This paper presents a critical and systemic analysis of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, situating it within a five-century genealogy of empire grounded in coloniality, extractivism, supremacist ideologies, and ontological separation. Drawing on the symbolic framework developed by Sahana Chattopadhyay — particularly her “Hegemonic Pyramid” visualization — the article traces how empire’s logic has evolved through successive phases of conquest, development, neoliberal globalization, and surveillance capitalism. The central argument holds that Gaza is not an exception to the global system but its structural and symbolic expression. Through an interdisciplinary synthesis of political economy, decolonial theory, epistemology, and regenerative philosophy, the paper explores the collapse of meaning-making (meta-crisis), the erosion of civilizational coherence, and the rise of relational alternatives. The conclusion proposes that the task of our time is not merely resistance but regeneration: to midwife the symbolic and systemic transition toward a pluriversal, life-affirming future. The empire is ending — not by overthrow, but by ontological exhaustion — and we are called to become stewards of coherence in its aftermath.
