The genocide in Gaza, perpetrated by the Zionist Israeli army, ought to far surpass the civilisational crises and the pessimistic interpretations of humanity’s future that followed the Nazi Holocaust, the two world wars, and the criminal atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States.
Germán Ayala Osorio
And yet, it does not. It seems that each country‘s internal dynamics, combined with the tariff war between the USA and China, the globalisation of football as a spectacle sport, and the distracting, degrading, stupefying and entertaining power of social media and artificial intelligence, prevent the consolidation of a single narrative. A narrative that, under the banner of genocide, might summon the entire world to reject the abuses, torture, persecution and annihilation of the Palestinian people at the hands of the Zionist Israeli army.
The genocide in Gaza becomes invisible because there exists a cultural landscape that enables its immateriality. “Given the way our culture is structured—with colonised ancestors and an economic and political framework rooted in capitalism—education, through mechanisms of mass alienation (the media, modern technology, television, the press, entertainment), has become a useful tool to mechanise individual behaviour, to rob people of the time to reflect on their purpose on Earth, to prevent them from thinking about their surroundings or their own problems, and to maintain levels of ignorance that make it easier to manipulate them with shiny trinkets, rewards, prizes and hollow flattery that fantasy plants in impoverished minds.”
The live and direct broadcast of the genocidal practices implemented by Israel—legitimised by the United States and other developed-world powers—has turned the brutal ethnic persecution of the Palestinian people into a captivating spectacle, framed by the biased narratives of global media corporations that go to great lengths to avoid labelling Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide. Terms such as war, deaths, massacres, attacks and clashes serve the media and political agendas of governments complicit in Israel’s genocidal practices. The aim is crystal clear: to avoid, at all costs, calling genocide what is plainly a genocide.
BBC Mundo refers to “war”. El País of Spain did the same. In Colombia, the hegemonic press still fears labelling the State of Israel as genocidal. These media corporations run headlines such as “Israel killed”, when the more accurate headline—never mind objectivity—would be “Israel murdered”, as killing or causing death can occur by accident.
Pope Francis spoke of “war” when referring to the events in Gaza, as did his successor, Leo XIV.
All such terms are cowardly euphemisms used by those who claim to guide the lives of at least 1.4 billion Catholics praying for peace in the tormented region, yet who fail to take the political stance needed to consciously defend life amidst ethnic differences.
To all this must be added the emergence of an economic factor, perhaps first seeded during post-war reconstruction processes such as the Marshall Plan: gentrification. This neoliberal phenomenon allows Israel and the United States to redesign, rethink or reinvent the Gaza Strip, handing it over to multinational construction and hospitality companies, to turn its beaches into tourist attractions—where perhaps old Zionist officers, along with their children and grandchildren, might one day come to relax. To achieve this, every last Palestinian and Gazan must be eliminated. And the only process that can guarantee such gentrification is genocide and diaspora.
The lukewarm reactions to the genocide in Gaza will, in the future, validate genocidal practices against other peoples pre-identified as obstacles to economic development and hegemonic processes—what one might well describe as “ethnic standardisation”.
If, in the not-too-distant future, the polycrisis of climate change strikes the military powers of the global North, they will likely turn their gaze southward to implement the Israeli model in Gaza—thus initiating processes of occupation, resource seizure and territorial gentrification. For all these reasons, the capitalist world-system requires genocidal figures such as Netanyahu.
*German Ayala: Political Scientist, Specialist in Contemporary Humanities and Social Communicator-Journalist. Author of the blog La otra tribuna.
(Translated by Rene Phelvin – Email: renephelvin@gmail.com) – Photos: Pixabay
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