Israel unleashed five wars on Gaza since 2006, the atrocities of which have been getting much worse and greater. In the current 2023 war, residential buildings, houses, hospitals, schools, and infrastructures are all being demonically bombed, burnt, and destroyed. Al Ahli Hospital with patients, wounded, and people taking refuge there for safety was targeted, killing at least 500 people and destroying whatever little was left there for saving lives. Total blockade has been imposed on the Gaza strip, blocking food, water, electricity, fuel, medicines, and other necessities of life. More than one million people were ordered to move to southern part of Gaza from the North. Those who were trying to move there, numerous walking as they had no other options, to save their lives, were bombed on their way. The southern part is also being bombed. Close to 10,000 Gazans, including more than 3,900 babies and children have already been killed, and close to 23,000 wounded, including 6,300 children. 420 Palestinian children are killed or injured every day in the Gaza Strip (3). Thousands remain buried under the rubble, as rescuers are also being bombed.
By Fazal Rahman, Ph.D. November 4, 2023
However, the specter is there again, inside and outside the frontiers of the advanced societies. The facile historical parallel with the barbarians threatening the empire of civilization prejudges the issue; the second period of barbarism may well be the continued empire of civilization itself. Herbert Marcuse. One Dimensional Man. Beacon Press, Boston. 1964. p. 257.
Note by Fazal Rahman on Marcuse’s above statement:
The genocidal and monstrous barbarism of the Western Capitalist-Imperialist Technological “Civilization” (WCITC) has been going on for centuries. After the socialist revolutions in Russia and other countries, a powerful deterrence was created, which put powerful brakes on that globalized march of barbarism. However, after the betrayal of socialism in those countries and their reversion to capitalism and joining the WCITC, that march has accelerated.
Objectively, most important foundations of civilizations are established by political economies and technologies. That is why the whole world now is part of WCITC, no matter where countries and nations are located. WCITC has been developing and overwhelming the civilizational diversity during the previous few centuries. With the success of Russian Socialist Revolution of 1917, the alternative Socialist Technological Civilization (STC) appeared on the world scene. However, with the Grand Betrayal of Socialism in the USSR, China, and Eastern Europe, it has currently vanished from the global stage. WCITC is currently the only dominant civilization in the world, dominating and overwhelming all the cultural, linguistic, religious and other super-structural differences between various countries, peoples, and nations.
For example, Saudi led coalition’s atrocities, with Western arms and support, in Yemen, and those of India in Kashmir, are parts of WCITC. WCITC is now divided between its original parts, that is, Europe and the US – the latter being multiplied extension of the former – and non-European parts.
As some Palestinian journalists have pointed out, language and words cannot describe the horror of massive sadistic evil and suffering being inflicted on Palestinians in Gaza. That can be better understood by the sight of dead and wounded bodies of children, men, and women, as well as their cries and shouts.
End of note
Crucial importance of understanding wars and conflicts in their historical contexts
Even though it is important to focus on particular wars and atrocities being committed by countries at given times, it is equally important to place these within their historical contexts, as well as to identify and explain the commonalities and differences between them and the specific and general and common underlying causes and natures of these. This article will briefly discuss some of these issues. Identification and analyses of such contexts are essential for seeing the overall picture and essences of almost constant and ever increasing such atrocities, which in no way reduce the focus on the ongoing ones. To the contrary, these deepen the understanding of their causes and nature, only which can create the possibility of reducing and preventing them.
The US and Western mainstream media have been toeing the pro-Israeli lines of their governments, which are fully backing Israel in its atrocities and genocide. They are framing the facts, whenever they are forced to present them, in confusionist and duplicity mode, with the intention of diluting, distorting, and perverting their nature, meanings, and effects. Some foreign media, like Al Jazeera, are presenting the facts and events far more objectively and accurately. However, they are also mainly focused on contextless particular facts and events. When they provide some context, they only go back to the history of creation of Israel on Palestinian lands, which is very important, but does not provide the full politico-economic historical context, which is identified and explained in the following passages. That context is of determining importance in wars and conflicts between nations, classes, and religions.
History of creation of the Jewish state of Israel by Britain, US, and Europe in Palestine is well-documented and will not be repeated here. Suffice it to state that these powers were crucial in helping the European Jews to steal Palestine from the Palestinians and rename it Israel. In that process, great massacres and expulsions of Palestinians were carried out. There are now millions of them forced to live as refugees in other countries, where, in most cases, they are deprived of basic legal, employment, and other rights.
What is the real nature and context of contemporary Israel? This question needs to be answered in order to understand its policies and actions. On the surface, it claims to be a democracy and is promoted in the West as the only democracy in the Middle East, which is not true, as several other democracies also exist there, like Iran, Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon etc., in which regular elections are held for electing the governments. It is important to point out that claims to democracy in general are fundamentally flawed everywhere. The word democracy is derived from the Greek language, which means power of the people. All the current so-called “democracies” are class-divided and real political and economic powers are monopolized in them by the capitalist class and its allies. These are in fact capitalist democracies. Lenin had great insights into their nature, as well as into their developmental dynamics, which not only the leaders, but overwhelming majorities are now ignorant of, which nevertheless continue to reveal their accuracy, with devastating costs of their ignorance. He conclusively demonstrated that bourgeois democracy was little more than a legal form of cover for the actual state of affairs characterized by the dictatorship of capitalists. He also pointed out that the “Marxists have always maintained that the more developed, the ‘purer’ democracy is, the more naked, acute, and merciless the class struggle becomes, and the ‘purer’ the capitalist oppression and bourgeois dictatorship.” (1)
In some countries, the capitalist class shares powers with feudal and even tribal classes. In the advanced capitalist countries, the capitalist democracies have evolved into imperialist democracies. In Soviet Union and other socialist countries, the essential stage of the dictatorship of proletariat in the development of socialism was progressively evolving into socialist democracies, on the road to classless societies, only which coincide with real democracy and democracy in general. These distinctions are of fundamental importance in understanding the nature of current so-called “democracies” and societies’ potentials for developing real democracies through transformations to socialist and communist democracies.
To get back to Israel, it is the worst and most flawed of all the current capitalist-imperialist democracies. It is a Zionist-Fascist-Racist-Apartheid system and society, in which Palestinians are deprived of their basic legal, human, and property rights, and their remaining lands and properties are being stolen by the state and individual and groups of Jewish settlers, through violence and threats of violence, with almost complete impunity Moreover, Israel is an integral part of the Western Capitalist-Imperialist Technological “Civilization” (WCITC), which has committed incomparably greater atrocities, occupations, invasions, colonialism, and neocolonialism in rest of the world for centuries, and has installed and enabled Israel to become the regional super-power in the Middle East. Currently, it shares politico-economic, geopolitical, racist, and other important commonalities with Israel, even though in the past, it had subjected Jews to various forms of discrimination, hatred, and expulsions. Anti-Semitism has been widespread throughout the recorded history and there were definite causes of that. Jews were expelled from England in 1290 and from Spain in 1492 and many other European nations also resented their obsession with money and property, which they acquired through usury and every other way imaginable. Among others, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Napoleon Bonaparte, Mark Twain, Richard Wagner, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, Voltaire, Diderot, George Bernard Shaw, George Sand, and numerous popes had observed the extreme greed, materialism and inhumanity of Jews, and written hatefully and angrily about it. Many contents of their religious book, Talmud, allow and advocate the robbery, plunder, and murder of non-Jews, as well as lying to them. Zionism is the logical consequence of those principles and their politico-economic application. This is also one of the bases of continued theft of lands and properties of the remaining Palestinians by the Israeli state and settlers.
Karl Marx, himself of Jewish origin, among other things, had this to say about the Jews, “Let us consider the actual, worldly Jew – not the Sabbath Jew, as Bauer does, but the everyday Jew. Let us not look for the secret of the Jew in his religion, but let us look for the secret of his religion in the real Jew. What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money.” (2)
Israel unleashed five wars on Gaza since 2006, the atrocities of which have been getting much worse and greater. In the current 2023 war, residential buildings, houses, hospitals, schools, and infrastructures are all being demonically bombed, burnt, and destroyed. Al Ahli Hospital with patients, wounded, and people taking refuge there for safety was targeted, killing at least 500 people and destroying whatever little was left there for saving lives. Total blockade has been imposed on the Gaza strip, blocking food, water, electricity, fuel, medicines, and other necessities of life. More than one million people were ordered to move to southern part of Gaza from the North. Those who were trying to move there, numerous walking as they had no other options, to save their lives, were bombed on their way. The southern part is also being bombed. Close to 10,000 Gazans, including more than 3,900 babies and children have already been killed, and close to 23,000 wounded, including 6,300 children. 420 Palestinian children are killed or injured every day in the Gaza Strip (3). Thousands remain buried under the rubble, as rescuers are also being bombed. Hundreds of thousands of Israeli soldiers and reservists are preparing for ground invasion on the borders with tanks and other high tech weapons. All this in response to Hamas fighters having managed to penetrate heavily fortified and surveilled Israeli border and killing 1400 Israelis, including 301 soldiers and 55 police officers and taking 200 hostages. Later reports indicated that there are 240 hostages. Israel has been blockading Gaza for more than 16 years and the small narrow strip has been known as the open air prison, suffering high levels of poverty, unemployment, and other deprivations, as well as constant attacks by the high tech military forces of Israel. Within that context, Hamas decided to carry out the above-mentioned operation. In response, Israeli extreme right government, which clearly has Jewish-fascist-militarist nature, has launched an extermination campaign against the Gazans. Jewish state and the settlers have been constantly robbing the land, properties, and resources of Palestinians for over a century, intensifying that since 1948, when with the crucial help of Britain, US, and Europe, they stole a major part of Palestine and renamed it Israel. They also have achieved the regional super-power status with the financial and military aids of US and Europe, which in this genocidal state terrorism of Israel are fully backing it. US has sent aircraft carrier strike groups and UK warships and aircraft to Israel in order to support and protect its extermination campaign against Gazans, and to prevent Muslim countries from intervention to save whatever is left of Gaza and Gazans.
The support of US and European parts of WCITC for Israeli atrocities and extermination war against the Palestinians in Gaza, among other reasons, can be explained by their own history of having committed these for centuries in every part of the world. The sight and sounds of their self-confident hypocrisy are unbearable.
Western Capitalist-Imperialist Technological “Civilization” (WCITC) committed innumerable indescribable atrocities, genocides, occupations, invasions, and plunder of human and natural resources in the world throughout its sinister history, which accelerated during the 20th and 21st Centuries. These are uncountable and include many bloody and plundering crusades, genocide of native Americans by White Europeans, enslavement of millions of Africans and exploitation of their labor for profits and development by the White Europeans and colonizers of Americas, British imperialism in numerous countries, by both alliances in the First World , Nazi Germany and its allies in the Second World War, French and other European imperialisms in various parts of the world, and more recently American imperialism in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. One of the main aims of such wars and invasions is the globalization of classist and racist injustice and inequality, and transformation of Homo sapiens into Homo dollarus in its own territory, as well as globally.
In the Second World War more than 54,000,000 people were killed and more than 90,000,000 wounded. In the First World War 10,000,000 were killed and 20,000,000 maimed in the armed forces of various countries alone. Both world wars were caused by the WCITC and resulted from the policies of imperialism and grew out of the antagonisms within the imperialist system for redivision of the world and its resources, i-e., from competitions for colonialism and neocolonialism.
It has been estimated that invasions and wars of just the US imperialism since the Second World War, which were very large in numbers, have killed between 20 million and 30 million people in various parts the world (4, 5). These are well documented in many studies (6, 7, 8).
US Military and CIA Interventions since World War 2 (4, 5)
- China 1945–51
- Korea 1945–53
- The Philippines 1945–53; 1970s -90s
- Marshall Islands 1946–58
- France 1947 Italy 1947–70s
- Greece 1947–49; 1967–74
- Albania 1949–53; 1991–92
- Eastern Europe 1948–56
- Soviet Union Late 1940s – 60s
- Germany 1950s Iran 1953
- British Guyana 1953–64 Guatemala 1953–90s
- Costa Rica Mid 1950s; 1970–71
- Syria 1956–57; 2011 — present
- Middle East 1956–58
- Indonesia 1957–58; 1965
- East Timor 1975–99
- Western Europe 1950s and 1960s
- Italy 1950s — 70s
- Vietnam 1950–73
- Cambodia 1955–73
- Laos 1957–73
- Iraq 1958–63; 1972–75; 1991 — present
- Cuba 1959 — present
- Haiti 1959; 1987–2004
- France/Algeria 1960s
- South Africa 1960’s — 80s
- Diego Garcia 1960s — present
- Ecuador 1960–63; 2000
- Congo/Zaire1960–65; 77–78
- Brazil 1961–64
- Peru 1965
- Dominican Republic 1963–65
- Chile 1964–73
- Bolivia 1964–75
- Thailand 1965–73
- Ghana 1966
- Uruguay 1969–72
- Panama 1969–91
- Australia 1972–75
- Portugal 1974–76
- Angola 1975-80s
- Jamaica 1976
- Seychelles 1979–81
- Grenada 1979–83
- Yemen 1979–84; 2015 — present
- Nicaragua 1979–90
- Afghanistan 1979–92; 2001 — present
- South Korea 1980
- Honduras 1980s; 2009
- El Salvador 1980–92
- Chad 1981–82
- Libya 1981–89; 2011 — present
- Suriname 1982-84
- Morocco 1983
- Fiji 1987
- Bulgaria 1990–91
- Columbia 1990s — present
- Somalia 1993
- Yugoslavia 1991–99
- Venezuela 2001–04
Current crisis and proxy war of US and NATO against Russia in Ukraine have also resulted after Russia and Ukraine became parts of WCITC. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu told the 10th Beijing Xiangshan Forum that Ukraine’s armed forces have lost more than 90,000 servicemen killed and wounded during the counteroffensive that was launched this summer. Russian losses must also be enormous.
Arab and Muslim countries
Among the Muslim countries, only Iran has an independent foreign policy. It has been trying to organize a joint action response to Israeli atrocities in Gaza. However, other Muslim countries are unwilling to go beyond the ineffective verbal condemnations. The role of leaders of Arab countries has been particularly disgusting, as some receive foreign aid from the US and Europe, while others are ruled by dynastic kings, sheikhs, and amirs, who monopolize and loot the national wealth created by the exports of energy resources. They are hostile to any changes in the status quo and have had long term military, trade, and other relations with the US and Europe, which installed their ancestors in those positions and have provided military and other support to their progenies to maintain that status quo. Iranian supported Hezbollah in Lebanon and impoverished and devastated Yemen have been doing whatever they can to help the Gazans in their war of national liberation against the Israeli war machine.
Five Arab countries that established diplomatic relations with Israel and betrayed the Arab and Palestinian causes continue to maintain those. Jordan and Bahrain have recalled their ambassadors temporarily, mostly to try to appease their inflamed citizens. Turkiye is now reported to be recalling its ambassador for similar reasons. Saudi Arabia was also almost ready to establish those relations before the current conflict.
Millions of people in Muslim and many Arab countries have been demonstrating and putting pressure on their governments to help Gazans by practical actions. In large and small pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Europe and US, most participants are Muslims, while in pro-Israeli demonstrations there, all the participants are European origin Whites.
Roles of Russia, China, and India
While US and Europeans are rushing to supplement the regional super-power of Israel militarily and financially in its genocidal fascist and racist war against the Palestinians, and are blockading the Middle Eastern and other Muslim countries from coming to the defense of Palestinians, Russia and China are resorting to ambiguous lip services only, leaving the Middle Eastern and other Muslim countries alone to face this lopsided situation. Both Russia and China are playing a duplicity game in this new war of Israeli Zionist-Fascists against the Palestinians in Gaza, who want to exterminate the latter this time. Socialist USSR and Eastern Europe had provided effective deterrent to the US and European imperialisms in such conditions, and they would have if they were still there.
Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, his party the BJP, and overwhelming majority of Hindus, under the current Hindutva fever, are supporting Israel in its extermination war against the Gazans, while Muslims, the largest minority in India, continue to support the Palestinians. Hindutva obsessed Hindus have been persecuting and attacking Muslims and Christians in India with impunity under the BJP government. In many cases, the authorities have been bulldozing and demolishing houses of Muslims, just like the Israelis are doing to Palestinians.
Human nature in the Western Capitalist-Imperialist Technological “Civilization”
The problems that have been created by the Advanced Capitalist-Imperialist Technological Societies (ACITS) are far worse and far more complicated than anyone can imagine, the creation of capitalist technological human nature being the most important and fundamental of them, on the basis of which, all the innumerable and diverse environmental, social, political, international, and other problems are constantly generated. The co-evolution of capitalism, science and technology, and modern capitalist-imperialist humans has created the greatest and most disastrous problems of all human history on this planet. Nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, climate change and global warming, ozone layer depletion in the atmosphere, destruction of the ecology of nature, extinction of enormous numbers of species, pollution of air, water, soil, and food, sinister insanity of quest for global domination by the US and NATO imperialism, etc., are the external symptoms of that co-evolution. However, it has also created disruptions and imbalances in the inner ecology of human nature, which remain unknown and in the dark. I have attempted to shed some light on these in some of my articles by venturing into the terra incognita. One of those articles can be read through the following link. It was posted on my web site https://imperialismandthethirdworld.wordpress.com (9).
In Gaza, like in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, etc., two contradictory sides of human nature have been activated and expressed in the struggle between imperialism, colonialism, and neocolonialism, on the one hand, and anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism, and anti-neocolonialism, on the other. Israeli imperialists and colonialists are revealing their evilized, unjust, and monstorized human nature in their conscienceless genocidal actions, while Gazans, under the most unlivable conditions imposed on them, are revealing extraordinary humanity, resilience, solidarity, mutual help, goodness, and higher human qualities and values, and have proven themselves to be incomparably superior humans than the Israelis, almost all of whom have proven themselves to be low life human demons. So have overwhelming majority of Americans, who support Israeli atrocities and genocide in Gaza (10).
Multipolar world within the Western Capitalist-Imperialist Technological “Civilization”
Lately great hopes and expectations are being created in relation to the developing Multipolar Capitalist and Imperialist World, usually only characterized as the Multipolar World. Obviously, the consequences of such a world have not been thought through logically and objectively by its enthusiasts. The Multipolar World that is developing is of capitalist and imperialist nature, with great diversity and inequality of economic, political, and military powers.
The biggest positive outcome of a Multipolar Capitalist-Imperialist World is and will be the end of Unipolar World, dominated by the predatory and hegemonic US imperialism with puppet-like collaboration of its European allies.
On the negative side, Multipolar Capitalist-Imperialist World will continue to enhance global arms race, militarism, and military prowesses of various competitive and predatory national states.
Wars and conflicts are certain to increase between capitalist and imperialist states, the current proxy war of US and NATO against Russia in Ukraine, and between Russia and Ukraine, being an example and evidence of that. US and NATO may also provoke a mutually devastating war against China around the issues and problems of Taiwan. Social inequalities and injustices are also certain to increase, in the absence of social revolutions. In the developing Multipolar Capitalist and Imperialist World, there are and will be a few super-powers, followed by various levels of lesser powers.
Conclusion
In this article, I have stressed the crucial importance of historical contexts of wars and conflicts between various countries and classes. Wars between countries are almost always manifestations of externalization of class struggles. This is especially true in the age of imperialism, in which wars are incomparably more devastating than in the earlier stages of capitalism or in the previous social systems, as a result of great advances in science and technology and their applications to the production of weapons and other areas of military. The most important historical context in this regard is that of the political economy, which among other multidimensional effects, also has profound effects on the human nature and mass mental apparatus, including mass psychological, cultural, biosocial, epigenetic, and genetics effects. Current Israeli war and atrocities in Gaza need to be placed and understood within that context, in addition to its history of occupation.
This is certainly one of the worst historical eras in human history, in which monolithic, totalitarian, and militarist capitalism and imperialism, with all their internal and external injustices ,’inequalities, and brute powers are dominating the whole world. Real peace without social justice is unimaginable. Real peace and social justice require the abolition of capitalism and imperialism as well as of the Western Capitalist-Imperialist Technological “Civilization” and their replacement with socialism and Socialist Technological Civilization. At this time, there is very little reason to be optimistic about that possibility. With continued developments of Western Capitalist-Imperialist Technological “Civilization”, human species is rushing full speed towards self-destruction and extinction.
Capitalist-Imperialist Technological Rationality (CITR), always sinister, has now evolved into Sinister Insanity. It can be abolished and replaced with Socialist Technological Rationality only under socialism.
Notes and references
1. Lenin, V. I. “Theses and Report on Bourgeois Democracy and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat”, First Congress of the Communist International, March 2-6, 1919. Selected Works, Vol. 3, pp. 150-163. Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1971.
2. Marx, K. On the Jewish Question (Zur Judenfrage). Written: Autumn 1843; First Published: February, 1844 in Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher.
3. Al Jazeera News. Gaza has become a ‘graveyard’ for children amid Israeli attacks: UN. October 31, 2023.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/31/gaza-has-become-a-graveyard-for-thousands-of-children-un
4. Blum, W. Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II–Updated Through 2003 Paperback – October 1, 2008Common Courage Press; Updated edition (October 1, 2008).
5. Driver, R. Elephants in the Room: US Military and CIA Interventions since World War II. The United States Government Is The Biggest Criminal Organisation in the World
Elephants in the Room: US Military and CIA Interventions since World War II
6. Lucas, J. A. U.S. Regime Has Killed 20-30 Million People Since World War II.
U.S. Regime Has Killed 20-30 Million People Since World War II
7. Street, P. Uncle Sam’s Grisly Record of Murder and Mayhem Since 1945.
8. Zinn, H. A people’s history of the United States. Harper Perennial Modern Classics. 2005 Edition.
9. Rahman, F. Biosocial and epigenetic relativity of human nature, relative to political economy, technology, and culture.
10. Groppe, M. .Americans overwhelmingly back Israel in war with Hamas but fear wider conflict: Poll.
Short bio:
The author Dr. Fazal Rahman is an interdisciplinary researcher and writer, with background in many areas of social and biological sciences. He has worked in many countries, like the US, Brazil, Lebanon, Zambia etc., as a scientist and administrator of research and development projects and centers.
imperialismandthethirdworld 