Conundrum of misunderstanding.

Locked in a fortress of legitimation, colonial mentality is the expression of a hegemonic machinery as sturdy as its weakest component, and like a house of cards, boasts the comprehensive sum of its parts over their lowest denominator. Trump’s regime-change war on Iran has failed miserably yet his administration’s triumphalist narrative, in a stupefying denial of defeat, freeze-frames the conflict with a vapid series of peace talks. The maintenance of a lie entails its eventual adoption in a leak-proof belief system, clear and innocuous as the light of day. Iran stands up to Israeli aggression in Lebanon by planning a massive missile strike against the colony and at the eleventh hour, the US does an about-face and scurries to reach a peace agreement with the country it has consistently demonized. All for Trump to take credit for opening the strait of Hormuz and declare himself the only president capable of bringing peace to this battered region, thereby ensuring his smooth ride to the mid-terms. The Israelis are fuming to be sure, not because their goals are misaligned but out of rapacious competition, as when a larger beast snatches the prey and leaves its starving companion in a fit of fury. Netanyahu is quick to state that Israel will not abide by the emerging agreement and will continue its military operations in Lebanon. The brutal bombing of innocent civilians will no doubt continue, if not imminently, and Hezbollah is sure to respond in kind, bringing back the negotiations to their starting point, unless and it seems both inevitable and more of the same, the US and Israel retreat to give themselves enough time to renew their aggression. Amidst the deceit and subterfuge that muddies this fundamentally unresolved state of affairs, it must be said with strength and confidence that Iran has already emerged as the genuine hegemon of West Asia in a historic victory over a political entity incapable of admitting defeat. If only for the integrity of word and action, Iran sets itself apart from the stewards of a web of lies so pervasive it becomes the unadulterated truth. For the apologists of the US-Israeli alliance, words must distract from what cannot be talked about because the actions associated with them spare no evil word. Israel is a fulcrum of belligerence and its supporter’s use of language has nothing to do with communication, much less with expression but instead, constitutes a semantic shield that conceals how words do not to match their referenced acts, and get systematically weaponized in the chameleon hues of army fatigue. For all the Israeli balking at being betrayed by the US, Netanyahu can now boast saying No to a superpower and like Trump, end up securing more votes. The perversity is such that the disagreement between these sworn partners are really meant to destabilize the opposite camp rather than cause a fundamental rift between them. A double-pincered approach does not necessarily abide with strict coordination and is more effective wielding contradiction. Facing this dual-headed monster, Iran remains a bastion of integrity, a symbol of dignity and honor, impervious to its splintering by colonial dialectics. Given that Israel will go on sabotaging any peace plan, the strength it imparts to the emerging polity of West Asia is to remain unperturbed by the staged prevarications of a scrambling coalition of racist usurpers.

The US-Israeli relation has consistently been applied to the obsequious behavior of a dog wagging its tail. While the pet metaphor is valid in describing a pecking order, it is perhaps more useful to use another analogy, one that brings us closer to the true nature of their political bond. The symbiotic relationship between a shark and a pilot fish seems apt to describe the mix of autonomy and dependence that characterizes the colonial giant’s rapport with its vassal state. A nefarious synergy that falls in the loophole of Biden stating, “If there was no Israel, we would have to invent it” and Huckabee exclaiming “without Israel, there would be no America.” The obvious benefits to the pilot fish are food access and protection while the shark enjoys its minor partner as a cleaning service and a sensory alert system. Pilot fish even swim into the shark’s mouth to hide from danger and draft behind it to significantly reduce their energy expenditure. Behavioral analogies spark the metaphorical comparison but things are not exactly what they seem because what is distinct about this particular tandem is a circus act that presents the shark as an indolent whale and the pilot fish as the ostentatious belligerent. Thus, self-proclaimed legislator of marine life, the US enjoys its status as the top mammal of the sea, touts to be the world’s hero and to further differentiate itself, lends its oversized jaws to a rabid ally, all the more ready for the kill.

The Israeli outrage at being left out of the US-Iran’s poor excuse of a peace treaty is only an expression of jealous appetition, an instance of rapacious competition among teammates. The moment they start saying opposite things is not a breach in their relationship but a clear articulation of colonial dialectics. The rift that allows Trump to gain popularity for his fake peace efforts while relegating the aggression to the snubbed party, all the more fueled by its rage, does not break with but rather implements the agreed-upon agenda. The facts persist through the smokescreen as Trump will not stop Isreal from acting out, collecting all the chips and leaving its co-player vexed but so what, since the game they are engaged in has not changed and Jolani, Trump’s other pet is also sitting at the table. Insulted at face value, it is doubtful Israel would object to Syria doing the dirty job of eliminating Hezbollah, the intrepid nemesis who continues to inflict heavy losses on its military. The internecine altercation has the equally perverse effect of allowing Israel to essentialize its rabid stance, of refueling its offensives with typical tirades of victimization. Empire talks from both sides of its mouth and conflicting statements are a hallmark of colonial dialectics. It is futile to draw rational conclusions from what is designed to confuse and as a brawl becomes another way of hiding intent in broad daylight, it must be insisted that words should match the acts they reference. Otherwise, we are on a verbal roller-coaster, at the mercy of a distracting but dangerous joy ride.

For all the intellectual vultures circling the announcement of the tenuous MoU — threatening to turn into a carcass at any moment, as countless times before, in Gaza and South Lebanon — the displaced inhabitants make their way back home in spite of the overwhelming destruction wreaked on their buildings and fields. The suspected treachery of any negotiation with the masters of deceit does not stop countless men, women and children from enacting this journey the moment there is the slightest glimmer of hope, and against the distinct possibility that they will encounter more hostility. For all the skepticism and cautious optimism of geopolitical agitators, resistance as pure necessity is, after all, only enacted on the front lines of both guerrilla warfare and the persistence of the persecuted population anchored to their land, like a dead weight, almost passive but with a force that seals the impossibility of separating them. The certainty the US will resume its belligerence is not a good reason to postpone a sense of immediate victory, for it is unlikely there will be a final triumph — not any time soon, or at least not until a generational washboard ablutes the blood-stained legacy of all the caustic individuals, the likes of Chuck Schumer, Mark Levine — and the list is too long to unfurl — who are adamantly bent on making the world their oyster. We would already be in a different state of affairs at that point, which is why victory must be seized where it can be found, in its instance of resistance, even if distant from a full celebration of sovereignty.

To say there is never going to be a final victory is not defeatist but a way to shift the attention to the ambient but not always recognized changes that are beginning to erode a number of safe assumptions. We can only be sure of the slow meltdown of overarching determinations, such as colonialism and Zionism, but may never know the actual difference of not having them around. The victories — not unlike how the vanquished goalposts were reached, how the gigantic efforts at hasbara and propaganda were able to naturalize a bunch of lies — are immanent to a permanent engagement that would make them second-nature once achieved. The reality of the moment is that the MoU, even if sabotaged by Israel, with or without the backhanded consent of the US, has driven a torpedo into their Abraham Accords. The new normal is thus not theirs to administer, nor the monopoly of reality theirs to impart. After at least a century-long attempt to harness the region, the current cycle of colonial appropriation may have reached its zenith with the disintegration of Syria, following which the scale tips favorably towards Iran, and by fortuitous nemesis, introduces a much different paradigm for the region to adopt, beginning with the alliance of both nations and non-state actors in their struggle for indigenous sovereignty. The other certainty is that there is a fracture in the structures we adopt that cannot be ironed out by leaving current presumptions about power intact. The law of the strongest masks an essential autophagy, which in the absence of the victim creates a condition of self-immolation, leading the aggressor to implode. It could be that the spastic maneuvers of empire are the symptoms of an overactive metabolism drowning in its own excess, that it is striking a balancing act on heels disproportionate to its weight. The weakest point of the world’s dominant economy is its incapacity to withstand a blockade on the chokepoint of its monetary flows, the end logic of which is the hair that breaks the camel’s back. Of course, The US lies and Israel will not step back, but going forward, it is equally certain that the reality of the concessions they each have to make is the unadvertised curtailment of their longevity.

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