Recognition Without Redemption: The Illusion of a State and the Hypocrisy of a Starving World

By Isaac Christopher Lubogo

So France has now declared it shall recognise Palestine as a state. Applause. But not too loud. For what is the sound of recognition in a land still burning? What is the worth of a flag over Gaza when beneath it lie graves of children, not foundations of sovereignty?

Over 100 countries, we are told, now “recognise” Palestine. Recognise what, exactly? A ghost? A memory? A bleeding wound dressed in diplomatic linen? Recognition has become the cheapest currency in geopolitics—a photo-op for statesmen, a press release for the morally fatigued, a balm for the guilty conscience of the international order. But recognition, in this context, is a theatrical nod while the stage still drips with blood.

And now, as famine devours Gaza like a locust swarm from the Book of Exodus, the world watches—mute, mannered, and monstrously indifferent. The so-called guardians of democracy and human rights turn their backs while children feed on roots and rats. Where is the humanity in their recognition? Where is the state whose airspace is owned by drones, whose borders are barbed by occupation, and whose skies rain hellfire in the name of security?

And yet, amid this theatre of symbolic empathy, Ruby, the U.S. Secretary of State, dares to rebuke France for such recognition. How telling. The very power whose vetoes at the UN have been Palestine’s shackles now lectures others on the timing of their mercy. Ruby speaks as though the recognition of a people’s right to exist is an inconvenience to the schedule of empire.

But let us ask this: Is the Palestinian state recognised because it is finally free? Or because it is finally starved enough to be seen as harmless?

France may wave the banner of diplomatic recognition, but Gaza’s children do not eat flags. They do not drink treaties. They do not sleep under constitutions. They perish while states argue semantics. Recognition means nothing without relief. Nothing without protection. Nothing without justice.

The cruel irony is that some of the Arab states swimming in oil wealth—Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE—have given more to skyscrapers than to starving siblings. They tithe to Mecca but not to Rafah. Their silence echoes louder than the bombs. Their comfort, drenched in gold and gas, is a betrayal to every Palestinian mother who buries her child in shallow rubble.

It was once said by a Zionist intellectual, “A single fingernail of a Jew is worth more than a thousand Arab lives.” Find the quote, for it is real. And let it sit with you like bile in your throat as you scroll past photos of Gazan infants turned skeletons. Is this what civilisation has become? The fingernail of privilege over the bones of the oppressed?

So no—we do not clap for France. We do not kneel for recognition. We demand repentance, reparations, and real sovereignty. For recognising a state while ignoring its starvation is like offering flowers at a funeral you helped arrange.

Palestine does not need recognition. Palestine needs resurrection.

And until then, every capital that claims to stand with it while doing nothing to end the siege is a complicit actor in a long and brutal genocide, televised nightly, sanitized for Western comfort, and debated while children die in silence.

Let the world be warned: History has eyes. And in the court of posterity, the blood of Gaza shall be the evidence, the verdict, and the eternal scream.

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