Statement on the Genocide in Gaza
In my home state of Illinois, the Chicago city council passed a non-binding resolution, calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. Across America, more than a hundred communities have passed similar resolutions. January 8th, Urbana community members brought forward a ceasefire resolution to the city council. The mayor replaced the original with a compromise resolution which specifically omitted the term ceasefire. After a petition garnered over a thousand signatures, community members filled the room where the city council held public input. March 18th, the city council unanimously passed a resolution calling for peace. Community members successfully added an amendment calling for an end to U.S. military aid to the state of Israel.
In the room, I heard speeches for and against a ceasefire resolution. One speaker stood out for seeming to qualify his support for Israel with a liberal critique of Netanyahu. This type of supplement I have noticed before whenever there is a blame game about Netanyahu personally. Why be so afraid to tell the truth about the state of Israel, and resort to a scapegoat? Personality is a poor substitute.
You, whose name I do not remember, your pseudo-critique shows even you are not convinced. I only claim to recognize these paper-thin reservations which fail to fortify your guilty conscience because you remind me of myself. I remember when I believed in the redemptive myth of Israel, another American ally across the Atlantic. My prejudice felt so natural that I could still think I was undecided. What changed my mind was never any isolated fact, but my missed encounter with the judgment I had inherited. For you today, I specifically intend a moral appeal for a Free Palestine, and for a ceasefire resolution on the way.
In my city, I have to say: remember the word ceasefire. Do not be so afraid of the word to turn away from your better judgment. Do not act so afraid of the Palestinian people. Their ambition is a national one. I guarantee you, the world is not so small a place there cannot fit one more state, sparing the lesson that a state exists nowhere out there except in our minds.
A successful slogan, everyone’s conscience meets the same pseudo-question: ‘will you condemn Hamas?’ Truly translated, the question would be ‘is Hamas ambulances?’ Because the state of Israel specifically bombs ambulances, hospitals, and schools. In Gaza, where over half-a-million children live, neutrality is unaccountable. Only an ideology of the ruling class could market genocide into a blameless tragedy, rather than a crime. If, in terms of the dominant ideology, Hamas is somehow everyone in Gaza, then how could Israel ever hope to defeat them? I remember the advice of the wise Gamaliel:
“I tell you, do not take any action against these men. Leave them alone, because if this plan and work of theirs is a man-made thing, it will disappear; but if it comes from God you cannot possibly defeat them. You could find yourselves fighting against God” (Acts chapter 5, verses 38–9).
The cautionary message is for anyone who feels undecided, anyone still identifying with the cult of the state of Israel. Too often, there is only pseudo-justification for the modern Israel. It is not holy, it is man-made, and a pernicious source of false promises. State violence is ultimately self-defeating, and lacks redemptive value. Something as infinite as revenge belongs only to God. The philosopher Max Horkheimer announces: "the refusal to accept violence as a proof of the truth is a perennial trait in Jewish history" (Critique of Instrumental Reason. Translated by Matthew J. O’Connell 1974, page 122).
Suffering in Palestine is not too complicated to understand. Every Christian, Jew, and Muslim knows the difference between Moses and the Pharaoh. There is nothing more natural than the resistance of the oppressed. I have no authority to condemn the Palestinian resistance. From the sea to the river, resistance can last forever. The Brazilian philosopher and teacher Paulo Freire wrote: “The oppressed must be their own example in the struggle for their redemption.” (1968, page 39) To the asymmetry of suffering I add the name and nothing else, the nothing of a dividing line. From his Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire wrote: “It is not the despised who initiate hatred, but those who despise.” (1968, page 41)
The state of Israel, so eager for recognition as a state fails to recognize itself as the source initiating violence. The so-called right to defend itself masks a lawless and unconditional license. The absolute violence of the state only seems ‘more complicated’ before we learn from Freire: “Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed” because:
“With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun.” (1968, page 41)
In my ideological past, I used to repeat in earnest the redeeming myth of a civilizing mission for Israel, to make the world all the same. The anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss was right when he wrote “civilization is no longer a fragile flower.” “All that is over: humanity has taken to monoculture, once and for all.” More true today: “the islands of the South Seas, for instance, have become stationary aircraft-carriers.” Across the Pacific, our rich and so-called peaceful countries accumulated wealth from an ongoing process of war. In his interview for Democracy Now! the novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen said:
“The greatest acts of anti-asian violence are not carried out within the United States. The greatest acts of anti-asian violence are carried out in America’s wars in Asia. That’s been true for a century. And if you consider Palestine to be a part of Asia very broadly speaking, I see total continuity between what the United States has done in the Philippines, in Korea, in Japan, in Laos, in Cambodia, in Vietnam, and now with Gaza.”
The genocide that is nearly completed in Gaza today is the result and continuation of the same war our country wages every day against the poorer countries. At home in the mother country, our bourgeoisie are the criminal and delinquent class. Their violence is not from any outside influence. Because who could influence rich and white Americans who seem to have everything already? Like man, like state: the rule is from Plato (perhaps the original white guy) since his Republic. No one can expect better states so long as there are imperialist wars. The same rich and so-called peaceful countries seem clueless: “Saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace.” No one can expect peace from the ongoing process of colonization.
In the philosophy of Horkheimer, the European so-called “Enlightenment” literally “destroys itself — it ends up in barbarism.” In words of Michael Landmann: “barbarism is not the effect of outside forces” (1985, page xiii). Neither is the opposite, solidarity with the oppressed, an effect of outside forces. According to Phillip Berryman in his book Liberation Theology:
“a responsible commitment within class conflict is an expression of love for neighbor. They are not “fomenting” hatred, as critics contend; class conflict already exists. Through solidarity in struggle with the poor, class division must be transcended in a new type of society.” (1987, page 26)
Berryman reads in Jesus a “permanent critique” of all institutions as means rather than ends for their own sake. In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus denounced those who follow orders down to the smallest details, yet forget the importance of mercy and justice. After Jesus and Pontius Pilate, social order no longer seems the way God intended, but only the way men made it. Even the most conservative clergy, after witnessing extreme poverty in Guatemala, learned to teach a more liberating theology than the church imagined.
Today, no anti-woke conservative ever suspected as much Christian sympathy for the cause of the poor. Why aspire toward a pedagogy of the oppressed? Because who else? In his book, Freire asks:
“Who are better prepared than the oppressed to understand the terrible significance of an oppressive society? Who suffer the effects of oppression more than the oppressed? Who can better understand the necessity of liberation?” (1968, page 29)
Every society depends on the poorest and less esteemed who are truly the wisest. The oppressed already participate in society. There is the possibility for a new participation. Freire divides liberation from the false generosity of rich and ruling classes who profit from poverty, and prefer the poor as “objects of humanitarianism” (1968, page 39). In the image of the poor and the condemned, there stands Jesus, whether he is recognized or not. All our words of recognition and support come too late. Only afterwards do we pretend to have supported the Palestinian cause all along.
