SINCE the mid-sixties, as I became aware of the world around me, I developed a deep admiration for Western civilization, its culture, and the lifestyle of its countries. This feeling of admiration will most likely remain for the rest of my life. However, the positions taken by certain senior Western politicians such as the American President Joe Biden, the British Prime Minister Sir Keir Rodney Starmer, and the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, as well as the horrific tragedy endured by over two million Gazans, left me profoundly shocked. The shock was not only due to their shameful stances on the tragedy but also their stubbornness in disregarding the overwhelming reports from the press, television, and international organizations documenting the death toll, particularly among innocent civilians. These reports detailed the horrors of a tragedy spanning 15 months, marked by massacres that no city in the 20th century had witnessed.
In addition, the heinous crimes carried out by Israeli soldiers deliberately and openly in front of dozens of TV cameras without any fear or shame only deepened this shock. All of the above had a profound impact in exposing the emptiness of Western civilization, as no civilization can truly exist without humanity. There was no justification or understanding for the positions taken by the leaders of these countries and others regarding the violence that unfolded before the eyes and ears of the entire world. It was carried out with financial backing and massive military support from Western democratic nations, causing psychological distress for millions, particularly in the West and among those who admired the West. They were forced to listen to and witness the screams of hundreds of innocent people, as they watched their homes, loved ones, farms, schools, hospitals, mosques, and churches being destroyed.
All this killing and destruction was being carried out without mercy, with no head of state who supported Israel or adopted its point of view offering any sympathy or even the slightest care. I specifically refer to those who shamelessly gloated over the suffering of the Palestinians. They have all contributed to the collapse of everything that Western civilization has built since the end of World War II, including the foundations of international law and the moral code. We have all begun to live in insecurity, having entered an era of barbarism, an era where the strong are granted the right to do as they please to the weak. Foreign Policy magazine (FP), regarded as one of America’s serious publications, is published by Graham Holdings, the former owner of the Washington Post. FP often reflects the views of Washington’s political and academic elite, and advocates for America’s role in leading the global order and promoting democracy and human rights.
On February 7, FP published an article titled “How Gaza Shattered the Myth of the West?” by the wellknown Indian writer Pankaj Mishra. It was an excerpt from ahis upcoming book ‘The World After Gaza’, set to be released by Penguin in ten days. Below is the article, with some modifications: On April 19, 1943, a few hundred young Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto seized whatever weapons they could find and fought back against their Nazi persecutors. By that time, most of the Jews in the ghetto had already been deported to extermination camps.
The fighters, as Marek Edelman, one of their commanders, explained, were attempting to preserve what little dignity they had left. Marek Edelman recalled, “In the end, all that mattered to us was not allowing them to slaughter us when our turn came. We had no choice but to choose how we would die. After several weeks of desperate resistance, the fighters were eventually overwhelmed by despair. Most were killed, while some of the survivors took their own lives in the final hours of the uprising in the command bunker while the Nazis pumped gas inside. Only a few managed to escape through the sewer pipes. The German soldiers then set fire to the entire ghetto, using horrific fl amethrowers.”
By Ahmad alsarraf
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