How to Awaken the Conscience of the World?

Sharp conflicts, whether it is a world war or (war in) Iraq, has always indicated transformation points to the consciousness of the world and provided pivots to a new design of human actions.

Things change after the world is traumatised or the world has sharp military conflict or collision of the human will in the earth has always provided pivot points or transformation points to the world’s consciousness.

We look at these events, look at the terrible things that are taking place, but behind that we recognise the fact that things are shifting to new positions.” Dr. Noel Woodroffe on Core Imperatives for Successful Nation Development

Gandhi used the principle of embracing personal suffering from your oppressor without retaliation to wake the conscience of your oppressor and make him stop the oppression to free India from British colonial rule.

In doing this, Gandhi had pointed to Jesus Christ as showing the way to embracing the principle of embracing unjust personal suffering visited on him by those he came to save to awaken the conscience of humanity to the path of reconciliation with its Creator, God.

Gandhi set up unarmed Indian protesters to defy unjust British laws and policies and then for these Indians to resort with non-violence when the British Army made up principally of Indians visited them with violence in return.

While Gandhi used the principle from a majority population perspective, Martin Luther King Jr. took the same principle and applied it from a Black minority population perspective to awake the conscience of the dominant white population in the US to the evils of segregation.

He simply organised Black protesters to defy the segregation policy and not to respond with violence when the police in the South came to enforce segregation with brutality and unwarranted violence before the American media who were on hand to record it.

This was what gave birth to the Civil Rights Act in the US ending segregation and legal racial discrimination, amongst others. Hamas deviated substantially from Gandhi and Martin Lutther King Jr. in that its application of the principle was triggered through violence and killing of over 1,200 Israelis during its border invasion on October 7, 2023.

The issue before Hamas was how a minority population brings the attention of the world to Israel’s biggest open air fenced prison in the world with over 2.5 million Palestinians, and by extension, the issue of a Palestinian state.

First, without the knowledge of the 2.5 million Palestinians in Gaza, Hamas dug tens of thousands of kilometres of tunnels deep underneath Gaza.

Then, on October 7, 2023, Hamas and its allies broke through reinforced concrete walls separating Gaza from Israel, invaded some neighbouring communities, killed over 1,200 people, and forcefully took over 200 Israeli captive back with them into the tunnels underneath Gaza.

An enraged Israel with its Western allies reacting to what they regarded as a massacre swallowed the bait, and what the world has witnessed live on all media platforms in the last 13 months has been a morden defining of what constitutes genocide as the full military might of Israel and its Western allies was visited on an unarmed nonviolent Palestinian population in Gaza.

Make no mistake, implementing this strategy came at great cost to Hamas and its leaders, but what has shaken a watching world to its core has been the resulting violence and suffering visited on over 2.5 million unarmed Palestinians, mostly women and children, by the Israeli government and military with the support of its Western allies.

A peace deal has now been brokered between Israel and Hamas facilitated by Donald Trump using a 3-stage peace plan earlier put forward by the Biden administration, starting with the exchange of prisoners between both sides.

But be assured that just as happened in India gaining independence from the British with the help of Gandhi, and with the civil rights movement in the US spearheaded by Martin Luther King Jr., the Palestinian cause is now a global issue thanks to the actions of Israel and its Western allies in the last 13 months.