In Islamic tradition, it is said that certain acts shake the throne of God. The death of an elderly Palestinian man in a queue for humanitarian aid is likely one such act. Exhausted and starving, just as his turn arrives, he succumbs to death with heartbreaking tremors.
Kabul 24: It’s not hard to imagine how little access he had to sufficient food over the past 21 months, nor the grim reality of how many loved ones—children, grandchildren—he lost in the recent war.The great tragedy is that his fate was sealed in a war he had no part in igniting or sustaining. Soon, the second anniversary of the Gaza war—described by many as Israel’s genocide—will arrive.
A daily, online slaughter unfolds in this besieged enclave, with no distinction made between women, children, civilians, journalists, doctors, or armed individuals.Alongside the killing machine, mass starvation and an artificial famine claim countless lives daily.
This is the Middle East, the cradle of monotheistic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The Gospel of Luke warns that pouring new wine into old wineskins brings sorrow: the wine bursts the skins and is wasted. This Christian parable mirrors today’s Middle East.
For over a century, the region has been a testing ground for modern ideologies—liberalism, socialism, political Islam, Ba’athism, nationalism—all poured into outdated tribal frameworks, perpetuating the old order.The rich, diverse history of the Middle East has become its burden. Nowhere else is so trapped by collective memory and ancient history.
Israel’s founding fathers, the first secular and often leftist Zionists, held more rational worldviews compared to today’s fervent, religious populists.
Nationalist populism is a global trend, but the Middle East suffers its worst iterations—Benjamin Netanyahu, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and a roster of petty tyrants. The world stands on the brink of political and geopolitical shifts, as if hurtling back to the Europe of the 1930s.
With new Hitlers and Mussolinis, the Middle East faces a bleak future.The title of this piece is borrowed from the renowned Kurdish poet Hozar, who, in an epic poem, laments the cruel twists of fate. Likely, Hozar drew inspiration from the famous qasida of Vaez Qazvini:At the threshold of the masses, servitude has killed us,
Chasing bread in every direction has killed us,
Never free from the thought of survival—
Oh death, come, for life has killed us!—Salahuddin Khadiw
