LET us rewind this scene from the recently enacted geopolitical drama. The most powerful president in the world is ‘invited’ to join a war by a so-called ally. He takes a couple of weeks to decide. So, it seems he has the ability to think and probably judge. However, even before the self-declared time frame ends, he gives in to the will of the ally. He does as he was expected. he orders his military to bomb critical infrastructures of a sovereign nation. He does not need to consult elected representatives of his country. He does not feel the need to approach the international community or care about international laws. The only force forcing him to act is probably the ally’s ‘invitation’.
This war-deciding drama performed by Donald Trump and watched by the whole world is not an isolated or random act. This is the American way that directed all previous wars in the region. Every time Israel needed a war with its neighbours for its ‘security’, it ‘invited’ America, and the American president dutifully obliged. They have not disappointed Israel. And once America joins the war, other allies from the west are automatically in. After all, if you pull the ear, the head will turn, as they say. We have noted this in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Lebanon, and now in Iran. We have seen this in Palestine for over seven decades. We can predict the same script will be followed for the next war that Israel will need and the United States will be ‘invited’ to fight on its behalf.
Over the years, one conclusion has been crystal clear from this warmongering on the global stage. The whole body of knowledge about Israel going to wars and dragging others into them for creating a better and rosier world is nothing but a hoax. What is more interesting is the dynamics of that knowledge — who produces what knowledge, how it is disseminated, who consumes this knowledge, and how they act on it. As these processes are the subject of knowledge-making, I am tempted to propose a theory of epistemic slavery.
This is a form of slavery in which powerful authorities (the United States and its western allies) suspend their own views and judgements and accept the narrative of their self-nominated master (Israel). They may not be brainless and thoughtless entities like Mephistopheles, Frankenstein, or Titan. However, they voluntarily surrender their mental faculties and act on the super-brain of their ally. This is nothing short of the slavery of the mind.
The Israel-Palestine conflict that has gone on for decades can be explained by this epistemic bondage. The west has condoned Israel’s every ‘dirty’ job that violates human rights and international laws. The conflict has culminated in the ongoing full-scale genocide under the pretext of Israel’s right to self-defence. This is the Israeli theory which has yet to be interrogated by the US and other western governments and the mainstream western media. In fact, the self-defence theory can be taken as a memorised script which is parroted by western media houses and government officials. They apply this theory slavishly without looking into the context or the particularities of any example of Israel’s violations of rules. The repeated vetoes of the United States in the UN Security Council on Palestine show its colonised mind. An imprisoned mind is apparent in their reaction to the two-state solution. Although this resolution has wider international support, it does not appeal to the western powers. This is not because the solution does not have any merit but simply because Israel does not endorse it. So, the west does not need to do any thinking for itself. It can just use the formula supplied by Israel, whatever the consequences are for Palestine and other communities.
A classic case of epistemic bondage can be made by referring to Hamas. It was criminalised by Western governments following Israeli dictates. Therefore, the group cannot be mentioned in the West — in media or policy discourses — without the terrorist label. It’s taken as pointless for the West to explore how Hamas came into being or how it may relate to other groups and communities fighting for their rights, independence, or existence in history.
Israel has discipled the West to machine-read the Hamas discourse as a justification for its barbarity.Ìý ‘Ask Hamas’ and ‘Do you condemn Hamas?’ are refrains chanted in Western media about the recent phase of the Israeli genocide in Gaza. Whether Israel bombed Palestinian hospitals, schools, homes, or masjids, and how many they killed, the Israeli theory auto-replied by the west is that Hamas was using civilians as human shields. This Israeli mantra has never been questioned, even when it does not satisfy logical criteria. The West does not need to count how many Hamas members are included in the thousands of women and children that are killed. Common sense tells us that they would have been killed together with the children and women. Instead of activating an enquiring mind, the West has purchased their master’s narrative: Israel never targets civilians. They are happy to go with this theory, no matter how many civilians are killed.
The logical fallacy of the Hamas theory has yet to be ‘discovered’ by the scientific West. The assumption is Palestinians allow their women and children to be used as human shields for Hamas and get killed. It has never been asked why they would allow Hamas to do it. Would parents in another society let their children stand in front of bombs or bullets? If this is illogical for another society, should it not be the same for Palestinian parents as well? Of course, Israel does not consider Palestinians as humans; for them, they are at best ‘human animals’. Although this anthropological theory has not been popularised in the west, it has not been challenged either.
Perhaps the most astounding case of epistemic slavery is Israel’s recent conflict with Iran. Netanyahu has been telling the West since the early 1990s that Iran was close to producing nuclear weapons. How close it was varied every time he spoke about it, but the discourse has survived almost three decades. The world has changed during this time, but it has not changed his narrative. In the meantime, the West has given him an unquestioning audience all the while. It’s never challenged him or his murderous theory. Only a collective mental slavery can make such an audience for a dangerous mythmaker.Ìý
The global community hoped that the West would come out of the Israeli epistemic spell and ask for reliable evidence, even if politely. They expected this after what happened in Iraq and other countries in the region that were invaded by the West under Israeli prescription. The Iraq case is particularly significant as Netanyahu convinced the West that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Most of the world questioned his propaganda but not the West or the Western media. The global community was proven right while Netanyahu and his Western disciples were wrong only after the invasion of Iraq that killed thousands and destroyed the seat of an ancient civilisation.
If the global community believed that Donald Trump wouldn’t submit to the Israeli master and attack Iran, they were wrong. He can go against the world when it’s a question of serving Israel. He can even go against himself. It’s the same Donald Trump who had said earlier that America’s Iraq war was wrong. That Iraq did not have the weapons. One may have anticipated that Trump would follow a different path this time. However, he can disappoint the whole world to please his ally.
The epistemic slavery of the west, in general, and of the United States, in particular, is an incredible reality. It goes against common sense. We would expect the most powerful nation on earth to have its influence over Israel, as it claims such influence over other nations. However, the America-Israel relationship is an outlier. This is a one-sided affair in which America has been loyal to Israel all the way through, but not the other way round. This means that America cannot go against Israeli wishes. Netanyahu congratulated Trump for his ‘bold’ decision as American planes attacked Iranian nuclear facilities. What is ‘bold’ from one perspective, showing America’s power, is the submission of the American will and its precarity from another.
It’s such an irony that the country that can threaten every other country in the world has to suppress its will, thinking and knowing when it comes to Israel. Whether at home or abroad, America has to see the world through Israel’s eyes. It cannot have its own vision or perspective.
One wonders when America will be freed from this epistemic slavery, if at all.
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Obaidul Hamid is an associate professor at the University of Queensland in Australia. He researches language, education, and society in the developing world. He is a co-editor of Current Issues in Language Planning.
