Split Sides

Disruption To Destruction

This will be a short filler chapter to discuss some thoughts I have over something. In this case it's this lawsuit on the International Court of Justice (ICJ) where South Africa is alleging Israel of committing genocide in its war against Hamas in Gaza. Both sides have played into history and emotion to make their case, both sides are coming into this believing they're right, and there's no telling which way the jurors will go and what their verdict will be. Now, I won't put myself into this debate since I'm no expert on the subject, and I've no interest in jumping ahead of the final judgment in the case. I'll see what happens and that's as far as my interest here goes. But I'm here to take a step back and see this case in the broader context of this larger struggle between two differing power blocs contesting the right to claim the narrative of the way the future of the world is heading.

It's striking to see Israel, a country that was created to give safe refuge for Jews fleeing unspeakable genocide by the Nazis in Europe, being accused of committing genocide on the Palestinians of Gaza, by South Africa, a country founded on the genocidal conviction to replace the native black people with European settlers who embrace white supremacy. More than that, this is about a rich, mainly white country, being held to account by a poor, black one, over the conduct of this gruesome war waged on the land where millions of brown people call home. To call it problematic would be a severe understatement. This seems to be the place where the tectonic plates of wealth and power are colliding with seismic effects on the rest of the world, and it's easy to see why.

From where I'm standing, this is a titanic fight between a Western-led order of flawed and unequal rules and customs that has given us unprecedented peace and prosperity for the past 80+ years, and an Eastern and Southern movement seeking to rewrite those rules and customs to pursue more equitable and more sustainable growth, but at the cost of the stability that untold millions have shed blood and life for at the end of the Second World War. If you're someone from the Third World, you feel that the global momentum is behind you as you justify the need for the redistribution of the wealth and power that has long eluded you for generations. But if you're someone from the First World, you feel anxious and angry that the power and prosperity and prestige that you've had for so long is ebbing away from you, leaving nothing behind but monuments of a distant age of glory. We're all lost and confused, groping around in the dark for the answers and solutions we crave, not knowing if we'll ever find them or not. But this is the scale of the challenge we as humans face, whatever creed or land or belief or preference we hail from. This is what I see, what we must deal with and live with at the present.

When does disruption morph into destruction? When does a good thing turn bad? When does a noble ideal slowly disintegrate into an unspeakable nightmare? And what will we have then? What will be left after all is said and done? What will come next?

As usual, I don't know. I don't know. I hope the answers are out there somewhere. Hope is such a fragile thing.