The discourse on the catastrophe in the Middle East is no longer mere intellectual pessimism or a passing wave of despair, but has transformed into a realistic assessment of a course of events that has surpassed all expectations. The matter has moved beyond a struggle for politics and power, entering a state akin to a “race to the bottom”\u2014a destructive struggle that has reached the lowest levels of ethical and human performance and involves the systematic dismantling of social, legal, and economic norms, portending a “total collapse.”<\/p>\n
The Middle East presents a terrifying lesson in human destructiveness and self-destruction, prompting fundamental questions such as: Where does all this hatred, violence, and death originate? Is hatred and a state of hell the destiny of this East, and its “eternal message” to the world?!<\/p>\n
These questions are not just rhetorical or expressions of gloom, but touch the core of collective identity and its transformations under the pressure of value systems, conflict, and the tremendous flows within the spheres of politics, society, media, and lived reality. They reveal a shock arising from “societies,” their self-definition, and their inability to grasp the simplest ethical and human lines and ways for understanding the self and the world.<\/p>\n
Firstly: Hell as an Existential Condition<\/strong><\/p>\n In this horrifying arena, multiple power actors\u2014local, regional, or international\u2014compete in inflicting the utmost violence and destruction on the “Other,” after they have been “dehumanized,” “sin-loaded,” and confined to an “identity” or “non-identity” that justifies their violation. Here, the “Other” is not viewed as a human entity, but merely an “idea” that can be eradicated, a “scapegoat,” where society finds temporary justification for its unity in destroying the “demonized Other.\u201d(1).<\/p>\n This is the profound basis for many current perceptions and policies. Any talk of a homeland, peace, and justice is reduced to mere “claims” or na\u00efve, illusory, or false “rhetorical exercises,” lacking the minimal understanding of the nature of the “collective madness” sweeping through a number of countries in this “East”\u2014which are not all the same.<\/p>\n Sociological studies show that protracted conflict leads to an “erosion of social identity,” where traditional ethical and social norms collapse under the pressure of survival, as civil wars (with regional and international dimensions) do not only destroy material structures, but radically reshape identities, aspirations, and stakes. (1). Societies in conflict and war witness a shift from civilian identities (modernist, and fundamentally fragile) to identities based on fear and enmity, creating vicious circles of violence, revenge, humiliation, and violation.<\/p>\n However, this transformation does not occur in a vacuum; it is nurtured through complex media, political, religious, and anthropological mechanisms that invest in the deepest layers of social consciousness (and unconsciousness) and collective imagination. Various platforms, including media and communication tools, are used to deepen sectarian, ethnic, tribal, and class divisions, turning these platforms into laboratories for experimenting with techniques of war and manipulating people’s perceptions and orientations.<\/p>\n The sectarian polarization, strongly intertwined with tribal, clan, regional, and ideological polarizations, is not a natural result of religious, ethnic, and cultural diversity, but a product of calculated strategies aimed at dismantling the social fabric, which was already fragile, fragmented, and divisive at its core (2). These strategies were not confined to the region\u2019s countries but extended to include complex international networks of influence and intervention.<\/p>\n Secondly: Violence as a Core Structure \u2013 A \u017di\u017eekian Reading<\/strong><\/p>\n The Slovenian philosopher Slavoj \u017di\u017eek speaks of three patterns of violence: subjective (direct), structural, and symbolic, which intertwine in a destructive cycle. He poses a fundamental question: What if the violence we witness is not an external element invading societies, but an essential part of their constitution? (3).\u00a0 This question gains particular relevance in the Middle Eastern regional context, where multi-patterned violence appears to have largely exploded from within the social structure itself. What some countries in the region witness daily is the visible peak of an iceberg of structural and symbolic violence accumulated over decades (even centuries) of tyranny, marginalization, bigotry, and hatred.<\/p>\n Structural violence is not limited to political tyranny, but includes the economic and social marginalization suffered by vast regions and communities in the area. Economic studies indicate that youth unemployment rates reached over 35% in some countries before 2011 (4), which\u2014along with other factors\u2014created fertile ground for social and sectarian polarization.<\/p>\n Structural violence is not limited to tyranny and unemployment (though they are important), but is rooted in the failure of the post-colonial state to build a common “public sphere” and integrate marginalized parties into the national project. Here, structural violence appears as the “sedimentation” or “historical outcome” of “injustice,” making the explosion inevitable. This marginalization and failure\u2014along with other factors\u2014created a fertile environment for polarization, where sub-identities (sectarian and clan-based) became a refuge for protection and identity in the absence of an effective civil state. The most marginalized areas seemed the quickest to slide towards armed violence, where marginalized groups find in arms a means to express their accumulated grievances.<\/p>\n Symbolic violence, as understood by \u017di\u017eek, is no less dangerous than physical violence. It is the violence inherent in language, discourse, and identity. Prolonged symbolic violence contributes to shaping antagonistic identities, legitimizing physical violence and making it “natural” in the collective imagination, where the “Other”\u2014from this perspective\u2014becomes an existential enemy that must be annihilated.<\/p>\n Here lies the true tragedy: violence is not just a means for political conflict, but has become a goal in itself, a mechanism for “self-redefinition” through the “cancellation of the Other.” This shift in the nature of violence explains its persistence even in the absence of clear, achievable, or meaningful political goals for a society and state, or what passes for a society and state.<\/p>\n The disturbing “\u017di\u017eekian” question is: Must we pass completely through this hell, instead of striving for an impossible peaceful reconciliation, in order to achieve a genuine new beginning? This does not mean supporting violence, but acknowledging that emerging from it cannot be through denying it or overcoming it with beautiful ethical rhetoric, but through a radical traversal of it.<\/p>\n Thirdly: The Geopolitical Dimension \u2013 The Middle East as a Global Stage<\/strong><\/p>\n The catastrophe in the region cannot be understood without recognizing the complex geopolitical dimensions. Countries like Syria, Libya, Yemen, Sudan, and Lebanon have become models for the “21st-century proxy war.” Every major regional or international power has its own agenda, interventions, and stakes that do not necessarily align with the interests of individuals and social entities, as a “people,” “society,” or “nation of citizens.” This logic explains the involvement of large segments of the population in a conflict with an immense cost.<\/p>\n However, external actors did not create evil from nothing; they invested in pre-existing contradictions and nightmares. At a later stage, the external motive\u2014alongside the hyper-nucleation and pathological self-centeredness\u2014became an independent engine for the continuation of the “race to the bottom,” even accelerating it to achieve strategic goals far removed from the “actual interests” of societies and countries. It is almost impossible to reach an understanding of the meaning of the latter phrase: “actual interests” or “national interests”! This complex intertwining requires an analysis that transcends the simple logic of cause and effect and acknowledges the composite and dialectical nature of the relationship between “internal” and “external.”<\/p>\n This makes the concept of “proxy war” simplistic in the face of the complexity of the scene. The situation allows for a transition to another, perhaps more accurate, concept: “The Intertwined Internationalization of Conflict.” Local parties are not mere tools, but “functional agents” who also invest in the “situations” and “stakes” to achieve their own agendas, implicating external powers. This creates a complex system of “Negative Interdependence” and “Conflict Self-Sustenance” that makes disengagement and conflict termination impossible or nearly so.<\/p>\n Fourthly: Collective Trauma<\/strong><\/p>\n The civil or internal war has not only left physical casualties but has also produced what can be called “Collective Trauma”\u2014a systematic destruction of the social fabric and mutual trust. This trauma is not limited to individuals but penetrates the social structures themselves. The traditional concepts of neighborliness, social interaction, and peace, which are supposed to form\u2014along with other factors\u2014the foundation of society, have been systematically destroyed.<\/p>\n The collective memory of society has undergone a radical reshaping. Cities and towns that were symbols of “coexistence” have become theaters for massacres, destruction, and displacement. This transformation in spatial memory creates profound difficulties for the process of psychological and social reconstruction. Developments show how places that held positive memories have become associated with fear and pain, complicating the process of collective healing. This systematic destruction of spatial memory poses a significant obstacle to any attempt to rebuild a cohesive national identity, if that is even possible.<\/p>\n Fifthly: Beyond Hope!<\/strong><\/p>\n \u017di\u017eek rejects traditional calls for “hope” as a form of “ideological sublimation,” a defense mechanism that prevents us from confronting the complete truth of the catastrophe. This “hope” assumes a common ground that can be built upon, ignoring the depth of the rupture in the “social fabric.” Instead, we may need to acknowledge the societal collapse, and that any attempt to mend it might be mere “barren rhetorical exercises.”<\/p>\n The matter requires, and here we borrow from \u017di\u017eek again, a kind of radical transformation in the political imagination and the necessary destruction of the old, corrupt structures. This concerns the structures, patterns of perception, and interactions below the state and pre-civil. The disturbing question is: Must this hell be traversed completely for a genuine new birth?<\/p>\n It is about the honest and complete acknowledgment of the “Existential Rupture” in societies and states, or what passes for societies and states. This requires the destruction of “ideological illusions,” such as the illusion of false national unity or the hope of superficial reconciliation. This “destruction” is a condition for liberation, not a condition for violence per se. Here, the actor is liberated from their complexes, value imbalances, self-centeredness, and rejection of the Other.<\/p>\n Sixthly: A Vanguard Model?<\/strong><\/p>\n Now, is the “race to the bottom” in the Middle East merely an extreme form of the “failure of the liberal-nationalist model” that threatens the world? Is the tragedy merely an extreme model (also) of what awaits our world, which is becoming increasingly fragmented and disintegrated? Is the “race to the bottom” in the conflict and war societies of the region the vanguard model for the future of conflicts in the post-political age?<\/p>\n In a world where chaos and violence are increasing, where forms of human solidarity, compassion, and mercy are eroding, and where the value of the human being, as a human being, is declining, Syria, Libya, or Sudan, etc., may not be an exception but a vanguard model of what is to come. This does not mean despairing of the future, which is happening anyway, but is an alert to the need for a radical rethinking of the ways we understand and deal with ourselves and the world.<\/p>\n In conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n The analysis of the catastrophe reveals the necessity of transcending traditional models for understanding conflicts in the region, and the honest acknowledgment of the “Existential Rupture” that has struck the depth of identity and social structures. The collapse we are witnessing is not merely a political symptom, but a “necessary disintegration” of ideological illusions and the accumulated structures of tyranny and structural violence. But not for “reproduction” or “perpetuation,” as if this were the destiny of this beautiful East!<\/p>\n What is required is neither naive hope nor fatalistic despair. Perhaps the only solution is to abandon the old formulas of hope and invent new forms of solidarity that resist the logic of the “race to the bottom,” even if these spaces are small and fragile.<\/p>\n [1] See: Ren<\/strong>\u00e9 <\/strong>Girard, <\/strong>Violence and the Sacred<\/em><\/strong>, Translated by Samira Risha, Beirut: Arab Organization for Translation, 2009.<\/p>\n [1] Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era<\/em><\/strong>, 3rd Edition (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012).<\/p>\n [2] Edward Herman and David Peterson, The Politics of Genocide<\/em><\/strong>, Translated by Ahmed Hassan, Cairo: Asir Al-Kutub Publishing House, 2024.<\/p>\n [3] Slavoj \u017di\u017eek, Violence: Six Sideways Reflections<\/em><\/strong>, Translated by Fadhel Jatkar, (Beirut: Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, 2017).<\/p>\n [4] Raymond Hinnebusch, <\/strong>\u201c<\/strong>Syria: from <\/strong>\u2018<\/strong>authoritarian upgrading<\/strong>\u2019 <\/strong>to revolution?\u201d<\/strong>, International Affairs<\/em>, Vol. 88, No. 1, 2012, pp. 95-113.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The discourse on the catastrophe in the Middle East is no longer mere intellectual pessimism or a passing wave of despair, but has transformed into a realistic assessment of a course of events that has surpassed all expectations. 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