As I watch the United States deploy two aircraft carriers and a major naval strike force to the Middle East to threaten its enemies and help Israel bring death and destruction to Palestine, I am reminded of a story told by St. Augustine about a pirate captured by Alexander the Great. who asked him how he dared to attack the sea. “How dare you attack the whole world,” replied the pirate. “Because I only do it with a small boat, people call me a thief. You, who do it with a great navy, are called an emperor.
Indeed, after two decades of US imperial wars that ravaged the Middle East, President Joe Biden’s administration is at it again, issuing threats and ultimatums to Palestinians and other resistance groups while protecting its client state, Israel, as it bombs Gaza and reoccupies the rest. from Palestine; history be damned. As if the millions of victims of the US-Israeli war were not enough, the US administration is now an enthusiastic accomplice in the Israeli genocide against Palestinian Arabs besieged in Gaza.
Like other empires, old and new, America is careful to talk about human rights because it contributes to the decimation of human life. He claims to respect the laws of war but continues to justify Israel’s murder of thousands of Palestinians. The benevolent empire expresses sadness at the sight of a single dead child, but provides the deadly weapons and political justification to massacre thousands of women and children. Its diplomats preach peace while propagating war.
For decades, America and Israel have waged asymmetrical wars in the Middle East, devastating countless communities and displacing millions under the guise of self-defense. They demonize their enemies and dehumanize their victims to justify a massive and disproportionate use of firepower, causing as much damage and suffering as possible.
After decades of war, the United States and Israel have developed an extensive lexicon of newspeak and media guides that highlight the “rightness” of their cause and the “wickedness” of their enemies. They claim, for example, that Israeli armed forces are “trained, tasked and operating to ensure the safety of Palestinian civilians,” not to mention the countless Palestinian civilian casualties so far in Gaza.
Despite the huge difference between Hamas and Al-Qaeda, the fear-mongering that followed the September 11 attacks on the United States, which ended the debate and led to catastrophic failures over the next two decades, been reproduced as if nothing had changed. Soon, Hamas, an Islamist resistance movement born and marked by an oppressive occupation, came to be seen as ISIL (ISIS) incarnate – evil, fanatical and brutal – which must be wiped out at all costs.
The American and Israeli narrative is the same; it is as consistent as it is misleading. Their fight is “in the name of civilization against barbarism”, of “good against evil” and “with moral clarity against moral bankruptcy”. Their fight is always in self-defense, their wars always just, their intentions always noble, even altruistic. They fight for democracy and freedom against totalitarianism and terrorism. If their allies are terrorists and dictators, as is often the case, they are quickly rebranded as freedom fighters and moderates.
Such justice would be worthy of respect if only it were honest and true.
The US-Israeli strategic liaison, born during the 1967 war and occupation, has been the main driver of instability and violence in the region ever since. By replacing the Europeans as the region’s leading imperial power at the height of the Cold War and becoming Israel’s patron, the United States paved the way for an imperial colonial alliance that also occupied and subjugated the peoples of the Middle East. East.
The United States designated Israel a regional watchdog in the 1960s, a regional influencer in the 1970s, a strategic asset in the 1980s, and it has since been considered at the forefront of American warfare against terrorism. Paradoxically, almost every time Israel rejected a US peace initiative, it was rewarded in one way or another with a new deal with the Pentagon and increased military assistance, the latest exceeding $38 billion. .
For decades, the United States and Israel have demanded that Arabs choose between Good and Evil and told them that they are “either with the United States or against us” as they wreak havoc in the region . In 1958, the devil was Egypt’s pan-Arab leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser; in 1968, he became Palestinian guerrilla leader Yasser Arafat; in 1978, the Iranian Ayatollah; and when all three no longer posed a threat, Saddam Hussein emerged as the new devil. Predictably, after Saddam was “contained”, Osama bin Laden became the devil of all devils, until Saddam re-emerged as the devil in chief. And since 2008, Hamas and Hezbollah, supported by Iran, have become the new regional devils that must be defeated once and for all.
This became clear during the latest war in Gaza, when the United States redeployed its armadas to the region last month to protect Israel from any potential regional retaliation by Lebanese Hezbollah and allow it to carry out its genocide against the Palestinians in response to the Hamas attacks of October 7.
Before looking for their next “evil” enemy in the Middle East and plunging the region into more chaos and violence, the United States and Israel might want to look inward for a change, and spare us all a another horrible war.
Ten thousand deaths and tens of thousands of wounded Palestinians later, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is back in the Middle East trying to turn Israel’s war crimes into diplomatic and strategic success. Expect the modern-day imperial emissary to force Arab regimes into a new Pax Americana around colonial Israel.