When I first learned about World War II, I couldn’t understand how so many people could turn a blind eye to the plight of the Jewish people. I understand it now, as I watch Israel rain bombs upon Palestinian civilians with the sinking feeling that we’ve all been here before.
In my last year of high school, my world literature class taught me about genocide. We learned the United Nations’ checklist of crimes and definitions, we read first hand accounts of ethnic war, like Immaculée Ilibagiza’s account of the Rwandan genocide, “Left to Tell,” or Art Spiegelman’s cartoon retelling of his father’s life during the Holocaust, “Maus.” I spent my days learning to distinguish conflict from murder.
At the end of the lesson, my teacher left us with the terrible knowledge that genocides are not an artifact of history, they are an active part of our daily lives. All over the world, people are being slaughtered for no reason other than the resources under their land, the color of their skin or the beliefs of their forefathers. Never have I felt the weight more than I feel it right now, as I watch the Israeli Defense Minister declare over Twitter that Israel will deny food, water, electricity and fuel to the civilians they call “human animals” because of the actions of one group.
In a piece covering the psychology of cruelty, National Public Radio (NPR) discussed the mental barriers that inhibit us from taking a human life, and the way colonizers rationalize the action anyway.
“During the Holocaust, Nazis referred to Jews as rats. Hutus involved in the Rwanda genocide called Tutsis cockroaches. Slave owners throughout history considered slaves subhuman animals,” NPR said.
In the same broadcast, a New England University professor of philosophy and author on the subject, David Livingstone-Smith, said “when people dehumanize others, they actually conceive of them as subhuman creatures. [Agressors] liberate aggression and exclude the target of aggression from the moral community.”
Even from the viewpoint of one unfamiliar with the psychological manipulation of such a statement, the cut-and-dry terminology of Israeli government officials is blatant in its attempts to dehumanize and villainize the whole of Palestine as an animalistic, terroristic nation.
The attack by Hamas offered Israel an excuse to wipe out Palestine in front of the eyes of the world, and the United Nations has been letting them.
All of us on our phones watch the people of Palestine plead on social media “we are still human, please understand that our lives mean something. ” We have watched because it is all we can do.
The only people who can instigate real change, the White House, the United Nations and the governments of the world, have been standing idly by, debating the fine print and worrying about trade deals. Our government is not only complacent to the atrocities committed by Israel, but actively endorses them.
In his Oct. 10 statement, President Biden voiced his support for the government of Israel: “So, in this moment, we must be crystal clear: We stand with Israel. And we will make sure Israel has what it needs to take care of its citizens, defend itself and respond to this attack,” Biden said. “There is no justification for terrorism. There is no excuse.”
Our government refuses to call for a ceasefire, possibly because it stands to lose an “annual bilateral trade of nearly $50 billion in goods and services,” as the U.S. State Department stated, from their longstanding partnership with the country. It feels like our government prioritizes Israel’s right to retribution over Palestine’s right to peaceful existence.
I think Craig Mokhiber, now-former director of the New York office of the UN high commissioner for human rights, said it best in his Oct. 28 letter of resignation:
“The current wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people, rooted in an ethno-nationalist colonial settler ideology, in continuation of decades of their systematic persecution and purging, based entirely upon their status as Arabs…leaves no room for doubt or debate,” Mokhiber said. “This is a text-book case of genocide. The European, ethno-nationalist, settler colonial project in Palestine has entered its final phase, towards the expedited destruction of the last remnants of indigenous Palestinian life.”
As of writing this, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) reported that there are now over 10,000 Palestinian fatalities since the onset of the war. There will be more on all sides if we do not push for a ceasefire now.
I know this piece is going to be met with anger. I know I will be called an antisemite and all kinds of awful names. I’m very familiar with the practices of Judaism, and I can tell you for certain that there is not a caveat in the laws presented in the Torah to condone the indiscriminate murder of human beings. Judaism is a faith of community and respect for all of creation, and since Israel’s creation in 1948, the state has done nothing but violate the land and peoples it occupies.
Remember. Remember the survival of the Jewish people during the Holocaust. Remember the survival of the Tutsis after the Rwandan genocide. Remember the survival of the Chinese people after the Rape of Nanking. Remember the survival of the Bosnian Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Remember the people of Ukraine, who are still fighting for their lives and their homes. Remember the people of Palestine, who are fighting for survival against a nation that has occupied their homeland, treated them as subhuman, and rained hell upon them for decades.
Keep talking about this. Keep posting. Keep the world aware of the genocide of Palestinians on the Gaza strip. Keep up the pressure on our government to intervene. We will not be the next generation to sit idly by and mourn after the slaughter. In our number, we have the power to force our government into action.
