Civilization, brought by bombs!
From Gaza to Lebanon, the imperial’s ‘new’ is nothing but recycled barbarism
Intro
Western imperialists preach to us about freedom, democracy, and Civilization, but the truth on the ground is in blood and rubble. From Gaza’s shattered streets to the ruins of southern Lebanon, imperialism sells massacre as civilization and occupation as freedom. What they call new is nothing but recycled barbarism — the same old colonial violence, rebranded for another round — yet history shows that resistance is what brings such colonial orders to an end.
Contradictory Realities
While lives of many have been turned upside down since October 7, 2023, life has continued in other parts of the world. This is natural within the Western colonial‑imperial mindset; what happens in our regions—West Asia and Africa—through wars, destruction, killing, and plundering of resources is ultimately to sustain the ongoing prosperity and expansion of Western imperialist powers.
Take a casual stroll through any neighborhood in model cities of Europe or North America: you pass a small park, see children playing safely after school, return home, eat, bath, and sleep peacefully in warm beds. Not all children in the world are so fortunate. Children in Gaza are killed brutally, starve, or die of thirst; they have been displaced from one area to another for nearly two years, living in plastic tents under the genocide and blockade imposed by Israeli occupation forces. Children in southern Lebanon have been uprooted from their homes, destroyed by the Israeli occupation, and denied their education. Children in Sudan face the same tragedy. Many children in South Asia and Africa endure similar suffering. It is as if we live in two separate worlds on the same planet.
Racism Is Systemic, Not Accidental
This separation, which appears ‘natural’, is nothing but a veiled class-based colonial contradiction. Upon closer inspection, one finds that most residents in these Western neighborhoods are themselves victims of that same colonialism: the working classes and marginalized communities who survive on the crumbs of wealth plundered from our lands. While colonial regimes polish their image by providing a ‘relative welfare’ built on the exploitation of our peoples’ resources, this welfare is used as a tool to consolidate domestic authority or as a power for overseas hegemony.
And if this disguised separation sometimes takes on racial dimensions, it must be understood within the legacies of Western colonial governance systems. Racism in the West is not a passing coincidence; it is the product of a long history of colonialism, normalized by political systems and rooted in the institutions of education, media, and economy. These roots have accumulated in the collective consciousness to the point that they are sometimes practiced automatically, as if they were a natural part of the culture. They are embedded in the structures of systems shaped by colonialism and maintained by ruling powers.
I was recently struck by remarks made by White House official Tom Barrack during a press conference in Lebanon, addressing Lebanese journalists: “When the atmosphere here becomes animalistic, we cannot continue like this; you must learn to become civilized!” Such rhetoric is not an exception, but rather the expression of a colonial, supremacist mindset.
The ‘New Middle East’ Project: Colonialism Repackaged
What’s so new about this rhetoric? What’s new here at all? It’s nothing more than yet another attempt by the United States to impose its ‘New Middle East’ agenda on the region. The term first surfaced with former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during the Bush Jr. administration, amid the Israeli war on Lebanon in July 2006. She stood over the corpses of Lebanese civilians and the ruins of Beirut’s southern suburbs, describing the devastation as merely the “birth pangs of a New Middle East.” This language reflected a Western imperial vision: reshaping the political, economic, and military map of the region to serve U.S. and Israeli interests through killing, destruction, and wars.
Although the term emerged recently, its roots run much deeper. From the 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement, which tore apart the region’s geography to serve British and French colonial interests, to today’s recent projects of division and fragmentation, the same pattern repeats itself. The ‘new Middle East’ plans includes dismantling the resistance forces in Palestine and Lebanon, isolating Iran, redrawing territorial influence in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, and imposing the Zionist entity as a central colonial power in the region—whether militarily, through normalization agreements, via military intervention using U.S. bases and multinational forces, or through economic dependence by controlling energy, trade, and technology.
Nearly twenty years after the July War, this term resurfaces, coinciding the ongoing genocide in Gaza, displacement in the West Bank, destruction in Lebanon, and aggression against Yemen, Syria, and Iran. Today, with the audacity of an open and brazen colonial rhetoric, the Israeli entity claims it daily: the ‘Greater Israel Project’.
The ‘New Middle East’ Serving ‘Greater Israel’
‘Greater Israel’ is a plan first published by former Israeli official and journalist Oded Yinon in 1982, and today its principles are openly echoed by the Israeli officials. This project calls for the invasion, occupation, settlement, and annexation of additional Arab lands by the Zionist entity, after weakening the surrounding Arab states through their fragmentation into small sectarian and ethnic units.
Today, this plan is taking shape on the ground. Since October 7, the Israeli entity has seized new areas in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria, and threatens daily that it will not stop until it occupies and annexes and issues daily threats that it will not stop until it occupies and annexes additional lands it claims as its historical ‘right’—the so-called right of the ‘Chosen People’ to the lands ‘promised to them’, as they assert. Within this logic, they justify seizing these lands and killing or exterminating their indigenous inhabitants—A ‘right’ illegitimately legitimated 1-6 7-9 by the Western imperialist colonial powers, led by the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany.
Lebanon: At the Center of Colonization
While the plan spans the region, Lebanon stands at its core, due to both its strategic position and the resilient resistance embedded within. The United States and the Zionist entity view the Lebanese resistance as the principal barrier to their so-called ‘New Plan.’ Disarming it would neutralize its deterrent power, eliminate the existential threat it poses to the Zionist entity, and weaken Lebanon—creating a historic opening for the Israeli entity to advance its expansionist ‘Greater Israel’ agenda. If this model succeeds in Lebanon, it is likely to be replicated in other countries that like Lebanon still resist their colonial-settler expansion.
The connections between the three files are clear. The ‘New Middle East’: reshaping the region. Disarming the resistance: a basic precondition for carrying out this project. The ‘Greater Israel project’: the direct beneficiary, as it would enable expansion, domination over the countries of the region, and the establishment of a strong Zionist entity amid a weakened neighborhood.
The “New” Is a Disguised Submission
All these Western colonial plans are projected onto us in polished language. How could we accept a ‘New Middle East’ imposed on us from across the seas. What is this ‘new’ that does not grow from people’s will, but is instead plotted in intelligence rooms and embassies? You may dress up your plans with beautiful, empty words like ‘new’, ‘democracy’, and ‘freedom’ but they will not deceive us. These so-called ‘plans’ are nothing but a recycled version of old colonial tactics: division, fragmentation, the ignition of sectarian and religious strife, weakening people by stripping them of their resistance and removing the elements of their strength, leaving them vulnerable targets for any imperialist aggression. Your ‘new’ is just a mask for submission.
When the word ‘new’ is applied to the blood of our martyrs, the rubble of our homes in Beirut, and the destruction of our villages, it can only be called colonial barbarism. What kind of ‘New Middle East’ is this? Middle East chained to Washington, the Zionist entity, and Riyadh, where IMF rules drive debt and foreign powers control our decisions.
I wonder: can the US’s smart missiles really be the ‘new’ the United States claims to offer? Because so far, this is the only ‘new’ we’ve seen from them! Missiles tested on our bodies and our homes—we lived under their fire and learned their true meaning far from the condemnations of the International Court of Justice, the UN Security Council, the United Nations, and human rights organizations. This ‘new’ is etched into our memory: the sound of missiles raining down, the tremor of walls before the roar, the fear awakened in our hearts, leaving behind psychological and material destruction.
Keep your ‘new’ for yourselves. What we aspire to is life with dignity, the right to self-determination, and to live on our land without guardianship, occupation, or settlement. We want freedom and justice measured by our aspirations, not by the scale of your interests and plans.
The So‑Called Civilization
Everything done to us is justified under the banner of ‘civilization’. Colonial powers have long framed conquest and dispossession as progress. In Palestine, Khalidi shows Zionism was presented as a “civilizing movement” that erased the indigenous population, while Pappé exposes the ethnic cleansing justified as bringing “civilization and progress”. Edward Said argued that Europe constructed the Orient as backward to legitimize its domination.
This logic continues today. U.S. interventions are framed as bringing “freedom, democracy, and civilization,” yet serve to perpetuate domination and sustain Israel’s occupation (says Khalidi). Gregory highlights the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Palestine, all legitimated as defenses of civilization against barbarism.
From mandates to modern occupations, the Middle East remains chained to foreign powers claiming to act in the name of civilization. Imperial colonialism depicts us as ‘backward’, ‘underdeveloped’, and ‘terrorists’, while they alone are the emblems of ‘progress’, ‘civilization’, and ‘peace’. I tell them: if this is so far the civilization you intend to bring us—models like Afghanistan, Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison, Guantánamo, Gaza’s genocide —then take it and leave us in our ‘backwardness’!
The truth is that terrorism was manufactured in their arms factories, violence woven into the history of their rise, and ignorance inhabits their past and present — Thieves and invaders of the twenty‑first century. Leave us to live in peace: stay away from our land, our air, our waters, our people, our minds, and our wealth. Watch us from afar; perhaps you will learn something about humanity and the meaning of true civilization.
International Solidarity to resist Colonialism
Of course I do not appeal to the colonizer to stop occupying us. This brutal imperialist assault must be confronted. Facing these Western colonial projects is a collective responsibility that transcends borders. It is not the concern of a single people or state, especially since these plans are devised and managed from the heart of Western capitals. This is a human struggle for justice, freedom, and the right of peoples to self-determination.
Solidarity is not measured by words or mere sympathy, but by concrete actions that exert real popular pressure on regimes. In the West, this means mobilizing public opinion to pressure governments to cease their political, military, and economic investment in colonial projects. In the Arab world, it means pressuring regimes to halt normalization with the Zionist entity, sever ties with Western economic and military dependency, and ultimately align with the will of their peoples who reject the new colonialism.
Resistance: The Peoples’ Frontier
In the end, the greatest hope remains with the resistance that historical experiences have proven effective. The American occupation was defeated in Vietnam by the steadfastness of a people largely unarmed except for their will. French colonialism was forced to depart Algeria after more than 130 years thanks to the struggle of the Algerian people. In South Africa, the apartheid regime fell under the pressure of internal resistance and global solidarity. These examples confirm that colonialism, however long it endures, is destined to break before the perseverance of peoples and their attachment to the right to freedom and dignity. Our region is no exception.
To Western imperialists: Your colonial projects, which you try to impose on us from across the seas; we will shatter and break. Your “new” may be the desecration of our lands, massacres, and destruction, but our real newness is our steadfastness — our resistance, our freedom, and our right to determine our own future — and our will to uproot the traces of your barbarism from our regions.
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