It was the first day of the year
when Israel targeted a neighbourhood in Jabalia camp.
A Hamas leader named Nizar Rayyan was killed.
He was buried under the rubble of his house
with fifteen of his family,
mostly his children, the youngest aged 2.
On TV, I watched when a man pulled out a headless child,
another with no arm or leg. So small
I couldn’t tell if boy or girl.
Hate ignores such details.
The houses were not Hamas.
The kids were not Hamas.
Their clothes and toys were not Hamas.
The neighbourhood was not Hamas.
The air was not Hamas.
Our ears were not Hamas.
Our eyes were not Hamas.
The one who ordered the killing,
the one who pressed the button thought
only of Hamas.
– from “The Wounds’”, by Gazan poet Mosab Abu Toha, published in his 2022 collection, Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear, about the First Gaza War, in 2008-2009, also known as Operation Cast Lead, or the Gazan Massacre
The current genocidal bloodshed unleashed on millions of innocent civilians with the bad luck to live next to a place known as Israel can trace its history back to European antisemitism. It was the relentless discrimination and murder of Jews by other Europeans, culminating in the horrors of the Holocaust, that first convinced large numbers of Jews of their need for their own state, and then the victors of the Second World War, with guilty conscience, to grant it to them. Their guilt was mixed with relief over finding a place to offer to all their unwanted Jews, and a strategic hope that this new Jewish state would serve as an outpost of European culture – and military force – in the Middle East. The Jews got their state, the Europeans – and later, the Americans – got their toehold in the Middle East, and the Palestinians, who already lived there, got killed, displaced, and corralled into an oppressive occupation over which they had no agency.
The Arabs tried to resist of course. Who wouldn’t? But I think it’s fair to say that their efforts have resulted in a long trail of defeats. The Palestinian Arabs have been squeezed into tinier and tinier pieces of land, while enduring recurring wars and apartheid conditions. Each act of resistance has only served to provide greater justification for the militarization of Israel and their own ethnic cleansing.
After the provocation of October 7, it looks like they might be entering the final act of their annihilation. Gazans, living in what is already one of the most populated places on Earth – with the descendants of refugees from the previous ethnic cleansing known as the Nakba having fled there during a time when 60% of Palestinians became refugees – are now being bombed, shot, starved, deprived of sanitation and health care, and forced into even smaller areas. The official death count is over 42,000, the majority women and children, but nearly everyone thinks that, when all the deaths from disease and starvation are taken into account, as are those of people lost under the rubble, the true number is in the hundreds of thousands – perhaps 10% or more of the population dead in one year. Killings and land seizures in the West Bank have also stepped up, and one of the Palestinians’ few allies, Hezbollah, has been invaded to the north of Israel in Lebanon, with the usual disregard for civilian casualties (about 100 killed a day since the invasion began). And now the ethno-nationalist government that currently runs Israel is gunning for a fight with Iran.
How has Israel been so successful against its enemies since its inception in 1948? Basically, it has received a lot of support from outside the region, especially from Europe and the United States. During the civil war in what was then mandate Palestine, and later the first Arab-Israeli war that immediately followed, which Israelis call the War of Independence, millions of dollars were raised in the US from supporters of Zionism to buy arms. Although support also came from Stalin, who was perhaps happy to have somewhere to send his unwanted Jews.
As time has gone on, support from the US in particular has become “unshakable”, in President Biden’s words, or “ironclad”, in Vice President Harris’s. She appears to be even willing to risk losing the election rather than change course from her boss’s policy, as Michigan, a battleground state, has the second largest Muslim population outside of the Middle East (after Paris), and they are understandably not happy with her. Her opponent, Donald Trump, promises to be even more supportive, if that is possible. The two political parties, who disagree on almost everything, are united in their doting adoration of the state of Israel. Why is the US so steadfast in its support?
There are two theories. One is that most US politicians, who, with their country’s lack of campaign finance limits are open to legal bribery, are essentially bought by AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a powerful lobby that is spending $100 million in this election alone to defeat candidates critical of Israel’s war in Gaza. There’s an eye opening interview between Tucker Carlson (of all people) and Republican (and libertarian) Congressman Thomas Massie in which Massie reveals the extent of AIPAC influence on American elected representatives. And that’s just the political realm; groups backed by Israel and its supporters also put huge amounts of pressure on the media to tone down any criticism of Israel and silence Palestinian voices, lest they get slapped with the poison pill of antisemitism.
The other theory is that the US, and to some extent western Europe, rely on Israel as a geostrategic asset against often hostile Arab states, many of whom sit on large reserves of oil. Britain originally invaded Palestine – then part of the Ottoman Empire – to secure Mideast oil fields and the Suez Canal during the First World War. President Biden famously said that “Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interest in the region.” If you’re up for a long read, Andreas Malm, a Swedish author and associate professor, has a piece entitled The Destruction of Palestine is the Destruction of the Earth, in which he argues this case.
Add to these two influences Christian Zionism and the military industrial complex (Israel has been a lucrative client) and you can discern many reasons for the blank cheque that the US government continues to write for its Israeli ally. This despite the fact that, in poll after poll, the majority of American citizens support an arms embargo to Israel and ceasefire in the current conflict, as well as an independent Palestinian state – although it’s important to note that Americans have always viewed Israel more favourably than the Palestinian Authority.
And yet the arms continue to flow, even after Israel has crossed every red line you’d think a civilized country would hold, breaking the US’s own laws around supplying weapons to a country engaged in human rights violations, as well as international law. The Biden administration meekly expresses “concern” when aid convoys are attacked, when UN workers are killed, when journalists are intentionally targeted and die in record numbers, when 2,000 pound bombs are dropped on hospitals and schools and refugee camps, when Palestinians are used as human shields for Israeli soldiers, when starvation is used as a weapon of war – but the shipments of bombs never stop. “No one in the world would let us starve and thirst two million citizens, even though it may be just and moral until they return our hostages,” said Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich in August; I guess there are still some lines they feel they can’t yet cross, at least not openly. American allies, including Canada, have largely stopped supplying arms, but few have made any forceful statements against Israel. The only country to show any true backbone has been South Africa – a country that, back when it was an apartheid state, Israel was closely allied with. Now that it has thrown off those shackles, it leads the charge against the atrocities being committed by Israel, with its accusation of genocide at the International Court of Justice – this, against the victims of the worst genocide of the 20th century, for whom the Genocide Convention was largely enacted. The abused has become the abuser, as often happens with trauma, and the truth of this is being called out by a country that has stood on both sides of that abused/abuser divide and managed to take great strides in healing its wounds. South Africa has now been joined by 12 other states in its court case, and many scholars now believe the threshold for this crime of crimes has been met. Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, has also issued a report in which she says that there are “reasonable grounds” to believe that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
Another act of bravery is the request filed by the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court seeking arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders on allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Prosecutor Karim A.A. Khan and the world have been waiting for over five months for the judges of the court to issue their ruling, while the death toll mounts.
Beyond the incomprehensible tragedy of the hundreds of thousands of innocent lives cut short in this needless conflict; the many thousands more wounded and traumatized for life; the millions displaced; the states forced into failure, with unknown future ramifications; the destroyed infrastructure that will take decades to clean up and repair; the despoiling of the environment; the waste of tens of billions of dollars that could have been spent saving lives instead of ending them; the rise in hatred towards both Jews and Muslims around the world; the seeding of a generation who will surely seek revenge against Israel and the West; and the ruination of the reputation of Israel amongst anyone not deluded by their propaganda, with the all-too-easy to imagine future real antisemitism (instead of the chimeras the Israel lobby chases everywhere) this war may engender; is the obliteration of whatever tattered remains there still were of the West’s vaunted principles, proclaimed since the Enlightenment, of human rights. The only right that remains is the phrase, repeated like zombies by politicians across the Western world, of “Israel’s right to defend itself.” Which is code for “Israel’s right to destroy those who would seek to avoid having their land stolen.” Which is itself a naked declaration that the “rules based order” is nothing but a facade; raw power – money and guns – is still the only true law of the land.
Where does this leave us? Israel will win this war, and every war after it – the UN, the ICC, the ICJ be damned. Throw as many acronyms as you want against them – the United States and Israel, along with fellow rogue states China, Iraq, Libya, Qatar and Yemen, have signed on to neither the International Court of Justice nor the International Criminal Court, and Israel and the US are two of only four countries (along with Russia and Sudan) who have indicated they never intend to ratify the treaty establishing the ICC. Israel and its best buddy America still have way more guns and money than anyone else, accounting for 40% of total global military spending – three times as much as its closest rival, China, and nine times as much as Russia. As a percentage of GDP, Israel ranks sixth in the world in military spending and the US ninth. It was guns and money that created Israel, like all countries, and it has been guns and money that have kept it alive.
It seems extremely unlikely that change will come from within Israel. Conservative, religious forces have been gaining ground there for some time, intent on claiming all of the occupied territories as their own.
Change will have to come from the US, with its ability to turn off the taps of aid. And opinion is changing there, including from Jews. Perhaps as the current younger generation – the ones in the campus protests – take the reigns of power, the US will start enforcing some red lines for its Middle Eastern proxy. Or maybe the US will go the way of the USSR eventually and lose much of its ability to send aid to its far flung military interests. But both of these eventualities will take time. The reality we are living with now is blatant injustice, genocidal hatred, and cold, calculated murder playing out on our screens on a daily basis for over a year now, for anyone who cares to notice, with no end in sight. It has profoundly shaken my belief that our civilization has progressed much beyond the Bronze Age when it comes to war. It is the worst thing I have witnessed in my 50 years of life.
Palestine is a land where nationalism, colonization, religion, and collective trauma have all come together into a diabolical brew of never-ending war, which threatens to pull all of us into its vortex. If we are ever to end the scourge of war, in Palestine as in the world, we’re going to have to empower international law, and stop allowing ourselves to be manipulated by leaders who seek to whip up our latent hatreds to serve their own power-hungry goals.
For those who are standing on the other side
shooting at us, spitting on us
how long can you stand there, fenced by hate?
– from “A Litany for ‘One Land’”, by Mosab Abu Toha, published in his 2022 collection, Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear
Excellent argument which I agree whole heartedly. Thanks Sean for putting this out. I read an inciteful damning analysis of the recent and relentless Israeli atrocities by Naomi Klein in the Guardian a couple of weeks ago. I think you’d find it here https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2024/oct/05/israel-gaza-october-7-memorials
Feel free to share this.
Naomi Klein is a stellar representative of many in the Jewish diaspora who have openly and fearlessly called out Netanyahu and his extremist government for committing genocide in Gaza.
Let’s talk sometime about the real background to the creation of Israel and Paestine and fir that matter Syria and Jordan and Iraq from the remains of The Ottoman Empire. It’s bot toll you get that bit if history right that you will fully understand. Israel was not created because of the holocaust it was created because of the opportunty arising from World War One.
While the killing in Palestine is deplorable, you have to ask yourself what would be a reasonable response from the USA if Canada consistently attacked it. Provocation of this sort inevitably leads to disaster. But also don’t forget Hamss and Hezbollah are political parties supported by Iran and not the will of the people. Let’s talk more over a coffee or pint. Andrew who slept the first five years of life in a bomb shelter excuse typos.
Hi Andrew. I think I’ve got a pretty good understanding of the history. My first draft of this essay contained a lot of history, but I threw it all out and started over because it feels like this constant reference to history can too easily become a justification for atrocities committed by either side. History is a vast well – particularly deep on this subject – and modern interpreters can always bend it to their desired stories. I fully realize the history goes back far beyond the Holocaust. But I decided instead to focus on the present situation, which is one of hugely asymmetric war, in which a whole lot of civilians – mostly on one side – are suffering. And that the world is letting the more powerful side commit war crimes on a massive scale. Putting aside the rightness or wrongness of either side, what Israel is doing right now to the people of Gaza and Lebanon is a crime.
Totally agree that what Israel is doing now, in 2024, is a massive war crime. I would just add that these atrocities are aided and abetted largely by the US, but also by other Western powers who are not standing up to Netanyahu. Canada, for example.
Thanks again Sean and thank you to Andrew for reminding us of the “opportunity” presented to Imperial Britain at the defeat of the Ottomans. This should remind us of the historical Islamophobia and Christian Zionism that predates the Shoah – but then again we need not go back to the Spanish Inquisition or the Crusades to understand that war crimes, Apartheid laws and genocide are currently being committed by a dominant occupying state and that dehumanized and occupied people are putting up a violent resistance. Colonization? Islamophobia?
Hi Andrew,
I have some questions about your hypothetical example of Canada and the USA. In general I don’t think a hypothetical analogy sheds any insight into the factual realities of the genocide in Gaza. I think the argument is based on some false premises.
Canada is not occupied by the USA in an oppressive Apartheid state where there are two sets of laws for people based on ethnicity, or religion. A state where food, water, employment and other resources are controlled by a dominant state and non-American people are effectively dehumanized or made the lesser. What if Canadian children were killed or starved or died from lack of medical aid. What if our hospitals, universities, water suplies, electricity and food supplies were shut down? What if no international journalists or observers were allowed in to assess the damage? What if journalists and health care workers were targetted? If that were the case, as a Canadian, I myself might be motivated to rebel.
Thanks Sean for this work.
Perhaps Ireland might be mentioned as a country with some backbone – and a few others.
More importantly,with respect to the “two theories” I would like to add some mention of Islamophobia and colonization as everpresent undercurrents to our western conception of the rest of the world.
“Imperialism leaves behind germs of rot which we must clinically detect and remove from our land but from our minds as well.”
― Frantz Fanon
Im living in Jordan right now for work. The mood is grim