the chances are becoming increasingly tenuous.
That the world has come a long way off from the past three centuries when Western dominance was beyond question. The problem with the Western powers is that they have surrendered leadership to the US with the cessation of colonial rule. But colonialism was replaced neo-colonialism. Both of which are now on their way out. Yet, the beneficiaries of such systems are trying hard to preserve the remnants of the system that propped their empires.
So they need wars – wars that must be fought on foreign soils. Although Vietnam should have taught the mighty powers a lesson, it did not quite do so. This is why wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were unjustly imposed upon. Right now, internecine strives torn Sudan and Syria where the feuding parties have their backers in the West. Russia also has stakes there and is unwilling to abandon its allies. The West Bank and Gaza including East Jerusalem, where Israel has forcibly established its capital, are Palestinian territories.
On November 29, 2012, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) reaffirmed "the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and to independence in their State of Palestine on the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967" by Israel. Palestine was also accorded the non-member observer State status in the UN. Next month a UN legal memorandum recognised the preferred name "State of Palestine". But the UNGA's initiatives were not backed by the required moves to have a full-fledged sovereign government. Instead, the Palestinian National Authority was put in place as an alternative title to it. But why? As many as 135 UN-member nations have recognised the State of Palestine but most Western Nations, Israel and their patron the US have not done so.
The intention is suspect. They have kept the carbuncle in the ME untreated for it to accumulate poisoned blood and erupt from time to time so that their lordly and deceitful mediatory role is sought after. Sale of deadly arms is yet another governing motive. A Palestinian sovereign state could have long been a reality with clear borderlines between the two warring parties. East Jerusalem could also be handed over to its rightful owners, the Palestinians that is. But such a peaceful solution to the conflict would go against the interest of the West, the US in particular.
No wonder, many of the Latin American countries which have bitter experience of US conspiratorial role in the past are either withdrawing their diplomats from Israel or snapping diplomatic relations. The carnage Israel is committing in Gaza proves overwhelming for individuals and nations. It is the worst disgrace to human civilisation in the new millennium.
© 2024 - All Rights with The Financial Express
