Is it better to loved or feared? Our history is littered with leaders who struggled with this question and many of them even used fear to make their people love them.
It wasn’t until around 1513 that the Italian political thinker Niccolò Machiavelli implied in his famous book that “fear is a more reliable way to inspire discipline than bonds of love” when many leaders adopted fear as the main tool to control others. In the Western corridors of political power there’s this belief that fear the only treatment people in Arab World deserve.
We are witnesses to this evil line of thinking today in the 2023 genocide against the Palestinian people being committed by the Israeli, the US, the UK armies and their allies. Just like the butterfly effect, the effects of genocides spread across the world and traumatise the victims and the oppressors for generations.
Whether it’s the Spanish inquisition, the war against native Americans, or the WWII Holocaust their horrors keep spreading long after these wars stop. With Israeli, American-Anglo and allies’ genocide against Gaza we are facing three scenarios in the region- the Domino Effect scenario, the David scenario, and the peace scenario.
Domino effect scenario
With tens of thousands of dead and injured Palestinians of all faiths in less than a month, escalation is inevitable among the 450 million people in the Arab World, and 1.5 billion people in Muslim majority countries. In this scenario, the continuous Weapons of Mass Destruction campaigns succeed in ethnically cleansing Palestine and move to bomb other countries in the region who share the same traits as Gaza.
The next attack will brutalise societies that are divided, have no access to WMDs, and are surrounded by willing genocide accomplices. The long-term winners in this scenario are the thousands of families that sacrificed all their lineage so that their people gain freedom. While the long-term losers are the leaders of US and allies such as the US President and Secretary of State will leave no legacy other than that of an incompetent, religiously motivated genocide perpetrator.
David scenario
Same as in the Vietnam liberation struggle, the second scenario sees the underdog side in this war — Palestinian people, represented by the Islamic Resistance Movement win the war narrative. It has already pierced through decades of Israel military, intelligence, and cultural superiority by showing fear in Israeli soldiers and failure assess risks and complete lack of respect for human life. The long-term David- winners here include the free Palestinian people, while the Goliath losers include all powers that let their fear stop them from taking any action, no matter how little, against this modern era’s more horrific genocide.
Peace scenario
While everyone talks about peace, superpowers don’t really mean it, especially powers that profit from weapons and violence. Genocidal allies use statements regarding peace as a delay tactic to ethically cleanse their victims, while others use peace statements hoping, in vain, that history will judge them less harshly because they didn’t directly drop the bombs on men, women and children in Gaza concentration camp.
There’s always hope, especially in the millions of peace-loving people making their voice around the world heard that our human life is too precious to waste on hatred. While the decent heart aches every time we see a dead baby lifted from the rubbles, we must keep praying and resisting the urge to be on the wrong side of history by succumbing to fear and supporting the oppressors.
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