Inside Western hypocrisy

What the genocide in Gaza teaches us about the West and its claims to civilization and liberal democracy

THE LAST WORD | Andrew M. Mwenda | We are witnessing, live on our smartphones and television screens, a genocide of the very first magnitude. It is not happening in the jungles of “the dark continent” of Africa by machete-wielding natives killing each other. It is being conducted by the state of Israel, ruled [largely] by ethnic Europeans of Jewish faith. They are conducting this genocide in the 21^st century against Asiatic peoples of [largely] Islamic religion and Arab ethnicity.

The Israeli genocide in Gaza is being aided and abetted by the countries of Europe and North America that claim to be liberal democracies, civilized, and with high moral values. Among these values is respect for human life, property, dignity, and liberty. Yet every day, with their money, weapons, diplomatic backing, and moral encouragement, they facilitate the genocide against the people of Gaza. A large cross section of their most influential media, academia, civil society, etc., either hide this genocide, ignore it, or invent lame excuses to justify it. And we are expected to follow.

It is time for non-Western societies to wake up to the tricks, deceit, lies, and hypocrisy of the West. European countries invaded and colonized parts of this planet. They claimed that these invasions were driven by altruistic motives—to spread spiritual enlightenment through Christian teachings, to promote civilization through the introduction of modern state institutions and practices, and to end the misery of native peoples through commerce.

To achieve these “noble” aims, native peoples in Africa, Asia, and Latin America were subjected to racial discrimination, extortionate taxation, land dispossession, and forced labor. To enforce these cruel policies, they exercised barbaric violence and brutality on an unparalleled scale, including beatings, amputations, hangings, etc. They plundered our material resources, desecrated our cultural heritage, despoiled our common patrimony, and carried out what was tantamount to genocide. Yet in committing these atrocities against us, they claimed that all this was for our own good.

Yet the worst violence was epistemic: the inculcation into the minds of our people that we are inferior, backward, barbaric, and unfit to govern ourselves without their paternalistic hand. Thus, every day, we cheer them in loud admiration when they denounce our leaders (who also act as their agents) as corrupt and brutal, when they call our systems and practices barbaric, and when they market our people to themselves as poor and in need of their assistance. The loss of faith, belief, and confidence in our own selves and systems has been the greatest European victory in the history of man.

It is in this context that we need to understand the ongoing televised genocide in Gaza. For many people, this is Israel exercising the right of self-defense against a radical, extremist terrorist organization called Hamas. We are told that the events of October 7, 2023, were the worst atrocity of man against man. Death toll? About 1,300. Yet to defend itself against this small organization called Hamas, Israel has brutally massacred over 60,000 people, the vast majority of whom are women and children.

Israel has bombed every school, hospital, kindergarten, bakery, water treatment plant, sewerage facility, electricity supply source, library, mosque, and home—everything that provides sustenance to life in Gaza. It has blocked Gaza with the openly stated aim of starving people there to death. It has bombed settlement camps where people have escaped for safety. And its soldiers record themselves on video committing these crimes.

What has been the response of the world’s so-called civilized nations, which are also liberal democracies led by the USA and followed by the EU, Canada, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand? To supply more arms, munitions, and money to complete the genocide, and to provide Israel with all the available propaganda resources and deny or justify the genocide and diplomatic cover to avoid and evade accountability before international law, itself written by them. All their proxies and agents in Africa who parrot their claims to respect human rights are equally silent.

Yet oblivious of these facts and perhaps because of them, these “civilized” nations and “liberal democracies” are every day preaching to governments in Africa the need to respect human rights, to advance the cause of freedom and democracy, and to respect the sanctity of life. How do they manage this duplicity? I shall leave this for another day because it is complex.

For now, it is important to note that liberal democracy does not stop evils such as mass murder. Historically, evil has been promoted through and justified using liberal democratic institutions—the “free press,” civil society, parliaments, courts, etc. The genocide of Native Americans was carried out and justified NOT just despite that country’s liberal democratic institutions and traditions but through and because of them. The same with the enslavement of African Americans, the apartheid system (called Jim Crow) that lasted 100 years, and today with mass incarceration.

It is in this context that we need to see what is happening in Gaza as a continuation of colonialism, especially its most insidious form, settler colonialism. By 1880, there were only about 5% Jews in Palestine. By 1920, they were about 11% and lived peacefully with the native peoples of that land. It was because of British colonial policies and Zionist aims that ethnic conflicts flared between native Palestinians and migrant Jews. Colonialism’s policy of divide and rule, pitting one community against the other, came to fruition. In countries like Rwanda, it exploded into genocide in 1959 and 1973, culminating in the biggest genocide of all, in 1994.

Despite the ability of power to sugarcoat its crimes, I have been inspired by many people, including Jews, who have stood up, against all odds, to expose and oppose this genocide. I have seen Israeli soldiers, Israeli human rights organizations, journalists, and politicians speak out and call this what it is—genocide. I have seen Jewish people in other parts of the world saying, “Not in my name.” Humanity owes these people a lot.

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amwenda@ugindependent.co.ug