Afrasianet - Hassan Awrid - The war on Gaza and attitudes towards it in the West have created a unique situation, especially among decision-makers. Western leaders denounce war, in terms of rhetoric, and it does not hurt to see the war machine claiming victims, displacing families, and subjecting them to hunger, cold and loss every day. Homes are demolished on their owners' heads, places of worship and hospitals are targeted, with Western leaders doing nothing practical to stop the machine of destruction.
They express their sorrow, their anxiety, their preoccupation, as if war is the wrath of nature, they cannot do one thing, and then they move on to something else. Or they have priorities that they don't want to yield from. What the US administration declares is not what it holds. You express something and come up with something that contradicts it, which is called schizophrenia, or schizophrenia.
The West, which promotes freedom of expression, confronts freedom of expression with obscenity, brazenness, and slander, as did the British journalist who confused the human rights activist Mustafa Barghouti, in a value judgment
As much as the Western diplomatic machine moves, the Western media has been fading, in a kind of state of familiarity with what is "happening in Gaza" and falling into apathy. The war in Gaza is no longer in the news on Western screens, and the Russian-Ukrainian war has regained its lead. There is limited coverage of the war on Gaza, not in the headlines, with a deliberate orientation to embrace the Israeli narrative.
The official spokesperson of the Israeli army can speak to all visual means in France, and any objection to it exposes its owner to disciplinary measures, whether journalist or guest, so the guests are carefully chosen, and those who do not adopt the Israeli narrative are avoided from appearing.
In some channels, such as CNN, the terms "genocide" or "war crimes" should not be used, even if the reality refers to genocide and speaks of war crimes. It is not enough for Israeli officials to authorize treating Palestinians as animals, another threat to use a nuclear bomb on Gaza, the use of all acts of killing, destruction and starvation, the targeting of children and women civilians, the bombing of hospitals, schools and places of worship, and the levelling of Gaza to the ground.
All of this is not genocide, nor does it amount to war crimes, as Blinken stated in his press conference in Israel. The difference between double standards is conscious and deliberate discrimination, while schizophrenia is to truly believe that what is happening in Gaza does not amount to genocide, even if that reality is not true.
It is difficult to judge who has always judged others, this will not be accepted by you, of course, but you cannot turn a blind eye to the schizophrenia of the West.
The West, which carries the values of man, forgets that there are people who run in their veins the same blood that runs in the veins of Westerners, as in Shakespeare's expression in The Merchant of Venice, and they have the right to be treated with the same standards as any human being.
The West, which believes in systematic skepticism and teaches the "barbarians" its virtues, does not hesitate to grab Israel's narrative from the broken bellies, burned bodies and heads that have been cut off, without questioning or inquisition. He does nothing but apologize after what has been promoted has been found to be false to the point of nausea.
The West, which is very rational, forgets its rationality, in the name of belonging, and the identity of the civilized against the "barbarians". He promises not to repeat what happened on October 7, as Blinken announced, and does not question what happened before this date, including the slow killing of the people of Gaza, the dispossession of the people of the West Bank of their lands, and the continuous violations of Al-Aqsa Mosque.
The democratic West, the bearer of the sovereignty of the people, does not consider its public opinion.
The West, the bearer of freedom of thought, tracks those who do not think from within the channels of Orthodoxy: (literally, right thinking, idiomatically the general trend), and does a kind of McCarthyism, in tracking down those who support the Palestinian people, or just calling for an end to the war, even on campus.
The West, which is jealous of freedom, even sexual freedom, forgets the first human right, the right to life. He mobilizes for the freedom of a transsexual, without a finger by children killed, or the right of a wounded person to express himself, or a motor in the rift with the injustice inflicted on him.
The West, which has advocated tolerance since Locke and Voltaire, tracks Muslims in the West in their dress, food, belief and ideas.
The West, which since Saddam invaded Kuwait has carried the rehearsal of a new world order, forgets (or forgets) that there is a reality of occupation in Palestine. He does not hesitate to recruit his rhetorical bombers into the "two-state solution", while covering up the series of settlements, providing loans for their establishment and granting aid.
The West, or the United States, to be precise, as the French philosopher Régis Dupré says, is the "White House", who drew up a land-based solution for peace, and the honest broker, completely forgot what he himself had set, and continues to provide diplomatic and financial support to Israel, a few words to the Palestinian Authority, and carried out a series of repeated operations contrary to the role of an honest broker.
The United States, as Bush reminded us in his famous "A Few Days" speech after the September 11 strikes, is a beacon of freedom, pluralism and democracy, which is what hateful extremists vent and hate the United States for it. We don't want to hate anyone. We have the right only to recall the values that the West is pushing for, and the inconsistency between what it says and what it only does. Or just a lack of consistency.
The West, which believes in man as a human being, is the one who covers up the reality of apartheid in the West Bank and in Israel.
The United States, which criminalized a president as happened with President Nixon – because he lied and covered up the truth – did not hesitate to lie about Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction and its involvement with al-Qaeda, or to repeat the narrative of cows in women's stomachs, burning children, and bombing the Baptist Hospital by the Palestinians themselves. US President Biden takes the initiative to first set foot in Israel, until he tells us the "sure news" that it was the Palestinians who blew up the Baptist Hospital.
The United States, who came to liberate Iraq from a "tyrant", is the one who gave him "practical lessons" on respecting human rights in Abu Ghraib prison! Today, it is the one who keeps silent about civilians whose dignity is degraded in Gaza, stripped naked in the cold, when they break into the houses of God with shoes and violate their sanctity.
The United States, the torchbearer of peace, or American peace, is the one that sends its military experts to Israel, providing its field expertise, intelligence, as well as weapons.
The United States, which sees the devastation and does nothing to stop it, mobilizes the "brothers" for reconstruction, and conducts shuttle travels, to reassure that the "Allies" on the "covenant", in order to complete the journey, the journey of the Abraham Accords, is important. For tens of thousands of children and civilians to die, be displaced, and have their homes destroyed on their heads, are side events, details, or an insufficient number, as a former U.S. official put it, is bullying an Egyptian "Galban" who sells hot dogs.
A final word on the country of lights, the Declaration of Human Rights, the Citizen and the Secularism. The lights shine only for the benefit of a limited group, equality is a variable geometry, and secularism does not put religions in one place, in the name of positive secularism. Analyze and discuss. With the support of "service Arabs", as in the "venerable" era of colonialism.
We are not in a position to think carefully, to meditate calmly, because we are in the midst of war, but there is a pathological situation, or an abnormal state of saying something, and doing something that contradicts it. The price of it, of course, is the lack of persuasion, or as Goethe says in his masterpiece Faust: "We are free to bring the first action, and we sacrifice prisoners to the second action."
No one can say, we did not know, or did not know, or invoke the "moral duty", as Habermas argued, about things from the past, and remain silent about what is being openly committed today. Everything is before our eyes: bombs as they fall on hospitals and schools, bullets piercing the chests of the walkers, and the trembling of children as they emerge from the rubble.. we know, and the world knows, and no one can invoke ignorance.
It's more than double standards, but schizophrenia is not mitigated by the condemnation of some free Westerners. The lesson is reality. In reality, it is killing, destruction and displacement projects. Does that absolve the West of its responsibility? Can he give lessons anymore? Even if he does, no one will listen to him.
Writer and academic from Morocco
Professor of Political Science at Mohammed V University in Riba