I BEGIN this essay with two absorbing statements that people in the post-colonial world should internalise and lodge deep within the walls of their collective psyche. Top Chinese diplomat Wang Yi told South Koreans and Japanese at an international conference that ethnic genetics make it impossible for them to look like Caucasians and they should know where their roots are.

Indian Foreign Minister, Dr. Jaishankar in an interview, said: “Europe has to grow out of the mindset that Europe’s problems are the world’s problems, but the world’s problems are not Europe’s problems.”

All the young people in the post-colonial period who are going to become policy-makers in their countries need to carry these two statements in their head forever.

Russia, situated in Europe, invaded a country that the European powers felt created instabilities in Europe, so they asked the entire world to condemn and sanction Russia. The developing world was not impressed and maybe could have come around to ostracising Russia. But then Gaza threw a monkey wrench in the works.

Gaza came and Europe told the world Gaza is not a European situation but an Arab issue. Genocide has been committed in Gaza, but the Europeans have supported Israel. European leaders tripped over each other to reach Israel to hug and assure a Prime Minister of a county with just 8,000 square miles and nine million people. And a Prime Minister facing criminal charges for corruption.

But Europe wants the Global South to sanction one of the great historical nations of 147 million, whose land space is the largest in the world and has been a historic friend to the colonially subjugated nations of European colonialism. That country is Russia.

Have the billions in the Global South learnt from the Gaza genocide? Commonsense should guide the peoples of the Global South after the year 2023. That year has passed into history but that year will forever remain a crucial year in the modern history of the world of the awakening of the peoples of the post-colonial world.

Genocide in Gaza and the insensitivity to it by all, not most, but all the countries in the West, including Ireland, whom we expected better from, should teach the peoples of the Global South that they have to look after their own interests because that is the way of life in international affairs. The Germans and the US have led the way in supporting Israel and they have done that because it is in the interests of the US and Germany.

The Americans have a silicone explanation for its forever embrace of Israel – it is in the interest of American national security. The Germans have said that Germany has a special instinct in protecting Israel because of Germany’s genocidal treatment of the Jews.

But such a statement is pregnant with inhuman thoughts. If Germany has a social, protective hand over Israel, does that allow Germany to condone the every process from which sprang that protective mentality – the act of genocide? If any country should have rushed to condemn Israel’s genocidal urges it should have been Germany after Germany’s perpetration of genocide against the Jews and the Namibian people.

There is a disturbing situation that is occurring in Canada at the moment. Canada has put an enormous amount of requirements on Gazans applying for refugee status. Commentators say that the criteria are designed to make it impossible to secure approval. But Ukrainian refugees are pouring into Canada. And there are absolutely no impossible criteria.

Ukrainian refugees by the millions have poured into Western countries and are readily accepted but not people from Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq, where the West had military operations in which dozens of millions were displaced. Are the people from the Global South blind to these double standards?

So where does the Global South go after the tragic year of 2023. It can only go in one direction. The route that maximises the interests of the Global South. The post-colonial world has been shown by the colossal tragedy of Gaza in 2023 that it has to formulate its own policies that serve the needs of the peoples of the South and not to surrender even for a fleeting moment to dictates of the West.

Gaza showed in 2023 that the West cannot be and will never be a standard bearer for humanitarian justice, philosophical truths, and democratic endurance. The West failed the world in 2023 and is arrogant, unapologetic and barefaced about the protection of its interest. One would like to think as I wrote in my caption yesterday that Gaza in 2023 has changed the world forever.