Erasing Palestine’s culture, history and public memory is part and parcel of Israel’s genocide in Gaza

Over 80% of the schools in in Gaza have been reduced to rubble—libraries, archives, publishing houses, and cultural centers . . . and centuries-old manuscripts in the Great Omari Mosque have been completely destroyed.

By Fareed Khan 
A version of this can be found on Substack.

In his 1980 book, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Milan Kundera wrote, “The first step in liquidating a people … is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, and its history. Then have somebody write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history.”

This chilling observation, drawn from the foundational logic of colonial erasure, precisely describes the century-long project of Zionism.

Founded in the late 19th century as a nationalist political ideology by ethnic European intellectuals like Theodor Herzl, who framed it explicitly as a secular political ideology rather than a religious imperative. Zionism sought to establish a Jewish state in historic Palestine through the systematic displacement of its indigenous inhabitants—Palestinian Muslims and Christians—and the erasure of their culture and history.

Far from an organic expression of Judaism, Zionism hijacked Jewish identity to pursue a supremacist agenda of demographic transformation and cultural obliteration. From its inception, the movement’s followers have pursued the goal of emptying Palestine of its indigenous inhabitants, and the erasure of Palestinian memory, history, and presence, employing mass violence, archival destruction, geographic renaming, and environmental camouflage as core tactics. This pattern, evident in the 1948 Nakba (Arabic for “catastrophe”) and repeated in subsequent wars and the ongoing Gaza genocide, reveals Zionism not as a liberation movement but as a cancer on humanity, intent on annihilating a people by first annihilating their collective identity.

Zionism emerged not from ancient religious longing but from 19th-century European nationalist fervour. Herzl, a secular Austro-Hungarian journalist, articulated in his 1896 pamphlet Der Judenstaat a political program for Jewish colonization of Palestine, viewing it as a “new society” to be built by European settlers while sidelining or removing the Palestinian majority. Early Zionist congresses, beginning in Basel in 1897, emphasized “transfer” of the indigenous population as a practical necessity, a euphemism for ethnic cleansing that became explicit policy.

This was no theological “return” of Jews to the Holy Land, where Jews had lived in peace with Muslims and Christians for centuries. It was a colonial enterprise by European Ashkenazi elites who claimed Jewish heritage while rejecting the Jewish religion. Prominent Jewish thinkers recognized this danger early. Albert Einstein, a vocal critic of Zionism, repeatedly rejected the creation of a sovereign Jewish state. In 1938, he declared his preference for “reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the basis of living together in peace than the creation of a Jewish state,” warning that such a state would inflict “inner damage” on Judaism through “narrow nationalism.”

Jewish-American historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt, similarly condemned Zionism’s embrace of exclusionary sovereignty. In her essays from the 1940s, she advocated a bi-national framework preserving Palestinian rights and decried the movement’s drift toward militarism and domination. Their stance culminated in a public letter published in The New York Times on December 4, 1948—signed by Einstein, Arendt, and 26 other prominent Jewish intellectuals—denouncing the “Freedom Party” (Herut) led by Menachem Begin as “closely akin to the Nazi and Fascist parties” of Europe for its terrorist methods and chauvinism. The letter warned that Begin’s vision foreshadowed a society built on oppression and violence, exposing the fascist undercurrents within Zionist factions even as Israel was being consolidated.

These warnings proved prophetic. The establishment of Israel in 1948 was founded on mass murder and ethnic cleansing—the Nakba in which Zionist terrorist militias, operating under Plan Dalet, systematically depopulated over 500 Palestinian villages and urban neighborhoods. Tens of thousands of Palestinians were killed in massacres such as Deir Yassin, where Irgun and Lehi terrorist gangs slaughtered hundreds of civilians, including women and children, as a deliberate terror tactic to induce flight. By war’s end, over 750,000 Palestinians—more than half the indigenous population—had been expelled or fled in terror, their homes looted and lands seized. To conceal these crimes, Zionist forces razed villages to the ground and planted forests over the ruins through the Jewish National Fund (JNF). Pine trees, alien to the Palestinian landscape, now blanket sites like those of Lubya (renamed Lavi) and hundreds of others, transforming sites of life into recreational parks that erased visual evidence of Palestinian existence. This planting of forests was not environmental stewardship but deliberate camouflage—a “greenwashing” of genocide, as documented in Israeli archives and eyewitness accounts.

Geographic erasure complemented physical destruction. Zionist authorities launched a comprehensive renaming campaign by assigning Hebrew names to thousands of Arab place names—villages, hills, rivers—to fabricate a narrative of continuous Jewish presence while severing Palestinian ties to the land. The Palestinian village of Asqalan became Ashkelon, and countless others followed suit under a 1949 Israeli government committee. This linguistic colonization mirrored the destruction of archives and libraries. In the “Great Book Robbery” of 1948-1949, Israeli librarians and soldiers systematically looted over 70,000 books, manuscripts, and newspapers from Palestinian homes in Jerusalem, Jaffa, Haifa, and elsewhere, transferring them to the National Library or destroying them. Private collections documenting centuries of Palestinian culture—poetry, legal records, family histories—were pillaged or vanished, ensuring that future generations of Palestinians would inherit a blank slate.

This erasure was not confined to 1948. Israel instigated multiple wars to expand territory or consolidate demographic control. The 1956 Suez Crisis saw Israel invade Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula in coordination with Britain and France, seizing Gaza and the Sinai before international pressure forced withdrawal, demonstrating Zionist willingness to launch aggressive campaigns against Israel’s Arab neighbours. In 1967, Israel was the aggressor in the Six-Day War, launching a surprise aerial assault that destroyed Egypt’s air force and seized the West Bank, Gaza, Sinai, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, and again displacing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. These conflicts, framed by Israel as “defensive”, were rooted in an expansionist doctrine, enabling further settlement and land expropriation while perpetuating the Palestinian refugee crisis that began with Israel’s creation in 1948. Subsequent invasions, including Lebanon in 1982, followed the pattern of pre-emptive aggression to neutralize resistance and secure the vision of a “Greater Israel.”

The Gaza genocide, unfolding with ferocious intensity since October 2023 as a “defensive” operation against Hamas, represents the culmination of this century-old strategy. Israeli forces have replicated the Nakba playbook on a compressed scale and with greater brutality, targeting not only lives but the infrastructure of memory and knowledge. All twelve universities in Gaza have been destroyed, their collection of knowledge obliterated. In addition, over 80% of the schools in in Gaza—over 500 institutions—have been reduced to rubble. Libraries, archives, publishing houses, and cultural centres lie in ruins—the Gaza Public Library, the Edward Said Library, and centuries-old manuscripts in the Great Omari Mosque have been completely destroyed. Mosques and churches, repositories of communal history, have been bombed, including the 7th-century Omari Mosque with its 13th-century library. 

This “scholasticide” also extends to human carriers of knowledge with at least 95 university professors, 261 teachers, and thousands of students—many of them children—have been killed, with journalists and story tellers systematically targeted by Israel. According to Euromed Human Rights Monitor, as of April 19th over 21,400 Palestinian children have been killed, with one study calculating that more than 300,000 children have been killed since October 2023. This ensures that future generations can’t reclaim or transmit their heritage, with UN experts and scholars noting this is not collateral damage but intentional annihilation of the fabric of Palestinian society.

Such actions align with the crime of genocide as defined by Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term in 1944. Lemkin described genocide as a “coordinated plan” to destroy a group’s “essential foundations of life”—not only through mass killing but by eradicating culture, language, religion, and national feelings so the group “withers and dies like plants that have suffered a blight.”

While the UN Genocide Convention emphasizes physical destruction, experts including the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention and human rights organizations have applied this broader lens to Palestine, arguing that cultural erasure—destroying educational and religious sites, preventing knowledge transmission, and killing intellectuals—constitutes genocidal intent. In Gaza, the scale of scholasticide and heritage destruction, coupled with statements from Israeli officials invoking biblical erasure, fulfills Lemkin’s criteria with the intent to erase Palestinians and their identity.

Zionism’s legacy is thus one of calculated dehumanization and the erasure of Palestinian existence in all its forms. By liquidating Palestinian memory—through forests over villages, Hebrew names on maps, looted archives, and bombed universities—it has advanced halfway to total liquidation of the people. Yet Palestinian resilience persists, a testament to the ideology’s ultimate failure and the determination of Palestinians not to surrender to Zionist violence.

For more than a century, the supremacist project of Zionism has inflicted immeasurable suffering, hijacking Jewish ethics in service of colonial violence. Recognizing this political ideology for what it is—a cancer demanding confrontation—is essential to any just future for the region and humanity. Only by restoring Palestinian history, culture, and right of return, and opposing the Zionist ideology wherever it exists, can the cycle of erasure end and justice for the Palestinian people be achieved.

© 2026 The View From Here. © 2026 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.

FOR LEADERS WITHOUT SOULS

By Fareed Khan 
A version of this can be found on Substack.

When injustice becomes law
resistance becomes a duty we draw
leaders who stand with the Israeli oppressor’s might
have shown their souls cloaked in darkest night.

When cruelty becomes normal and vile
compassion becomes radical, worth the while
national leaders who ally without shame
ignoring genocide, they play the devil’s game.

After more than two and a half years of Israel’s hell
in Gaza where innocents were murdered and fell
politicians refuse to criticize or break
their bond with Israel, for their own sake.

They remain its ally, steadfast they stand
refusing to condemn with blood on their hands
they’ve shown the world who has sold their soul
for a devil’s bargain, which they don’t control.

Gaza’s horrors still unfold, yet they look away
from the massacres that have darkened every day
their hearts are empty, their consciences sold
to embrace inhumanity, corruption and gold.

The evil in Gaza, they wilfully ignore
the cries of Palestinian kids dying, and the murderers’ roar
standing firmly with their Israeli ally they are proud
no souls within them, they are just a devil’s crowd.

These people are not horrified by these evil deeds
more than two and a half years later as Gaza still bleeds
for those with souls it is most horrifying to see
our so-called leaders complicit in genocidal atrocities.

They’ve shown the world who lacks a soul’s light
who has traded it all for the blackness of Lucifer’s night
for favours, alliances and trade they bend their knees
to a regime committing horrific evil, with complete impunity.

In halls of power our leaders are clear
they side with the devil’s acolytes, shedding no tears
the world now knows those who sold their souls
while deceit and injustice still take their deadly toll.

Yet some global leaders with moral compasses strong
have condemned Israel to the depths where they belong
they label its leaders as criminals to be convicted
who must burn in hell, and that assertion is not conflicted.

With righteous anger they raise their voices
against the Gaza genocide, making the choices
to stand for justice, for Palestinian rights
in the face of darkness and evil they bring the light.

These brave souls label the guilty ones clear
criminals who deserve to rot in eternal fear
to be condemned for the evil of their heinous crimes
while those who seek justice, advocating for better times.

© 2026 The View From Here. © 2026 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.

US-Israeli aggression has destabilized the Middle East and turned it into a powder keg

Through their actions, the United States and Israel have transformed the Middle East into a far more dangerous place, and established themselves as the biggest destabilizing force in the region.

By Fareed Khan 
A version of this can be found on Substack.

“To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

These words, pronounced by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in 1946, were meant to serve as an eternal indictment of aggressive war and a bulwark against the very atrocities it inevitably unleashes. They declared that the crime of starting an unprovoked conflict carries within it every subsequent horror—civilian slaughter, shattered societies, refugee crises, economic ruin, and the slow erosion of global order.

Today, in the wake of the collapse of the two-week ceasefire with Iran announced by President Donald Trump on April 7, 2026, Nuremberg’s verdict echoes with terrifying clarity. The agreement was precarious from the moment it was signed—a cynical pause designed not to end hostilities but to buy time for the continuation of a war of aggression launched by the United States and Israel on February 28. That original assault, and every violation of international law that has followed—including the breakdown of Pakistan-mediated peace talks in Islamabad over the weekend and the subsequent US threats to blockade the Strait of Hormuz to all shipping traffic—embodies the “accumulated evil” Nuremberg warned against. The ceasefire’s swift failure was not an unfortunate accident; it was the predictable consequence of a policy rooted in lawlessness, hubris, and an unshakable commitment to Israeli impunity.

Almost immediately after Trump’s announcement, Israeli forces expanded their strikes deep into Lebanon, hitting more than 100 targets in a single ten-minute barrage across commercial and residential districts of central Beirut. Lebanese health authorities now report civilian deaths climbing rapidly, with more than 280 killed over a 48 hour period alone—the highest single-day toll in the Israel-Hezbollah war—along with hundreds wounded and the overall displacement of more than 1.7 million Lebanese from the southern part of the country. In direct response, Iran once again closed the Strait of Hormuz and imposed tolls on shipping. The fragile truce, which Iranian officials explicitly insisted include an immediate end to the war in Lebanon, lies in ruins. However, Israel refuses to recognize that Lebanon was ever part of the agreement, exposing the selective and self-serving nature of the so-called peace deal.

This breach was not an aberration but the expected outcome of a pattern of bad faith negotiating that has defined Israeli and American policy in the region for years. Israel has violated every ceasefire it has ever agreed to—both in the recent past two and a half years and in the decades prior—including the so-called ceasefire with Hamas signed in October 2025, which it shattered with near-daily attacks, killing hundreds of Palestinians and racking up more than 2,000 documented violations by March 2026. The same pattern has played out repeatedly in Lebanon, where Israel stands accused of thousands of breaches of the 2024 ceasefire agreement. 

Netanyahu’s government and the Trump administration now claim the US-Iran truce “does not cover Lebanon,” but that self-serving caveat was never accepted by Tehran. The ceasefire was never meant to hold; it was merely a temporary pause in a war of aggression that Washington and Jerusalem launched—an operation that has already exacted a devastating human and strategic toll and that carries, in Nuremberg’s precise language, the accumulated evil of all the atrocities that have followed. 

The original assault on February 28 remains the root of the entire catastrophe. On that day, US and Israeli forces unleashed coordinated airstrikes across Iran in what was dubbed Operation Epic Fury. The attacks assassinated Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and other senior officials, bombed nuclear and military sites, and indiscriminately killed civilians, including more than 165 girls and staff at an elementary school. There was no armed attack by Iran that could justify such action under Article 51 of the UN Charter, given that negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program were still active at the time. There was no imminent threat, no UN Security Council authorization, and no lawful claim of self-defence could be made by either the US or Israel. The strikes constituted a classic war of aggression—the “supreme international crime” condemned at Nuremberg as the crime that contains within itself the accumulated evil of all subsequent atrocities.

The legal violations are clear and damning. Article 2(4) of the UN Charter is unequivocal declaring that states must refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any other state. The US-Israeli operation shattered that prohibition in the most flagrant manner. Legal scholars have repeatedly affirmed that pre-emptive wars of choice, launched while diplomacy was still underway, violate the post-1945 international order that was designed precisely to prevent such acts of naked aggression. The subsequent bombing of schools, hospitals, and civilian infrastructure only compounded the original crime. International humanitarian law—the Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocol I—forbids attacks on objects indispensable to civilian survival and demands strict distinction between military and civilian targets. Deliberate or reckless strikes on health centres and schools are war crimes under any reasonable interpretation of the law. 

Compounding the legal atrocities is the incendiary rhetoric from the White House itself. Trump’s own social-media rants have escalated the criminality into genocidal territory. He threatened to make Iran “live in Hell,” promised attacks on power plants and bridges, and declared that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” Under Article II of the 1948 Genocide Convention, such statements can be seen as telegraphing intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national or ethnic group by inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction. Threatening to annihilate an ancient civilization—its people, culture, and millennia-old heritage—meets that legal threshold. Experts have already labelled these declarations as potential incitement to genocide and war crimes. 

The fact is that the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz was entirely manufactured by the US-Israeli initial act of aggression. Before February 28, commercial shipping was moving normally through the waterway that carries one-fifth of global oil and gas. Only after the bombs began falling did Iran assert control, reduce shipping volume, and begin collecting toll from ships that were allowed to pass. The closure was defensive and in reaction to US-Israeli aggression, not provocative. Iran’s re-closure of the waterway this week is the predictable consequence of Israel’s violation of the ceasefire’s Lebanon provisions and the mounting civilian slaughter there. 

Each additional provocation only deepens global sympathy for Iran and erodes Washington’s moral authority. This latest escalation follows directly on the breakdown of Pakistan-mediated peace talks in Islamabad, which collapsed without agreement over the weekend despite offering a genuine path to de-escalation. In the wake of that failure, the United States has now threatened a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz to all shipping traffic—an act of economic warfare that further militarizes the chokepoint and exposes the hollowness of any American commitment to peace. 

The human and strategic costs of this military aggression are already staggering beyond imagination. Civilian deaths inside Iran exceed 2,000. Power plants, bridges, and homes remain in the cross hairs, and the global economic costs are mounting, with a potential to plunge 32 million in to poverty, and create a global recession Additionally, the latest Lebanese massacres—more than 280 dead in just two days—demonstrates that Israel has no intention of honouring even the limited truce it signed. Should the conflict reignite fully, the “accumulated evil” of the initial aggression will metastasize. Hezbollah, Iraqi militias, and the broader “Axis of Resistance” will be drawn in. Refugee flows, oil-price shocks, direct retaliation against US bases, and proxy wars across multiple borders would follow. 

The Persian Gulf and the Levant could erupt into a conflagration dwarfing any recent Middle East conflict, pulling in surrounding nations—Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states—in a vortex of retaliation none of them sought. This avoidable war with Iran could easily lead to a wider regional war with some analysts predicting it could even lead to World War 3, as alliances are tested and superpowers are drawn into the fray through cascading proxy conflicts and economic desperation.

Through their actions, the United States and Israel have transformed the Middle East into a far more dangerous place, and established themselves as the biggest destabilizing force in the region. Rather than acting as forces for stability or sincerely committing to peace, their unprovoked aggression has fuelled cycles of violence, resentment, and instability that threaten to engulf the entire region and far beyond. The war with Iran was completely avoidable, yet Washington and Jerusalem opted for missiles and bombs over bargaining in a display of arrogance that has now destabilized multiple borders simultaneously. This choice has not only violated international law but has also sacrificed the safety and lives of tens of millions of innocents on the altar of America’s unequivocal support to its genocidal Israeli ally. 

The main victims of this unholy alliance have been Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims, whose lives hold little value in the pursuit of Israeli security objectives and America’s goal of controlling Middle-East oil. From the relentless violations and civilian slaughter in Gaza to the carnage in Lebanon and the war against Iran, these populations have borne the brunt of the suffering, with their homes destroyed, families torn apart, and futures obliterated to appease a rogue terrorist nation that operates with impunity while the US provides diplomatic cover, arms, and political support at every turn.

The evils of war are not abstract concepts to be debated in think tanks. They are visceral, devastating realities that destroy lives, communities, and the fragile fabric of international trust. Wars bring indiscriminate death to children and civilians, widespread population displacements that creates generations of refugees, economic collapse that ripples across continents, and a legacy of hatred that poisons societies for decades. 

In the current scenario American and Israeli actions pose an existential global threat, undermining the very foundations of global peace and security that have held since 1945. By flouting the UN Charter, committing what amount to war crimes, and declaring genocidal intent (as Israel actually commits genocide), they have set a dangerous precedent that could encourage other nations to engage in similar acts of aggression to achieve their geopolitical goals, leading to a breakdown of the global order and the very real prospect of uncontrollable escalation. 

Additionally, the risk of a wider war is not hypothetical. It is imminent, with the potential to draw the world into a conflict of unprecedented scale involving energy chokepoints, proxy armies, and nuclear-armed states. There is also the reality that Trump’s words and actions have thoroughly destroyed America’s reputation on the world stage. Once seen as a leading proponent of diplomacy and the rule of law, the US under Trump is now seen as unreliable, impulsive, belligerent and dangerous. His threats and the childish rampage that characterized his approach to Iran have marked what many describe as the end of the American century, leaving even its closest allies questioning whether they can trust Washington anymore. The world will ultimately pay for Trump’s Iran mess, as global stability hangs in the balance due to his reckless policies and the resulting chaos. A nation that even its allies don’t trust any more is a nation adrift, its moral authority in tatters and its alliances fraying at the seams. 

Canada’s response has been characteristically timid, reflecting the broader erosion of trust among traditional partners. Prime Minister Mark Carney has issued vague calls for “respect for international law and human rights” but has offered no specific condemnation of either Trump’s genocidal threats or Israel’s criminal actions either in Gaza, Iran or Lebanon. Ottawa appears content with platitudes about “deep concern” and “calls for restraint,” prioritizing economic and security ties with Washington over moral leadership. History will judge whether such silence amounts to complicity in the face of clear violations. 

In the end, the shattered ceasefire changes nothing fundamental. The war of aggression began on February 28, and its criminality persists. Civilian infrastructure still lies in ruins; hospitals and schools still bear the scars of illegal attacks. Genocide still continues in Gaza, while additional genocidal rhetoric still emanates from the White House. 

The Strait of Hormuz remains a flash point of America’s own making. And the risk of a wider war—engulfing neighbouring states in uncontrollable escalation—looms larger than ever. If the international community allows this precedent to stand, the UN Charter and the UN itself become meaningless, and Nuremberg’s verdict becomes a historical footnote. The greater danger is that Israeli sabotage of the ceasefire—coupled with the rising tide of Lebanese civilian deaths—will now be used as pretext for renewed attacks while the architects of the original aggression face no reckoning.

Only by naming the February 28 strikes, and every subsequent violation—including the collapse of mediated diplomacy and the provocative U.S. blockade threats—for what they are—an illegal, unprovoked war that has already produced war crimes and follows the example of the atrocities committed in the Gaza genocide—can we hope to avert the regional eruption that still threatens us all. The fault lies squarely with the United States and Israel. Until that reality is confronted through concrete international action, including accountability mechanisms that ensure no impunity for these aggressor nations, peace in the Persian Gulf and the Levant will remain a fragile and ultimately illusory hope. The Nuremberg principles demand nothing less: aggressors must face justice, or the accumulated evil of war will continue to consume us all.

© 2026 The View From Here. © 2025 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.

Trump’s Iran war speech revealed an American imperial crusade disguised as "defence"

With its war against Iran and other aggressions—Venezuela, Cuba, Greenland—the United States has shown itself to be the greatest threat to global peace and stability in 90 years.

By Fareed Khan 
A version of this can be found on Substack.

 

If anyone familiar with the history of the Middle East over the past 150 years had been thoughtfully absorbing President Donald Trump’s April 1, 2026, address to the nation, the words emanating from the screen would have transported them not to the present-day battlefield in Iran, but to the drawing rooms of 19th-century European chancelleries. There, kings and prime ministers justified the carving up of Africa at the Berlin Conference and the conquest of ancient Asian societies by invoking divine mandate and racial superiority.

This colonial mindset, once used to legitimize European domination over “uncivilized” peoples and their resources, has found a strikingly modern echo in Trump’s rhetoric. Beneath the boasts of military success and appeals to American strength lies the same underlying assumption: that certain racialized societies are inherently chaotic and backward, requiring the forceful hand of a superior power to impose order. The speech did not merely announce tactical victories; it revealed a deeper imperial logic that treats the Middle East as a theatre for great-power manoeuvring rather than a region of sovereign nations with millennia-old civilizations.

Trump’s triumphant declaration—that in just one month the US had destroyed Iran’s navy, reduced its air force to ruins, killed its leaders, and decimated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps—read like a dispatch from a European viceroy announcing the subjugation of some “backward” colonial territory. He framed America as the indispensable force restoring order to a “fanatical regime” whose citizens have been chanting “Death to America” for decades, while congratulating troops on victories “like few people have ever seen before.” Yet the real barbarian in this picture is not Iran, a nation that has never invaded or attacked another sovereign state since long before the United States achieved independence. It is the United States itself—an agent of chaos and destruction that has destabilized the Middle East for generations in pursuit of its own geopolitical agenda and its enduring desire to control the region’s oil resources.

Trump’s speech was a masterclass in reductive Orientalism, the kind Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said dissected decades ago in his critique, where he asserted that European and Western powers simplify and stereotype the region and its societies as primitive, irrational, violent, despotic, fanatic, and essentially inferior to Western societies, and thus in need of civilizing. The president cast Iran as the world’s “No. 1 state sponsor of terror,” responsible for everything from the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing to the October 7 Hamas attack, while glossing over America’s own violent and destructive history of intervention. From the overthrow of governments in Central America, to the 1953 coup against Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, to the illegal Iraq War, and support for proxy wars that have turned the Middle East into a perpetual theatre of instability and conflict.

He boasted that the US is now “totally independent of the Middle East” thanks to his Venezuelan oil venture, yet insisted on remaining in the region “to help our allies.” This is the colonial logic laid bare. The US doesn’t’ need their resources, but will bomb their societies into submission to dictate who controls them. It mirrors the European scramble for Africa, where powers like Britain and France invoked civilizing missions while securing diamonds, rubber, and trade routes. Trump’s divine flourishes—”God bless” the astronauts and troops—echo the manifest destiny that sanctified earlier empires, now repackaged as another example of American military aggression and exceptionalism.

This war is not only completely illegal it is unnecessary and unprovoked, as there was no impending threat to the US, as verified by intelligence leaks. In reality, it is the fulfillment of a fantasy Benjamin Netanyahu has harboured for nearly 40 years. For the better part of four decades, he has repeatedly claimed that Iran was weeks or months away from a nuclear bomb, using the spectre of a nuclearized Iran to lobby Washington for military action while sabotaging diplomacy at every turn. Wisely, no previous American president was reckless enough to listen to him and be sucked into a war of choice. They understood what Trump chose to ignore—subjugating Iran, a civilization with roots stretching back millennia, is impossible without catastrophic consequences. Previous administrations recognized the quagmire that would follow—endless insurgency, regional upheaval, and the risk of wider war. Trump, in his address, claimed to have corrected their “mistakes” by killing General Qassem Soleimani and tearing up Barack Obama’s nuclear deal. He presented these as acts of strength, but the truth is they were the opening salvos in a conflict that Netanyahu has long craved, that could be reminiscent of the US failure in Vietnam.

Additionally, Iran remains the last major Middle Eastern power that unequivocally supports freedom and justice for Palestinians. Through funding, arms, and diplomatic backing to groups resisting Israel’s occupation, Tehran has stood as a patron where other Middle East nations—Egypt, Syria, Libya, Iraq, Saudi Arabia—have been neutralized through diplomacy, economic incentives, or military action. Remove it, and Palestinians face a future of more Israeli subjugation, oppression, and occupation with no significant state-level ally left to help them achieve freedom.

Trump’s address barely mentioned Gaza, and didn’t even use the word “genocide”, focusing instead on Israel’s security as a core justification. This omission is deliberate, with the war serving as a grotesque distraction. As global eyes remain fixed on Iranian missile sites and oil tankers set ablaze, Israel continues its documented campaign of mass murder in the enclave—a genocide that the world has done nothing to halt. With attention diverted to the war against Israel presses forward unchecked, continuing the destruction of Gaza and the annihilation of its people.

The speech’s tone of bravado cannot mask the deeper truth—that the United States is showing itself to be the greatest threat to world peace and global economic stability in 90 years with its aggressions against Iran, (and Venezuela, Cuba, and Greenland). Trump claimed “core strategic objectives are nearing completion,” but the conflict has already exposed America’s limits. Despite its military might, the US has failed to achieve a swift victory. Iran’s resilience—its ability to absorb strikes and maintain asymmetric pressure—signals to Russia and China that Washington is not invincible despite its military power. If the mightiest military in the world cannot impose its will on a mid-tier adversary without calling for help from its NATO allies, Moscow and Beijing may calculate they could fare even better were a conflict to breakout with the US.

This war has not stabilized the region; instead it has brought the world palpably closer to World War Three, with supply chains fracturing, oil markets convulsing, and alliances realigning. Trump’s claim that “America is winning bigger than ever” rings hollow against the funerals at Dover Air Force Base and the American lives already lost.

As people listened to the address, they would likely be reminded of the casual racism that has underpinned American Middle East policy for decades. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld under George W. Bush once reportedly dismissed Arabs as “lazy” because they sat atop too much oil. Texas Rep. Keith Self has claimed Islam is “stuck in the 8th century,” while Sen. Lindsey Graham quipped that anything starting with “Al” in the Middle East is bad news—oblivious that “algebra,” “alchemy,” and “algorithm” entered Western knowledge through Arab and Persian scholarship. Florida Rep. Randy Fine’s preference for a dog over a Muslim ignores Jalal ad-Din Rumi, the 13th-century Persian poet whose wisdom graces countless lives today, or the fact that Arab numerals underpin modern mathematics.

These stereotypes, as Said warned, erase the Middle Eastern society’s foundational contributions to human civilization. No one denies the region’s post-colonial challenges resulting from Western intervention—artificial borders drawn by former colonial masters, autocracies born of foreign meddling, and tensions exacerbated by external destabilization. But the notion that it requires Western “wisdom” imported at the barrel of a gun is the same conceit that justified colonial conquest. Iranians, like all peoples, deserve safety, freedom, and respect, not bombs justified by clichés of a “blood-stained land.”

Essentially, Trump’s address was more than just a war update. It was a declaration of imperial continuity. By aligning so brazenly with Netanyahu’s long-sought war against Iran, the US has cast itself as the latest in a line of powers convinced of their divine right to reshape ancient societies.

Iran did not seek this fight but it is prepared to fight to the bitter end to preserve its society and sovereignty. The chaos we now see in the Persian Gulf originates in Washington’s endless quest for dominance. As gasoline prices continue to rise and the shadows of a wider war lengthen, Americans should ask--who is the true threat to civilization—the nation defending its people and territorial integrity against an unprovoked attack, or the superpower carving up the map once more?

History’s verdict on 19th-century colonialism is clear. The question is whether we will see that historic barbarism repeated, or finally reject it and then toss it onto the trash heap of history where it belongs.  

© 2026 The View From Here. © 2025 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.

Stephen Lewis—a political giant—leaves a legacy of justice and shows what a good politician should be

Stephen Lewis had a higher purpose of public service—to work tirelessly to build a better society for those who were not members of society’s elite class.

By Fareed Khan 
A version of this can be found on Substack.

With the death of Stephen Lewis on March 31, 2026, Canada has lost a political, moral, and intellectual giant. At 88, Lewis departed this life just days after his son Avi’s election as federal New Democratic Party leader, closing a chapter of extraordinary public service while opening another. Few figures in our history combined such fierce intelligence, unyielding moral clarity, and oratorical power. In an era when politics too often feels small, transactional, and beholden to the wealthy, Lewis stood apart—a voice that elevated debate, challenged power, and reminded us that public life could be a noble calling.

No political leader of recent memory possessed the intellectual and moral strength of Stephen Lewis. As Ontario NDP leader from 1970 to 1978, he brought a razor-sharp mind and passionate eloquence to the legislature and the hustings. His speeches were not mere sound bites, they were rigorous, evidence-based arguments wrapped in moral urgency. He could dissect economic inequality with the precision of a scholar while stirring the conscience of ordinary Canadians with the fire of a prophet.

Later, as Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations and special envoy on HIV/AIDS, he confronted global indifference with the same combination of intellectual rigour and ethical conviction. Where others offered platitudes, Lewis demanded action. Where others courted donors and pollsters, he spoke truth to power. In the decades since he left provincial politics, no federal or provincial leader—Conservative, Liberal, or even New Democrat—has matched that rare fusion of brilliance and principle. Lewis did not merely participate in politics, he ennobled it.

It is regrettable that we rarely see political figures of his calibre any more in Canadian politics. Today’s leaders too often default to scripted talking points, focus-grouped slogans, and carefully managed social-media moments. The grand rhetorical tradition that once animated Canada’s political culture and public squares has been diminished by the demands of 24-hour news cycles and social media algorithms. Lewis’s ability to hold audiences spellbound with his words, to weave complex policy into vivid human narratives, and to inspire collective action feels like a relic of a more courageous age. In the era of performative politics and corporate and billionaire influence, the absence of voices like his leaves a void that needs to be filled. Public discourse has suffered, because unlike Lewis, today’s leaders fear bold ideas because it may mean losing power.

Yet even as many mourn Lewis’s passing, there is reason for hope. With the recent election of his son Avi as leader of the federal NDP, we may witness a rebirth of the sort of the sort of progressive politics that gave Canada its most cherished social programs. The NDP and its predecessor, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, have long been the engine of social democratic advance in this country. It was that tradition—fiercely championed by figures like Tommy Douglas—that delivered Canada’s public health care system, a single-payer model , however flawed, that Canadians value as a critical part what it is to be Canadian.

The Canada Pension Plan, which provides retirement security to millions, owes its existence to the determined advocacy of NDP parliamentarians who refused to let Lester Pearson’s minority government settle for less. The 40-hour work week, once a distant dream of labour activists, became reality through decades of union and political pressure rooted in the same progressive ethos. More recently, public dental care and publicly funded day care have moved from aspiration to policy, thanks in no small part to NDP insistence during minority Parliaments.

These are not abstract achievements. They are the concrete expressions of a politics that puts people before profits. Canadians take them for granted precisely because they have become woven into the fabric of our national identity. Avi Lewis’s leadership, taking from what his father taught him, offers the chance to revive that tradition at the federal level, to remind us that bold social policy is not radical—it is Canadian.

What Canada needs today is political leaders cast in the mould of Stephen Lewis—men and women who do not serve the rich and powerful but represent the interests of the 99% of Canadians who are not part of the millionaire and billionaire class. Too many in our current political class have internalized the notion that economic policy must first appease Bay Street, corporate boardrooms, and the ultra-wealthy. The result is a new Gilded Age in Canada, where a tiny elite grows obscenely richer while wages stagnate, housing becomes unaffordable, and essential services strain under chronic under funding. The super-rich are not merely benefiting from the system, they are shaping it—through lobbying, political donations, and media influence—to ensure policies flow upward.

Stephen Lewis never accepted this arrangement. His higher purpose of public service was to work tirelessly to build a better society for those who were not members of society’s elite class—the working families, the poor, the marginalized, the vast majority who labour every day without the cushion of inherited wealth or corporate connections. He understood that governments too often pursue policies that benefit the rich and powerful at the expense of the bottom 99%. Lewis rejected that approach to governing. He believed public office existed to restrain excess, expand opportunity, and guarantee dignity for all, not just those of wealth and privilege.

If given a chance, Stephen Lewis’s son Avi, as the new leader of the NDP, could be the political leader who begins the process of ending this new Gilded Age. The current Liberal government under Prime Minister Mark Carney has adopted fiscal and economic policies that often resemble those of past Conservative administrations—cautious on taxation of extreme wealth, deferential to market orthodoxy, and slow to confront the structural inequalities that define our time.

Carney, a former Bank of Canada governor and Goldman Sachs executive, brings formidable expertise to the role of prime minister but also a worldview shaped by elite financial circles. His minority government has shown flashes of progressive instinct, yet more often it has prioritized fiscal conservatism and investor confidence over the transformative change Canadians need to reduce extreme wealth inequality and raise the wages of the vast majority.

Avi Lewis has the platform, the pedigree, and the passion to push the Carney government—and the broader political spectrum—back toward the left of the political centre by demanding universal pharmacare, stronger labour rights, meaningful wealth taxes, and aggressive action on housing and climate justice. An emboldened NDP, echoing the legacy of the elder Lewis, could force the Liberals to choose between the status quo and the bold social democracy that once defined Canadian politics in the 1960s and 70s.

As Canadians mourn the passing of Stephen Lewis, let the example of his life—in politics and beyond—serve as a guiding light for the future of our public life. His intellectual honesty, moral courage, and unwavering commitment to the common good should not slip into mere nostalgic memory. Instead, they must inspire a new generation of leaders who understand that the true measure of a nation lies not in the height of its stock market, but in the depth of its compassion and the breadth of its opportunity.

Avi Lewis now carries that torch. As he works to restore the federal NDP to the principled, fighting spirit that once made it the conscience of the nation, Canadians have a chance to reclaim the progressive legacy that built our greatest public institutions. Stephen Lewis showed us what politics at its best can achieve. His son now has the opportunity to prove it can happen again.

The passing of a giant leaves a huge silence, but in that silence echoes a clear challenge, to reject complacency, to demand better, and to build the fairer Canada that Lewis always believed was possible. If we seize this moment, perhaps we can achieve in our lifetime what Stephen Lewis could not fully realize in his.

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