• By Mitchell Plitnick, Mondoweiss.

The Most Important Political Shifts In 30 Years Are Taking Place In Israel, The U.S., And China.

Perhaps 2023 will be remembered as the year tangible political momentum shifted for Palestine.

One of the more eye-opening aspects of 2023 for Palestine and Israel is how much has happened while the essential situation for Palestinians has continued its steady decline. The occupation of the West Bank has turned into annexation, and the apartheid nature of Israel has been exposed for more of the world. Protests in Israel have shown the world that Israeli Jews will come out across political lines to protect the democracy reserved exclusively for them, while more and more people recognize the implication that this is something Israelis could have done long ago if the political will to address the apartheid reality had been there.

There’s more, of course, but through it all, day to day life for Palestinians hasn’t changed all that much. Settler pogroms are not new, although the settlers are bolder than ever. The biggest difference is that there are a few more news reports about them in the West. Settlements continue to expand. The pace has intensified but this too is not new. The Palestinian political system, such as it is, continues its collaboration, occasional shows of defiance that no one believes anymore, and every so often talks about change. Nothing new there.

Yet, for all this sameness, there are strong indications that 2023 is going to be looked back at as a landmark year and, indeed, a turning point. Profound changes are happening in Israel. The reactions to those changes have yet to be reflected in the halls of power in places like Washington, Brussels, London, Berlin, and Paris. But as resistant as those capitals are to change on this front, we may well look back at 2023 as the year their shift finally started.

This isn’t wide-eyed optimism, believe me. I’ve been working on U.S. policy toward Israel and Palestine professionally for over twenty years and studying it for nearly forty. That experience does not promote optimism. And indeed, it is by no means certain that the changes that will stem from the formative events of 2023 so far will necessarily be positive. But they will be significant.

Changes In Israel

The most obvious factor is what is happening in Israel. As much as the protesters are laser-focused on an exclusive Jewish democracy and work hard to prevent anti-occupation voices from speaking (though they’re happy to have them show up silently), the obvious continuity between denying the rights of Palestinians and diminishing those rights for Jews is inescapable. Even if the protesters couldn’t care less about Palestinians, they are confronting the fact that it’s the settler movement that has been promoting anti-democratic changes and has been increasing its control over the Israeli government and military.

This is going to matter going forward. In 2011, a series of large protests in Israel were demanding increased social spending. That movement successfully resisted any connection to the plight of Palestinians. The leaders of the current protests have tried to duplicate that success, arguing, as they did in 2011, that the goals of their movement would benefit everyone, but any explicit or even implicit connection to the Palestinians would undermine chances for success.

But 2023 is different. While the protests have kept supporters of democracy for all under Israeli rule marginalized, they can’t maintain the division between Palestinian rights and democracy. From the beginning, it was already clear the protest leaders would not be able to completely erase the Palestinians as had happened in 2011.

This is not only due to the efforts of some on the Jewish Israeli left and Palestinians who are continuously reminding people that these protests are not calling for true democracy, but only for Jewish democracy. It is also intimately connected to what the protests are about.

The 2011 protests were essentially about Israel’s budgetary priorities. These protests are about the settler takeover of Israel’s government. This has been coming for decades, with the consistent rightward drift of the Israeli electorate since the late 1970s when Likud broke Labor’s monopoly of power in Israel.

In 2000, with Ehud Barak and Bill Clinton both breaking their word to Yasir Arafat and disingenuously blaming him alone for the collapse of the Camp David II talks and the beginning of the second intifada, the already tattered Israeli left, centrist though it truly was, collapsed and virtually disappeared. But now, there is a growing backlash to the extreme right that Netanyahu has courted.

For the past decade, Netanyahu has moved his governments further and further right in an effort to undermine legal structures (for Jews) and avoid accountability for his extensive and criminal corruption. An unintended consequence is now likely to develop over the next few years, with a credible opposition that has more to unify around than simply detesting Netanyahu, which is the only common thread among the current opposition, a bizarre tapestry of a few Palestinian parties and mostly right-wing and right of center Zionist parties.

That alternative will very likely coalesce around certain democratic principles in order to oppose the religious parties and the settler-dominated ones. The question is whether that will mean coalescing around right-wing figures like Benny Gantz, center-right ones, or a new leadership that legitimately wants to find a way forward for both Israelis and Palestinians. Even that would certainly be a right-of-center government that will be dedicated to maintaining Israel’s “Jewish character,” though. And that, naturally, will necessitate continued discrimination.

Even in the best case scenario, there certainly will not be a major Israeli party that would seriously consider what Palestinians would require for even minimal justice. But it could mean we might see a smaller, but still significant, party that could dedicate itself to Jewish-Arab equality and partnership. Such a party might just be big enough to be required for any non-Likud government to form a coalition, and that means leverage. If such a party could be part of supporting a less palatable one that at least offers a significant alternative to Netanyahu, Smotrich, and Ben Gvir, that could make a big difference. Certainly, 2023 has already proven that an extreme Israeli government does not do anything to enhance Palestinian prospects for better days, and it seems inescapable that true, anti-racist, Arab-Jewish unity is the only possible way out of this apartheid quagmire.

Changes In The Democratic Party

We’ve all rightly made a lot out of the Gallup poll in March that showed significantly greater support for the Palestinians than for Israel among Democratic voters. The difference in that poll—49%-36% in favor of Palestinians–was too large to be dismissed as a statistical anomaly. The fact that 56% of those same Democrats remained supportive of Israel indicates that the shift is based in great measure on Israel’s tilt toward authoritarianism over the past few years, and especially since the last election. That, in turn, implies that it was not a loss of sympathy for Jews but, at long last, recognition of Palestinians’ humanity and the authoritarianism they face.

The fact that those who do not sympathize with Palestinians skew heavily older indicates that this isn’t a transitory phase among Democrats, but very likely a trend that will remain consistent. But the party’s elected officials remain steadfast in their devotion to Israel. The recent House Democratic delegation to Israel, led with all the pro-apartheid enthusiasm he could muster by Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries demonstrated that the core of the Democratic party remains firmly in Israel’s grip and in opposition to their own constituents on this issue.

Is this sustainable? That’s going to depend, and a lot is at stake in 2024. AIPAC has already made it clear that they intend to go hard after Jamaal Bowman, Summer Lee, Pramila Jayapal, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib. The Palestine solidarity community is small, but very politically active. It will be important that their energy counter AIPAC’s money and that people hear that opposition to apartheid is a winning political issue. It can be done, and it needs to be if the political cowardice that Jeffries and his fellow Democrats showed is not to be repeated.

The effect of such a victory can’t be overstated. It will mean that no matter how much contempt some Democrats and party leaders, up to and including Joe Biden and Antony Blinken, have for Palestinian lives, the Democratic position will need to start moving and leaving support for an apartheid system in Israel where it belongs—in the Republican party. Because most Democratic voters know that opposition to apartheid is in the best interests of Israelis as well as Palestinians and, above all, in the interests of justice.

If such a stance does take hold in the Democratic Party, we will surely look back at 2023, the year where liberal Zionists started to finally question our blind support for Israel, as a turning point.

The Wild Card: China

While Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has dominated Washington’s day-to-day foreign policy agenda, it is China that is their conceptual focus. Biden has relentlessly pursued a belligerent policy toward China, routinely belying his insistence that he does not want a new cold war with his Asian adversary. While Biden’s rhetoric is not as outright racist as his predecessor’s, and he’s at least smart enough to recognize that tariffs do American businesses more harm than they do to China, most of the rest of his policy toward China has differed little from Donald Trump’s.

As a result, China’s forays into international diplomacy and its attempts to establish a greater role for itself on the international stage have been greeted with hostility from the White House. And when China brokered a deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran to restore diplomatic relations between the two, Biden redoubled his efforts to secure a normalization agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israel.

Biden also believes that brokering this deal will help Democrats at the polls, but that is a major political miscalculation. There is nothing here that is going to matter in November 2024 or thereafter. He’s also wrong about normalization being a potential counter to China. Saudi Arabia has no reason to compromise its position on Iran in order to normalize with Israel. It has much more to gain by being able to engage, and avoid escalating conflict, with Iran, and neither Israel nor the U.S. will sacrifice Saudi participation in any regional military alliance simply because it has a relationship with Iran. The Saudis understand very well that they can get normalization with Israel without having to trash their mutually beneficial rapprochement with Iran.

China is never going to dive into Israel-Palestine diplomacy like the United States has, or even like Europe. Indeed, it really didn’t play all that big a role between Saudi Arabia and Iran; most of the heavy lifting there was done by Iraq, and China just came in at the end to seal the deal.

But China places great value on its prestige on the international stage. While it won’t risk getting into the quagmire that is Israel and Palestine, they could very well act on the periphery with the intent to find ways to be a bigger part of the endgame. What might that mean?

China is a huge importer of Middle East oil. Its relationships with Iran and the Gulf Arab states are strong, and while the United States would very much like to degrade relations between the Saudis and the Chinese, its ability to do so is limited because the Saudis have a powerful interest in good relations with China. While Saudi Arabia and Iran still have many contentious issues that could certainly worsen and create the potential for renewed conflict, they are on a path toward de-escalation, much to Washington’s chagrin, as their agenda for the Gulf region, as well as Israel’s “integration into the region” are based almost entirely on tensions with Iran.

China also has good relations with Israel, another relationship that Biden, like his predecessors, has worked hard to undermine with only limited success. Israel would never accept China as a mediator, of course, as Beijing would not lean in Israel’s favor the way Washington does. But as China’s influence in the region grows, its ability to support the Palestinians while remaining too important for Israel to just abandon—especially if the United States’ support starts to waver—will also increase.

All of these changes are uncertain. The seeds planted in 2023 could also have deeply negative effects. Israel could, for example, calculate that its position will continue to worsen if its authoritarian nature does not abate, and so might finally take the aggressive steps of forcing Palestinians out in greater numbers, or move militarily against Iran. Or both.

But it seems very possible that we are looking at a major shift in the playing field, perhaps the biggest one since the disastrous Oslo Accords thirty years ago. While we still see no sign that Palestinian reunification or a new, more competent, and loyal Palestinian leadership might finally emerge, even that becomes more likely in the atmosphere that some of these changes might create. Most importantly, though, it is the increasing global support for the Palestinian cause and what seems to be its finally coalescing into some tangible political momentum that mark 2023 as a year of change and, quite possibly, the year that marks the beginning of the reversal of what has been a steady decline in hopes for a better future for Palestinians, and, yes, Israelis as well.

Mahboob A. Khawaja, PhD.

Militarization of a nation embodies  ruthless purging of its thinking hubs, hopes and  moral and intellectual capacity to change and envision a sustainable future. Are the Pakistani Generals a replica of the historic European “Razor King”, compelled by the nature of self-interest and expanding one-track mental microscope to go on radiating violence and insane aggressive actions against legitimate political activism? Being unconscious and incapable to understand the requisite of time and history, they are complicit in catastrophic emerging events leading to destabilization of the country. For almost 60 years, Pakistan was a victim of military dictators and martial laws depriving the new generations of educated and intelligent people to participate in political governance or to work on nation-building and a viable future. Those nations hooked up to the “US-AID” are nations of systemic corruption and degeneration without a formidable promising future. Their plans could well be defined as pure evil against the national interest leading to realization of pure evil to stop Imran Khan no matter how and by what unrealized possibilities of political encroachments.

Few of the Pakistan accomplice Generals  appear to have an unrestrained mental sickness to view Imran Khan  (Teherk-Insaf Pakistan – “Justice Party”), as a threat to their survival and wanted to eliminate him by all means – fair or foul. The arrest of Imran Khan unfolds an unwarranted and fraudulent scheme of things orchestrated by Sharif brothers and a few Generals to cover-up their  own scandalous corruption and was  the result of individualistic political animosities. Some of the Generals view the new generation of educated  and intelligent Pakistanis as a challenge to their authoritarianism and could drive the country to self-destruction. The Pakistani Generals professing to be wise, turned out to be egoistic and foolish – men obeying their Master.  If they had any credibility, it is lost and they are seen among the hated ones like Sharifs, Bhuttos and Zardari and dead Musharaf. Shabaz Sharif and few Generals wasted 16 months doing nothing useful for the nation except to conspire and dehumanize the political culture by arresting Khan time and again. It has adversely culminated an image of a highly undemocratic and backward country.

Imran Khan was Jailed to Undo Fair Elections

Evil has its power and evil mongers expose their frustration, tyranny and repression by haunting Khan and his supporters.  Imran Khan is the leading democratic party leader favored by the people. In April 2022, in a coup like political game changer operation at the Assembly, few of the Generals led by Bajwa installed highly controversial and criminally indicted figures like Shahbaz Sharif, Bhutto, and others to please the US and its vested strategic interest in South West Asia. Imran Khan, a new generation educated person wanted to opt for political changes in Pakistan’s external relations and reshape Pakistan’s exclusive reliance on the US towards a more balanced relationship with Russia, China and other Middle Eastern nations. His PTI party alleges American intervention in the political coup against him and removal from office.  Strangely enough often Khan spoke of political changes but he lacked the capacity to dismantle the neocolonial systems of of corruption and intrigues across the board. Was Khan so naive about his own plans and weak political and intellectual strength to be removed from office undemocratically by his opponents? Few of the Generals and Sharif brothers feared the return of Imran Khan to power if fair elections were held, he could hold them responsible for corruption, looting of the treasury and egoistic political belligerency. If Imran Khan was conscientious and had acted diligently, he could have called an early election to undo the political conspiracy. Was he misinformed by some of his own dubious party stake holders? Khan sounds more truthful and man of moral and intellectual integrity to assume the leadership and be part of urgently needed domestic harmony and nation-building.

To Foster  Planned Change,  Nation Needs New Generation of Educated  and Proactive Leadership, Not Sharifs and Not Few Generals

Pakistan is being stabbed by vengeful intrigues of political power and insanity of the few. Progressive nations produce and bring the best and intelligent ones to the role of leadership and responsibility. Rationally arguable was the coming of PM Imran Khan – a hope for the future crushed by political intrigues, conspiracies of the few Generals and Sharif brothers? National honor and glory lives in the conception of good, not conspiratorial minds.  Something evocative and hauntingly familiar about the current imagery of failed political governance emerging across Pakistan. The quest for political change lacks the existence of public institutions to sustain reasoned politics, educated and intelligent leaders and proactive visions for change and adaptability to a critical future-making.

A snapshot of critical moment in time and history unfolds dark imagery of political governance and military coups in Pakistan.  We, the People of Pakistanlost half of our country (East Pakistan), and India occupied Kashmir by force and we continued to lose more in socioeconomic and political domains because of the dishonesty and failed leadership of Bhuttos, Sharifs and the Generals. These thugs stole billions and billions to buy palaces in UK, France and  elsewhere in Europe. The Thinking People of New Generation of Pakistanis view the Bhuttos, Zardari, Sharifs and General Musharaf –  all in one slot – the most corrupt, crime riddled monsters who will never come to terms with reason and honesty to reflect on their own wrongdoings. They never imagined–how the present and future generations will remember them?

Even if there are organized political elections, the current chaotic culture carries a lingering suspicion of institutionalized corruption, political exploitation, killings of civilians  and the coming of martial law and some form of military dictatorship in alliance with most corrupt, known thugs and indicted criminals of the recent past.  The evidence supports the alliance of defunct Bhuttos, Sharif’s, military generals and other infamous so called Islamic parties.  There is no moral and political accountability for thugs and indicted criminals not to return to the threshold of political power.  (Please see more by this author, “Pakistan Imperatives of political Change for a progressive Nation”2019; “Pakistan where Politics and Corruption are the Same” 2014;  “British Colonialism and How India and Pakistan Lost National Freedom.” https://www.globalresearch.ca/british-colonialism-how-india-pakistan-lost-freedom/5765810 and            https://ms-my.facebook.com/Uncommon-Thought-Journal-161860380533165/photos/4916004181785404/ ; “Pakistan in Search of Freedom and Security”, Uncommon Thought Journal and Global Research: 10/20/22, and “Pakistan, Planned Political Chaos: Imran Khan a Victim of Hope for the Future”, Global Research: 11/06/2022. Pakistan has no credible law and justice system of governance and the masses are entrenched in poverty and ignorance of the facts of political exploitation, often they are enforced to believe in traditional authority and wide range scheme of corruption-led system of opportunism as a normal way of Pakistani political life.

Pakistanis are Not a Dead-Ended People but Neo-Colonial Elite are living in the Past

At the edge fo reason, cynicism about politicians and few Generals is endemic and it exposes the imagery of a dead-ended culture of moral, political and intellectual landscape. Truth telling is maligned and persecuted by the ruling neocolonial elite. British changed the sub-continent in 90 years, but Pakistan after 75 years has no viable system of political governance.  The informed masses view the home-grown traitors like ZA Bhutto, Ms. Bhutto, General Yahya Khan, Zardari, Sharifs and General Musharraf  as impostors  like Mir Jaffar and Mir Sadiq and as a scum floating on a torrent.

Pakistan lost its natural capacity for change, progress and nation-building under the military dictators and continuous martial laws  Nations cease to exist when educated people of new generations who could have replaced the old and redundant guards leave the country and never return to build the nation. Young educated generations embark on migrating to Europe or America and never come back. You may find ideas and ideals in“How to Change Political Culture of Corruption and Rebuild the Future?” 2/16/2019: Pressenza, NY. (https://www.pressenza.com/2019/02/pakistan-how-to-change-political-culture-of-corruption-and-rebuild-the-future/).  

At the moment, few mindless Generals and their accomplice Sharif brothers and Zardari are bent upon destroying public thoughts and vision for political change, reformation and organizing a free and fair elections. They are paranoid with lost public support to have acted dogmatically and vengefully to imprison Imran Khan. The masses and history will haunt them for an inescapable accountability. We, the  educated and Conscientious People and history will judge them by their actions, not by their claims. The few conspiratorial Generals and Sharif brothers could well face public accountability for their crimes against the nation and even firing squads if the law and justice are implied for a rational course of a just action.

Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in international affairs-global security, peace and conflict resolution with keen interests in Islamic-Western comparative cultures and civilizations, and author of several publications including the latest: One Humanity and the Remaking of Global Peace, Security and Conflict Resolution. Lambert Academic Publications, Germany, 12/2019.

Mahboob A. Khawaja, PhD.

Mankind is being Traumatized for its Hopes for Peace and Sustainable Future

The trajectory of peace and war between Russia, Ukraine and the West unfolds the pursuit of unbridled ambitions and insane geopolitics at the height of cheap military triumphs and fame. The egoistic class of leaders operating global institutions claim “success” by rape of earth, destruction of human habitats and bellicose chauvinism without any accountability.  The unending war fast became an economic warfare – accelerated weapons sales to warring parties and money making. The Transcend Media Service – Norway (8/21/23), reports that the “top 5 US weapon contractors made US$196B in 2022.” The inept leaders lack humanitarian consciousness of peace and conflict management and are well paid and well fed to have distorted the criterion of basic human values, morality if any, and standards of being honest. They solely rely on making bogus statements of peace and conflict management for public consumption. It is evidence of tragic abnormality and much evil and less goodness in the 21^st century global affairs – amassed collection of unthinkable junk history.  If the leaders were honest, they should have faced the current challenges. If President Putin and President Erdogan (Turkey) could meet in Sochi to discuss the grain deal and prospects for peacemaking, surely, if the US and NATO and the EU wanted conflict resolution and peace could open a dialogue with Russia and China.

The on-going war in Ukraine and its wide range of global ripple effects – from the supply of gas, oil, grain deals, collaborative ventures in peaceful dialogue and the lingering suspicion of the threat of tactical nuclear weapons – all echo degradation of human values and soul, exhibit intellectual failure, universal chaos and socioeconomic miseries of innumerable multitude. Time and history are not going to wait for the few insane outrages, phony statements on human deaths and destruction unless we take this challenge in its time and opportunity to make things happen  for change and for the best of all mankind.

We, should not wait for the end game to watch global leadership failure but being the People of Reason call for the formulation of a global forum of peace and unity and to plan for peace and conflict resolution between Ukraine and Russia and elsewhere in the world.

Imperatives of Meeting of Minds:  Conflicts, the Earth and Human Consciousness

A rational conflict analysis and search for peace involves listening and learning to divergent viewpoints and finding a common place of reasoning without agreeing or disagreeing to halt the warfare. This shows effective communication and enlightened leadership traits.  Modern technologically advanced wars kill people; destroy the Earth and its systematic working, human habitats and its ripple impacts entrap the future generations in psychological and intellectual captivity and dehumanization. Strangely enough, none of the Western leaders – be it the US, NATO or the EU had fostered a vision for a dialogue with Russia and China or to forge understanding for a peaceful resolution of the conflict.

Could we the human kind count the blessings of God to maintain life for millions and billions of years on this planet?  All things exist in a mathematical order, whether we recognize it or deny it. So strange, we know all about other material things and scientific – technological developments but we are ignorant and arrogant to learn about our own origin and existence on a living planet. Are we the human being intelligent enough to know about our own existence and Purpose of Life?  How could we imagine peace and harmony among ourselves when we bomb and destroy each others with weapons of destruction as if we were not the human kind but some kind of animals without any sense of rational thinking? The Earth is a living entity and is meant for us – the human beings. The Divine warning (Chapter 7: 56: The Qur’an), is self-explanatory:

Do no mischief on the Earth after it hath been set in order, but call on God with fear and longing in hearts                 For the Mercy of God is always near to those who do good.  

In all ages, people and nations claiming to be most powerful and transgressors manipulating the Earth and humanity were destroyed by the Laws of God – natural causes. Have you not walked on the earth to learn how most powerful nations of the past were destroyed by the Will of God – asks the Divine Revelations? We, the People live in a splendid Universe in which planet Earth floats ordained by the commands of God. We are moral being unlike animals that possess the eyes, ear and other senses but cannot draw logical conclusion from their senses. There is a moral sense of spirituality and humanity to co-exist in harmony with the rest of all creations on this Earth. This TRUST is explicitly mentioned in the Qur’an, Chapter 33: 72:  “We did indeed offer the Trust to the Heavens and the Earth; And the mountains but they refused; To undertake it, being afraid thereof: But man undertook it; He was indeed unjust and foolish.”    

Have you ever thought how the day-night alternates systematically to serve the mankind?

“Behold! In the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the alternation of Night and Day – There are indeed Signs for men of understanding.” (3: 190). Do you know who else other than God determined the Earth spinning of 1670 km per hour? Who else than God ordained it to orbit the sun at 107,000 km per hour?  And who else than God made it to spin at 28,437 km per hour at the equator? (https://www.newscientist.com/question/fastearthspin/#ixzz7C8p37S9X). Be aware that earth average distance to the Sun is about 93 million miles (105 million km); the distance of Moon from Earth is currently 384,821 km equivalent to 0.002572 Astronomical Units and if the distance between the Earth-Sun and the Earth-moon were ever to change, there will be no sign of life, human civilizations or habitats left on Earth. You as human being as One Humanity has one origin –  why can’t we co-exist in peace and harmony?

It is God Who has created you from dust; Then from a sperm-drop,

Then from a leech-like clot; Then He does get you out (into the light)

As a child: then lets you (grow and) reach your age of full strength; then lets you become old,

Though of you there are, some who die before;

And lets you reach a Term appointed; in order that ye

May learn wisdom.       (Chapter 40: 67: The Qur’an)

Are the Global Leaders Ignorant of People’s Aspirations for Peace?

If the Russian, American, Ukrainian and NATO’s leaders are honest, proactive and accountable to the global community, they would urgently need new creative strategic thinking to cope with multiple layers of political conflicts and humanitarian crises and to find peaceful and workable solutions away from the entrenched political box of the few global warmongers. Recently, this author proposed a strategic framework of dialogue for peace to global leaders to resolve the conflict :

Conflict Beyond Reason: A Dialogue to End the War Is Desperately Needed

Global Conflict Management: Why Can’t Russia, NATO, the EU and Ukraine Make Peace?

The challenging truth arising from the emerging conflicts and leadership failure calls for rejection of the violent assumptions of militarization and egoistic triumphs by acts of genocidal plans. We, the People of global humanity ask the conscientious leaders to listen to the voices of reason for an immediate ceasefire between Russia-Ukraine and stop the acceleration of military confrontations on all fronts. Caitlin Johnstone, an Australian critical thinker and a housewife spells out a prevalent scenario: (“Always Opposing Past Wars But Never The Present One.” Information Clearing House: 8/30/23): One day it will be permissible to say in mainstream circles that it was wrong for the US empire to deliberately provoke the war in Ukraine and keep it going as long as possible to bleed Russia, but it’s taboo to say that now, because the empire hasn’t yet accomplished all its goals in Ukraine.

Despite the sketchy illusions of freedom, democracy, human rights, liberty and justice, we are encroached, stuffed and at terrible risk of annihilation more by error of judgment than planned scheme of things by Man against Man. Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in international affairs-global security, peace and conflict resolution and has spent several academic years across the Russian-Ukrainian and Central Asian regions knowing the people, diverse cultures of thinking and political governance and a keen interest in Islamic-Western comparative cultures and civilizations, and author of several publications including the latest: One Humanity and the Remaking of Global Peace, Security and Conflict Resolution. Germany, 12/2019

Mahboob A. Khawaja, PhD.

“War provides an outlet for every evil element in man’s nature. It enfranchises cupidity and greed gives a charter to petty tyranny, glorifies cruelty and places in position of power the vulgar and base.”  (C.E.M Joad. Guide to Modern Wickedness, 1936)

The Leaders Who could not Lead to Political Change and Peace

The Arabian landscape portrays continuous wars, insurgency against authoritarianism, insecurity and lack of moral and intellectual leadership to political change for the good of people. For more than a decade, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Afghanistan have not emerged stable entities after the conflicts.  This week, the Laws of Nature signaled the staunch reminders to all mankind via flooding, hurricanes, earthquakes and raging wildfires across the globe. Would any serious thinkers take notice of these natural acts for change, reformation and security? Please view:  “Global Peace and Security:  World Leaders Betray the Canons of Truth, Wisdom and Humanity”, “Peace and War The Russia-Ukraine Conflict Urgently Needs a Dialogue for Peace”, Uncommon Thought Journal: 8/26/2023, and “Arab Triangle: How the prosperity bubble destroyed the Arab Moral and Intellectual culture” Uncommon Thought Journal: 6/12/2013.

Militarization of the Arabian Peninsula appears high on the agenda items for policies and  practices. The European and American policy makers view the oil exporting Arab leaders as “camel jockeys”  and draw hollow laughters.  According to John  Perkins (Confession of an Economic Hitman, 2006), Arab States are like ‘cows to be milked as long as necessary.’ Most of the Arab leadership families are the former colonial agents hired by the British, French and US Empires to control and manage the oil export business. They pay to the Masters for protection of their palaces, but not of the people. Even a common person cannot think outside the capsule of secret police apparatus.

There are no objective moral, spiritual and intellectual values in the imperial philosophy of global economic development except power and wisdom are immeasurably separated by the gulf of greed, militarization and hegemonic control over the oil-rich Arab Middle East. The puppet rulers and the imperial Masters demonstrate sadistic policy behaviors  and cruelty to safeguarding their vested interests and strategic priorities for hegemonic economic development across the Arab world.

Evil is deprivation of good. The coming of Islam glorified the Arab moral and intellectual cultures from an age of ignorance to an age of human development, change, progress and  to the peak of Golden Age of scientific and human progress lasting 800 years in

Al-Andulcia- Spain. Marai Rosa Menocal (A Golden Reign of Tolerance: The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain, 2003), highlighted the contributions of Islamic civilization in Spain. The Islamic civilization identified the Arabs as “Ummah of Khair – people of goodness and peace.”  The message of Qur’an is clear:  “We have revealed for you (O men!)  a book in which  is a message for you: Will ye not then understand?” (21: 10). And it warns: “Then the Apostle will say: O My Lord! My people took this Qur’an for just foolish nonsense.”(25:30), “Does Man not see; It is God Who created him from sperm. Yet Behold! he (stands forth) as an open Adversary.” (36:77). Today, the Arab world exemplifies a decadent moral and intellectual landscape. What a moral and intellectual human tragedy for those knowledgeable people, who defied the logic of truth. The oil exporting superficial prosperity betrayed the heritage of Arab nations and changed them to be interdependent and subservient to the West as puppets and stooges living to compete in erecting high-rise buildings and palaces without any purpose, importing luxury cars, organizing  and enjoying football matches and striving for exclusive consumerism and nothing else. They lost sense of humanity,  and consequential futuristic calamities and accountability to God.

The Arab Spring (2011), raised hopes for systematic rethinking and socioeconomic and political change but the authoritarian Arab leaders crushed the spirit of people’s movement for political change. Islam professed a movement for human development and change but the neocolonial opted for a short lived economic prosperity. The Arab people have become victims of their own rulers and their complacency to remain in power, fair or foul. 

After the 9/11 tragedies, the US led bogus “War on Terrorism”, and its War-Industrial  Complex fetched the Arab rulers with a sense of insecurity for their survival.  John Perkins (Confessions of an Economic Hitman, 2006), outlines how the economic and industrial development scenarios were linked to a ‘Saudi Arabian money laundering affairs’ to modernize the Kingdom by an unusual coercive and secretive agreement worked out by Henry Kissinger. Under the conspicuous scheme of things:

“Saudi Arabia would use its petrodollars to purchase US Government securities; in turn the interest earned by these securities would be spent by the US Department of the Treasury in ways that enabled Saudi Arabia to emerge from a medieval society into a modern, industrialized world….Our own US Department of the Treasury would hire us at Saudi expense to build infrastructure projects and even entire cities throughout the Arabian Peninsula.” Perkins adds that “Washington used its advantage to impose one other critical condition…. and I sometime find it difficult to understand how Saudi Arabia could have accepted this condition.”

John Perkins views the grand scheme of Arab economic development as a blueprint for the US ambitions of empire building across the globe: “ it was part of a sinister system aimed not at outfoxing an unsuspecting customer, but rather at promoting the most subtle and effective form of imperialism the world has ever known…….most puzzling was that final entry under the list of my clients: US Treasury Department, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”

Arab world lives under the Western Imperialism and War Racketeering

“War is a racket Then and Now” (Free Thought Manifesto: 05/29/2011) describes Mark Sheffield. Brigadier General Smedley D. Butler (WAR IS A RACKET) of the US marines served 33 years but “had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until [he] retired to civil life did [he] fully realize it.” The wars sustained capitalist governance and made millionaires into billionaires. “WAR is a racket.  It always has been.  It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious.  It is the only one international in scope.  It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.”  Butler asks many rational questions: “How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle?  How many of them dug a trench?  How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dugout?  How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets?  How many of them parried the bayonet thrust of an enemy?  How many of them were wounded and killed in battle?”

War is a crime in civilization context. What is the cure to raging indifference and cruelty to the interests of the whole of the mankind?The 21^st century new-age complex political, economic, social and strategic challenges and the encompassing opportunities warrant new thinking, new leaders and new visions for change, conflict management and participatory peaceful future-making. The Divine knowledge offers logical substance of reality to be reckoned with:

Verily in the creation of the Heavens and of the Earth and in the succession of the night and of the day, are signs for men of understanding;                                                                                                                                             Who standing and sitting and reclining, bear God in mind and reflect on the creation of the Heavens and of Erath and say: Oh, our Lord- Thou has not created this in vain.  (3: 190: The Qur’an).

The imperial networks export militarization and wars to destabilize the Arab Middle East. The Arab world has one focal issue – Palestine and the Two States solution.  The contemporary Arab world has no honest leaders to protect the Masjid Al-Aqsa and its sanctity from Israeli’s Ultra Nationalist provocations and to reason with Palestine and Israel and what future options could be imagined for peace and security: Please see by this author: “Al-Aqsa Mosque Waiting for the Arab Leaders.” http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/57491.htm 

Wars, deaths and destruction are at the top notch agenda items in relations between the West and the Arab world.  Was the discovery of “oil” was a conspiracy (“Fitna”) to forfeit the Arab culture and Islamic civilization? The on-going bloodbaths across the streets of Yemen, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere provide a staunch reminder of something terribly wrong with human thinking and military actions. How do such crimes portray the nature of Arab societies in which bloodbaths are taking place under the aegis of economic development and militarization? Do the paranoid Arab authoritarian rulers envisage an advanced culture of “modernity?” The whole of the Arab world is a quagmire of conflicts, sectarian warfare and foreign interventions. Wars kill people, destroy the planet and those who posses power show no wisdom to dream of triumph and glory over human mind and soul. The on-going war between Russia , Ukraine and NATO,  and the war-torn Middle East overshadowing the common citizens of the world feeling incapacitated and dehumanized to share a terrible sense of helplessness and wonder how to save the humanity from the scourge of imperial led war racketeering and the consequences of man’s intransigence, triviality and viciousness against his own existence and future on Earth.

Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in international affairs-global security, peace and conflict resolution with keen interests in Islamic-Western comparative cultures and civilizations, and author of several publications including the latest: One Humanity and the Remaking of Global Peace, Security and Conflict Resolution. Germany, 12/2019.