File photo of Gaza in ruins after Israel’s indiscriminate bombing
Israel continues to murder Palestinians in Gaza, as Europe and the U.S. look on, with token attempts to urge restraint. As casualties mounted, many believed the U.S. would adopt a moral stance and call for an immediate ceasefire, but to no avail. This has precipitated a debate on the moral underpinnings of Western democracies, with little doubt left that perceived strategic and national interests, not questions of humanity, drive “developed” nations. As one Arab commentator noted: “In their support for Israel’s brutal bombardment in Gaza, Western powers and media have shown their true colors of hypocrisy and racism. The reverberations will be felt across the Arab and Muslim world.”
A Mauritanian professor of philosophy, Al-Mustafa ould Klaib, was equally repulsed. “I have become ashamed before my students whom I have taught, over decades, the enlightenment and modern Western philosophies glorifying concepts like truth, rationalism, humanism, values, ethics, progress, justice, equality, human rights, liberty and criticism. I apologize to you, my students, because I was complicit in deceiving you. The West is the biggest lie history has known.” Social media is similarly littered with criticisms of Western media’s coverage of the Gaza offensive—particularly how it “worked to manufacture consent for a genocide.” The disenchantment of the Arab world threatens to spread further, especially among the youth, who increasingly see the West as solely committed to its own supremacy—even at the cost of thousands of civilian lives.
The anger is not solely restricted to civilians. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in his usual blunt style, recalled the Crusades, questioning if the West wished to initiate another “Crescent-Crusader conflict.” The Western world’s heavy-handed attempts to curb the mounting anger within its own populace—recalling the same policies it has long criticized in the “third world”—is triggering further backlash. Sensing the shifting tides, U.S. President Joe Biden this week finally admitted that Israel’s indiscriminate bombing was “losing support” in the rest of the world. However, in the absence of concrete actions to curb Israel’s ongoing war crimes, this appears little more than empty rhetoric, cynically designed to shore up support for a president whose popularity has dropped near its lowest level. The world is watching as the West fails Gaza; and it will not soon forget its criminal apathy.