For decades, our heads were battered with endless talk about the virtues of democracy, while the peoples of the so-called advanced West were discovering its falseness—and the falseness of the slogans that accompany it, such as human rights and freedom of expression—against the backdrop of the genocide in Gaza. People in Britain woke up one morning to read the news of the ban on the organization *Palestine Action*, and they asked in astonishment: Why is this organization being banned, when it has committed no crime, carried out no acts of terrorism, and incited no hatred?
At that point, the image of democracy fully collapsed in the minds of many there, especially after they began to feel the impact of powerful minority lobbies on their wages, their energy bills, and their healthcare services. Today, they find themselves facing a real dilemma: how can the demonization of anyone who opposes the Zionists, their brutal war, and their illegal occupation of Palestine be stopped?
The peoples of the advanced West are now caught between the pincer of government measures that have severely restricted many of their freedoms, and the anvil of deteriorating living conditions on multiple levels. Is there still anyone in our Arab and Islamic world who defends the so-called “advantages” of democracy and presents it as the best political system ever devised by the deficient human mind? And will we learn from Western societies the art of resisting the suppression of free will, and remove the blindfolds from our eyes so as to see democracy for what it truly is?
I do not know; for unfortunately, we are known as peoples who rarely learn from lessons.
