Gaza is almost gone. We are responsible. If you ever told yourself you’d oppose atrocities of the past, now’s your chance to prove it.
After decades of oppression and 21 months of sustained bombings, mass shootings, and forced starvation, the people of Gaza are on their last leg. Reports of the famine there are as horrific as anything in modern history. Images of children and babies emaciated to the bone pour out of the region every day, and the situation is only getting worse.
All of this is intentional, imposed on Gaza by the state of Israel and supported throughout the US government. Israel has completely obliterated the region’s infrastructure and land and is now deliberately preventing aid from getting in. Even more despicably, when aid does manage to enter the strip, Israeli soldiers slaughter the hungry people trying to reach it. This kind of massacre, one of the most depraved things anyone can imagine, is now routine.
Only now are some Western leaders and talking heads coming around. Among others, The New York Times, a longstanding and defiant supporter of Israel even through the worst atrocities, is gradually growing more critical. But plenty of observers have known for a long time that this latest flare-up between Israel and Palestine was different from previous skirmishes. This time, from the beginning, the intent and the actions have been purely genocidal.
If you’re just waking up to the horror now, then welcome aboard. It’s time to speak up. And if you haven’t woken up yet, you have precious little time left to do so. Gaza may not last much longer. And when the people there are all gone, when we’re realizing the extent of the horror we have perpetrated, you won’t be able to say you weren’t told. This is a US atrocity as much as it is an Israeli one, and every American who looked the other way shares in the responsibility.
Our shared responsibility in the crime of the century
Without US blessing, Israel couldn’t get away with what it’s doing in Gaza. US funding essentially helped build the modern state of Israel, especially its military. Even today, as our screens are filled with images of parents gathering the pieces of their bombed babies and decimation as far as the eye can see, we have continued to send more aid and weaponry, totaling nearly $18 billion since October 7, 2023.
In other words, we are responsible. All of us. Both the Trump Administration and the Biden Administration. Members of both parties. Propagandists, diplomats, cabinet officials, congresspeople, military brass, defense contractors, and, to a certain extent, the American people.
Start from the top. When the fighting began in October 2023, the Biden Administration pledged its uncritical support for Israel’s campaign, sent them billions of dollars, and ran diplomatic cover even as international outcry increased, culminating with the International Criminal Court calling for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Now, under the Trump Administration, Israel has stepped up the carnage. And President Trump has openly expressed his desire to ethnically cleanse Gaza and build luxury hotels atop their mass graves. Trump has even taken to using the term “Palestinian” as a slur.
At a lower level, Biden Administration spokesman Matthew Miller, who now admits Israel committed war crimes, lied daily to the American people and, when pressed, used the same excuse as Nazi war criminals: he was just doing his job. Continued funding for Israel’s genocide receives near-unanimous, bipartisan support. Even a politician as supposedly left-wing as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez deserves culpability for her insistent lies that Vice President Kamala Harris was “working tirelessly to secure a ceasefire in Gaza.”
Then there is the cadre of pundits who downplayed or ignored every Israeli atrocity and sensationalized every attack by Hamas, perpetuating false stories about mass rape and baby beheadings. Add to them the university administrators, police officers, and ICE agents who violently assaulted peaceful protesters on college campuses who were demanding an end to the carnage, going so far as to attempt to deport some of them.
Imagine how far gone a society must be to get to the point where protesting a genocide is a greater crime than perpetrating one.
The academic and activist Eman Abdelhadi said it best: “Every editor who cancelled a story about Palestine brought us here. Every boss who censored an employee. Everyone who said ‘not this way’ to protesters. Every university admin calling the cops. Bloody. All your hands are bloody, and we will never forget.”
I would add to this guilty roster the American people – you and I included. Our tax dollars funded this atrocity. And our consent, whether explicit or implicit, has allowed it to go on.
Some of these people – especially the further up you go – are sick, malevolent monsters who are relishing in this genocide. Plenty of others may not be. But just as people enable these atrocities, people can stop them, too. Politicians can stop signing checks for the bombs. Police and military can lay down their arms and join the protesters. And ordinary people have more power than they think, and can force change through civil disruptions, boycotts, mass strikes, and other collective actions.
A sliver of hope to redeem ourselves
The only way to salvage the piece of our souls we’re surrendering for this historic atrocity is to immediately reverse course and start helping the people of Gaza, then prosecute those responsible, including and especially within our own government. If it takes every single one of them down and they all need to be replaced, so much the better. We should also support the ICC’s attempts to bring Netanyahu and his coconspirators in the Likud Party to justice.
But that likely won’t happen, and even expressing the wish feels fanciful. Somehow, we’re so twisted that for far too many of us, justice sounds more radical than genocide.
Still, there’s no need for the American people to go to hell alongside our leaders. We do not have to stand by while our money is used to perpetrate atrocities like this. If you have always told yourself you’d have opposed slavery or the holocaust had you been alive, now’s your chance to be that hero.
And none of this is about a “holier than thou” attitude. The American people have our own problems and burdens. I have not done enough, either. But this is a basic moral test. We’re not just witnessing, but perpetuating, a genocide, and it isn’t asking much to oppose it. Post about it on social media, sign petitions, write to media outlets, protest, join aid flotillas. There is no sacrifice too great in the face of this greatest of all evils. Maybe the only one truly absolved of complicity in this horror is Aaron Bushnell, the Air Force serviceman who burned himself alive in protest.
Long before October 7, international observers were calling Gaza the world’s largest “open-air prison.” It has essentially been a concentration camp for generations. The people there have lived their whole lives under brutal oppression, and now they are living through their own holocaust, funded by US taxpayers. You may not like the way some of them chose to fight on October 7, but whatever your feelings about it, that attack has long since been paid back hundredfold in death and misery.
The US has done a lot of terrible things in its long history. But rarely in modern times have we been faced with something so monstrous, perpetrated in broad daylight and livestreamed on every platform, where we are so unequivocally in the wrong. If we can’t get this one right, then we are truly lost. Even if there is some miraculous turnaround and what’s left of Gaza is saved, the world will never forgive the perpetrators. You owe it to yourself not to be on the side of history’s next great evil.
If you’re on the left, despite any disappointments and misgivings you may have with the Democratic Party, you may conclude that they are the lesser evil and vote for them in most elections. This is not normally a difficult case for Democrats to make. Indeed, “not as evil as Republicans” has almost become the party’s tagline. It’s their primary selling point.
In 2024, however, President Joe Biden is struggling to make that case. He’s done a lot wrong during his years in office and a few things right. But his present support for Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza is so monstrous and criminal that no moral nation could allow him to remain president.
At least 34,000 Palestinians have been killed since the fighting escalated after October 7, the large majority of whom are women and children. The number of dead is surely much higher, but the region is so totally devastated that they can no longer keep count.
The Israeli blockade has triggered widespread famine, with Oxfam reporting that “the entire population of Gaza is currently facing high levels of acute food insecurity.” That’s 2.3 million starving people.
More than 50% of the buildings in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, including universities, hospitals, and critical infrastructure.
Israeli leaders routinely pledge total destruction of Gaza and dehumanize Palestinians, setting up a narrative where the victims deserve whatever Israel decides to dole out to them.
By punishing the entire civilian population of Gaza, the Israeli military has exceeded in scale and criminality the terrorist attacks carried out by Hamas on October 7. And they have done so with unconditional funding, arms, and diplomatic support from the United States and President Biden. Biden is not just culpable in this genocide; he may bear more responsibility for it than anyone else on Earth. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu simply couldn’t carry it out without Biden’s blessing.
Reelecting a man who’s perpetuating a genocide is unthinkable. There are no good alternatives. Donald Trump will likely be just as bad, if not worse, on the question of Gaza. And simply put, if Biden loses, Trump wins. That’s a horrifying prospect for Palestinians and the planet. But if our system is so corrupt and amoral that it can’t present even one candidate who refuses to aid and abet genocide, then it deserves to crumble and begin anew.
American presidents do terrible things routinely. Warmongering comes with the territory of managing a global capitalist empire. But there are some crimes for which there can be no forgiveness or grace. Deeds which, once done, put you in league with the worst monsters of history. Genocide is chief among these. We can’t keep allowing politicians to get away with this sort of thing by rewarding them with more power.
Now, protests and occupations demanding an end to U.S. support for the genocide have emerged on university campuses across the country. Police have cracked the skulls of college students and professors, staging mass arrests and conducting heavily militarized raids in places like Columbia. Biden responded to the unrest not by condemning police brutality or offering any sympathy to the protesters’ legitimate concerns. Instead, he painted protesters broadly as lawless and antisemitic, claims for which there is scant evidence if any.
It’s a curious strategy that Biden and the Democrats are running: Carry out a genocide, then use state stormtroopers to beat and silence the young people who oppose it and whose vote they desperately need to win. Somehow, unleashing state violence on a core constituency and telling them to “get over yourself” seems like an irresponsible way for the defenders of democracy to campaign during a must-win election against the most dangerous fascist in American history.
On climate change, the social safety net, labor, ballot access, and rights important to women, immigrants and minorities, Democrats are generally at least marginally better than Republicans. That holds true in the Biden vs. Trump rematch. These are hugely important issues and many progressives will make that calculation and vote for Biden on that basis.
Yes, Donald Trump is a serially corrupt, pathologically lying, habitually felonious, fundamentally indecent, and totally amoral crook. He will do damage that will last generations. He must be kept out of the White House. More than that, if he showed up at your house you’d be ill-advised to let him in.
But Biden is sanctioning, funding, and arming the worst humanitarian crisis on earth. Whatever damage Trump will do in four years might be worth suffering if it shifts the country’s political calculus such that an alternative to the Democratic and Republican super-hawks has a chance to emerge. We might teach the Democratic Party that its lust for war, violence, and profit will not be tolerated and pave the way for a new party.
Our lesser of two evils system was always destined to be a race to the bottom, and now we’re there, voting between two genocidal geriatrics. If these are the kinds of decisions we’re having to make, then we’ve gone way too far over the edge. We might be better off abstaining from the election altogether and finding new ways to oppose the two nihilistic death cults we call political parties.
A crowd gathers around bodybags of all sizes laid out in Gaza.
For more than 100 days, Israel has been relentlessly bombing, starving, dehumanizing, and denying aid to the people in the Gaza Strip. In terms of scale and proportionality, it’s one of the most brutal assaults in memory. It’s being done in broad daylight with funding from the American taxpayer and the full support of the American political and media class.
On January 11, South Africa presented a genocide case against Israel at the United Nations’ International Court of Justice at the Hague. Their case was persuasive, outlining a long list of war crimes and genocidal rhetoric from top Israeli officials.
Despite this flurry of negative attention, Israel has carried on undeterred and Western governments have maintained their support. America and the Biden Administration continue to fund the assault and have even supported it with direct military action.
The situation feels helpless. It’s a tragedy unfolding in real time, with live updates from victims and reporters. Every day brings a new horror, and the supposed moral arbiters of the free world are looking humanity in the eyes and saying, “We’re doing this, and there isn’t a thing you can do about it.”
The case against Israel
Whether Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute genocide is a matter of ongoing debate. The United Nations’ definition of genocide includes, “…any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
Killing members of the group;
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
The first three of these are almost a given. More than 25,000 people have been killed in Gaza since October 7 and another 58,000 have been injured. Around 70% of the dead are civilian women and children. On average, Israeli strikes kill one child in Gaza every 15 minutes. The actual numbers are believed to be much higher as bodies lie uncounted under the rubble. In a population of just 2.3 million, this equates to more than one out of every 100 people killed, and the numbers grow every day.
This is why the IDF is killing any journalist that flies a drone over Gaza, they don’t want the world to witness the sheer scale of the genocide…🇵🇸💔 pic.twitter.com/uwNTpamtih
The World Health Organization reports that virtually everyone in Gaza faces “crisis levels of hunger.” Facilities and infrastructure have been demolished. Diseases are running rampant amid the deplorable sanitation conditions, horrific overcrowding and lack of healthcare. The Israeli siege prevents Gazans from accessing goods, basic aid, electricity, and vital services. The UN’s Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Martin Griffiths, declared in a briefing to the Security Council that in Gaza, “Dignified human life is a near impossibility.”
Devastation in Gaza is almost total. Everywhere is death, disease, starvation, and destruction.
But proving genocide requires proving intent. All this carnage could be, and often is, dismissed by Israel as collateral damage in a righteous war against Hamas. Even if everyone in Gaza winds up dead, that isn’t necessarily enough to convict Israel.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant: “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed… We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”
Israel President Isaac Herzog, implying everyone in Gaza shares culpability for the terror attack on October 7: “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible… It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved.”
Agriculture Minister Avi Dicther, referencing the 1948 Nakba in which 750,000 Palestinians were violently removed from their homes or killed to make way for the State of Israel’s founding: “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba… Gaza Nakba 2023. That’s how it’ll end.”
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, advocating the permanent removal of Gazans from their homes: “I welcome the initiative of the voluntary emigration of Gaza Arabs to countries around the world… The State of Israel will no longer be able to accept the existence of an independent entity in Gaza.”
The Israeli defense
The day after South Africa presented its genocide case, Israel dismissed the charges as “grossly distorted” and argued they have only acted in self-defense. They insisted they were fighting a war against Hamas, not the Palestinian people, and rejected calls to stop the assault. One common refrain from Israel supporters and Israel itself has been, “Israel has a right to defend itself” – and they claim everything they’ve done since October 7 has been to that end.
In the current narrative, everything began on October 7, when Israel was attacked by armed members of Hamas, Gaza’s governing militia. The details of October 7 were horrific: Hamas stood accused of slaughtering civilians, taking hostages, committing mass rape, and decapitating babies. While some of the more sensational allegations are disputed, no one disputes that Hamas killed innocent Israelis.
But even if you treat October 7 as an out-of-the-blue terror attack, what the IDF is doing in Gaza goes far beyond self-defense. Hamas killed 1,139 people during its attack. Of these, 68% were civilians. Not only has Israel killed more than 20 times that number of Gazans, a greater proportion of them have been civilians. In other words, the Hamas attack was slightly more focused on military targets.
People who flippantly tout the self-defense argument either don’t understand the scale of destruction in Gaza or they’re trying to imply that Israel has a right to murder anyone it thinks might one day pose a problem – even if that person is only a child.
Israel and its defenders have also resorted to censorship and bringing up irrelevant counterpoints – for instance, suggesting that South Africa is acting as “the legal arm of the Hamas terror organization.” Even if that were true, it says nothing about the charges and the evidence.
Antisemitism and censorship
Another not-insignificant tactic of Israel defenders has been, unfortunately, to accuse opponents of antisemitism.
Much of the discussion conflates and confuses the State of Israel, the religion of Judaism, the Jewish people, and Zionism – the movement to establish and, nowadays, expand a homeland for Jews. Jumbling these concepts has the effect of turning criticism of any one of them into antisemitic criticism of them all. In supposing that Jews, Israel, and Zionism are inseparable from one another, even human rights advocacy on behalf of Palestinians becomes antisemitism.
This has led to the stigmatization and even criminalization of the phrase, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Popular at demonstrations, the phrase refers to the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, which is currently shared by Israel and what’s left of Palestine. Propagandists are taking the most uncharitable possible interpretation of the slogan to smear protesters and college students worldwide as irredeemable, terror-supporting antisemites. Ironically, a pro-Israel variation of the phrase is used by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ruling Likud Party without mainstream controversy.
Censorship of phrases like “from the river to the sea” and “decolonization” is less about protecting everyday Jews from bigotry and more about discrediting criticism of Israel and its assault on Gaza. However, everyday Jews may actually be suffering because of it. Agencies worldwide have reported a rise in both antisemitic and Islamophobic hate crimes. It’s cowardly, disingenuous, and dangerous for Israel and its defenders to put the Jewish people between themselves and their accusers while they commit war crimes.
It’s also important to note that countless Jews have raised their voices, often quite bravely and at enormous personal risk, in opposition to Israel’s assault on Gaza. Here’s a sample:
Ofer Cassif, a member of Israel’s legislative body Knesset, is risking expulsion for speaking out against the Gaza assault.
The group Rabbis4Ceasefire has led marches and a prayer protest at the United Nations.
Author and 87-year-old Holocaust survivor Marione Ingram called for a ceasefire and protested outside the White House.
The Guardian reported on multiple Jewish groups that condemned the harsh treatment of Gazans by Israel.
Tal Mitnick, an 18-year-old conscientious objector in Israel, was jailed for refusing to take part in the Gaza genocide.
It’s deeply cynical and unfair to label criticism of Israel’s actions or support for Palestinians as antisemitic. It’s also deeply unfair to hold Israel’s actions and the statements of its politicians against the Jewish people. Antisemitism is an ancient blight on mankind that should be stamped out wherever it emerges. Opposition to violent military occupations is a proud tradition that should be celebrated wherever it emerges.
US President Joe Biden and Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu.
Israel’s genocidal co-defendant: The United States
For many Americans, the shame of this situation arises from our complicity in it. Aside from some occasional finger-wagging and suggestions that Israel ought to “be more careful” about killing so many children, the Biden Administration has been ironclad in its support of Israel since the assault on Gaza began.
Now, the US is moving from arms dealer to active participant. Together with the UK and others, the US has been bombing the Houthis in Yemen. The Houthis are an Islamic militia that controls large parts of Yemen. They’d begun attacking commercial vessels in the Red Sea in an attempt to disrupt the shipment of supplies to Israel. Now, the US has effectively gone to war with one of the poorest nations on Earth to open shipping lanes for a country accused of genocide. Perversely, the Houthis are actually the ones acting in accordance with international law, which obligates states to “take measures to prevent and to punish the crime of genocide.” The international community is pleading for de-escalation as fighting threatens to extend throughout the Middle East and beyond.
The Biden Administration is also running diplomatic cover for Israel. The US has vetoed UN Security Council resolutions calling for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby called the South Africa genocide case “meritless, counterproductive, and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever.”
And Biden is doing all this at his own political peril. He’s about to have a rematch for the presidency against Donald Trump, who leads him in polls. Meanwhile Biden’s support among many of his core constituencies, especially young people and Muslim-Americans, has cratered since the Gaza assault began. There is zero reason to expect that Trump will offer any greater wisdom or morality on this issue, but voters can’t bring themselves to support the man they’ve nicknamed Genocide Joe.
Where do we go from here?
Whether you call it a war, an assault, or a genocide, what Israel is doing to Gaza can’t last forever. Soon there won’t be anything remaining of Gaza to attack. Without immense international pressure, applied swiftly, all that will be left is to write the history.
Netanyahu and his top officials are crystal clear. Their goal is “full Israeli security control over all the territory west of Jordan” – in other words, Israeli domination from the river to the sea. Netanyahu has flatly refused to consider a two-state solution, the long-sought resolution that would create two sovereign states, Israel and Palestine. Increasingly, it seems unlikely that there’ll even be a one-state solution – that is, a single state where Israelis and Palestinians coexist peacefully with shared, equal rights.
A judgment from the International Court of Justice could take years. Even if the court convicts Israel, it has no enforcement powers. The US can simply veto, as it has in the past, any Security Council resolution requesting that Israel stop its assault.
It’s never too late for peace. No matter how much damage has been done, it would be better if the fighting stopped. Anyone with any means at their disposal, whether it’s protests, letter-writing, petition-signing, boycotting, or even voting, can pressure their leaders to impose sanctions and diplomatic measures. Perhaps, with enough action from activists and the international community, the genocide can be stopped before it’s completed.
This article only catalogues evidence from more or less reputable news sites. Underneath all the lies, coverups, and sanitization there almost certainly lie even greater horrors. One day, Western institutions will have to pretend they didn’t know what was happening, pretend there weren’t countless videos of Palestinians clutching their dead and dying loved ones, pretend they weren’t warned by human rights organizations and journalists.
There’s no one left in Gaza who hasn’t been displaced, gone hungry, lost a relative, and/or been blown to bits. If that isn’t a genocide, it’s hard to know what is. The psychological toll has been profound and will last generations – if there are future generations left to feel it. Whoever does survive will harbor deep, long-lasting animosities for Israel and the US for the carnage visited on them. Many of them will likely respond to the violence they’ve experienced with violence of their own. They will never forgive us, because what we’ve done is unforgivable.
Whatever you call it, hardly anything on Earth today is as clear-cut and morally unambiguous as Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip. And the USA, President Biden, establishment Washington, and mainstream media are firmly on the wrong side of it.
Tensions between Israel and Palestine have erupted anew, reaching perhaps their most dangerous escalation yet. Things kicked off when Hamas, the leading political authority in the Palestinian territory of Gaza, slaughtered some 260 people at a music festival in Israel. Since then, all the world’s eyes have been on the region as reports of war crimes and atrocities on both sides – some exaggerated or made up, but far too many true – filter out daily. Political leaders, pundits, and ordinary people have responded to the horror with vengeful, even genocidal rhetoric.
Discussing the situation is difficult. Emotions are high, and the sheer scale of violence makes level-headedness feel almost inappropriate. Disinformation and propaganda make it hard to know the truth even for those who seek it out and there are numerous misunderstandings about the region’s politics and history in general. Add organized religion to the mix and all the bigotries, atrocities, and accusations that entails, and it’s not hard to imagine things quickly going off the rails.
Still, it’s more important now than ever to not get carried away – though the powers that be are already well on their way to doing horrific, irreversible, history-staining crimes.
Responding to terrorism with war crimes
Many have referred to the massacre as Israel’s 9/11. The analogy is apt not just for the horror of the act itself but for the reaction its leaders have had. Both Israel and the US were allegedly warned about the attack in advance. In both cases, leaders refused to acknowledge how any of their own wrongdoings may have incited terror, and in both cases they seized the opportunity escalate their own violence in brutal revenge.
No doubt, the Hamas-led massacre was heinous. Nova music festival attendees did nothing to deserve being butchered. The Palestinian people have real grievances with the State of Israel, but those innocent people were not responsible for generations of abuse.
By the same token, the 2 million Palestinians living in Gaza were not responsible for Hamas’s actions. Despite that, retaliation against the entirety of Gaza has been swift and gigantic. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant used violent, dehumanizing language when he ordered, “… a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we act accordingly.” Gallant’s siege has been condemned as a war crime, hundreds of Gazans are being killed by Israeli bombing daily, and a ground invasion is underway.
To be outraged by the violence in only one direction is simply morally inconsistent. We must never allow ourselves to think responding to terrorism with war crimes is justifiable – yet, far too often, we do. We afford grace to leaders like Gallant and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, just as we did for George Bush after 9/11. “Proper” leaders wage war honorably with bombs. Shooting civilians in a murderous rampage is rightly viewed as savage terrorism. Killing them with bombs while they’re asleep at home is somehow dignified, civilized – or, at worst, unfortunate but necessary collateral damage.
A brief history of Israel/Palestine
Disturbingly, this contempt and inhumanity is how Israel has treated Palestinians all along. The Palestinian people, in both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, have suffered for generations under one of the most brutally oppressive apartheid regimes the planet has ever seen.
The history of the region, of course, goes back millennia. Jews were persecuted throughout Europe for centuries, with “the Jewish question” being debated in the 1700s in Britain and early Zionists like Theodor Herzl arguing for the creation of a Jewish state as early as 1896. Following the atrocities of World War II, large numbers of displaced Jews and holocaust survivors were looking for a place to call home. Governments including the U.S. and U.S.S.R. struck up a deal to carve up Palestine – then under British control – into Arab and Jewish sections, displacing some 700,000 Palestinians and giving birth to the State of Israel in 1948.
From the beginning, the region was fraught with turmoil, and even times of peace were uneasy with resentments always simmering. Wars broke out with neighbors like Egypt and Jordan while territorial control waxed and waned. Overall, however, Israel grew considerably, eventually dwindling Palestine down to only two occupied territories: Gaza, now a small, 25-mile-long strip bordering the Mediterranean Sea and Egypt, and the West Bank, now a fragmented cluster of Palestinian villages.
This land wasn’t taken through luck or savvy negotiation. It was taken by military force, settled illegally and maintained with often brutal occupations.
In the 1970s, Israel also became a close military ally of the US. Adjusted for inflation, the American government has given Israel some $260 billion in aid, the vast majority of it military. Israel is the largest annual recipient of US military aid, and the package grows with almost every presidency. In addition, the US looks the other way on Israel’s myriad human rights violations and shields it from international scrutiny, vetoing some 53 United Nations resolutions over the years that condemned Israel for its illegal settlements, repression of dissent, and treatment of Palestinians.
The terrifying place we now find ourselves: Calls for ethnic cleansing
To place Hamas’s rampage, and the ensuing violence and hostage-taking, in this historical context is not to excuse or justify it. However, the context is necessary to understand why it happened. The kind of violence and abuse the Palestinians have been subjected to for generations radicalizes people and makes citizens of the offending country, and the entire world, less safe.
After the Nova festival attack, Israeli journalist Gideon Levy wrote in Haaretz: “Behind all this lies Israeli arrogance; the idea that we can do whatever we like, that we’ll never pay the price and be punished for it… it’s impossible to imprison 2 million people forever without paying a cruel price… Israel hasn’t stopped punishing Gaza since 1948, not for a moment… We haven’t learned a thing.”
Not only have we not learned a thing, Netanyahu’s government – with the support of President Biden and the US government – appears ready to commit full-on genocide in Gaza.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog blamed all Gazans for the Hamas massacre, saying, “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible… It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved… They could have fought against that evil regime.” By the same logic, every US citizen bears responsibility for US crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and elsewhere. Every Israeli is responsible for the displacement and subjugation of Palestinians.
Netanyahu ordered the evacuation of some 1.1 million Gazans, nearly half the strip’s population, despite them having nowhere to go and being given only 24 hours’ notice. Then, Israel bombed the evacuation route, killing as many as 70 people, including women and children. A full-scale invasion of Gaza is imminent, and virtually everyone there has been declared an enemy terrorist. Already, more than 2,200 Gazans have been killed, including 700 children, and the number grows by the hundreds every day. Meanwhile Hamas has killed some 1300 Israelis and taken another 150 hostages. Some hostages have reportedly been killed by Israeli bombs. What’s happening in Gaza is heartbreaking and horrifying – and as Netanyahu has already threatened, “this is only the beginning.”
Defenders of Israeli policy often claim the nation, as the only Western ally and Jewish state in the Middle East, is beset on all sides by enemies. There may be some truth to that. But to truly understand the power differential between Israel and Palestine, simply look at what’s happening: a complete siege, shutting off power, ordering over a million people to evacuate. Hamas doesn’t have the power to do that to Israel. Only Israel has the power to do it to Gaza.
All this context is lost in mainstream American media and political discussions. President Biden flippantly says, “Israel has a right to defend itself” – as if every action it takes, every bomb it drops, apartment it levels, child it maims, and human being it terrorizes is purely self-defense. On top of that, warmongers in Washington are now calling for war with Iran over its support of Hamas, which could spark World War III.
What can we do?
Solving the problems in Israel and the Middle East, ending war, and allowing for the dignity, peace and security of everyone – these are all lofty goals that feel depressingly unachievable in moments like this. The need of the greedy and the powerful to expand their territory and subjugate others with as much violence as it takes feels insurmountable.
But even in these ugliest and darkest moments, there are things we can do. We can choose to see the humanity in one another. We can seek out voices on the ground like Plestia Alaqad, who is reporting from besieged Gaza despite a lack of energy and internet. We can refuse to be bullied by warmongers and dehumanizers into cosigning their genocidal worldview. We can protest, educate ourselves and each other, put the squeeze of public pressure on leaders, and if necessary or able, put our bodies on the line.
We must break free of the American corporate, political, and media narrative that says nations can retaliate to terrorism with any murderous war crime they want. We must stop tolerating or justifying abuses of the powerful against the weak.
Terrorism isn’t about justice. It’s a violent means to a political end. Hamas’s crime was heinous, but the correct response is not even larger-scale atrocities. Governments can undertake police actions to find those responsible. They can inspire, support, and encourage the people of Gaza to overthrow Hamas. Best of all, Israel could lift their boot from Palestinians’ necks, begin treating them like human beings, and alleviate the desperate situation that foments extremism in the first place.
Whether it’s Hamas with machineguns or Netanyahu with F-15s, mass-scale murder should always repulse us and animate our passion for justice. What Netanyahu and the Israeli government is leading us toward – with the bloodthirsty, salivating support of American politicians, media, and the military-industrial complex behind them – reeks of genocide. No one with any morality can be comfortable watching it, but we all must be brave enough to not look away.
America has spent the last seven or so decades shaping the rest of the world in the neoliberal pro-market, anti-people mold. An important component of that global plan is the Middle East, where Israel provides a foothold for Western interests in a region where the West is traditionally unwelcome. Continue reading →
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