Israel is not a blemish on an otherwise pristine record of the West. It is quintessentially the West. It’s exploitative and effacing ways, its hedonistic materialistic worldview. Its complete disdain for the sacred and timeless. It is in its entirety a summation of the necessary constituents of what has come to be regarded as Western Civilisation. I do not believe in the slightest that the Israel problem is but a small deviation from the path to “progress”. That somehow it can be rectified whilst maintaining the idealogical premises of the world we find ourselves in. No, not at all. I do not believe that the Palestinians will be set free and we shall merrily go on with our lives. Lost in our hawa. Perhaps this is too audacious a claim but it would seem to me that there signs that suggest this. The spat with Harvard is not simply a procedural or donor issue, it represents the potential of Israel to collapse the very bedrock of modern day America. The education system, the economy, the tech spheres that the Israelis have set up in their “civilizing” drive against the Palestinians, everything is on the verge of collapse. Cursory musings over open spaces, paved roads and infrastructure will cease as more and more people realise that what has kept the machine running has and always will be the oppression of entire groups of people. There is only so much that the sahr of consumption will be able to stall. The algorithm has been rendered naught. How much binge buying and indulgence will purge away the blood of the Palestinians that stains our hands? What level of debate and argumentation will allow us to delude ourselves into feeling better about ourselves? A hyper bureaucratic society forged with the intent of keeping people in their domains, drenched in work has failed. What compels a young woman to forsake her career and call out our tech overlords for their complicity in genocide? Surely her Professors, career advisors and recruiters must have advised her otherwise? To focus on the length of her CV, her skills and experiences. All of course so she could forge for herself a future. Yet she cast the mold aside and instead opted for “freedom”. True freedom as opposed to simply owning a currency that does not exist and spending it on fleeting highs. She must have been told she was mad. That she would lose everything, that the clarity of conscience is simply not worth the trouble. This is something we find hard to fathom. To do something not for economic gain or career progression. It was something else that drove her. Something primordial, simple but emotive, timeless. But Alas such things are nothing but hindrances for the Geist’s march towards progress. The crunching of numbers, churning out papers and presentations. The throwing of one’s CV at the feet of CEOs and PIs. What good does lamenting over the decimation of the Palestinians do for my career? It’ll get in the way of my study plan for the GRE. How do I finish my thesis knowing that as I write something that will most probably never be ready by anyone but the review committee, people are being starved to death. Gunned down brutally by Churchill’s bastion of Western progress. It all becomes too much. The insanity, depravity and worst of all the indifference. I’ll mourn for a second or two after seeing the corpse of a Palestinian child. But then immediately go on sifting through job applications as if nothing of consequence had occurred. It is this bay hissi that permeates the modern world. Despite being connected we remain unattached, distant and most importantly uninterested. One wonders if a world comprised of such constituents deserves to be saved? Am I worthy of saving? I cannot say.
Afkar-e-Qurtuba 