TODAY marks one year in which a nation’s Jewish army committed genocide against another country with a different type of racial grouping. On this day last year, the armed forces of Israel began a genocidal campaign against the Palestinian nation in Gaza.

Please consult an article written by Julia Frankel for the Associated Press (January 11, 2024). In that commentary, Frankel wrote that what Israel did in Gaza from October 7 last year is one of the most destructive acts in the history of war. Today on the anniversary of the genocide, almost 80 per cent of the territory is destroyed.

As I write, the genocide continues and it will continue because the West that colonised the Third World centuries ago is backing what Israel’s colonisation of Gaza. In such support for Israel, I think the West’s relation with the Global South has been permanently damaged.

Contextually, we have to go back to the immediate post-colonial era. The West left a democratic template for the post-colonial societies after Independence. The template had three sides – liberal, democratic governance, an independent judiciary and the independence of the Fourth Estate (the media).

As the independent countries settled down to pursue developmental goals, this blueprint became the subliminal instinct among Third World peoples. The countries of the Global South used this blueprint as their standard bearer. The peoples and governments of the post-colonial world at a deep Freudian level believed that the West was the part of the world to emulate in the complete role of government.

It is my contention that in no other part of the world the template is so deeply embraced as in the CARICOM region. There are governmental leaders in CARICOM today that believe that the Privy Council in London is a more professional and independent body that the Caribbean Court of Justice. Many of these CARICOM leaders still believe this, even after the Julian Assange miscarriage of justice took place in the UK right in front of the eyes of the world.

It is the contention of this columnist that the template handed down by the former colonial countries is now in tatters, destroyed by what the genocide in Gaza revealed. I now will briefly discuss the eventual awakening of the minds of Third World peoples brought about by the unspeakable hypocrisy of the West that for so long thought us that the West was the embodiment of democratic government.

The first casualty of the genocidal atrocities was the media in the Western world. Today, no reporter, no journalist in any Western media house, I repeat, all the media organisations in the West, refused to print any submission by journalists or columnists who use the words – genocide in Gaza. The unprofessional reporting of the Gaza genocide by the Western media is incredibly shameless.

I was surprised and almost got a heart attack when the Saturday edition of the Guardian (UK) carried an item that points to destruction caused by the missile attacks by Iran on Israel last week. After the attack was over, all Western media houses reported that the missile salvos were ineffective.

Secondly, the double standards the West has used in judging how democratic are governments have graphic. All Western countries that colonised the Third World, including the United States after it became the uni-polar force in the world after the Second World War, drilled into the heads of people of the developing world that the foundation of democracy is respect for free speech and the right to be heard.

Since Israel began its genocidal campaign, all Western countries have demonstrated that its practice of democracy is billions of miles from what they thought us during colonial rule. There has been only one Western country that has not arrested or jailed or victimised or harassed students, academics, artists, entertainers and media practitioners for protesting genocide in Gaza or speaking out against Israeli bestialities and that is Ireland. The saddest part of this rejection of the right to protest has been the expulsion of students in the US whose graduation were affected by their expulsion either from the universities or from the countries they lived in.

Thirdly, the genocide in Gaza has resulted in the de-recognition by the Third World that the West does not have the moral conscience anymore to continue to set the guidelines on what international behaviour should be like. If Russia is wrong to invade the Ukraine, then the West cannot tell the Global South that it is right for Israel to destroy Gaza. The fourth causality is the demise of international law and the UN. Unfortunately, space has run out to discuss how Gaza has brought about the demise of international law, the UN and has changed we way we now see Hitler and Nazi Germany.

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.