Kevin Barrett
As police beat protestors outside the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, crowds chanted: “The whole world is watching.” And they had a point. Television network news cut away from convention speeches to show snippets of violence in the streets. Despite the networks’ refusal to show the worst abuses, it was all too obvious that police were the instigators and perpetrators. That widely-viewed “police riot” helped polarize public opinion, partly along generational lines, and contributed to the collapse of the US war on Vietnam.
In 1968, only a small portion of the world watched a few brief network-selected clips of the Chicago police riot. An even smaller portion got the unvarnished truth from underground newspapers. Today, however, the whole world really is watching the unfolding genocide in Gaza—or as much of it as it can bear. Thanks to courageous journalists (106 of whom have already been martyred by the zionists in 84 days) and the wonders of social media, we are faced with the unprecedented spectacle of a monstrous genocide unfolding in plain sight, before the astonished and horrified eyes of 7.8 billion people. As Ron Unz put it, “We are certainly witnessing the greatest televised slaughter of helpless civilians in the history of the world with nothing even remotely comparable coming to mind.”
The breathtaking savagery of the zionists’ bloodthirsty debauchery, and the heartbreaking suffering of Palestinian victims, has become an experiential reality for billions of people around the world. We have watched 2000-pound bombs exploding in heavily-populated neighborhoods, including crowded refugee camps in zionist-designated “safe areas.” We have watched more than 90% of the population of Gaza rendered homeless by zionist bombing.
We have seen the bodies of women and children refugees executed in a school at point-blank range by zionist genocide perpetrators. We have watched Gazans dying of thirst and hunger and lack of medical treatment as the zionists destroy hospitals, blockade food, water and fuel, blow up water, sewage, and electricity infrastructure, and gleefully burn humanitarian relief shipments.
If anyone doubts that Israel is waging a war of extermination against the people of Gaza, they need only check the statements of Israeli rulers to stand corrected. Netanyahu has openly called for Biblical vengeance, meaning genocide, against Palestinians, by identifying them as “Amalek,” the Torah’s designation for an enemy who must be exterminated to the last man, woman, child, baby, and even animal.
An Israeli general proclaimed that “Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist.” A minister in the current regime has suggested dropping nuclear weapons on Gaza. Israeli schoolchildren are taught to sing “Within a year we will annihilate everyone.”
What makes this spectacle of unfolding genocide even more outrageous is the effort of the world’s most powerful forces, led by the US regime and the zionist-dominated media, to censor, obfuscate, and prevent anyone from doing anything about the genocide. Young people, who are more adept at circumventing internet censorship, are especially outraged.
As in 1968, the “whole world” that is watching is disproportionately made up of younger people. Today, polls show that the majority of American young adults support the elimination of “Israel” by the Palestinian resistance!
Equally outrageous, in the eyes of most of the world’s nearly two billion Muslims, is the inaction of their countries’ political leaders. A huge backlash is developing in places like “Saudi” Arabia:
“On Twitter, one user posted two striking images, along with a comment: ‘These are two pictures, one from Gaza and one from Riyadh Saudi Arabia last night. In a picture, Gaza’s Muslims are facing genocide to protect the Aqsa Mosque! In the second picture, Saudi Yehud bin Salman is dancing naked with Shakira! They should be ashamed’.”
The institutions complicit in the Gaza genocide, starting with the US regime and its vassals in both the west and the Muslim East, are being severely discredited. A gap has opened between the people, especially younger people, and their institutional leadership.
The trend is clear: As current institutions weaken and wither, new ones will emerge. After losing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and (soon) Ukraine, the US-led western empire no longer looks so formidable. In the wake of the Gaza genocide, the shocked and outraged people of the Global South in general and the Muslim East in particular are already boycotting American and Israeli products, and are in the process of forcing their governments to tilt away from the perpetrators and towards the rising BRICS alliance, and away from the Axis of the Occupied and westoxicated toward the Axis of Resistance.
The “Confucian-Islamic connection” that Huntington saw as a threat to western world domination has been immeasurably strengthened by US complicity in the genocide of Gaza. The leading independent powers, Russia, China, and Iran, have been pushing ceasefire resolutions in the United Nations (which are always vetoed or watered down by the United States). The sharp contrast between the Americans, who are arming, funding, and diplomatically supporting the genocide perpetrators, and the anti-US bloc that wants to stop the genocide, is turning most of the world against the US.
That ongoing delegitimization of US empire is happening fastest in the Muslim East, where by far the two most popular entities today are the Al-Qassam Brigades and the Ansarullah movement in Yemen. Billions of people from Indonesia to Morocco are cheering wildly for Hamas and its supporters in the Axis of Resistance—especially the heroic Ansarullah forces who have shut down the Red Sea for Israeli shipping. Even the people of “Saudi” Arabia, conditioned by state propaganda to view Ansarullah as an enemy, are now applauding Houthi commandos descending from helicopters to capture Israeli-bound ships.
The shock effect of the Gaza genocide has riveted billions of eyes across the Muslim world to the latest videos of the leading Resistance groups. But since Hamas is less a group than an idea—pan-Islamic resistance to zionism—and since Israel’s genocide campaign has cast a heroic glow over that group, it is obvious that the zionists are not only doomed to fail in their quest to “annihilate Hamas,” but that they have actually managed to raise the “Hamas idea” to the status of guiding light for the world’s nearly two billion Muslims.
Thanks to the zionists and their genocide, Hamas has become the central icon of Islamic political identity today. And even if the zionists were to kill the current leadership, hundreds of millions of potential replacements wait in the wings.
So, the zionist entity is doomed to lose, one way or another, in its war to “eliminate Hamas.” When the current round of genocidal destruction ends, the idea of Islamic resistance to zionism will have been firmly implanted, at the deepest level, in the heart of the Muslim Ummah. And the central symbol of that resistance will be Masjid al-Aqsa, the icon of Hamas’s heroic al-Aqsa Storm operation.
The Significance of Al-Aqsa
The Aqsa Mosque is the pre-eminent symbol of Islam’s ecumenical and spiritual aspirations. As the Qur’an tells us, “Exceptionally exalted is He who advanced His subject [Muhammad] on a night journey from Al Masjid Al Haram [in Makkah] to Al Masjid Al Aqsa [the distant Masjid in al-Quds/Jerusalem]; an area blessed by Us, so that We may show him [Muhammad] demonstrations of Our [extraordinary] power. He is the All Hearing, the All Seeing” (Al-Isra: 01). This verse is the cornerstone of the many accounts of the Isra wal Miraj, the miraculous “night journey” of the Final Prophet (pbuh) from Makkah to al-Quds/Jerusalem and his ascension through the heavenly spheres into the presence of Allah (swt). The Isra wal Miraj is said to be a miracle second only to the revelation of the Qur’an. It is this miracle that inspires the sublime architecture and artistry of the Masjid that stands on the spot where the Prophet (pbuh) commenced his upward journey into the Divine Presence.
The Isra wal Miraj is the symbol and inspiration of every Muslim’s inner journey, which amounts to an effort to ascend spiritually and get closer to Allah (swt). The beautiful Masjid al-Aqsa, and the Dome of the Rock with its magnificent dome featuring intricate geometrical designs evoking Allah’s creation of multiplicity out of primordial unity, stands as the oldest and greatest architectural monument in the Islamic world, and the supreme artistic expression of Islamic spirituality. Even today, those who gaze upward at the ceiling of the Dome may experience a hint of spiritual expansion or ascension.
The Aqsa Mosque symbolizes not only Islamic spirituality, but also ecumenicism. According to accounts of the Isra wal Miraj, as the Prophet (pbuh) rose from the spot where the mosque now stands through the heavenly spheres, he met the earlier prophets including Moses and Jesus, peace upon them. This image of the brotherhood of all prophets and the underlying identity of their respective messages informs Islam’s role as the final message that brings concord and unity among the followers of all the prophets: “We make no distinction between any of them, and to Him we submit” (2:136). Hence al-Quds/Jerusalem, the city that is holy to the followers of all three major monotheisms, must be a place where everyone’s rights are protected—and not a monument to the supremacism of a narcissistic and genocidal “chosen people” who spit on Christians and plot to tear down Islam’s greatest architectural monument to build a blood sacrifice temple. “And they plot, and Allah plans. And Allah is the best of planners” (8:30).
Al-Aqsa as Symbol of Emerging Unity
As the Islamic Ummah and the Global South, shocked to the core by the zionist genocide of Gaza, unite in defense of Palestine in general and Al Aqsa in particular, the new order that arises from the ashes of the Anglo-zionist Empire will be focused on unity and cooperation rather than division and strife. At the international level, this means adapting the Chinese “win-win, no war” approach rather than the zionist-western “zero sum, endless war” model.
Meanwhile, the triumph of the Hamas idea—pan-Islamic unity in defense of al-Aqsa—will bring the Muslim-majority countries together under the banner of Islam, and reduce the influence of the petty nationalisms imposed in the 19th and 20th centuries by western conquerors and colonialists. As the western empire collapses, and with it the wests’ power to divide-and-conquer, a re-united Islamic world, brought together by bonds of communication and commerce enabled by technology, will emerge. As Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah says:
“We do not believe in multiple Islamic republics; we do believe, however, in a single Islamic world governed by a central government, because we consider all borders throughout the Muslim world as fake and colonialist, and therefore doomed to disappear.”
Where will the central government of the “single Islamic world” be located? Quite possibly in al-Quds/Jerusalem... insha’Allah. That would be a fitting monument to the truly monumental courage and tenacity of the Palestinian people, whose resistance to genocide over the course of the past century, culminating in the heroic al-Aqsa Storm battle that is still raging as I write this, will be the guiding light and inspiration of not only the re-unification of the world of Islam, but also the re-establishment of at least some sort of bare minimum of justice on Earth, as the sun finally sets on the evil empire of the pathologically mendacious, genocidal zionist west.
The Israeli war criminal Benhamin Netanyahu, with backing from western rulers, has rejected calls for a ceasefire as his murderous attacks c...
In tandem with its genocide in Gaza, the zionist war criminals are also using starvation as a weapon of war. Almost the entire population of...
The zionist regime claims to be the “only democracy” in the Middle East but its conduct would put the Nazis to shame. Last week, 16-year...
After three months of relentless bombing of Gaza, the murder of tens of thousands of innocent children and women, Israel has failed to achie...
