In the year since the horror of October 7, the illusion of a different “new world” that could emerge from such chaos and violence has reared its ugly head once again.
In 2001, the post-September 11 era had given rise to similar terse judgments or naive hopes… and to monumental errors, such as the invasion of Iraq in 2003, supposed to lead the Middle East to democracy.
However, the impression in the Middle East is rather that of a spinning wheel and an eternal return, of an endless war, the fundamentals of which have never really changed.
With an obvious tactical winner, from one episode to another… almost always the same… but incapable of transforming his military successes into strategic victory: namely to definitively crush his enemies or to be accepted by them, then to bring about a change stable politics.
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The wheel turns, history repeats itself… but not completely. There is also, in this supposed new world, the decline of the United States as “arbiter” and the (pleasant?) rise in power of its enemies. Against a backdrop of sinking multilateral diplomacy at the UN.
The United States’ record in this entire crisis is little to none. Joe Biden concocted a grand plan, in which he seemed to believe, which would, on paper, have allowed a ceasefire in Gaza, a normalization of Israeli-Saudi relations, opened the way to a Palestinian state and a rapprochement with the Saudi Arabia, supposed to keep China at bay.
But Biden was unable — or willing — to force Israel’s hand. At every ultraviolent turn, Netanyahu lied to him, deceived him, and ridiculed him.
Today, on the eve of the American elections, Washington is falling into line against Israel, in a strict alignment that we thought could be changed.
Should the decline of the United States, applauded by those who want the liberation of Palestine and vomit up Israel, lead to a new hegemony, that of China, assisted by Russia and Iran? Because in the real world, this is the concrete alternative to the current situation.
Declaring yourself horrified by the fate imposed on Palestinian civilians, by the disproportionate use of force, is this really positioning oneself ipso facto… as anti-American, in the name of a binary explanation according to which Washington imperialism is the great responsible for everything?
In other words, does being pro-Palestinian in the current conflict mean that we must also, in a sort of mechanical automatism, be hostile to Ukraine, “a supporter of NATO and imperialism”, and rejoice that China is (not sure, but at least possible) replacing the United States as the hegemonic power in the world?
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In this perspective, archaic but persistent, which we can call “campism” (we must choose our side: evil imperialism – always the same – against the rest of the world), the repudiation of Zionism, the anti-Israeli vehemence is translate, for many people on the left, into sympathy – or at least complacency or forgetfulness – towards Russia, China and their crimes…
We will forget, for example, the massacre of the Uighurs, these Turkic-speaking Muslims from the northwest of the country – much more numerous than the Palestinians – whose culture, language and religion the Chinese government is in the process of eradicating through overwhelming imperialism. .
But the terrible ordeal suffered by the Uighurs – mass internments, torture, brainwashing, documented by serious NGOs – is scandalously ignored, written off and written off. Witness: the guilty silence of the Arab-Muslim states “bought” by China.
While the Palestinian question – it is true forgotten and relegated to previous years, even decades – becomes obsessive and central again. Muslims oppressed, and even exterminated as a people by China: this is infinitely less shocking… than when the culprit is Israel!
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In such a movement, we can also deny that Ukraine represents a just cause, and a crucial confrontation between democracy and an imperialist autocracy.
At best, we will ridicule the proponents of this vision by recalling the United States’ past support for dictatorships and their serious breaches of democratic ideals, by sending back to back — in a dubious and ignorant moral equivalence — Washington and Moscow, Washington and Beijing .
At worst, we will go so far as to rejoice that China and Russia, with their current regimes and with their allies (Iran, North Korea, Syria, Venezuela!), can seriously represent the solution, the future and the hope of the world.
This October 4, Ayatollah Khamenei, at the head for 35 years of a dictatorship vomited by his population, justified a posteriori the atrocity of October 7, 2023, qualifying it as a “logical” and “legal” act.
This is how he explained it, to “prayer” (sic) from Friday: “The enemy of the Iranian nation is the enemy of the Palestinian, Lebanese, Iraqi, Egyptian, Syrian and Yemeni nations. The attack on Israel, by anyone or any group, serves the entire region and also serves all humanity. »
The tragedy within the tragedy, in 2024, is that such a vision is not only that of the extremists of Tehran, Hamas or Hezbollah.
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