The most asymmetric of conflicts: Why the fight for Palestine is ours
Last week, US President Donald Trump returned to the Capitol as president, his ascent staged as a spectacle of defiance and power.
Draped in theatrics and bombast, Trump spoke of a renewed American "manifest destiny". This time, the promise extended beyond Earth to the stars. Colonising Mars, he declared, was the next great chapter in America’s mythology of conquest.
Yet, his ambitions for expansion had already revealed themselves on Earth. He floated the idea of purchasing Greenland, mused about annexing Canada, and invoked the Panama Canal as a symbol of US dominance. Whether aimed at land, trade routes, or planets, Trump’s imperialist vision reflects a fixation on control, cloaked in the language of exceptionalism.
Beneath the polished bravado and lofty proclamations lay the shadow of history.
Manifest destiny is a doctrine written in blood. It justified the genocide of millions of Native Americans, the theft of their lands, and the obliteration of their cultures. It cloaked destruction as progress, a weapon of empire masquerading as inevitability. And now, Trump seeks to resurrect that same ethos, updated for the modern age and aimed not just at the stars, but at every frontier he deems ripe for domination.
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The spectacle of the inauguration carried its own unmistakable symbolism. Front-row seats were granted to the tech billionaires whose influence spans not just Silicon Valley, but every corner of the modern world.
In Trump’s universe, Palestinians do not exist. Their lives are erased by the same logic of manifest destiny that dehumanises those deemed expendable
Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg are not mere spectators of global power; they are its architects. Their wealth has ballooned at an unprecedented pace, a staggering reflection of unchecked tech capitalism.
In 2012, Musk was worth $2bn; today, his wealth has soared to $449bn. Bezos grew from $18bn to $249bn, while Zuckerberg climbed from $44bn to $224bn.
These numbers represent more than personal fortune. They reflect a global system where wealth consolidates in the hands of a few, while millions suffer the consequences. Meanwhile, the federal minimum wage in the US remains frozen at $7.25 an hour, unchanged since 2009.
This is the Divided States of Oligarchy: a world where billionaires fund and facilitate war and control, while the working class is left to toil with stagnant wages and declining security.
Their presence at the inauguration was a stark reminder of how intimately technology, surveillance, and wealth are tied to state violence. These billionaires, complicit in the systems of oppression, have made fortunes providing the tools of war and control.
Google, Amazon, and Microsoft have all supplied AI tools and data to enhance Israel’s military capabilities. Meta has systematically censored Palestinian voices, while Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) has amplified Israeli justifications for war.
Trump's universe
Yet, the echoes of conquest were not confined to metaphors. The carefully staged symbolism of Trump’s address betrayed its intent. Behind him stood the families of Israeli hostages, their grief etched into the performance.
Addressing an Israeli mother whose son had died in Gaza, Trump turned to her and declared: "Had I been in power three months ago, he wouldn’t have died. We had a deal in July."
The audience roared with approval, but there was a profound absence from the stage: no Palestinian mother stood there, no grieving voice to represent the over 10,000 Palestinians killed since July or the 50,000 or more slaughtered in 15 months. Their deaths, their names, their stories, their humanity, went unacknowledged.
This silence was no accident. In Trump’s universe, Palestinians do not exist. Their lives are devalued, erased by the same logic of manifest destiny that dehumanises those deemed expendable. Their suffering is rendered invisible, their deaths stripped of meaning. This indifference is not unique to Trump. It is systemic, woven into the fabric of global hegemony.
That Trump is now proposing the ethnic cleansing of Gaza to pave the way for glossy, sea-view real estate developments is as grotesque as it is unsurprising. "I’d like Egypt to take people. I’d like Jordan to take people," Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. "You’re talking about, probably, a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing and say, ‘You know, it’s over.'"
Such total disregard for Palestinian lives is not unique to Trump though. In a recent interview with MSNBC, Biden admitted that he had warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to "carpet bomb" civilians in Gaza.
Netanyahu’s chilling response? "Well, you did it," he said, pointing to the United States’ own history of indiscriminate destruction. Fully aware of Netanyahu’s intent to wage a campaign of annihilation, Biden still approved the transfer of over 50,000 tons of bombs to Israel, an arsenal that has obliterated Gaza’s infrastructure and devastated its people.
Western dominance
This is the machinery of western dominance. The bombs that rain down on Gaza are made in America and Germany. The intelligence that guides them is supplied by the United Kingdom. The political cover that justifies these atrocities is manufactured in Washington, London, and Berlin.
Figures like British Prime Minister Keir Starmer endorsed Israel’s collective punishment, calling it "legitimate" to cut off food, water, and fuel to an already besieged population. Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock repeated Israeli propaganda, defending the bombing of hospitals where women and children burned alive.
The media, too, plays its role in this cycle of complicity. Western outlets amplify Israeli narratives while silencing Palestinian voices. The New York Times circulated fabricated accounts of atrocities allegedly committed by Hamas. CNN, despite internal protests, has repeatedly suppressed stories critical of Israel. The BBC’s Middle East coverage has faced scrutiny for being overseen by figures with links to Israeli intelligence.
These institutions have become part of a well-oiled machine that shapes public opinion, painting Israel as a victim while dehumanising Palestinians. The result is a distorted reality, where the oppressor is portrayed as the oppressed, and systemic violence is rationalised as self-defence.
The Palestinian struggle for liberation is the most asymmetric conflict in modern history.
Palestinians' fight for liberation is a fight against the entire structure of western imperialism that sustains Israeli colonialism
On one side stands Israel, armed with the full might of the West, the unflinching support of its governments, its media, and its institutions. Israel is not simply a state. It is an extension of western hegemony in the Middle East, a colonial project nurtured and sustained by the world’s most powerful nations.
It is backed by weapons, surveillance systems, political cover, multinational corporations, and now artificial intelligence - tools of domination wielded to maintain its colonial grip on Palestinian land.
On the other side stand the Palestinians, isolated, besieged, and abandoned by the international order. They have no superpower to arm them, no media to champion their cause, no institutions to shield them. Theirs is not merely a fight for liberation - it is a fight against the entire structure of western imperialism that sustains Israeli colonialism.
Their resistance, against overwhelming odds, is a testament to the human spirit’s refusal to be extinguished.
And yet, despite this staggering asymmetry, a rising global resistance stands in solidarity with Palestinians.
A global resistance
Around the world, a rising resistance stands with Palestine. Streets in London, Paris, and New York have filled with protesters demanding an end to the siege of Gaza. University campuses have become flashpoints of dissent, with students staging sit-ins, walkouts, and teach-ins, despite institutional crackdowns. Activists face arrests, expulsions, and criminalisation, yet their defiance remains unbroken.
The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement continues to gain momentum, forcing corporations and governments to sever ties with Israel. Legal efforts to investigate Israeli war crimes press forward, with the International Criminal Court (ICC), the International Court of Justice (ICJ), and major human rights organisations pursuing accountability, despite relentless obstruction by western governments.
The global front is not a mere act of solidarity. It is the lifeblood of the struggle for liberation, an integral force without which the colossal power imbalance cannot possibly be redressed, and true justice will remain a distant dream. This movement must not only endure but evolve into a force capable of shattering entrenched systems of power and driving political change.
Because just as the Israeli project stands as a cornerstone of global dominance - an indispensable node in the machinery of empire - it can only be confronted by a vast and unyielding network of peaceful resistance.
This resistance must transcend borders, continents, cultures, and ideologies, weaving together a unified front as boundless and determined as the oppression it seeks to dismantle.
For this is not simply a struggle for one nation; it is a battle for the soul of humanity. It pits ordinary men and women against a powerful, unyielding global elite, a clash between the forces of dignity, justice, and freedom on one side, and supremacy, inequality, and colonialism on the other.
At the heart of this struggle lies Palestine - a symbol of resistance, of defiance, of the universal fight for liberation. To stand with Palestine is to stand against the machinery of oppression, to reject the structures that perpetuate imperialism and domination, and to affirm the sacred values of humanity itself.
The battle for Palestine is the battle for all of us. It is far from over. And it will be won.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
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