The West has long been the centre of cultural and media influence for the Middle East and North Africa.1 But now with the Israelis waging a war in Gaza and the United States and Europe expressing unequivocal support, anger has been aroused and spread.2 At the heart of this fiery spread of mass protest has been the bombing of Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, which killed more than 400 people.3 This was the last straw tipped the anger that was building up, into new territory.4 Demonstrators took to the streets in their thousands to declare that enough was enough with the Western powers and their unconditional support for Israel that rendered it incapable of acknowledging the inhuman violence being meted out to Gaza every hour of the day and going back decades.5 (Al Jazeera)
Now the frustration in countries like Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania, Lebanon and Egypt have spilled out. They have seen the steadfast support the Americans and the European Union have given the Zionist state while none recognize the continuous land evictions by the Israelis of the Palestinians. This can be interpreted as a mixture of disillusionment and anger that have built up over decades against the west. As crowds face teargas and water cannons, they see the war in Gaza as an extension of colonialism.6 Tunisia has long known the harsh rule by the French from the early 19th Century.7 Now the Tunisian people see the unequivocal support given by the French to Tel Aviv and they (the Tunisians) have an earful to give to Paris.8(Al Jazeera) They are calling for an end to the relationship between Tunis and the Europe nations.
Rasulullah ﷺ said, ” Whoever relieves a believer’s distress of the distressful aspects of this world, Allah will rescue him from a difficulty of the difficulties of the Hereafter.”
On October 18, US President on a visit to Tel Aviv to express his support for the corrupt regime of Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu.9 During a public appearance in Tel Aviv, the elderly president told the prime minister: “Based on what I’ve seen, it appears as though it [al-Ahli Hospital attack] was done by the other team not you, not you.”10 Netanyahu thanked him for his unequivocal support””.11(Al Jazeera) Biden never provided any evidence of what he said.
Meanwhile in the Tunisian Parliament, the body’s Freedoms Committee approved a draft law criminalizing the normalization of diplomatic relations with the Zionist state.12 The move paves the path for hearings on the bill by legislators followed by a public session for discussion and vote.13 The draft comes as Israeli reprisal on blockaded Gaza have killed more than 5, 000 people in response to Hamas militants who allegedly killed at least 1,400 Israelis in a rampage after breaching the wall enclosing the strip of territory.14 (Reuters) How the Hamas militants were able to cross that barrier when the area around it is mined has never been properly explained. The allegations that they used Hand gliders sounds absurd given how can even take Hostages back on those gliders?
Coming back to the legislation being passed by the Tunisian Parliament, they criminalized every form of relation with the Zionist regime from communication in trade to military cooperation.15 (Reuters) The whole point of this is to set an example for other Arab Regimes and states such as Morocco or Saudi Arabia to discourage them from having ties to the Israelis. The Zionist entity believes it can have neighbourly relations with other Islamic nations in the region without entering into a diplomatic agreement with the Palestinians. Libya is another example of this, when the foreign minister Najla El Mangoush had fled the country when it surfaced that she had met with her Israeli counterpart in Italy. The meeting which the Israeli Foreign Minister had leaked sparked widespread demonstrations in Libya due the country having similar legislation to Tunisia as regards to Israel.
In the following days the bitterness between the Arab World and Israel will determine how relations with the West are perceived. One thing is for certain going back to the status quo will not be enough.