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The stakes are too high for the world to fail Palestine
PHOTO: REUTERS
Martin Luther King Jr said that injustice anywhere threatens justice everywhere. That warning has never been so relevant as today, when the global powers are themselves violating the rule-based world order established after the Second World War, with goals to avoid wars, maintain peace, uphold human rights, and assure security and justice to every nation-state and every people in this global society.
The horrible genocide in Gaza has slaughtered over 37,000 people—two-thirds of them women and children, injured over 85,000, and buried alive countless people under the 220,000 collapsed buildings in the tiny strip of land just 25 miles long and about five miles wide. This ethnic cleansing, and the crimes against humanity are being carried out with the full military and political support of none other than the US—once the architect, founder, and supposedly the de facto defender of the international rule of law. Such a monstrous injustice to a defenceless and long-persecuted people who endured ethnic cleansing by the settler colonial state, Israel, for the last 75 years under the patronage of the West, especially of the superpower of our time, is undoubtedly giving messages to the entire world that the “might is right” policy of the dark ages is back, and no one is safe.
The Rohingya genocide in 2017 occurred in Myanmar while global powers watched. Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 and inflicted scorched earth destruction, mass murders, and inhuman atrocities. There are other examples of massive human rights violations by global powers. If the global community does not take measures to hold them accountable, the ultimate victim of this dangerously irresponsible pattern will be humanity in its entirety.
Washington’s polished mask is removed, and its ugly and rotten state is exposed to the world as it repeatedly counters and vetoes resolutions at the UN General Assembly and the Security Council, cares little about world opinion, undermines the verdicts of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and opposes the International Criminal Court’s requests for arrest warrants against top Israeli officials including the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. These actions are sending alarms to the rest of the world that the world order based on universal principles is becoming dysfunctional. It is utterly disgraceful that the US Congress has invited Netanyahu to speak before a joint session.
Realising the stakes of the failure to address the current Gaza genocide, millions of people are coming to the streets to protest. They know that politicians and decision-makers operate in a socio-political environment that must be changed by the people.
It is a dangerous signal to many states and non-state actors who struggle peacefully and within the law because they believe the international community will effectively address their issues. However, as they see the present hopeless state of affairs, these people and organisations often resort to illegal and violent means, abandoning peaceful resistance.
On the other hand, authoritarian regimes and predatory elites all find encouragement in a lawless world in which they can promote their vested interests by exploiting, subjugating, and victimising countless people. The alarming rise in authoritarian regimes and dysfunctional democracies in the world is an outcome of vicious geopolitics created by the global and regional powers under the heavy influence of predatory elites.
The US President John F Kennedy warned the world, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
This explains the desperate events of October 7, when Hamas attacked Israel. All peaceful means have been systematically blocked for decades.
As Ilan Pappe, a renowned Israeli historian, clearly exposed in his work: terrorism did not exist among the Arabs in the Middle East. Terrorism was introduced to the region by the Zionist forces by creating fierce organisations like the Hagenah in 1920, the Irgun in 1930, the Stern Gang, and others later, all to terrorise the Palestinians to drive them out of their homes and homeland, where their forefathers had lived for centuries. The project of establishing a settler colonial state started more than one hundred years ago when the Palestinians were persecuted as these Jewish terrorist organisations were trained and armed by Britain and funded by the wealthy Zionist elites of Europe. Arabs were no match for the Zionist forces.
Israel was created in 1948 after destroying half of Palestine, perpetrating 31 massacres, and driving 750,000 Palestinians—then half of the population of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea—out of their homes and homeland to make space for the immigrant Jews from Europe.
Four decades later, after the Hagenah was created to terrorise the Palestinians, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was created in the mid-1960s. The Palestinians waited patiently and peacefully, hoping the international community would address their issues. When the oppression continued, violent resistance started its course from the state of utter hopelessness and frustrations for which the inaction or inadequate actions of the global community were responsible.
During the last few decades, especially since 9/11, the “War on Terror”—a two-decade-long Western military onslaught without addressing the root causes of grievances and inhuman sufferings of countless people of the region—has been enormously painful, deadly, unjust, and in the end most counterproductive.
These are all tactics and agendas of transnational predatory elites to exploit, subjugate, and vilify targeted people to serve their mutual vested interests. The Palestinians are the worst and longest victims of this heinous agenda.
The people in the top positions of the military-industrial complex of Western powers and big businesses are the strongest allies of the pro-Israel elites, who all collude with each other to consolidate their collective power, establishing “strangleholds” on many Western governments, most dangerously on the US government. It’s not only the Palestinian people, but the whole world—directly or indirectly—who is a victim of this corrupt and repugnant state.
Today, the world is again at a crossroads. The enormously powerful transnational elites and their alliances are hijacking Western democracies and the international rule of law. On the other hand, the people of this global society are ever more determined to establish their rights and dignity. Two mega-confrontational forces are dangerously approaching each other—one for the rule of law and justice and the other for authoritarianism, exploitation, and subjugation of the masses.
Europe’s might-right policy caused the two most devastating wars of the 20th century, bringing the world to its knees. That is why, right after WWII, the world leaders reached a consensus to establish the new world order in 1945. The international rule of law recognises the equal rights of all nation-states with respect to their sovereignty, territorial integrity, and security. Since the UN adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 to mandate each member-state to uphold the rights, new optimism and vigour swept the world. As a result, 36 countries became independent during the post-WWII period, ending the colonial era.
The global rule of law ensures our collective well-being, freedom, and dignity. We, the people, are threatened when these universal ideas are undermined or trampled. The people of this global society are the stakeholders, and consequently, we all must fight to preserve, protect, and defend the world order that aims to help us achieve justice and peace.
Israel’s fanatic and extremist government has already conflagrated the Middle East, a region where the global powers and the regional powers are increasingly getting entangled, each moving in their own way, failing to see the bigger picture and pushing the world “sleepwalking” into World War III.
A people-to-people global movement to restore the rule of law, reclaim democracies from the mouth of monstrous forces, and establish good governance that upholds human rights and sustains stability worldwide is the paradigm shift that is needed now, an imperative necessity for a healthy global community.
Ruby Amatulla
is executive director of the US-based Muslims for Peace, Justice and Progress, and the Bangladesh-based Women for Good Governance.