I HAVE done 37 columns on Gaza for the Guyana Chronicle. This one will be 38. There will be more to come if there is no editorial decision from the newspaper to stop my analyses. Why 38? Because as someone trained at UG to have a university degree in history and who subsequently went on to study history voraciously, the genocide in Gaza has lacerated my psyche.

I offer three reasons for this torment of my soul. One is that the first paper I wrote, the very first essay I did after I entered UG, was on the Holocaust for Professor Mary Noel Menezes. I could not believe that in Nazi Germany, what happened to the Jews occurred among humans.

The second reason is that the Holocaust was my baseline for looking at the inherent flaws of Homo sapiens in the first year philosophy course that I taught at UG for 26 consistent years. For many years, I showed the Holocaust movie Schindler’s List to my class to drive home the point that Homo sapiens have congenital fault lines.

The third reason for penning 38 pieces on Gaza was the shocking, incredible and unbelievable double standards of the West after the genocide in Gaza began. I grew up in this country where all the contents of what democratic governance should be like came from our colonial rulers: the British, then the European and the Americans.

The leaders of these countries, during colonial British Guiana and after Independence, consistently lectured to us on what democratic governance should be like. That democratic rule must have a meticulous tolerance for free speech, freedom of assembly, the right to dissent, a free media landscape, an unfettered judiciary but most of all, respect and acceptance of the right to life.

There was no letting up on the pressure of the Western countries to lecture to post-colonial leaders that there are requirements of democratic government. From the immediate post-colonial period right up to 2024, the West that gave Guyana and other post-colonial nations developmental aid lectured to us on what they to see in the exercise of power.

Then came Gaza. On October 7, 2023, a group of Hamas militants broke the physical barricade that encircled Gaza from Israel, erected by the colonial power of Israel and attacked, killed and kidnapped Israeli citizens. From October 7, Israel responded in bestial ways, never before seen in history.

In no other conflict in human history within the space of one month has so many doctors, journalists, women, babies, aid workers, and employees of international organisations been killed by intense bombing. Yet the West from October 7 to this day continues to embrace, openly and shamelessly, a country that has committed genocide and continues to do so. Where are the priceless values of democracy that the West people told the post-colonial world they must have?

The destruction of Gaza has opened the eyes of not only the peoples of the Global South but the world in general. The destruction of Gaza has informed every soul on Planet Earth that the West does not practice the values of humanity that they instructed their former colonies to embrace. The exposure of the West is complete and it would not have happened if it wasn’t for Gaza.

It began in October when President Biden went over to Israel days after Israel bombed a hospital, killing over 5000 patients. Here were the words of Biden as he spoke to Netanyahu; “It’s not you guys who did it but the guys from the other side.” All the armies of the Western countries have asserted that the explosion was caused by a Hamas rocket that backfired. These are the countries that taught us about democracy. The BCC’s investigation of the hospital bombing disputes, the conclusion Western leaders have come to.

From Biden’s speech about the hospital to the French pronouncement on the arrest warrant for Netanyahu by the International Criminal Court (ICC), the West’s doctrine of democratic values has been dissolved in the ashes of Gaza. The French government has announced that Netanyahu cannot be arrested because Israel is not a signatory to the ICC. But Russia is not a signatory also yet France has said it will observe the ICC arrest warrant for President Putin and arrest him if he arrives at any French airport.

Here is laid bare for the peoples of the Global South to see how convenient is democracy for some countries, the very countries that tell the Global South that they must practice democratic government and tell us what democratic governance is. It is sad that it took a historical tragedy like Gaza to finally open the eyes of the people of the Third World.
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.