Something very interesting is happening in the wake of the Trump ascendancy. Seemingly opposed ideological elements and movements are coalescing against a manufactured menace.

In the United States, Donald Trump achieved the presidency on the back of popular support that included that from blacks and Hispanics, two unlikely groups given that their ethnicities and ways of life had not lain clearly within the Republican fold, only so that the new Administration could train its sights on immigrants, including those residing there legally. Many of those expelled from the United States have been treated as threats for having supported the Palestinian cause.

Certainly, America has a case for acting against those who support Hamas, which the United States has designated as a terrorist organisation, but if to protest against the war in Gaza is to automatically support Hamas, then to jump from the door of a stationary school bus to the ground would make a child guilty of defying the laws of gravity. Since gravity is one of the cardinal features of physics, on which the balance of the world rests, that leap would be treated as an act of defiance against nature. And what are buses and peoples and governments without nature? If this sounds like convoluted logic, it is.

So much for what is happening in the United States. Outside it, its closest ally, Israel, is witnessing a remarkable phase of change in its relations with a hostile world.

News agency AFP reported recently on European far-right politicians who were set to attend a conference on fighting anti-Semitism organised by the Israeli government in Jerusalem. AFP said that among those invited to the symposium are a member of Hungary's Fidesz party and France's National Rally (RN), whose co-founder was known for his anti-Semitic comments. As a Bengali would say, le halua! What on earth is this?

One of the invited speakers is the RN's current president, Jordan Bardella, who visited sites where deadly Hamas militants had carried out their ignoble Oct 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel. Since then, his party has tried to project itself as being staunchly anti-Semitic. In that spirit, Bardella has described Israel's offensive in Gaza as a war of "civilisation against barbarism". Bardella did not extend unconditional support to Israel but he said he was in favour of close ties with "all nations fighting against Islamic terrorism".

That is a remarkable turnaround from the views of the party's associated National Front, whose iconic leader Jean-Marie Le Pen was convicted in a French court for having downplayed the Holocaust.

Le halua 2.0.

The AFP article put it all in perspective. It read: "Analysts say the invitation to parties that have themselves been accused of anti-Semitism in the past demonstrates the willingness of Israel's right - under pressure from some traditional allies over the war in Gaza - to cultivate new relationships with unlikely supporters."

Exactly. That is how the world is turning in the wake of recent events.

Which way it is turning was foretold by Samuel Huntington, the Harvard professor who wrote about the clash of civilisations in the 1990s. He argued: "It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilisations. The clash of civilisations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilisations will be the battle lines of the future." That is because "differences among civilisations are not only real; they are basic".

Which are these civilisations? Huntington wrote of seven or eight major civilisations. They include the "Western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox, Latin American and possibly African" civilisations.

Extrapolate from Huntington, and it seems to be the case that Western civilisation - which is said to be fundamentally Judeo-Christian - finds itself up in arms against a putative Muslim civilisation, whose excesses are dramatised by the Oct 7 attack. There is no doubt that the attack carried out by Hamas was criminal. That is why it was not Islamic, because the faith does not permit attacks on civilian innocents. Those killed, hurt and taken hostage in that attack were innocent civilians. True, the Israeli response to that attack also killed and injured innocent Palestinian civilians, including innumerable children: the most innocent of the world's innocents. Either way, two civilisations did not clash in 2023.

But that is how the Jewish-Arab conflict is turning into a focal point for the clash of civilisations. Right-wing European politicians visiting Israel in apparent solidarity embody the supposed unity of Western civilisation, which is under alleged threat, and existential no less, from Islamic civilisation supposedly represented by Hamas.

Countries need to position themselves in the warring world of Huntington's civilisations. There is no simple formula, but what is required at a minimum is an ability to look beyond cultural borders at the world at large and see where one fits into global civilisation.

Western civilisation is not only Judeo-Christian. It is Judeo-Islamic as well, and Islamic-Christian, too. Civilisations have enriched themselves by interacting with others through time. Yes, terrible wars have been waged between them, but the peace that they have established among themselves has outlasted ruinous wars.

Right-wing politicians striking up tactical alliances among themselves will fall by the wayside of the grand march of history.

That is because history is the greatest civilisation invented by humankind.

The writer is Principal Research Fellow of the Cosmos Foundation. He may be reached at epaaropaar@gmail.com