Genocide needs permission. We gave it. Genocide doesn’t ask for permission, of course. It just commits its crimes against humanity and, frequently, we all say it’s ok. Sometimes “we” means the global community because the genocide or ethnic cleansing is in a place we’ve rarely heard from and our outrage plates are already full. By “we” in the case of the Palestinians in Gaza, I mean “us”, the most powerful nation in the history of our planet, which with all of its wealth leads the world only in the percentage of its citizens in prison and the size of its military. We not only gave permission, we aided and abetted. Our ordnance leveled neighborhoods and destroyed schools and hospitals. Our cash bought bulldozers that razed cemeteries. Our support at the UN and world courts provided cover, respectability, and deniability: Permission to an immoral campaign no respectable authority wouldn’t call mass murder.
Meanwhile, there was at the same time a non-shooting war here, and those who dared to object to Israel’s and the US’s unconscionable conduct were labeled the enemy. None of the responsible critics of the conduct of the war on Gaza excused Hamas’ October 8 savage attack and hostage taking. None of those responsible critics were animated by antisemitism. Many of them were Jewish themselves. Most of them understood the complex history of the region on the one hand and that the trauma of the Holocaust on the other is something that those not affected could ever, on the other hand, truly understand.
And yet, criticism of Israel’s war was met in nearly every corner with overwhelming, frequently unmeasured force intended, ominously, not as argument but as accusation. Accusations of antisemitism. Accusations of Hamas sympathy. Accusations of terror support. Accusations of ignorance. With exceptions that aren’t the subject here these were false and possibly slanderous accusations. They were dangerous. But they largely served their purpose, which was to silence good faith critique of a war the conduct of which most or all credible international observers and organizations called genocide, ethnic cleansing, or nearly so.
The threats against critics were far from empty. The accusation of “Antisemite” became last year’s Red Scare. Jobs and positions were lost and still are. Reputations were ruined. Friendships were strained or broken. The accusation had the power to cause others, without the context, to wonder whether a person whom they thought they knew was secretly antisemitic, because no one really knows another’s heart. The irony of that was in some cases the very people who detested antisemitism the most refrained from expressing their disgust with the execution and torture of the Palestinian people because it just wasn’t worth the inevitable dishonest but effective attacks against them personally.
I’m not blind to the fact that this has been hard for some of my Jewish friends, as well. I read their objections to my art and commentary. I studied the history they offered to me. I opened my heart to the certainty that they held things in their own hearts I never had to. I reconsidered my critique. I revisited my own education in the laws of war and its conventions, which I had taught to soldiers. I checked in on my own humanity. My conclusions didn’t change. Israel’s response to the Hamas attack was not just disproportionate in the legal and technical sense, it was criminal. Almost incomprehensibly so. And the United States was there every step of the way.
That’s beyond question at this point. The question, really, is why it was so relatively easy for most Americans to accept it or – the functional equivalent – remain silent about it. We’re all busy. For all but a lucky few life is hard, and the days are full. Even so, there are always people of good faith who try to lift their voices in protest against injustice. And there is so much of it. Those who would silence critics of Israel know that, of the avoidable suffering this country and others are imposing on innocent people, most would rather avoid The Whole Gaza Thing to avoid being called a terrorist or an antisemite when there are other fish to fry. Media, almost uniformly, took the same easy way out. It’s obvious that anyone with an ounce of self-preservation in the business world (and that’s all corporate media is at this point, a business) won’t tolerate criticism of Israel. It’s anecdotal and personal I realize, but also entirely true, that none of my mainstream outlets will, or have for some time, publish political art critical of Israel. They decline and ask for a piece “about something else”. It’s just not worth the trouble to them, the “trouble” being complaints that they are being critical to the Jewish faith, which accusation is the height of mendacity. They’ve seen the power of the accusation though, and, like all unfair accusations of the kind, there’s no effective defense. A lie gets half way around the world before the truth has a chance to put its pants on.
And it’s not over. Their homes, hospitals and schools reduced to rubble the people of Gaza are now being told they’ll be removed en masse out of Gaza so it can be “rebuilt” – by the very nations who destroyed it. This is a shockingly evil suggestion (and a lie) that one can imagine if made about any other place, and about any other people, would be the subject of such immediate, unanimous, loud condemnation it would be the political death of anyone who defended it. The plan is being criticized, of course, but in a business as usual sort of way. In the context of (a) months of slaughter of Palestinians paired with (b) months of threats, direct and subtle, to not criticize said slaughter, it’s received by most with a shrug of the shoulders that’s become muscle memory for most Americans. “What can we do, anyway?” “It’s best I not say anything, it’s just not worth it.”
We do have other big problems, and the Musk Administration creates new ones daily. Realistically, with our help Israel has already won again, anyway. There’ll be no repercussion for its atrocities. Borders will be again redrawn in its favor. The cries of the Palestinian people will disappear further into the dust of their flattened homes and hospitals. And we’ll move on, as we always do. Those cries, like trees falling in the forest where no one’s there to hear, won’t penetrate our silence. The silence that was our permission for their deaths.
This article appears in Jan 31 – Feb 13, 2025.
