It is hard not to retch when one hears yet another Pakistani defense minister, nearly two years into the televised genocide of Gaza, suddenly discovering his voice to call for “Muslim unity” against Israel. The timing is always exquisite: when the corpses of Gaza’s children are stacked too high for the world to ignore, when another Western-backed ceasefire farce is about to be signed, or when domestic discontent in Pakistan is simmering dangerously close to boiling. At such moments, a stern-faced man in Islamabad dutifully proclaims solidarity with the Palestinians, as though words could substitute for courage. The performance is so transparent that even the clumsiest village theater troupe might blush at the lack of subtlety. Yet these rhetorical spasms […]
