Why they are flattening Gaza
While some differences exist, the duo considers its achievement epoch-making: the Arabs have been reduced to a defeated and demoralised lot, humbly offering as tithe a three trillion-dollar investment in America – with a personal jetliner as the topping.
While Israel dropped bombs from the sky over Arab lands, regular flights of Gulf carriers to and from Tel Aviv continued undisturbed.
But the victories go further: Iran was once the outlier, the last to challenge United States-Israeli domination of the entire Middle East.
After 12 days of war its defiance is now merely token. Months earlier its allies in Lebanon and Yemen had been decimated.
Mass starvation in Gaza – now just piles of rubble – has eviscerated Hamas.
Meanwhile, Israeli soldiers with automatic weapons enjoy daily target practice with live ammunition on Palestinian children as they chase food trucks.
Pronouncing moral judgement on these two men may offer relief to some but to what end?
Let's recall that even the International Criminal Court was openly derided in Washington as a 'kangaroo court' when it ordered Netanyahu's arrest.
Blaming individual leaders alone misses the point. No matter how powerful, they invariably reflect what their base wants.
Consider that in 2024, as Netanyahu addressed the United States Congress amidst his hospital bombing campaign, American lawmakers – mostly Republicans but also many Democrats – repeatedly gave him standing ovations.
We surely need to dig deeper lest we miss the systemic forces shaping the mindset of both leaders as well as Western publics. To see why Israel wants to eliminate as many Palestinians as possible is easy.
Over its entire history it has deliberately cultivated a Holocaust-driven us-or-them mentality. While Hamas' October 7 attack on Israeli civilians was morally abhorrent, Israel has systematically sought to blame all violence on the people it has conquered.
But what about America? What beef does America have with Palestinians living half a world away?
The ruins of Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip. — AFP
In the past, American presidents pursued their political objectives in the Middle East through 'gentler' covert means like CIA-led coups and targeted assassinations but never through overt genocide captured on camera.
The shift, I will argue below, owes to the rapid rise of Social Darwinism and evangelists of the Bible Belt.
Social Darwinism became a popular belief in 19th-century America soon after Darwin discovered the laws of biological selection. Darwin – a true scientist – forcefully rejected this 'Darwinism' as extreme misapplication and distortion of his work.
Nevertheless, the capitalist robber barons of his time found this piece of science very useful. British philosopher Herbert Spencer first coined the phrase 'survival of the fittest' and advocated that this is the way things ought to be, not just how nature functioned.
Society advances, he wrote, when 'its fittest members are allowed to assert their fitness with the least hindrance.' The unfit should 'not be prevented from dying out'.
America's cowboy culture readily absorbed Spencer and, in time, Donald Trump inherited this mindset from his father, a property dealer.
His political career, culminating in his presidency, was launched by his popular book, Think Big and Kick A**: In Business and in Life .
This crude title bespeaks its crude content: being self-serving and brazen brings success, and ultimately, success is all that matters, regardless of how it's achieved.
Elon Musk – the richest man in the world and Trump's ex-sidekick – couldn't agree more. 'The fundamental weakness of Western civilisation is empathy', he declared, adding that 'woke' liberals have weaponised empathy and are 'exploiting a bug in Western civilisation.'
Musk trashes social insurance such as Social Security, which he calls a 'Ponzi scheme.'
His newly launched political party will be still kinder to America's ultra-rich and yet harsher on ordinary people. As for starving Palestinians: the fewer the better. What do they produce, he asked rhetorically.
While heartlessness might explain why the US has stopped trying to feed the world's hungry, it fails to explain why America helped Israel flatten Gaza. For that, we must glance at Trump's political base.
In 2024, Trump won over roughly 80% of white conservative, evangelical Christian voters. (Incidentally, most conservative Pakistani-Americans also voted for Trump.)
During my professional visits to the US over the decades, I've often found myself watching white televangelists hawk their beliefs and marvelled at their well-honed delivery skills.
Their core message: the Bible commands you to give your absolute support for Israel.
Then, without batting an eyelid, they equate the Promised Land of Moses's time with today's nation-state of Israel.
One such preacher – later disgraced because of his weakness for women – I watched particularly. Jimmy Swaggart, who died last week, was a Christian Zionist who made his living off the Bible.
'Israel is God's prophetic time clock,' that heralds Armageddon and Jesus's return to Earth, he sermonised. His son, Donnie Swaggart, carries on his mission today: 'We must stand for Israel, for Jerusalem is the chosen city of God, where Jesus Christ, the King of Kings, will one day reign forever.'
That Trump ordered the US embassy to be shifted from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in his first presidency was surely not accidental.
No logical exercise can ever disprove what the Swaggarts and their ilk preach.
Reason can never defeat faith, particularly when it stands behind a holy book. But what about Social Darwinism? Is that unassailable too?
Here one can be more hopeful. Its nonsensical pseudo-scientific claims – virtuous people beget virtuous children being one – are readily disproven. But more importantly, as Darwin himself insisted, cooperation within the human species is fundamental for societal well-being.
Cooperation, in turn, demands empathy. Without empathy we'd be living in a dystopic Muskian jungle populated by selfish individuals pursuing selfish needs.
To prevent more Gazas, people in every country must boldly confront their ingrained beliefs, repudiate pure selfishness, and internalise the profound truth that humanity is one.
Else the scum shall continue rising to the top, eventually becoming that country's political leaders. — Dawn/ANN
Pervez Hoodbhoy is an Islamabad-based physicist and writer.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Star
17 minutes ago
- The Star
Analysis-For Europe, 30% US tariff would hammer trade, force export model rethink
BRUSSELS (Reuters) -The 30% tariff on European goods threatened by U.S. President Donald Trump would, if implemented, be a game-changer for Europe, wiping out whole chunks of transatlantic commerce and forcing a rethink of its export-led economic model. European ministers meeting in Brussels on Monday remained convinced they can bring Trump back from the brink before his Aug. 1 deadline and reach a deal that would keep the $1.7 trillion two-way trading relationship broadly intact. But the wild swings in Trump's mood towards the European Union - which he has sometimes labelled as friendly and at other times accused of being set up specifically to destroy the United States - keep the 30% threat very much alive for now. "It will be almost impossible to continue the trading as we are used to in a transatlantic relationship," EU trade chief Maros Sefcovic said of the 30% rate before meeting ministers and officials of the 27 EU capitals to give them an update. "Practically it prohibits the trade." EU officials had been hoping they could limit the damage by agreeing a baseline tariff around 10% - the one currently in place - with additional carve-outs for key sectors like autos. Last year the United States accounted for a fifth of all EU exports - its largest partner. Trump's bugbear is the $235 billion U.S. deficit generated by the goods component of that trade, even though the U.S. earns a surplus on services. UPEND POLICY PLANS The impact of making European exports - from pharmaceuticals to autos, machinery or wine - too expensive to be viable for American consumers would be instantly tangible. Economists at Barclays estimate an average tariff rate on EU goods of 35% including both reciprocal and sectoral duties combined with a 10% retaliation from Brussels would shave 0.7 percentage points off euro zone output. This would eat up most of the euro zone's already meagre growth and likely lead the European Central Bank to cut its 2% deposit rate further. "Inflation would likely undershoot the 2% target more deeply, and for longer, prompting a more accommodative monetary policy stance – with the deposit rate potentially reaching 1% by (March 2026)," the Barclays economists said. An earlier estimate by German economic institute IW found tariffs of 20% to 50% would cost Germany's 4.3 trillion euro economy more than 200 billion euros between now and 2028. While arguably small in percentage terms, that lost activity could still upend Chancellor Friedrich Merz's plans to push through tax cuts and spend more on renewing the country's long neglected infrastructure. "We would have to postpone large parts of our economic policy efforts because it would interfere with everything and hit the German export industry to the core," Merz said at the weekend of a 30% rate. NOWHERE TO RUN Further down the line, it raises bigger questions over how Europe recoups the lost activity to generate the tax revenues and jobs needed to fund ambitions ranging from caring for ageing populations to military rearmament. Under its existing policy of trade diversification, the EU has done well in striking preliminary deals with new partners but - as the continued delay over completion of the giant EU-Mercosur trade pact shows - it has struggled to get them fully signed and sealed. "The EU does not have different markets to pull up to and sell into," Varg Folkman, policy analyst at the European Policy Centre think tank said of the long and complex timelines involved in classic free trade deals. Some observers have argued the stand-off with Trump is what the EU needs to complete long-delayed reforms of its single market, boosting domestic demand and rebalancing its economy away from the exports which account for around half of output. The International Monetary Fund has estimated the EU's own internal barriers to the free flow of activity are the equivalent of tariffs of 44% for goods and 110% for services. Mooted reforms such as creating freer cross-border capital markets have made little headway in more than a decade. "It is easier said than done. There isn't an agreement to deepen. The barriers are imposed by the EU members themselves to benefit their own," Folkman said of the web of national regulations. How all this plays into the EU's negotiating strategy in the less than three weeks ahead remains to be seen - but for now, the bloc has stuck to its line of being open to talks while readying retaliatory measures if they break down. One thing that might persuade Trump to reach a deal, some European observers suggest, is that the lingering uncertainty may by itself push back the timing of the Federal Reserve interest rate cut the U.S. president so desires. "The latest developments on the trade war suggest that it will take more time to get a sense of the 'landing zone' on of course raises uncertainty for everyone, including the Fed," AXA chief economist Gilles Moec said. "With this new for cutting quickly get even harder to justify." (Additional reporting by Christoph Steitz in Berlin; Writing by Mark John; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
The Sun
22 minutes ago
- The Sun
Malaysia joins global Gaza emergency conference in Colombia
KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia is among over 30 countries participating in the landmark Bogota Emergency Conference in Colombia, aimed at coordinating legal and diplomatic responses to the worsening situation in Gaza. The event, co-hosted by Colombia and South Africa under The Hague Group, includes nations such as Algeria, Brazil, China, Cuba, and Indonesia. The Hague Group Secretariat stated that the July 15-16 conference represents the most ambitious multilateral effort yet to challenge Israel's actions in Gaza and enforce international law compliance. 'It is part of the effort to strengthen multilateral support for accountability and justice for the Palestinian people,' the group said. UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese called the gathering a historic turning point. 'The Bogota conference will go down as the moment in history that states finally stood up to do the right thing,' she said, praising The Hague Group's formation as the most significant political development in 20 months. Albanese is expected to critique the international system's failure to protect Palestinians and the selective enforcement of international law. 'For too long, international law has been treated as optional—applied selectively to the weak and ignored by the powerful,' she noted ahead of the conference. She will also address recent US sanctions against her and emphasize the UN Charter as a moral and legal guide. Colombian President Gustavo Petro stressed the need to shift 'from condemnation to collective action,' while Vice Foreign Minister Mauricio Jaramillo Jassir warned that alleged genocide in Gaza endangers global legal norms. The conference follows The Hague Group's formation earlier this year. Its eight founding members, including Malaysia, committed to upholding ICJ provisional measures on Gaza, preventing arms transfers to Israel, and blocking military supply vessels. The event also seeks to implement the ICJ's 2024 advisory opinion and UN General Assembly Resolution A/RES/ES-10/24 by September 2025. - Bernama
Free Malaysia Today
24 minutes ago
- Free Malaysia Today
Israel to issue 54,000 call-up notices to ultra-Orthodox students
Ultra-Orthodox Jews block a main road during a protest in Bnei Brak, Israel, opposing military recruitment and conscription. (EPA Images pic) TEL AVIV : Israel's military said it would issue 54,000 call-up notices to ultra-Orthodox Jewish seminary students following a supreme court ruling mandating their conscription and amid growing pressure from reservists stretched by extended deployments. The supreme court ruling last year overturned a decades-old exemption for ultra-Orthodox students, a policy established when the community comprised a far smaller segment of the population than the 13% it represents today. Military service is compulsory for most Israeli Jews from the age of 18, lasting 24-32 months, with additional reserve duty in subsequent years. Members of Israel's 21% Arab population are mostly exempt, though some do serve. A statement by the military spokesperson confirmed the orders on Sunday just as local media reported legislative efforts by two ultra-Orthodox parties in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition to craft a compromise. The exemption issue has grown more contentious as Israel's armed forces in recent years have faced strains from simultaneous engagements with Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Houthis in Yemen, and Iran. Ultra-Orthodox leaders in Netanyahu's brittle coalition have voiced concerns that integrating seminary students into military units alongside secular Israelis, including women, could jeopardise their religious identity. The military statement promised to ensure conditions that respect the ultra-Orthodox way of life and to develop additional programmes to support their integration into the military. It said the notices would go out this month.
