[IMPORTANT: Make this 4 times longer with much more detail]
Q&A Why Is the World So Polarized on Gaza? The answer might be linked to race and colonization, explains author Pankaj Mishra, speaking on FP Live. By Ravi Agrawal , the editor in chief of Foreign Policy . No audio? Hover over the video player, and tap the Click to Unmute button. Already an FP Subscriber? Login On-demand recordings of FP Live conversations are available to FP subscribers. Subscribe Now My FP: Follow topics and authors to get straight to what you like. Exclusively for FP subscribers. Subscribe Now | Log In Human Rights United States Europe Ravi Agrawal February 12, 2025, 12:22 PM Comment icon View Comments ( 11 ) Global opinion on how Israel has prosecuted its revenge on Hamas and Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023, is bewilderingly polarized. Why should the United States and South Africa diverge so sharply in their understanding of what has happened, ranging all the way from a justified response to genocide? What explains the sharp polarization between east and west, north and south? It’s hard not to layer upon this issue “the color line,” writes Pankaj Mishra, an Indian writer and public intellectual, in his new book, The World After Gaza: A History . But does race adequately explain the cleavage in perception over conflict in the Middle East? Why, in Mishra’s analysis, is Gaza so substantially different from other conflicts roiling the planet in how they have an impact on public imagination? And how does the world move beyond seeing conflict from a personal prism, rather than a more humanist and equal lens? Global opinion on how Israel has prosecuted its revenge on Hamas and Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023, is bewilderingly polarized. Why should the United States and South Africa diverge so sharply in their understanding of what has happened, ranging all the way from a justified response to genocide? What explains the sharp polarization between east and west, north and south? FP-Live-podcast-functional-tag Prefer to listen? Follow the FP Live podcast for the entire conversation, plus other in-depth discussions, wherever you get your podcasts. Trending Articles Vance Delivers Rebuke on Immigration, Alleged Censorship Situation Report covers the Munich Security Conference. Powered By Advertisement Vance Delivers Rebuke on Immigration, Alleged Censorship X It’s hard not to layer upon this issue “the color line,” writes Pankaj Mishra, an Indian writer and public intellectual, in his new book, The World After Gaza: A History . But does race adequately explain the cleavage in perception over conflict in the Middle East? Why, in Mishra’s analysis, is Gaza so substantially different from other conflicts roiling the planet in how they have an impact on public imagination? And how does the world move beyond seeing conflict from a personal prism, rather than a more humanist and equal lens? I spoke with Mishra on FP Live on the day his book launched in the United States. Subscribers can watch the full discussion on the video box atop this page, or read an excerpt here . What follows here is a lightly edited and condensed transcript. Ravi Agrawal: Tell me why you chose to write this book. What are you trying to argue that is missing from the canon of books on this topic? Pankaj Mishra: I wouldn’t have written this book had Oct. 7 not happened and we hadn’t witnessed this wholly disproportionate Israeli response. Witnessing week after week, month after month of atrocity, of massacres, of children being murdered, there was a kind of accumulation of both despair and hopelessness. And I was hardly the only person to feel it. But as a writer, one thing I can do is respond to that moment by retreating into books, into sentences, into thinking, into making sense of it on the page. That was the initial impulse behind the book. I was seeking to answer several very baffling questions. How did a nation founded to house the survivors of the Holocaust end up committing such atrocities on another population of stateless people? This is one of those large historical questions that has to be answered in all its complexity, whether that’s moral or geopolitical. We tend only to look at the history of the Middle East or Palestinian history or the history of European Jews. But I think there are larger moral questions lurking there. You have to take into account the very deliberate construction of a certain kind of memory of the Holocaust in Israel. You have to look at how that memory was deliberately cultivated elsewhere, in the United States and, most importantly, in a place like Germany. In what way are these particular Western narratives of the Holocaust compatible or not with historical memories elsewhere define, for the vast majority of people around the world, what their place is. These very clearly are antagonistic narratives, narratives that are increasingly colliding. And the color line is alive like never before, whether it’s, you know, [U.S. President] Donald Trump sanctioning South Africa for its alleged dispossession of white South Africans or indeed South Africa going to the ICJ [International Court of Justice] with a [genocide] case that it knows would damage its economic interests. Most importantly, a large part of the book is devoted to exploring whether these antagonistic narratives can be reconciled. It is clear that we need global institutions that respond to our state of living in a heavily networked reality, a reality that transcends the one created by sovereign nation-states. The United States or Israel are assertions of an older, expansionist kind of nation-state. This is not only anachronistic but also destructive of existing norms. This is increasingly a dark portent for our future because we need to build institutions that accommodate an increasingly globalist reality. Instead, we are retreating into a hypernationalist mindset. The end of the book attempts to respond to this and come up with an ethical solution so as to not stay with antagonism, not stay with sympathy only for one’s own people or for the people you think you should be affiliating yourself with. RA: Your book reframes not only Zionism and the state of Israel, but it also takes on the cultural memory of the Holocaust, also called the Shoah . It creates a kind of decolonial framework for history that situates Israel within a context of Western hegemony and guilt. And so, in other words, Israel is reparations for what the West viewed as the primary moral moment, ignoring what the global south experienced as the primary moral moment: decolonization and self-determination. PM: Absolutely. The irony is that some of the major leaders of nationalist movements in Asia and Africa were initially very sympathetic to the idea of a Jewish homeland. They were well aware that Jews in Europe and Russia were being viciously persecuted. Before 1948, many Asians and Africans saw European Jews striving for a homeland as fellow victims. Since its founding, Israel has been increasingly identified with the white West, as it were, and more specifically with the Western mode of settler-colonialism in the early 20th century. So it’s important to remember that these narratives are capable of changing all the time, for the better and, indeed, in ways that stoke antagonism and conflict. RA: You write in the book: “Much has happened in the world in recent years: natural catastrophes, financial breakdowns, political earthquakes, a global pandemic, and wars of conquest and vengeance. Yet no disaster compares to Gaza—nothing has left us with such an intolerable weight of grief, perplexity, and bad conscience. Nothing has yielded so much shameful evidence of our lack of passion and indignation, narrowness of outlook, and feebleness of thought.” Who do you mean by “us” here? And why is Gaza more impactful than the other conflicts roiling the planet right now? PM: There are very simple answers to this, in my opinion. One is that the onslaught on Gaza was extensively broadcast, both by its perpetrators and by its victims. There was a continuous stream of live videos and images. Although no international journalists were allowed into Gaza, there were a number of Palestinian writers, journalists, activists, and ordinary civilians putting videos onto social media of houses being flattened, schools being bombed, people pulling out children from mounds of rubble. That is unlike any other atrocity today or in recent decades. Sign up for Editors’ Picks A curated selection of FP’s must-read stories. Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use and to receive email correspondence from us. You may opt out at any time. Enter your email Sign Up ✓ Signed Up You’re on the list! More ways to stay updated on global news: FP Live Enter your email Sign Up ✓ Signed Up World Brief Enter your email Sign Up ✓ Signed Up China Brief Enter your email Sign Up ✓ Signed Up South Asia Brief Enter your email Sign Up ✓ Signed Up Situation Report Enter your email Sign Up ✓ Signed Up View All Newsletters The other thing is that, unlike what is happening in Myanmar or Sudan or parts of India or China, the assault on a population is being not merely supported but actually enabled by the Western democracies. And that is the confusing bit for many people. How can they keep doing this while this overwhelming evidence of war crimes or even genocide piles up? Many people have been shocked and bewildered, asking what has happened in the West? That question is becoming more relevant and urgent, especially in the last two weeks since Trump’s arrival. What has happened in the West, in the United States specifically but also in Western Europe, that has created this mentality, this climate where we are all supposed to be supporting Israel in its brutal suppression of the Palestinians? Those who dissent are severely punished by ostracism. People have lost their jobs. People have been deplatformed. I’m one of those people who have suffered that fate. So this is the bewildering bit. And again, I think you would agree that we are not in a similar situation here when it comes to Myanmar or Sudan. What was happening there was truly atrocious, and in opposing it, we—the ordinary citizens, people, and media—were completely united with the powerful people in politics and business. That is not the case with Gaza. Read More Figures are silhouetted in a smoke-filled scene above a heap of destruction. A bit of fire is seen in the foreground. How Gaza Shattered the West’s Mythology The war has exposed post-World War II illusions of a common humanity. Excerpt | Pankaj Mishra A man pulls a man on a mattress on a rubble-strewn street. Why Are We Ignoring Human Rights Criticism of Israel? Major international organizations condemn Israel’s conduct in Gaza—and they’re not getting enough attention. Analysis | Howard W. French An aerial view shows a road clogged to the horizon with people. At left is the ocean and at right a war-devastated landscape. What Trump’s Gaza Plan Means for the World FP asked 10 writers to respond to the U.S. president’s shock announcement. Analysis | Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib , Matthew Duss , Khaled Elgindy , Dalia Hatuqa , Sara Khorshid , Aaron David Miller , Yousef Munayyer , Robert A. Pape , Hala Rharrit , Dennis Ross RA: I’d like to stay on the question of “us,” and explore why the global south sees this differently than the global north. There’s a section of your book called “Across the Colour Line.” How does race play into all of this, and why? PM: If you talk about this today, you’ll be denounced as “woke” and as dangerous to Western civilization. But historians and novelists in the part of the world where I grew up assumed that the modern world was created by certain very racial forms of imperialism and capitalism. They understood that in places like India, the country’s best people—artists and writers, poets, painters and political activists—fought extremely hard and were often imprisoned to liberate themselves of their European, or in some cases American, masters. So outside the United States, there’s a deep consciousness of the global racial hierarchy that systematically subjugated the once prestigious, powerful, and rich countries like India and China. It’s an anomaly of history that people in the United States are not sufficiently aware of this. But this is what happens in such a parochial intellectual space where your newspapers, your periodicals, or even your popular history books do not give you the essential information. For a vast majority of the world’s population, the existence of a global racial hierarchy and the existence of white racial privilege have never been in doubt. The initial struggles for sovereignty and self-determination were aimed at ending that particular racial order. Even a country like Japan, which was on the victorious side in the first World War, pleaded with its allies, the Western powers, for a clause in the Treaty of Versailles proclaiming racial equality. Even that modest proposal was rejected. And it was rejected by none other than Lord Balfour, the original author of the Zionist manifesto, who said that he can’t imagine an African as equal to a European. So, the color line, the racial divide, has long been a reality. And in many ways, it has created the modern world that we live in. Its memory has not vanished for the many people who still see themselves as living in a world made by and for white men. And obviously, that is going to manifest itself in geopolitical relations and in the way we look at events like Gaza. RA: Pankaj, now that you’ve laid all of that out, I just want to push back on a few elements. On the color line, you mentioned Japan, which also has a history of racism. So there’s nuance within these buckets that makes it hard to lump groups together. There’s nuance within the West, too. Not all Western countries are alike. Not all of them have supported Israel equally. And in the alternative, there are lots of different ways that countries in the global south, or whatever you call it, have acted in their own self-interest. Not to forget, many of them have their own histories of racism. Many of them have their own histories of conflict. Isn’t there a danger, when you bucket countries together as you are, that you lose nuance? PM: My point is not that we should rigorously observe the color line or the racial divide. That is the point of view of a racist. I’m saying that there are these historical experiences that constitute identity for large numbers of people around the world. For instance, I’m not arguing that because white racial privilege in the world has operated for decades, that there hasn’t been simultaneously an upper-caste Hindu privilege operating in India. I’m very much a beneficiary of that. The important thing is to acknowledge it and then to try to create a more egalitarian state. We cannot have these attitudes that were originally formed in the 19th century and the responses to those attitudes carry us through the present and into the future. We need to come up with solutions. I talk about these things because I’m working in a climate in Anglo-America where you hear in mainstream forums like the BBC, in the Sunday Times , in the New York Times magazine, that the British Empire was a wonderful thing and that the Americans should imitate that and impose it on large parts of the Middle East. That is the climate in which I’m operating. So in response to that, I’m saying that a large part of the world’s population believed imperialism was a great curse, that it destroyed societies, hollowed them out economically and socially. In making that argument, I’m not also talking about other various forms of hierarchy and exclusion existing today. It’s the context that shapes my thinking of these issues. RA: Let me bring us back to the core theme of the book. Another criticism that has come up is that you gloss over the effect that the Oct. 7 attack had on Israel’s sense of safety and how that was manifested through Iran’s actions, and through the rise of antisemitism. Many of your detractors argue Israel’s strength was necessary in response to a very particular historical reality that Jews have been killed and expelled. How do you respond to that? PM: I would respond similarly to the first objection. There is no dearth of writers, journalists, commentators, politicians pointing this out, especially in the context that your readers operate. I want to focus on the things that are not being talked about. That is my role. I am simply assuming that my readers share with me the vision, as I say in the book, that horrific war crimes were committed on Oct. 7, and that Israel had the right to go after Hamas and the other militant organizations who committed those war crimes. But I think the Israeli state also had a responsibility to take a moment and absorb the various, sort of, atrocity stories that occurred on Oct. 7. It did not give us time to listen to or see or feel within ourselves the enormous tragedy that so many ordinary Israelis suffered on Oct. 7. Instead, it started retaliating almost immediately, within a few hours. So while, at the same time, we condemn the Palestinian militants who committed atrocities against Israelis on Oct. 7, we also have to remember that there was never a moment to reckon with what happened that day. The retaliation was too swift. It was too disproportionate. And subsequently, many of these tragedies, many of the appalling disasters and calamities suffered by Israel have been obscured for many people. They are obviously extremely visible to people in Europe and America, because there’s a lot more attention paid to Israeli suffering. But it’s extraordinary that so many people in India or Indonesia have very little sense of the great losses and bereavement suffered by Israelis on Oct. 7. I could write a separate book or article about this subject. But again, my intention was not to dwell on things that already had been covered by the Anglo-American press in great, even disproportionate, detail when compared to the attention paid to Palestinian suffering. RA: We’ve been talking about “why Gaza” so far, in relation to your book. Here’s a similar question: Why you? It’s an interesting one to bring up partly because of your background growing up in India. You write about the Israeli desire to create a national identity of strength and hypermasculinity—a nationalist. This is something that many other countries share today, including India. Talk to us a bit about how nationalism plays out in that way with the rise of not just [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, but also [Indian Prime Minister Narendra] Modi and so many other characters so central to our modern politics. PM: This is my attempt to broaden the subject and look at Zionism’s resemblance to other nationalisms. Look at it from the perspective of India. With the Hindu nationalist government in power in India, it’s clear that there are a lot of people in India who admire Israel and completely approve of what Israel has been doing in Gaza and the West Bank. When I was growing up, that support was confined to a tiny, mostly invisible minority of upper-caste Hindu nationalists. They felt linked to Israel as a strong and successful nation-state that has created something enduring out of very unpromising material. It did so by being very clear about its identity, by putting Arabs and Muslims in their place, and by making sure that the majority community is dominant in all walks of life. Also modernizing its economy and having a very strong military. So these were the lessons we were drawing from Israel at the time. I think it’s really important to look at the way nationalism has developed across the world. What are the energies driving it? What are the motivations here? Is it the work of mostly men insecure about their status and their masculinity? I’ve raised these questions in other books. But these questions are almost inseparable from anything I do because I’ve watched Hindu nationalism develop, watched this great envy and admiration of Israel, and then saw that admiration become institutionalized through alliances, arms deals, and security cooperation with Israel. RA: Another line that stuck out to me: “Postwar American visions of modernisation and progress through democracy and capitalism, and a ‘rules-based international order,’ skipped over the fact that a world war that killed tens of millions and ended with the dropping of atomic bombs had made modernity and progress seem synonymous with universal destruction.” But a lot of good has come from the liberal international order, with millions lifted out of poverty, the elimination of many diseases, and expanded peace, no? PM: I wouldn’t fundamentally disagree with the idea of having a norms-based or rules-based order. There are very large, serious questions about to what extent this was rules-based, to what extent this was even an order, and whether it helped the United States emerge after 1945 as the dominant power. But I think the point I was making in the book is something different. Americans were largely exempt from the biggest calamities of the 20th century, which were the two world wars. They came into both quite late and they emerged from both as victors. The lessons of the two world wars—of the competitive imperialism that created a continuous climate of instability, and then of decolonization—were lost on the United States. So there is a relative American innocence about the way the world has worked in the 20th century and later. Some of that innocence can also be blamed for the Americans thinking that they’re here to create a new moral world order post-1945. Of course, it was left to other people to point to the hypocrisies: the criminality involved in enforcing that rules-based order, whether it’s Vietnam or any number of foreign-policy interventions around the world. You could argue there is more evidence of an international global disorder. At the same time, we do need a rules-based order. But it’s very clear now it’s not going to be created by one single hegemony. We need to absorb the lessons of decolonization if we want to move toward a stable global order. RA: You said America was very protected from the major flux of the early 20th century. Do you still think that it’s protected? Because part of your argument about why Gaza is so different is that it’s playing out live on smartphones and it’s polarizing global opinion. And with that comes a loss of American standing and soft power. How does that end up for America? PM: We can probably agree that the period of American decline started a while ago. Of course, it’s still an incredibly powerful country, but it has many more challenges and rivals than it did in the 1970s and ’80s. But I think we are seeing a last-minute scramble for power that is and has been slipping away. And what makes Gaza so disturbing as a portent, even before Trump was elected, is a climate in which even Democratic politicians not only support what Israel is doing, but go to great lengths to suppress criticism and stamp out dissent. It showed that the anti-democratic tendencies which are common to almost every fearful and declining power were on the rise. So this is why Gaza is so important. Gaza is not something confined to the Middle East. It denotes a universal shift of mood. It certainly denotes, very specifically, a dramatic shift of mentality in Western Europe and the United States. The kind of scenarios that were once associated with neofascistic countries are now becoming mainstream in advanced Western democracies. That is what Gaza portended. This is why I really wrote the book. I was aware that we are heading toward a much more chaotic and anarchic period in which politicians, sometimes aided by journalists, will take extreme measures and create a huge system of justifications and repression where dissenters will be penalized heavily and democratic rights will be trampled upon. My FP: Follow topics and authors to get straight to what you like. Exclusively for FP subscribers. Subscribe Now | Log In Human Rights United States Europe Ravi Agrawal Ravi Agrawal is the editor in chief of Foreign Policy . X: @RaviReports Read More On Europe | Gaza | Genocide & Crimes Against Humanity | Human Rights | Israel | Palestine | United States | War Join the Conversation Commenting on this and other recent articles is just one benefit of a Foreign Policy subscription. Already a subscriber? Log In . 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