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Dominique De Villepin, former Prime Minister of France, who famously led France’s opposition to the Iraq war, recently described the term ‘Occidentalism’ (currently the prevalent sentiment in much of Europe) as being the notion that “the West, which for five centuries managed the world’s affairs, will be able to quietly continue to do so”. He continues:
“There is this idea that, faced with what is currently happening in the Middle East, we must continue the fight even more, towards what might resemble a religious or a civilizational war”.
“That is to say, to isolate ourselves even more on the international stage”.
“They’ve gone “all in” on a certain moral and ethical framework of the world, and faced with a situation where the West’s moral fabric has been openly exposed and refuted, they find it extremely difficult—and perhaps fatally impossible—to withdraw”.
It is ditto for an Israel (which is umbilically linked to the West): Were Israel to imagine that its former Arab allies might look the other way, whilst the Jewish state attempts to annihilate resistance in Gaza,- and then expect these allies to help police and pay for a Gaza security apparatus to rule there, they would be guilty of wishfull thinking.
And, if either Washington or Israel assume this ‘after-Gaza’ plan can unfold in the same moment that militant settlers on the other side of the terrain build their settlement kingdom with the express goal of founding Israel on the Land of Israel (thus expunging Palestine altogether), that notion too would constitute a fantasy, both strategically and morally incoherent.
It won’t work. Israel will not be able to generate either the Palestinian partners, nor the global allies, it needs to co-operate in such a scheme.
The situation in the Middle East has radically transformed. Whereas Palestine was about national liberation, today Palestine is the of the symbol of a wider civilisational re-awakening – the ‘end to centuries of Regional humiliation’.
Equally, whilst Zionism in Israel was largely a secular political project (Greater Israel), today it has become messianic and prophetic.
The point here is that we continue to think about the Gaza issue in the ‘old way’ – through the prism of secular material rationalism. This leads to conclusions such as ‘Hamas objectively is weaker than Israel’s IDF’, and therefore rationally the latter must prevail as being the stronger party.
In this way of thinking, though, there is only ‘one single reality’ with only the descriptions and interpretations of this ‘reality’ differing. Yet there is demonstrably more than ‘one reality’ as collectively, we progress from one consciousness to another. In one consciousness, for example, ‘Hamas is destined to fail’, and the discussion turns to US and Israeli notions of ‘what follows in Gaza’.
In another state of consciousness however – one becoming ever more prevalent in the region – the ‘reality’ is that any ‘rationally’ negotiated compromise between two clashing eschatological structures is impossible. The more so should the conflict escalate horizontally – overflowing the boundaries of Gaza.
Other ‘fronts’ likely might open, as Gaza is seen – whether or not Hamas is crushed – as the revolutionary spark lighting a transformation in the Middle Eastern and the Global South’s consciousness (note the list of Global South states now cutting diplomatic ties with Israel).
The West however, has opted to back itself in a silo of its own making – as defined by its demand for a singularity of messaging that all of Europe ‘stand with Israel’; refusing any ceasefire; and saying ‘no limit’ to Israeli action (subject to law).
A veteran Israeli commentator writes, we are dealing with:
“an instance (Israel), where a country is so devastated, shocked, humiliated and naturally consumed by rage that retribution becomes the only end. The moment when a country realizes that its deterrence failed; and perceptions of its power have been so critically diminished – that it is driven solely by the motivation to restore an image of power”.
“It is a dangerous point where decision-makers feel they can dispense with military theorist von Clausewitz’s axiom : “War is not merely a political act but a real political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, a carrying out of the same by other means”.
Europe, taking its lead from Washington, simply is disregarding the Clausewitz axiom, by tying itself unreservedly to Israel’s military operations, and at a real risk of collusion with whatsoever may transpire there.
Put plainly, the absolute command that there must be an unambiguous distinction between truth and falsehood and singleness of meaning pertaining to the Palestinian issue, plus no ‘pro-Palestinian messaging’, reflects a deep insecurity in the West – as if one-sided messaging could be the remedy to a civilisational clash. In the current climate, to even call for a ceasefire can lose one one’s job.
Rather, this stance serves only to isolate Europe from playing a role on the international stage – save that of threatening escalation against Iran, should Hizbullah open a northern front into Israel.
Here, we also face the problem of material rationalist ‘old think’ – one that sees deploying aircraft carriers and scattering air defences around the region as a manifestation of such potential overwhelming, crushing force that it constitutes deterrence, whilst Israel finishes the business of quelling the Palestinian irruptions in Gaza and West Bank uninterrupted.
Here again, the myth of deterrence has been superseded by the asymmetrical tactics of the new warfare. Conflicts have become geopolitically diverse, technologically more complex and multidimensional – particularly with the inclusion of military-adept non-state actors. This is why the US is so nervous about Israel entering upon a two-front war.
The ‘other reality’ is that unalloyed fire-power is ‘not everything’. The management of controlled escalation is the new dynamic. The US may think (material rationally) that it alone possesses escalatory dominance. But does it, in this new multidimensional, asymmetric world?
Further, the ‘other’ state of consciousness might be reading matters differently: Israel’s Gaza pounding may prove to be more prolonged than the US might expect, and its outcome may not produce the definitive restoration of Israeli deterrence for which most Israelis yearn. Viewed dynamically, Israel’s assault on Gaza might produce, rather, a further metamorphosis in the regional consciousness toward anger and mobilisation, impinging a new dynamic into the geo-strategic ‘reality’.
Despite deterrence being presented as being such an aim (allowing Israel to find a new security paradigm for itself), military escalation will not bring any sustainable accord by which the division of Mandate Palestine into two states can be reached. It will put it further from attainment.
Might the present turmoil in Palestine then, simply and quietly, be put to rest under White House management?
To view the Israeli-Hamas war as a local event would be another error of ‘old think’. This has become a war for Palestinian existence – between the Hebraic vision of Israel, and the Islamic vision of its own civilisational Renaissance. In this second vision, the Palestinian wound constitutes a lacuna that has festered for 75 years, as a result of western mal-management.
This Palestinian question will not now fade away – nor be resolved by restoring the discredited Palestinian Authority, nor vague ‘talks’ about some ‘one-day’ Palestinian State. We must re-configure our thinking – onto the longer plane – to take account of the intrusion of shifting dimensions in consciousness.
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Americans senators congressman, pentagon staff and the media were terrified of Hizbollah joining in and repeating something m much worse than 2006 .This led to the concerted and well coordinated responses from US with EU in tow .
Gaza’s are not fighting against Israel.It is fighting against combined EU USA and Israel. Even Australia has joined.
West also needed a win after debacle in Afghanistan ,Ukraine and after sordid display of unacceptable behaviors in Iraq and Syria. Israel is their handyman and midwife.
Also the shameful of France exit in Sahel has opened a wound in the psyche of France not seen since Algeria .
Non western actors will note that any fight against any western vassal is likely a fight against the combination unless it is Israel .In that case it is certain, immediate ,and massive .
This will reshape the thinking of Hizbullah , Iran ,and even of Syria.
Russia has been trying to protect Israel and has been allowing it to mount aggression agisnt itself and Syria . This observation will be reanalyzed by Iran China and Syria.
How doe4s Ukraine and how does Taiwan factor in after Gaza 2023 war ?
Agreed, NATO Pact censorship of Palestinian claims of right reflect profound insecurity – elite panic, in fact. But this is not a war between “the Hebraic vision of Israel, and the Islamic vision of its own civilisational Renaissance.” It’s a war of the US impunity regime against the universal world consensus, institutional and doctrinal, affirming rights and rule of law.
What’s here termed “old think,” Morgenthau’s realism, remained US ideology even after Morgenthau abandoned it in despair. It’s handy because it lets the state dismiss the world consensus on rights and rule of law as “idealist” notions inapplicable to the overriding reality of legally inadmissible force. However, now realism tells you Washington’s the weakling, so it’s giving unacceptable answers, like, tap out asshole, you lose.
The problem is not two irreconcilable viewpoints. The problem is that the US cannot justify its conduct in terms of world consensus it’s committed to accept. US influence, international “waterfall” privileges, and even sovereignty depend on the US making its case in terms of rights and rule of law. The US can’t do this. When they try, the outside world makes fools of them. As Iran points out, the US is a laughingstock. They’re too weak to even scare you to stop laughing.
So it’s not some great schism, it’s routine maintenance, like bouncers body-slamming a pervy drunk. Countries go off the rails all the time, and the world knows what to do.
—the ‘end to centuries of regional humiliation’….all made possible by the bold actions of the russian federation under putins leadership. the change we’re seeing in the world, whether the global south, africa, and the middle east is all being driven by this and the new strategic and economic alliance between russia and china. the world has been waiting for this moment and now that the hegemon can no longer, make his petulant demands with impunity and expect the real world to toe the line with their illegal and haphazard sanctions and embargoes, they conveniently forget are an act of war. the latest u.n. vote on the 60 year embargo of cuba, is quite telling with only the u.s. and israel, voting in favor. the u.s., their western vassals and israel are becoming geopolitical leper colonies. a fitting end to colonialism, good riddance.
It’s not “the West” anymore but rather the US which has grabbed the reins unto itself since ’45 and the rest have become just accomplices. The US is really not “West” but is a mongrel hybrid. It has no real culture except idiotic commercialism pitched at the lowest denominator and has a short history from inception to the present. It is an economic empire, not a real country, that has been grasping for the world’s wealth like a roving bandit. It has less and less to offer and other countries are jumping ship as the opportunity presents. Venal, stupid, short sighted, the US has squandered all its advantages and is reduced to threats and force to get its way. It is only natural for other countries to want to get out from under and develop along their own lines.
The world needs new solutions to the Palestine-Israel dilemma, of that there can be little doubt and not much discussion. All parties involved are too busy being king sized dicks even with their micro-penises in full view. Will foreign born Israelis and those with short ancestral histories in the region leave Palestine willingly if the IDF fails in a two front war? Will Gazans be willing to live in the Sinai and wait for their West Bank cousins to move and let the Ashkenazis have Israel? Or is this the prelude to the second coming and the apacolypse the Zionists have been fantasizing about for years?
You gotta be a well-sheltered academic to think “the West” managed the world for five centuries.
The bankers managed to get most of the world into deep debt while flattening their own working class and destroying opportunities for their progeny.
It is the former colonies that now “manage” the West. Destroying once civil societies and turning them into chaotic engines of destruction.
Every time the “indispensable nation” the “light on the hill” pulls out its six-shooter it blasts another hole in its foot and now its deputy dog is pushing the U.S aside and saying “let me have ago” and blasting two holes in the U.S foot.
No coming back for the U.S now, it will have to distance itself from Israel and the mess in Europe before countries will even talk to them, as for Israel, Carthage comes to mind.
Humanity will not allow white Europeans to continue murdering to steal. They will have to start living off their work and abandon banditry or they will have to disappear.
Nature is life but for racist parasites.
well said
‘It is ditto for an Israel (which is umbilically linked to the West’
For now. The real goal is to link it to China via belt and Road. The Jewish diaspora will flee the mess they left behind in the U.S and go to China.
‘Equally, whilst Zionism in Israel was largely a secular political project (Greater Israel), today it has become messianic and prophetic.’
With respect (and I hate to sound like someone pro-zionist) what evidence is there for this? Israel’s assault on Gaza has been much more hesitant than it would have been in the past simply because the Jewish camp is more split than ever before. If zionism has become more ‘messianic’ it is because diaspora Jewry ( and the Tel Aviv bubble) has become more secular and the lower class in Israel has become more religious (ultra orthodox and Mizrahi Israelis having more children). From this imbalance comes the problem of populism in Israel. Netanyahu (despite being by anyones standards corrupt) is easily the most divisive figure in Israels history is the devil to secular Jews who embrace the two state solution and the diaspora Jews who do not want to be caught looking bad supporting what is essentially a criminal state. It seems plenty of zionists would be happy with a two state solution (with the Palestinians subtly undermined as per Jewish standard operating procedure) and a nice coastal strip to live their lives in.
Israel has tried the Yinon plan (divide the middle east along sectarian and ethnic lines) and it has failed. The bulwarks were Syrian and Iran. If Jews could they would nuke Iran tomorrow morning. If zionism was currently anywhere near as ‘prophetic’ as the author suggests U.S marines would already be dying in droves in the tunnels of Gaza.
Or is this the prelude to the second coming and the apocalypse the Zionists have been fantasizing about for years?
Zionists may very well think this is it.
But it will be seen as a failed (or not so much) dress rehearsal at the end of the impending most horrific bloodshed ever. Although for the inhuman beasts coalition of banksters, Zionists, outright Satanists and the rest of the scum moving towards their very explicit goal of leaving a mere 500 mil total of living humans it will be a huge success.