0
THERE is so much spin, so much deceit, so many lies that one can’t be blamed for not believing anyone — anyone in a position of power and authority — while the genocide continues in Gaza, with Israel enjoying the impunity it has had for as long as one can remember.
Hamas may have accepted some of the terms set forth for a ceasefire but uncertainty remains regarding further developments. US President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has called for an end to the Israeli bombing — just days ahead of the Nobel Peace Prize announcement.
Rewind to a few days earlier when Trump announced the Gaza peace plan and said he’d agreed with eight leaders of the Muslim world. When he made public the details, murmurs of discontent started among some of these states that had agreed to the draft. The deceit was laid bare.
Qatar and Pakistan said more or less publicly that this wasn’t really what was agreed to. And that they were unhappy with what was announced. However, it was also leaked to the media that Qatar would continue to insist in private to the US that some sections of the original draft be restored, while lauding it in public. (All eight governments endorsed the deal in a joint statement.)
It then emerged that the agreed draft was ‘edited’, in effect mutilated, by Israel’s psychopathic prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, during the six hours he spent ‘negotiating’ with Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner — both seen as personal friends of Netanyahu and the apartheid state, and both of whom have often backtracked on their positions to harmonise it with Israel’s.
Of the nearly 500 activists that set sail to deliver essential supplies to Gaza, only 30pc were Muslims.
These changes were made with the twin purpose of enabling Netanyahu to claim victory at home in order to appease his far-right coalition partners, namely Ben Gvir and Smotrich — both evil incarnate like himself.
At the same time, it was aimed at making it very difficult for Hamas to accept it because it excluded key Israeli Occupation Forces timelines for withdrawal, and dramatically cut the number of Palestinian hostages to be swapped for Israelis in Hamas captivity. It also excluded Palestinians from a top role in governance.
Bizarrely, the great and the good of the Muslim world — those with trillions of dollars in their sovereign wealth funds invested in the US; a Nato member boasting immense military power; another with a military powerful enough to have retaken territory lost to the apartheid state; and a nuclear-armed ummah state — were so helpless that three of them — Qatar, Egypt and Turkiye — were said to have put pressure on Hamas to accept the plan. That may have been why Hamas conditionally accepted it — or perhaps it had reasons of its own.
When the discontent among his key Gulf, Nato and newfound South Asian allies became apparent, it was leaked to the media that Trump was so unhappy with Netanyahu, as the negotiations proceeded, that he told him: “Take the deal or leave it. And if you leave it, we’ll walk away from you.”
Now, in the AIPAC-bought controlled political space in the US and the AIPAC-steered decision-making, if anyone wants you or me to believe for a moment that a US president, who has received hundreds of millions of dollars from supporters of the apartheid state had the leeway to ‘walk away’ from Israel, then you’d believe and so would I that this columnist is wealthier than Elon Musk.
This was one window to the world of lies we live in, and another is the one which tells us that Canada, France, Australia and the UK have ‘recognised the State of Palestine’. Their key Middle East ally Israel says there will never be a Palestinian state, so what they recognise is immaterial.
These democratic Western powers have time and again called for an end to the Gaza genocide and have, of late, taken to calling it abhorrent and unconscionable, but will not impose sanctions to force Israel to alter its conduct. For, that would mean putting their money where their mouth is and hurting the apartheid state.
These are the Western nations whose governments are still paying lip service to the Palestinian cause but whose people have taken to the streets in their millions to say enough is enough; they are calling for a boycott and blockade, of the apartheid state.
From the UK to Spain, from Belgium to Italy to Germany where police brutality, reminiscent of the SS of an era long gone is trying hard but failing to suppress the protest — it seems that all, from the Greens to the conservatives, have decided that the Palestinians have to atone for the sins of Nazi Germany, Holocaust being the worst. Almost as if to say one genocide has to pay for another.
Despite the fact that many governments in the Muslim world take unkindly to street protest, thousands of young Moroccans are out in the streets, battling the police to question their pro-Israel monarch’s polices. Turkiye has seen demonstrations too.
But then there is the other view. The humanitarian flotilla, with nearly 500 activists from around the world trying to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza and deliver baby food, milk, diapers and women’s sanitary supplies and more, was intercepted by the apartheid state’s forces. Many of the activists were kidnapped by the Israeli Occupation Forces from beyond occupied Palestine’s territorial waters. Of these activists, a mere 30 per cent belong to Muslim countries. The rest belong to countries and societies and cultures that many among us in Muslim states feel so superior to. Tens of thousands are still pouring into the streets in Madrid, Rome, Brussels, Mexico City, Bogotá … the list is endless.
Many of us in the Muslim world are like our governments — docile and scared and unwilling to annoy the US — while many people in the much-derided West have taken to the streets, challenging their governments to do more. Here is hoping their humanity triumphs, for there lies hope.
The writer is a former editor of Dawn.
Published in Dawn, October 5th, 2025
