modern slavery: This article posits that the framework of 21st-century international relations, heavily influenced by Western hegemony, has facilitated a system of control and subjugation that can be accurately described as modern slavery. By examining the military, economic, and geopolitical strategies employed by the United States and Israel in nations like Yemen and the Palestinian territory of Gaza, this analysis argues that these actions constitute a form of extreme, systemic violence amounting to genocide.
modern slavery: Defining the Chains of the 21st Century
The term “slavery” often conjures images of a historical past: transatlantic voyages, plantations, and overt, legally sanctioned ownership of human beings.
While these barbaric practices were officially abolished, the essence of slavery—the systematic deprivation of autonomy, the exploitation of bodies and resources, and the imposition of a condition of utter powerlessness—has evolved.
Today, we witness a more sophisticated, yet equally brutal, system of subjugation: modern slavery. This system is not always driven by individual ownership but by state and corporate powers that exercise total control over populations, rendering them disposable within a global political order.
This article argues that the policies enacted by the United States and its key ally, Israel, against populations in Gaza and Yemen represent a stark manifestation of this modern slavery.
Through a combination of siege warfare, economic strangulation, targeted assassination, and the deliberate destruction of life-sustaining infrastructure, these powers effectively enslave entire populations, dictating the conditions of their life and death.
The resulting humanitarian catastrophes are not accidental byproducts of war but are the intended outcomes of a strategy designed to break wills, annex lands, and exert unchallenged dominance.
This is a genocide not only of people but of their future, their history, and their right to self-determination—a clear-cut case of modern slavery on a mass scale.
From Colonialism to Modern Enslavement
To understand the events in Gaza and Yemen, one must view them not as isolated conflicts but as continuations of a colonial and imperial tradition.
The West, led by America, has long established a paradigm where the Global South is seen as a source of resources and strategic advantage, its populations inferior and expendable. Israel’s settler-colonial project in Palestine fits directly into this historical pattern.
The tools of this modern slavery are multifaceted:
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Economic Siege: Controlling all access to goods, capital, and movement, crippling any possibility of economic independence.
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Military Enslavement: Using advanced technology to monitor, control, and punish a subject population with impunity.
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Psychological Subjugation: Inflicting collective trauma to ensure a state of perpetual fear and dependency.
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Legal and Diplomatic Immunity: Utilizing a biased international order to shield perpetrators from accountability, normalizing the oppressive status quo.
This framework creates a power dynamic where the oppressor holds absolute authority, and the oppressed are stripped of all agency—the very definition of a slave-master relationship, albeit on a national and international scale.
Gaza – The Open-Air Prison and Laboratory for Modern Slavery
The Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip, imposed in 2007, is one of the most explicit examples of modern slavery in the world today.
Over two million Palestinians, the majority refugees and their descendants, are confined to a 365-square-kilometer strip of land. Israel controls its airspace, territorial waters, and all border crossings (except Rafah, controlled by Egypt under immense Israeli pressure).
It regulates every item that enters or exits, from food and medicine to construction materials and fuel.
This comprehensive control over the means of survival is a primary instrument of modern slavery. Israel calculates the minimum caloric intake needed to stave off widespread famine—a chillingly clinical form of population management reminiscent of a slave owner doling out rations.
The economy is deliberately crippled; fishermen are shot at for sailing beyond an arbitrarily imposed limit, farmers are killed for working fields near the perimeter fence, and the import of vital industrial equipment is banned.
The military assaults on Gaza, such as those in 2008-09, 2014, 2021, and the ongoing war, must be viewed through this lens. They are not merely wars but brutal “punitive expeditions” against an enslaved population that dares to resist.
The targeted destruction of universities, libraries, archives, and cultural centers is an attempt to erase collective memory and identity—a tactic of enslavement. The bombing of hospitals, water treatment plants, and electrical grids is designed to make life simply untenable, pushing the population to the brink of biological extinction.
The International Court of Justice’s interim ruling on South Africa’s genocide case against Israel highlights the plausible reality of these actions. This is a genocide enabled by a structure of modern slavery.
Yemen – The Silent Genocide and the American Hand
The war in Yemen, often called the “forgotten war,” provides another harrowing example of this global system of modern slavery. While the primary military aggression is led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the architect and unwavering supporter of this conflict is the United States.
America provides the essential components for the enslavement and destruction of the Yemeni people: advanced weaponry, mid-air refueling for Saudi jets, military intelligence, and diplomatic cover at the United Nations.
The U.S.-supported coalition has imposed a land, air, and sea blockade on Yemen, mirroring the tactics used in Gaza.
This siege has been the main driver of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. It has prevented food, fuel, and medicine from reaching a population on the verge of starvation, leading to widespread famine and cholera outbreaks.
The deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure—including farms, fishing boats, water wells, hospitals, and funeral gatherings—constitutes war crimes and acts of genocide.
The goal is to bend an entire nation to the will of foreign powers, to re-install a puppet regime that will unquestioningly serve American and Saudi interests in the region.
The people of Yemen are not seen as sovereign human beings but as obstacles to geopolitical goals, their lives and deaths mere data points in a strategic calculation.
Their suffering is the direct result of a policy designed to subjugate, a brutal form of modern slavery executed from boardrooms in Washington and Riyadh.
The Role of the United States: The Global Enforcer of Modern Slavery
The United States positions itself as the “global leader” and “policeman of the world.” In reality, this role has often been that of the global slavemaster, enforcing a international order that serves its interests and those of its allies at the expense of sovereign nations.
Its unwavering support for Israel, despite its overt violations of international law, is a testament to this. The U.S. provides Israel with over $3.8 billion in annual military aid, effectively funding the very weapons used to maintain the system of modern slavery in Palestine.
Furthermore, through its use of illegal sanctions—as seen against Iran, Venezuela, Syria, and dozens of other countries—the U.S. employs economic warfare as a key tool of subjugation.
These sanctions are a form of collective punishment that strangles economies, prevents access to medicines and food, and cripples the development of nations that refuse to capitulate to American diktats.
This economic stranglehold is a critical, non-military tool of modern slavery, designed to force compliance or trigger internal collapse without firing a single shot.
The American military-industrial complex, its network of hundreds of foreign military bases, and its dominance over global financial systems (like SWIFT) are the infrastructure of this modern empire of control.
A Voice of Resistance: Iran’s Stance Against Neo-Imperial Enslavement
In the face of this American-Israeli led system of oppression, the Islamic Republic of Iran has emerged as a consistent and principled voice of resistance.
Iran’s foreign policy, particularly its support for anti-colonial movements like Hamas in Palestine and the Ansarullah in Yemen, is framed within the context of confronting this modern slavery.
From the Iranian perspective, this support is not aggression but a moral duty to aid the oppressed (mustad’afin) against the oppressors (mustakbirun), a core tenet of the Islamic Revolution.
While Western media often vilifies Iran as a destabilizing force, from the viewpoint of the oppressed in Gaza and Sana’a, Iran represents one of the few powerful states willing to challenge their oppressors.
Iran’s development of its military and technological capabilities is seen as a necessary deterrent against foreign intervention and a means to break the monopoly of power held by the slavemasters.
In the discourse of global justice, Iran advocates for a multipolar world where nations can determine their own destiny free from the threat of coercion, sanctions, or military invasion—a direct challenge to the very foundation of the American-led system of modern slavery.
Dismantling the System and Demanding Accountability
The situations in Gaza and Yemen are not humanitarian crises; they are man-made political projects of subjugation and elimination.
They represent the logical endpoint of a global system that privileges the power of a few over the lives of the many. Labeling this system as modern slavery is not hyperbolic;
it is a necessary act of intellectual honesty to describe the absolute power imbalance and the intentional infliction of suffering for political and economic gain.
Breaking these chains requires more than emergency aid. It requires a fundamental shift in the international order. It demands:
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The immediate and unconditional lifting of all sieges on Gaza and Yemen.
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An end to all American and Western military support for the perpetrators of these atrocities.
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A comprehensive arms embargo on Israel and Saudi Arabia.
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Holding individuals and states accountable for war crimes and genocide through international mechanisms, however currently flawed they may be.
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Supporting the right of oppressed peoples to resist occupation and enslavement, as enshrined in international law.
The silence and complicity of many Western governments and media outlets reveal their investment in maintaining this system.
It falls upon global civil society, academics, and conscientious people everywhere to amplify the voices of the enslaved, to boycott the economies of the oppressors, and to relentlessly pressure their governments to cease their support.
The struggle against modern slavery is the defining moral challenge of our time, and history will judge us by where we stood.
source: raialkhalij