TODAY is Prophet Mohamed’s birth anniversary and it comes at a time when history is witnessing one of its most infamous acts of brutality of one nation against another nation. In society, it is called genocide. Genocide against the Palestinian people by Israel’s government and army has been taking place in Gaza since October last year.
We are on the verge of one year of unrelenting genocidal violence against the Palestinian people in Gaza that may not have any parallel in world history when we look at the statistical dimensions. Here are those statistics. More doctors, journalists, babies, children, women and aid workers from international agencies, have been killed in one month than any other conflict between nations at war in the entire history of the world.
There have been two internecine global wars in world history – the First World War and the Second World War. In both of these wars, there are no statistics to match what has been written above.

Yet the genocide goes on. I was not born when the Nazi government of Germany from 1933 was killing Jewish people.
But from reading, I learnt that the world did not intervene to stop Germany from committing genocide and the atrocities stopped when Germany was defeated, primarily by the Soviet Union (now Russia) and secondarily by the Western Allies. The genocide committed against the Jewish people is termed the Holocaust.
The Holocaust was so deeply anti-human that world civilisation was determined that it should never happen again. Many organisations were set up to prevent an occurrence such as the United Nations, the World Court and the International Criminal Court. But it is happening again, in Gaza right at this moment, at this very moment.

How does one explain the current genocidal plans of the Israeli government that has been in motion for 11 months now? Why hasn’t the world intervened to stop the second Holocaust in the contemporary world? There are a number of factors that explain this, but three hold special significance in understanding current international relations.
First, the small state of Israel is not the powerful, global hegemon that cannot be stopped by the world community. Israel is in fact a small country (8,000 square miles and eight million people) that has no special niche in world politics and global political economy. Israel is not a significant achiever in any endeavour of life.

It is not a producer of any special resource that global trade depends on. It is not a country that has a resilient industrial and manufacturing base. Agriculturally speaking, Israel is barren land. This small country depends on its livelihood from its special relation with the United States.
Against this background, Israel’s capacity to wage genocidal war against the Palestinian people of Gaza is because it is nurtured and protected by some of the most powerful countries in the world. If these countries terminate their special relationship with Israel it would crumble the way the hand crushes a piece of paper. The brutal reality then, is that by complex logic, it is not Israel by itself that is sustaining its war in Gaza.

Secondly, there is a huge element of culture that is involved in Western support for Israel which is pyrotechnically manifested in the proclamation of the German Government that Israel is the reason for Germany’s present existence. Two German chancellors have referred to this in this way: Israel is Germany’s reason of state; a very frightening concept that may impinge on international law.
The West is closer to Israel than any other country in the Middle East, because Israel is the only quasi-Christian, English-speaking country in the entire Middle East (even Lebanon is not Christian and Western), whose essential cultural fulcrums are similar to the West.

Israel is accepted as a European nation in most sport competitions in the world, which is an absurdity because it is not in any way situated in the continent of Europe. Yet Lebanon which is closer geographically to Europe is not a European participant in world sports. Perhaps the most powerful manifestation of this cultural realism is Türkiye’s relation with the European Union (EU). Türkiye has been applying for membership of the EU the past 40 years and has been rejected each year.

It is a Muslim nation that will never see membership in the EU in millions of years. There is then an automatic, deep, ideological sympathy for Israel once Israel is involved in a confrontation with its Muslim neighbours.
Finally, the genocide in Gaza has shown the nature of Arab civilisation in the Middle East. The Arab nations which when combined have a figure of over 200 million people, just lack the backbone to read the Riot Act to Israel.
DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.