About the West’s Selective Priggishness and Neo-Orientalism
In an era when light reflects across the political desert of the Middle East, the illusion of a moral mirage rises again and again. From afar it appears as conscience, justice, compassion. But as one draws closer and the dust settles, it becomes clear it is merely an illusion. |
A moral mirage.
After the massacre of October 7, many in the West stopped speaking with empathy. by October 8, some have not even began. After all, most of the murdered were Jews, in Israel, the place they see as the root of all evil, the great enemy of humanity.
Meanwhile, in the Israeli northern border, while Druze women and girls in Syria are abducted, raped, and murdered, and Druze men and children slaughtered, Western social networks and public figures choose to channel all their outrage solely toward Israel, speaking of “genocide in Gaza.” There is no justice or morality here, only a performance of selective righteousness,.
This are the new aesthetics of the Western conscience: morality as visual design, well branded but hollow. In a world where compassion has become an Instagram filter and solidarity a hashtag for relevance, outrage is selected for convenience, for visual effect. Israel becomes an easy target for slogans, while the Druze minority in Syria is butchered in mass with no echo, no mention, no solidarity from those self-righteous voices that never miss a chance to preach morality to Israel, and to Jews, completely oblivious of over half a million Syrians and Lebanese killed by their own and over five million that had to seek asylum all over the world.
This is the new moral illusion. In an age of constant exposure, when the selfie is the new “self”, morality has become a staged performance across visual platforms, positioning the self(ie) as the center of the universe. The loudest voices claim moral superiority but speak only when outrage fits the fashionable narrative. The situation of Israel and the Midde East is convenient example: its complexity can be fashionably hashtagged into a single slogan by adding a # to an old slogan without understanding history, geography, or the reality of the Middle East. Facts? Who needs them when one can shout FromTheRiverToTheSea and feel righteous in front of a camera?
The real Middle East, with its layers, minorities, and daily tragedies, remains outside the frame. The true victims do not matter. What matters is fashionable relevance: posts, tweets and selfies that manipulte the pain of the “Other” to glorify the “Self” at a cheap cost, producing a fast selling populist relevance especially when the word “Jews” closes the argument. History has already shown again and again how propaganda wrapped in false justice, aimed at a marked enemy, can become a weapon. Ask Goebbels and Hitler.
Take, for example, the current archetypal “Syrian-American” figure: Rama Duwaji, wife of Zohran Mamdani, the elected mayor of New York City. A young illustrator, born in USA to a Syrian family, graduate of an elite art school, living safely in the heart of democracy, surrounded by the privileges of free speech.
Duwaji presents herself as an advocate for justice and women’s rights, supports Greta Thunberg and fights tyranny while expressing her Syrian-Arab sentiment from the comfort of her Western life. Her Instagram alternates between chic selfies and illustrated anti-Israeli propaganda. Not a single word about the Druze massacre in Sweida, or the women raped and the children disappearing with no trace. Not a mention of the terror organizations like ISIS, Hamas, and others , that have long prospered in the blood-soaked Syria under the same regime her family had the privilege to escape from in time.
How can a woman who defines herself as “Syrian” feel no moral obligation toward the Druze minority of Syria, now under a straightforward campaign of extermination? Alongside sentimental tales of family roots, there is complete silence about a nation destroyed by its dictator and the terrorist militias that force the same brutality we see in Gaza and across her Syria and over the world. But of course, it’s obvious: speaking about Israel and Gaza brings followers; speaking about southern Syria brings silence. No Jews, No News.
The world has fallen for this before. Remember Asma al-Assad, the Western-educated wife of the dictator of Damascus, once celebrated in Vogue as the “Rose of the Desert.” Only later did the world realize she was part of the machinery of destruction and murder that devastated her people. Once again, the West’s blindness was revealed, preferring glossy packaging and moral gossip over harsh reality.
Western activism has been adopted like a brand: selfie, slogan, T-shirt with a catchy phrase and the world applauds. Empathy has been reduced to graphic design, morality has become another Instagram filter, engineered, aesthetic, meaningless and empty. It generates traffic and likes, but who does it help? Not the Druze victims of Sweida, not the children, not the women raped and murdered, not Lebanon drowning under radical Islamic rule, and not the refugees who drowned at sea escaping tyranny. And certainly not the people of Gaza who lost everything. In truth, it serves to normalize and indirectly empower radical Islamist movements that openly declare war on the very liberal values the West claims to defend.
The real tragedy is that fake solidarity saves no lives. It only soothes the Western conscience, comfortably condescending, imagining itself pure. Merely a foolish justice, seeking likes and moral applause.
Criticism of Israel is legitimate, even necessary. But true justice is measured by the courage to face complexity. Those who remain silent about Syria’s massacres and the Druze genocide, yet devote all their outrage to condemning Israel, are not warriors for justice. They are agents of selective conscience of a new neo-orientalism that continues to frame the Middle East only in ways that flatter the West’s reflection.
