We are the only victims

 » The « lethal applications » of Western racism, writes Professor Xiang, are the fear of change, the ontology of bivalent dualism, the invention of the « barbarian » as racial Other, the metaphysics of colonialism and the insatiable nature of this racist psychology. All these « applications » are exploding, in real time, in the Middle East. The main consequence is that the construction of Western « values » has already perished, buried under the rubble of Gaza.  » Pepe Escobar (November 24)

Stunning images have reached us from Gaza. As soon as the ceasefire began on November 24, videos showed people returning to their homes: lines of poor people, with their bundles of belongings, albeit badly manhandled by the Israeli army, headed back towards northern Gaza, towards their destroyed homes. Or other lines of people, supposedly refugees in Egypt, cross the border back into South Gaza.

Incomprehensible. This is contrary to the plan for ethnic cleansing underway in the Gaza Strip, through genocidal acts, both physical and cultural. What courage and self-sacrifice it takes for the Palestinian people to go to their deaths in this way! That’s the romantic image that absolves the  » deadly applications of Western racism « . And maybe there’s a crumb of that. But above all, there are simple facts: the blockade on everything, on food, water, fuel, medicines and other necessities, ⎼ cesarean sections are performed today without anesthesia ⎼, leaves only bad choices: either being crammed into the south, in the most awful promiscuity, dying of hunger and disease, under the bombs; or in the north at home, also under the bombs and in destitution. It’s these desperate choices that drive people, even if each situation is certainly different. Or being in Egypt, isolated, where they don’t want you, is not a solution for the future, apparently less so than coming back. A hope that may also be firmly rooted, as shown in this short sequence with a child from Gaza who expresses his joy at the temporary ceasefire and hopes for a permanent one. The joy of a child in the midst of ruins… Accompanying this movement, some fifty Red Crescent aid trucks reached northern Gaza for the first time since October 7. This was the reason for the delay in the prisoner exchange on Saturday, as resistance to the shipment had to be overcome. A drop in the bucket for this destroyed part of the strip, but highly symbolic. Until, perhaps/probably, the horror begins again.

On the other hand, in our collective West, we have difficulty understanding this. Besides, don’t we say, at least many of our European « elites », that the people there must obey the plan drawn up for them, leaving the north and then the south of the Gaza Strip? It’s for their own good, to free them from the horrible Hamas that coerces and kills them indiscriminately. Everything is Hamas’s fault, just as everything is Russia’s fault: « theontology of bivalent dualism « : the good guys and the barbarians. Today, we’ve been bottle-fed with the ideology of our supposedly Western values, unable to break out of the pattern and understand what we’re observing.

Let’s listen carefully to what the famous Israeli writer-journalist Gideon Levy had to say a few years ago, in a conference: » JI don’t remember a only occupation where the occupier presents himself as the victim, not just the victim, but the only victim alive. Pour say it better, I quote here the late Golda Meir, whom I quoted above, but the quote is so strong that I me must from use it again. She once said that we will never forgive the Arabs for forcing us to kill their children, we are the victims, we are forced to kill the children, poor us, and as a victim and the only victim in history, that gives us the right to do what we want and no one will tell us what to do because we are the only victims. »

Christophe de Brouwer

Honorary full-professor and former President of the School of Public Health at the Free University of Brussels, November 28, 2023.