Palestine’s Shackles Are Others’ Shackles
Dismantle the shackles around Palestine, and we start to dismantle the shackles around other dominated parts of the world.
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By Tong Veng Wye
Picked off one after another
We are aware what happened on February 28. Israel and the US bombed and brought death and destruction upon Tehran (again, while negotiations were going on). They struck a school killing over 160 young girls mostly aged 7 – 12 years. As with Gaza, they killed children. But with Gaza they murdered more than 20,000 children. As with Gaza, the infanticide comes and goes with impunity.
As with Gaza, Zionist Israel and the US (complicit to the hilt) have destroyed Iranian hospitals and infrastructure. Residential blocks too. As with Gaza and the wider Palestine, there is total disregard for international law.
As with Gaza and the rest of Palestine, crude overwhelming military power is brought upon Iran, led by crude and vulgar men, the likes of Netanyahu and Trump and their cabinet clones.
That massive military power has historically been coupled with political and economic dominance. It is the same combination of hegemonic power that has enabled the colonisation of Palestine for more than 100 years.
It is the same imperialist gangsterism which allowed Trump to order American forces to intrude into Venezuelan airspace and territory in January 2026, kill a number of people and abduct the Venezuelan head of state.
Amazingly, in the midst of the illegal attacks on Iran, the New York Times reported in March that the US was also involved in an operation that struck (exploded) a supposed narco-terrorist camp in Ecuador that turned out to be a dairy farm with no evidence of drug activity. (The U.S. Military Said It Helped Bomb a Drug Camp in Ecuador. It Was a Dairy Farm. – The New York Times)
Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, Ecuador . . . smaller, weaker countries picked off or attacked one after another with more hinted to come. This is uncivilised. And it comes with a long history (The old US playbook: Regime change, broken rules and the price of impunity – Aliran).
But violent imperial power also expresses itself in non-military ways. Murder by starvation, for example.
In Gaza, Zionist Israel induced catastrophic-level famine in 2025 by choking off food supplies (plus medicines, medical equipment and fuel, among others) – a crime against humanity.
As a corollary, it has been estimated by the Lancet Global Health journal that since 1970, more than 30 million deaths have occurred associated with unilateral US and EU sanctions.
To quote, “From a rights-based perspective, evidence that sanctions lead to losses in lives should be sufficient reason to advocate for the suspension of their use . . . It is hard to think of other policy interventions with such adverse effects on human life that continue to be pervasively used.” (Effects of international sanctions on age-specific mortality: a cross-national panel data analysis – The Lancet Global Health)
Where are these more than 30 million excess deaths? (Enough to almost decimate the entire Malaysian population.) They are in the low-income Global South countries of Africa, Latin America, parts of Asia including West Asia – Venezuela, Iran and Cuba included.
In Cuba today, US sanctions have caused the collapse of power supply with all the ramifications that entails. Six decades of US sanctions, which affect civilians, have wrecked the supply of medicine and functioning health care. They lead to excess deaths in Cuba just as they have from decades of sanctions against Iran and other countries too.
And guess what? In the Lancet estimate, half the estimated more than 30 million excess deaths were children under five.
Again – the massive killing of children.
Palestine – An axis for understanding
There is something deeply sick and uncivilised about rich powerful western countries that repeatedly exercise their power in ways that make masses of disadvantaged vulnerable people in non-western countries miserable, suffer and die – in the midst of which is the massive killing of children.
This, of course, is a general statement as there are also many in those self-same rich and powerful countries who are also weak and vulnerable and exposed to the rapaciousness of their elite oligarchic and, increasingly, techno-plutocratic class. Just as there are elites within the Global South who gain at the expense of their own disadvantaged groups.
It is also a general statement because we know that the practice of empire and domination is not exclusive to western nations. But in terms of ongoing global, centuries-old, neo-imperial hegemonic domination, the US and the West have the dubious honour of being unsurpassed.
Indeed, the battering ram that has been used in Palestine is the same one now being used in Iran, Venezuela, Cuba and others. It is a ram made up of layers of military, technological, (diminishing) economic, political and (also diminishing) cultural power. It wields not just military violence against weaker countries but also embargos and sanctions, and strangles them with impunity.
It is disgraceful that at a stage where the dominance of western hegemons, epitomised by the US, is on the decline and under challenge, they lash out by using the most powerful thing at their disposal, i.e. technologised military force. It is disgraceful because the resort to violent militarised bullying is infantile, uncivilised and unworthy of the West’s own loftier ideals.
The same boorish colonial tactics have long been used on Palestine. If we understand Palestine and its history and how its people have been bullied, erased, dispossessed and now genocided in Gaza, then we will also be sensitised against what is now happening to Venezuela, Iran and Cuba. (Justice for Palestine: Four Jewish scholar-activists, a young Palestinian-American woman and Edward Said speak out – Aliran; Knowing the history of Israel-Palestine: Injustice from the start – Aliran)
In that sense, Palestine is like a common axis for understanding a good deal of the wars and troubles being inflicted on much of the world by neo-imperial western powers, in particular the US.
That common axis revolves around the domination of others.
Thus, for instance, the US has been the primary enabler of Zionist Israel’s acts of genocide and forced displacement in Gaza and Palestine. (Israel itself being a settler-colonial power in the region.) The US is also the country that, together with Zionist Israel, is the aggressor in Iran.
In each case, aggression is used to either beat down a people who resist and will not surrender their right to exist in dignity, or a country that refuses to bow to US demands. In either case, various European countries play the role of active or passive enablers together with comprador Arab governments.
Palestine’s shackles are others’ shackles
Colonialism and empire got together with white supremacism in the 19th and 20th centuries and gave birth to the ethno-nationalist ideology of Zionism for a segment of European Jews. That, in turn, led to the very ‘immaculate’ conception of the Zionist state of Israel in 1948 at the expense of the native Palestinians.
When the Palestinians unsurprisingly resisted their oppression in their own land, they were labeled terrorists and, later, ‘jihadist terrorists’, as if they were radical elements threatening the Zionist state of Israel for no rational reason.
The hegemonic powers would have you think that you are not supposed to resist even when wrong is done to you. In the same vein, if a Venezuela, Iran or Cuba decides to be independent and not bow to the hegemon’s wishes, then it will be punished.
It is more than rhetoric to say that if we free Palestine, then we start to free other forms of repressive dominance.
Dismantle the shackles around Palestine, and we start to dismantle the shackles around other dominated parts of the world.
Working with Israel/US to oust a bad regime
The likes of Trump and his predecessors sit on a self-righteous perch underpinned by great power. From that perch they pontificate about bad people in bad regimes doing bad things to their own people. And so, they say, out of the goodness of their intentions, they have to bomb, destroy, kill and assassinate to help the poor citizens overthrow their governments.
They will also issue other self-serving, mealy-mouthed justifications for their actions, famous among which is Iraq’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction more than 20 years ago.
Nevertheless, a conundrum exists in a case like Iran’s. On the one hand, military violence is used on the country by Israel/US on the basis of self-serving justifications. On the other, there is a segment of Iranians who themselves see and/or have suffered from draconian aspects of the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran since 1979.
Hence, there are Iranians who may be glad for what Israel/US are doing to their country because they see that as a way for the current government to fall and be replaced by another. Perhaps even with the return of the former Shah’s son in a reprise of a Western-dominated imperial order.
As a non-Iranian, one would not be in a position to make a judgement about Iranians and what they wish to see unfold. Nevertheless, an opinion is still possible based on what one sees.
That opinion would suggest that any form of working with the Israel/US illegal, unwarranted and destructive attacks on Iran to change its government is working with evil incarnate.
It would be aligning with those who have been committing and are complicit with acts of genocide and the mass murder of children and civilians in Gaza. Those whose actions belie their supposed dedication to values such as freedom, democracy and self-determination.
People whose words and actions cannot be trusted as so clearly demonstrated on repeated occasions when, with one face they negotiate and, with another they strike and attack in the midst of negotiations – June 2025 in Iran, September 2025 in Doha, February 2026 in Iran again.
In such a scenario, the term Faustian bargain is almost inescapable.
But Malaysia is far away
Malaysians may think they are far from troubled West Asia. But we can see how we are not immune. The rise in oil prices with consequential increases in food prices is an obvious example. Malaysia is 60% dependent on food imports – even for, ummm, onions. Transport, fertilisers and, conceivably, medicine and health care are all vulnerable. (Iran war squeezes Malaysia’s food security | The Straits Times; We can’t survive for long, food producers say amid diesel price surge | FMT)
This is partly why we have to care about what happens outside. It is also why we should care when things are not done right domestically. For when we do things wrong internally, we become vulnerable to external pressures, and we lose self-reliance and autonomy and be subject to domination too.
The other reason why we should care is the best of our own cultures and traditions call on us to do so, as people who share a common humanity with others who suffer and are being trampled upon.
So, whenever we can, we need to stand up and say no to injustice.
28 March 2026
Tong Veng Wye is a member of ALIRAN and is part of Palestine Solidarity, Penang. He is a retired engineer.
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