Modernity and the Gaza Genocide
Western leaders have aligned themselves with the barbaric and monstrous destruction of Gaza. Over 100,000 people have been killed—mostly women and children. More than 80% of the city lies in ruins. Millions are starving. Children are burned alive.; women are raped. Ethnic cleansing of native Palestinians is openly supported. Yet, the genocide of Gaza is justified and rationalized to this day.
Israeli ordinary citizens have turned into monsters; doctors, shopkeepers, teachers, garbage collectors, husbands and wives, fathers and sons are complicit in the slaughter of Palestinian women and children. Hannah Arendt, the German-American historian and philosopher, once noted that the most monstrous acts are not carried out by monsters but by ordinary people. In studying the Holocaust, we focused on the few racist, sadistic leaders who orchestrated the extermination of millions of Jews, but we cannot ignore the fact that millions of ordinary people participated in the genocide.
Western fascist ideology, obsessed with reconstructing and reordering society for the sake of illusionary perfection, has long sought to eliminate so-called unwanted elements. As Polish-British sociologist Zygmunt Bauman explained, modernity demands not just modernization of infrastructure, but of people, societies, and ideas. In pre-modern times, disasters were seen as divine punishment to immoral people, but in the modern era, Western secular rationalism has taken control—of nature, of people, and of history itself. The ideology of modernity demands the creation of a perfect society, a utopia, a superior race, a superior nationality, a superior state. And to do so, it deems the elimination of entire peoples and cultures necessary.
For an avid gardener to create the perfect garden, weeds must be uprooted—even if they are native plants. This is the logic of modern ideological states. The Nazis sought to eliminate millions of Jews, Serbs, Roma, LGBTQ individuals, and others deemed undesirable. Today, Zionist ideology in Israel seeks to eliminate Palestinians—not just in Gaza, but from the face of the earth. Israeli political leaders openly call Palestinians “subhumans,” “scoundrels,” and “grasshoppers.” The Speaker of the Israeli Parliament has advocated for the killing of all adults in Gaza and the separation of children. This is not an aberration; the majority of Israelis supported the genocide, and now they support the mass deportation of Palestinians from Gaza, the West Bank, and even from inside Israel itself.
The rational modern state has an obsessive drive for progress, for achieving its so-called perfect society, regardless of the human cost. In the pursuit of this ideal, entire populations are deemed collateral damage. The killing of over a million Iraqis was justified as collateral damage to remove Saddam Hussein. The machinery of modernity must continue—like a river that must flow, as Bauman described, indifferent to the destruction left in its wake.
Hannah Arendt’s concept of the “banality of evil” explains how average individuals commit horrific crimes simply by conforming to collective ideology or authority. In Eichmann in Jerusalem, she argued that Adolf Eichmann—the Nazi bureaucrat responsible for orchestrating the Holocaust—was not a sadistic monster but a shallow, thoughtless man seeking professional advancement. He helped kill millions of Jews not out of deep-seated hatred ideology, but because he was simply doing his job, following orders, and seeking approval.
The conditions that allowed the Holocaust to happen are present once again. The promise of “Never Again” rings hollow as a new genocide unfolds in Gaza. And yet, Western leaders are supporting a fascist Zionist ideology in the Middle East. President Donald Trump has inadvertently exposed the true nature of Zionist expansionism—one driven not by faith or morality but by money, exploitation, and the transformation of the so-called Promised Land into a luxurious Riviera. As Karl Marx once said, “History repeats itself, first as a tragedy, second as a farce”
Ahmed Tharwat
Host/Producer of the Arab American TV show, BelAhdan
WWW.ahmediatv.com
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Lives in Minnetonka, Mn
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