{"id":306126,"date":"2025-10-27T12:01:46","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T12:01:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=306126"},"modified":"2025-10-26T07:40:19","modified_gmt":"2025-10-26T07:40:19","slug":"a-view-from-istanbul-on-the-savagery-of-the-wests-genocide-in-gaza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2025\/10\/a-view-from-istanbul-on-the-savagery-of-the-wests-genocide-in-gaza\/","title":{"rendered":"A View from Istanbul: On the Savagery of the West\u2019s Genocide in Gaza"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A view of Istanbul at dusk, from European side overlooking the Asia side across the Sea of Mamara, with two magnificent landmarks. Photo by Zarni, 23 Oct 2025<\/p><\/div>\n

25 Oct 2025\u00a0<\/em>–\u00a0It is 8AM here on the Asian side of Istanbul. It\u2019s 6AM back home in Kent, England.<\/p>\n

Last night I had gone to bed with, and woke up this morning thinking about, the image of Gaza, I saw at the Archaeological Museum. That is, the Gaza battle scene on the sarcophagus named Alexandar, yes, that Macedonian empire-builder remembered as Alexandar the Great.<\/p>\n

The image is said to represent the Battle of Gaza (312 BCE), fought between the Emperor Alexander\u2019s successors, after the Macedonian died at the unripe age of 33.<\/p>\n

(See the photos of the sarcophagus and curatorial explanation below. All photos by Zarni, 23 Oct. 2025)<\/p>\n

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In fact, I am here to attend the final session of the Gaza Tribunal<\/a> held in this great city of 20 million people, where not only the two continents \u2013 Asia and Europe \u2013 but also different civilizations of antiquity have interfaced over several millennia.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Gaza Tribunal will hold its final session in Istanbul from 23\u201326 October. https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/DQG6h44iOCI\/?img_index=1<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

I decided to give a miss to the opening day of the Gaza Tribunal which was kicked off with the recap of the tribunal\u2019s previous session held in Sarajevo, another great seat of different civilizations.<\/p>\n

Instead, I headed to the Archaeological Museum at the foot of the Tokapi Sayari (or palace) where I have in my previous visits found little gems that give me fresh perspective on things I have been taught to be modern or post-modern \u2013 such as the ideas of liberal freedoms, welfare states, progress, empirical sciences, rationality, gender equality \u2013 and you get the drift.<\/p>\n

For instance, in one of the great display rooms at the museum, I stumbled across an earthen tablet from Mesopotamia 3,500 years ago, that is, BC 1,500, where a woman leader stated that her efforts in governance would be devoted to addressing the needs of the welfare and protection of the population she ruled over.<\/p>\n

Such material evidence displaces and decentres the prevailing dominant intellectual order rooted in the foundational distortion or delusion \u2013 that everything \u201cprogressive\u201d, \u201chigh status\u201d, \u201cprestigious\u201d, \u201cscientific\u201d \u201crationale\u201d and so on is deemed to be \u201cWestern\u201d. This western-centred world is in turn believed to be rooted in the ancient Greco-Romanic Civilization, where philosophy worthy of universalization was birthed.<\/p>\n

I immediately recognized the tablet\u2019s message as the Indic (atheistic Buddhist<\/strong> Indian) equivalent of a dozen fabled edicts, erected in the 3rd century Before Christ (or BC), across what is now Northern India, by Emperor Ashoka or Ashok, which convey a similarly enlightened ideology of governance. I saw them in their original at various archaeological sites in Northern Indian provinces such as Odissa state and Sarnath. Sarnath is within a short drive from Varanasi, the 5,000-years old birthplace of the creation-centred polytheistic Hinduism.<\/p>\n

A word about Ashoka is in order. After a bloody \u2013 some might say genocidal, retroactively \u2013 campaign of what we would call genocidal wars of empire-building, Ashok was said to have repented and embraced the Buddhist philosophy of Impermanence and universal loving kindness or metta <\/em>(in Pali, the principal spoken and scriptural language of the ancient Buddhists).<\/p>\n

Two thousand years after the old genocidal warrior relinquished his mass murderous militarism and sought to pay for his crimes by spreading the message of peace, harmony and welfarism, another set of empire-builders or defenders in the West have been engaged in another round of bloodletting in the name of this fictitious Judeo-Christian Civilization.<\/p>\n

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A mosque in Gaza destroyed in an Israeli airstrike, 20 February 2025. As of January 2025, Israel had destroyed 815 mosques and 19 cemeteries over the course of the Gaza war. Wikipedia Commons<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

For the last two years hundreds of millions of people around the world have been pained by Gaza\u2019s images of death and destruction livestreamed by the Palestinians until they were literally wiped off the surface by the incoming drone bombs, or 1,000 lb bombs. Barking the empty mantra of the colonising occupier\u2019s \u201cself-defence\u201d, British, American, German and other European patron-politicians and myriad supporters of apartheid Israel have in effect approved the war of mass extermination of 2.3 million inhabitants of Gaza under vice-like medieval siege by relentless bombings and fire from the sky and on the ground.<\/p>\n

As I juxtapose, in my mind\u2019s eyes, the image of the Battle of Gaza nearly 2,300 years ago and today\u2019s images of Gaza as the site of genocidal killings and destruction I realize how utterly meaningless and intellectually vacuous this Pavlovian idea of Progress and Rationality which what we call Global North or \u201cThe West\u201d have sought to universalize as \u201cthe Gold Standard of Civilization and Culture\u201d has been.<\/p>\n

The scene on the coffin in the museum of men fighting with their hands, chopping off heads or sticking their spears into an enemy\u2019s back seem more humane and human than what the collective West has been doing to the largely defenceless population of 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza.<\/p>\n

The unfolding savagery of the collective West in Gaza far exceeds what men in antiquity did to one another or inflicted on respective enemy populations. Over 3,700 years ago, men would pursue retributive justice guided by such principles as Hammurabi\u2019s code<\/a>, which spells out \u201can eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth\u201d.<\/p>\n

Alas, no such \u201cleniency\u201d in thought or deeds, in Palestine where Israeli architects of genocide implement the kill ratio of 50 Palestinian lives for the life of 1 Israeli Jew<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Men who are in the driver\u2019s seats of this savage war against largely unarmed Palestinians in Gaza, such as Donald J. Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu and their courtier-investors, show absolutely no sign of self-reflection, capacity for repentance or, in short, humanity, despite the global majority, of states and people, screaming foul at multiple fora including people\u2019s moral tribunals, UN resolutions, street rallies, civil disobedience acts, marches and voyages of symbolism.<\/p>\n

This was the subject I discussed on South Africa\u2019s humanitarian radio program, Salaam Media.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Watch the 20-minutes discussion aired yesterday below or here: Gaza Made Unlivable: Apartheid Israel\u2019s Genocide on Palestine Turns Environmental Catastrophe \u2013 YouTube<\/a><\/p>\n