America should punish International Criminal Court (ICC) and put Karim Khan back in his place. If the ICC is allowed to threaten Israel’s leaders, we know that America will be next” says Mike Johnson, the one of the least experienced speakers in modern U.S. political history and an aspirant of David Barton’s Christocentric view of Americanism.
David Barton, who spent decades working to overturn church-state separation, celebrated Johnson’s election as a turning point for the Christian right. Johnson’s statement indicates the underlying biblical nostalgia and fanatical insecurity—both are the derivatives of rising evangelicalism–permeating rapidly into the political skeleton of the mightiest country on the planet that has been championing the free world for the last ten decades—from Woodrow Wilson’s 14 points and then 1945 San Francisco Conference of 50 nations which approved the charter of the United Nations starting as “we the people of the United Nations”.
The ICC’s warrants fixed the conflict parasites, Hamas and Benjamin Netanyahu, who place their scriptural animosity above a human’s right for life, property, prosperity, can be inhumanly violent and irrational to achieve their political targets. The religious freaks from both sides played a key role in turning this small Levant’s real-estate a horrific trigger for future conflicts and a source of psychological stress around the whole world.
Otherwise, if sanity prevails, what is impossible in it to break out from the prison of memories and co-exist for the shared future of their generations under one secular constitution or two friendly neighboring states side by side? But No, their hate narratives flourish in each other’s existence. Ehud Barak, the former Israeli Prime Minister and Ami Aylon, the former head of Shin Bet, Israel’s secret service, bear witness that Netanyahu deliberately allowed the cash transfer of USD 1.4 Billion from Qatar to Hamas as protection money. He perpetuated Hamas not only to avoid the two-state solution but to ground the far-right hysteria drawn from the ancient scripture that is the principal play of his political performance.
Similarly, Hamas did every effort to sabotage the peace process during the lifetime of Yasir Arafaat, declared him an American Agent, and divided the Palestinian polity between religious and nationalists. They school political Islam torched by Hasan ul Banna and Abul Aaala Maudoodi. Like Natenyahu and evangelical motivators in the US, Hamas also believes in Armageddon to be fought around Al-Quds. They interpret inspirational codes against Jews from the Quran just as the Barton or Natenyahu do from the Bible.
Hamas’ sister organizations have lost their influence in The Middle East, Egypt, Bangladesh and Pakistan, as the majority of voters in these countries support decouple between religion and state. However, Hamas ossified its existence in Palestine as Israel’s ultra-right section not only provided ideological reasons to uphold its legitimacy but also logistic facilitation for maintaining its stronghold in Gaza against the nationalist PLO.
What did Hamas achieve after the October 7 brutal killing of 1200 weaponless civilians including foreign nationals, women, children, and bringing 240 hostages back to Gaza? Without any exit plan and military capability, putting another tens of thousands of innocents under bombs and then negotiating and campaigning to create “awareness and sympathy” is criminal insensitivity. Their brutal intrusion has pushed the whole region under war clouds without bringing any good to the Palestinian people.
The insensitivity went on when President Biden and David Cameron objected to the “mismatched equivalence” in the ICC’s warrants between a terrorist group and a democratic government, but they did not mention the law that allows any “democratically elected government” to massacre 35000 humans including a large number of women, children, doctors, journalists, health and humanitarian workers on the pretext of “self-defense”; the law which entitles them to death as they failed to forget their centuries-old Palestinian identity; or because Hamas was using them as human shields so it was legal to bomb them in hospitals and schools.
After October 7, Like Hamas, what did Netanyahu achieve for his people except providing hundreds or maybe thousands more recruits for Hamas? The dead bodies, mass graves, rubble, fumes, screaming kids, these images etch deep down in the memories of Z and Alpha generations all over the world, and will remain so for the next many decades. Hundreds of thousands of students, women, men, have shown up on the streets of Europe, Asia, Latin America, The Middle East, North America, and Africa, not in support of anti-Semitism, but in respect of the continuity of their own species, the humans.
In response to this massive public outrage, 143 countries in the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution to provide new “rights and privileges” to a Palestinian state and push the Security Council to reconsider their admission as the 194th member of the U.N, followed by the formal recognition of Palestinian statehood by Spain, Norway and Ireland. Obviously, politicians cannot ignore such an outstanding global response when about 49% of the people in the world are going to poll their votes in 2024 in around 64 countries including The EU and The US.
The US polity entered in the election year with an unprecedented social polarization. The challenge for the public will is how to cut through the layers of evangelicalism, corporations, interest groups and funded lobbyists. The funny thing is that 43% of adults who identify themselves as independents will have to elect between two the most aged presidential choices in November. The American polity needs to realize that being a superpower is not something so durable that you throw anything towards it. Power sustains with responsibility.
It is not about the Palestine question only, but the consequences proved that the US administration’s approach was superficial towards Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, even to some extent towards Russia and China today. Superficiality is a sign of erosion. The story of America cannot deviate from the set variables operative in the rise and fall of super powers for the last three thousand years– starting from Greeks, Romans, Persians, Arabs, Ottomans, British, to the USA.
The careful analysis of history reveals that the sustainability of such power and quality of its impact on the rest of the world largely depend on two factors: inward coherence between the social ingredients constituting the fervor that defines a superior sense of nationalism; and structural resilience of the underlying political system that upholds the outwards credibility of its arbitration on global disputes. Unfortunately, the USA is failing in both today.
—The Author is a columnist and member of UNFCCC global team. He taught Public Policy in the National Defence University of Pakistan)
