There is no history to judge us. There is only now.
For shared resistance until global liberation.
I’ve been trying to wrap my head around the apathy that many people have toward the genocide of Palestinians. At first I tried to be patient for those who perhaps felt overwhelmed and uninformed about what was happening, but it’s a month later. Israel has killed more than 11,000 Palestinians. At this point it's a choice: no longer apathy but an endorsement of the violent actions Israel commits, co-signed by U.S. leadership.
I actually think that’s why people keep bringing up other atrocities happening around the world. As a way to be like: it’s fucked up everywhere, why does this particular horror deserve my time? Which is a cop out of course because the people who are idle on the devastation happening in Gaza have also been silent on matters happening in places like the Congo or Sudan. Congolese people being killed while mining metals for our cell phones and electric vehicles deserve more than to be used as a prop by Americans who want to divert attention away from Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. They deserve for people to truly join in their resistance against authoritarian leaders who are emboldened by global capitalism.
What is required at this time is for us to not simply look at these as isolated genocides or colonial issues, but as part of a whole that must be confronted by domestic disturbances around the world. Only by this method will the injustices of Western supremacy and colonization finally end.
This is what makes American apathy just so egregious. These crimes around the world are happening in part because of America’s relentless support for Israel, our dependence on fossil fuels, our overconsumption and belief that we should rule the world because we truly know what is best. This narcissism has plagued the world with poverty by promoting fascist regimes in the favor of maintaining our way of life. Americans' unequivocal support for Israel is mirrored by other Western nations, such as Germany, and even France, despite Emmanuel Macron’s weak protestations over Israel’s violence.
The pandemic has taught me that most people just don’t care about what happens to other people. That they are not willing to sacrifice personal comfort or desires at the cost of their own personal happiness. Americans in particular have taken something like self-care and turned it into a rallying cry for selfishness. But choosing to look away from genocide and staying quiet as thousands are killed and millions displaced is not you taking care of your mental health — it’s complicity.
Yet, the issue here is not about people in the West simply not caring. They care about maintaining the status quo. Which means new Apple cell phones when they come out, protecting their careers so they can climb in status, and watching their 401ks grow as their war stocks reap them rewards. There are people who are okay with authoritarianism and fascism as long as they benefit from it, and for that reason many of those people will never be a true ally in the cause of the oppressed. And it’s not just Americans, but the international bourgeoisie in countries all over the world, who prefer to pretend none of this is happening.
The Palestinian movement is so unapologetically anti-colonial that it is hard to co-opt. There are clear demands: 1.cease fire and 2. restore Palestine to its 1948 territory. While the first demand should be easy to support, the second is definitely more difficult for more Americans to get behind. The reason why the Biden administration and most of Congress will side with Israel no matter how many hospitals, schools, and BABIES they kill is because Israel plays an important geopolitical role in maintaining U.S. hegemony. And Israel, a nuclear armed state, has itself threatened to destroy the world before it will be undone. We’ve arrived at a profoundly difficult political moment.
Despite mass protests in the U.S. the Biden administration remains committed to unconditionally loyalty for Israel. “No possibility,” of a ceasefire, the president said. When Israel’s war crimes are called into question in press conferences, he denies them. It’s as if the denial, misinformation, and blatant lies are stall tactics used to control public opinion. Like the “forty beheaded babies” by Hamas fable. If they can just play into western prejudice about Arab people long enough, then those who are apathetic and the people who get their politics fed to them by cable news will believe it. And as long as they believe it, or at least are confused enough to think it’s too complicated to understand, Israel has the cover to continue assaulting and occupying Gaza with impunity.
However, Biden and Netanyahu have underestimated the global support for the Palestinian cause, and how contagious collective solidarity can be. While they may hope that like other things this movement's momentum will fizzle out with the next news cycle, they are wrong. At least it is up to us to prove them to be.
The immediate goal must be to stop Israel from killing anymore Palestinians, but it can’t end there. We’ve seen over the years that a ceasefire does not stop Israel from committing violence, and it’s important to note that the violence won’t stop until the occupation has ended. Yet, here’s the caveat, and what it means to say, “We aren’t free until Palestine is free.” For the occupation to end, the state of the U.S., at least in its current form, would have to end as well. What that looks like, we have to figure it out. But it should start by ending the two-party system, demilitarization, and the eradication of wealth as we know it. Some form of revolution must take place here, and in every country, to reconfigure how as a species we can coexist with each other in a way that isn’t so harmful to life on this planet.
Governments that are strained by domestic unrest will be in a weakened position internationally. This is becoming true for Biden who has not only the diplomatic baggage of the Ukraine and Russian war, but now his devotion to Israel which has become increasingly unpopular worldwide. Add the fact that we’re approaching an election year -- where choices are either hell with a beach view, or hell with a pool view -- and the need for a culture of resistance that continues beyond a cease fire is instrumental to our survival.
Right now there are roles for everyone, whatever their comfort level may be - although to obtain liberation we’re going to have to be willing to be uncomfortable and challenge complacency - there is still a point for everyone to enter based on their abilities. Everyday it seems like people are shutting something down, marching somewhere, and fighting Israeli and Western propaganda on social media. Zionist organizations in the U.S. acknowledge they are losing the public relations war, and are planning an extraordinarily expensive counter attack.
There’s a chance Trump will win again, and that will impact not only the borders of Gaza but of the U.S. as well. The same military companies building rockets dropped on Gaza are manufacturing surveillance tools for the U.S.-Mexico border. Trump’s campaign advisors have promised a whole-of-government crackdown on immigrants and his political enemies, openly boasting of tactics that recall Nazi-era persecutions. The shutdowns that demonstrators have organized around the world against manufacturers should continue until every facility that creates weapons and surveillance gear to wage war on the world’s colonized and oppressed is closed.
True solidarity in struggle understands that this is not just about a momentary ceasefire. It is a promise to be in shared resistance until liberation is true for us all. Everyone keeps saying that history will judge those who said or did nothing about this genocide. Yet we know this almost never happens: Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, George Bush and so many enablers of the war machine continue to thrive. The truth about these moments in history may in fact be censored and banned, and unknown or misunderstood by future generations. There is not yet a history to judge us, there is only now. And now is the time to act, build networks, and be in this for the long haul because that’s what it’s going to take.