“An Eye for an Eye Will Leave the Whole World Blind”

The war unleashed between Israel and the Palestinians, if allowed to continue, could quickly escalate out of control, involving the entire Arab world, Iran, and well beyond. Therefore, the priority must be to stop the bloodbath, neutralize the “crazies” on both sides, and protect the civilian population in Gaza that is now threatened with “ethnic cleansing”.

However, most Western media, acting on behalf of the powers that be, are promoting vengeance and war as the only solution, forcing people to believe they have to choose sides — either the Israelis or the Palestinians, either black or white.

The so-called “democracies” are fully on that line, contrary to the African Union, Arab nations, China, Russia and others, that have called for an immediate cease-fire and international efforts to achieve a two-state solution. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken rushed to Israel, where he declared that “Israel has our back” no matter what, while Chancellor Scholz called the security of Israel our “reason of state”, before making the trip to Israel himself, following on the heels of the superfluous EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Pro-Palestinian demonstrations have been banned in Germany and France and severely restricted in the UK, while the U.S. State Department instructed a group of U.S. diplomats to refrain from using the phrases “restoring calm,” “end of violence/bloodshed,” or “ceasefire/de-escalation”, when referring to the conflict in Gaza.

To understand the situation, a very different viewpoint is needed. As Lyndon LaRouche once explained in 2009, during a presentation at Central Connecticut State University, it is an error to talk about a conflict in the Middle East, “we should talk about the Middle East as a conflict, and a conflict that is largely global”. Ever since the British took over the Middle East, it has been used as a tool in the geopolitical “great game”. And that continues to be the case today.

Just consider that the violence erupted there, just as NATO’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine was stalling, and support for it in the United States and Europe was dropping dramatically. Thus, the focus of the “great game” has shifted to a different venue, to South-West Asia. Part of the reason is that the ominous “military-industrial complex”, made up of corporate cartels, makes tons of money from wars. But even more importantly, war is used to reshape policy, and the objective today is to ensure there will be no break with the “unipolar order”. That also implies stopping the efforts of the BRICS and the Global South more generally to effectively establish a new paradigm of international relations, as proposed by the Schiller Institute.

Coming back to the situation in Israel and Gaza, there has been a 75-year period of conflict and strife. But the cycle of revenge has never brought peace. Depriving the population of Gaza of food, medicine and fuel will not let Israelis to live in peace, on the contrary. For that, a new security and development architecture is indispensable (cf. the following item).