In July 2006, in the midst of Israel’s war on Lebanon that ultimately killed around 1,200 people – the overwhelming majority of them civilians – then-US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice nobly described the attack as ” birth pangs of a new Middle East.” .
Although the metaphor was undoubtedly aptly orientalist, it raised some questions since the goal of the birthing process is not usually to kill the baby. The role that Rice and her boss, then-U.S. President George W. Bush, were supposed to play in this metaphorical arrangement was also questionable, but “bloodthirsty obstetricians” were a potential option. This was especially true given the US decision to hastily send bombs to the Israeli military to help it forge the “new Middle East.”
Secretary Rice invoked the analogy of “birth pains” to support the U.S. argument that a ceasefire should be thwarted at all costs to prevent a return to the “status quo ante” in Lebanon. To the extent that the “status quo ante” meant a country where apartment buildings and villages had not been turned into bomb craters and rubble, the delivery was a resounding success.
And yet, the growing public support for Hezbollah in Lebanon and the wider region during the 2006 Israeli war was not exactly the new Middle East that the United States and Israel had imagined emerging from the womb of slaughter. But hey, the bigger the enemy, the greater the possibilities of homicidal obstetrics in the future.
The summer of 2006, of course, belonged to an earlier era of Israeli massacres, when killing 1,200 people in 34 days was still considered extraordinarily shocking. Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip, during which Israel killed some 1,400 people in 22 days in December 2008 and January 2009, also belongs to this era. In 2014, during Operation Protective Edge in Gaza, the Israeli army killed 2,251 people. in 50 days.
We have now apparently passed into an age of obscenely intensified labor pains; The latest Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip has killed more than 20,000 Palestinians in just the first two and a half months, and the destruction in the besieged enclave is on a scale that the human mind can barely manage.
As in Lebanon in 2006, the United States has increased its support for the aggressors, while repeatedly opposing a ceasefire or an end to the savagery. Aesthetically at least, the “status quo ante” has long since disappeared in Gaza, with the territory now resembling the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust. As it stands, the new “new Middle East” is defined by Zionist genocide – the problem for Israel being that no matter how much bombing you do, you can’t truly wipe out a people who refuse to stop ‘exist.
In mid-December, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken again argued in favor of continuing the war, arguing: “How come there are no demands made on the aggressor and only demands addressed to the victim? Anyone with a modicum of logic may be surprised to learn that by “victim” he meant the state responsible for the murder of more than 20,000 Palestinians in Gaza in two and a half months.
Regardless, reality inversions are commonplace within the American political and media establishment.
The same goes for orientalist discourse. Since the start of this latest carnage caused by Israel, there has been no shortage of paternalistic and infantilizing speeches from said power, determined to condemn Hamas – and by extension the Palestinians in general – as uncivilized troublemakers who have caused this whole apocalypse. on themselves.
Certainly, the United States’ orientalist contempt for a region that receives one Western “civilizing mission” after another is an integral component of supporting the entire imperial mission. After all, there’s no better reason than relentless delay to bombard people into something, uh, new — a place where the United States and Israel take the lead entirely and without question.
The case of Iraq, another region of the Middle East which has suffered for decades from the condescending and calculated rhetoric of the United States as well as explosives, confirms that a “new” Middle East is hardly a Middle East better, at least in terms of human well-being. And so on.
Writing for Time magazine at the time of Condoleezza Rice’s “birth pains” diagnosis in 2006, journalist Tony Karon noted that Iraq was “Exhibit A of the administration’s ‘New Middle East.’ Bush, and it’s a bloody mess that gets worse by the day. .”
It remains to be seen what, if anything, can “come of” from the current genocide in Gaza – another “bloody mess” that is naturally far more disastrous for the babies, children and older people who actually have to live through it, not for their assassins. Tel Aviv and Washington, DC.
Whatever happens in the new year, a baby born between the United States and Israel is in no way viable in the Middle East – and the genocide should be aborted immediately.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Tel Aviv Tribune.