The Consciousness of Metaphysical Guilt

The staggering contrast between President Trump's Ukraine and Gaza policies may appear inexplicable.

- A FAIZUR RAHMAN

But then, the US policy towards Israel was never meant to be within the parameters of international diplomacy. According to political scientist Paul D Miller, evangelical Christians, who form the biggest pro-Israel religious group in America, influence the US policy towards the Jewish state by exploiting the Biblical statement that nations friendly to Israel stand to be blessed by God, while those opposed to it court His wrath (Genesis 12:3).

But Israel still needed to justify its expansionism and brutal violence against the Palestinians. How it did this forms the main theme of Pankaj Mishra's book, The World After Gaza.

Mishra's heartrending narrative recounts the ruthlessness with which Israel has tried to suppress the legitimate resistance to its occupation of Palestine by demonising Palestinians as the new Nazis who are plotting another Shoah (holocaust) against the Jews.

To pass off this lie as a genuine possibility, and thus justify the grossest forms of violence and dispossession as warrantable self-defence, the memorialisation of the holocaust came in handy even though David Ben-Gurion himself had initially demeaned holocaust victims as "human debris" who survived only because of "harsh, evil, egoistic" nature, and therefore, not good enough to be part of a strong Jewish state.