Shakespeare’s seminal poem draws the haunting parallel between the tragedy of Lucrece and plight of Palestine. Lucrece, the beautiful, pious, and faithful wife of Collatinus, was ravaged by Prince Tarquin; the people of Palestine, no less innocent, suffer under the violence of Zionism. In her grief, Lucrece writes to her husband and, upon his arrival, names her violator before taking her own life. Her body, carried by her husband, father, and Brutus into the streets of Rome, sparks a revolt that banishes Tarquin—just as the suffering of Palestine threatens to banish its modern tyrants.

However, there lies the rub, unlike Lucrece, the Palestinians have taken up their arms to seek revenge from their oppressor directly while the people of the world bear the wounded bodies of Palestinians, demanding from their shameless governments to act to halt the genocide.

Genocide is inherent to the West. It serves dual purposes, one the surplus army of workers is liquidated, and secondly, it resolves the inherent anarchy of capitalism. “World crises have always been”, Marx says, “the real concentration and forcible adjustment of all the contradictions of bourgeois economy”.

“It is now generally accepted” David Harvey states, “that almost all famines over the last 200 years have been socially produced and not naturally ordained”. The one Israel is carrying out is merely the repetition of imperialist history.

Land grab follows genocide. Its economic purpose is to monopolize the mineral resources, food chains and to build high-rise buildings to extract rent. Controlling the food production is an important reason because West cannot produce the crops required to feed its people. The dream of Ertz Israel—the hegemonic idea borrowed from the Monroe doctrine and Nazis’ Lebensraum—is linked to meet the same ends. Otherwise, the Jewish population is too small to justify such a dangerous adventure.

It’s not only about US hegemony or domination but about keeping the Middle East passive and in permanent chaotic decadence. Is it only the US, keen to keep the Middle East primitive, trapped in the dark ages or is there consensus among all powers — including emerging ones such as China and........

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