08/10/23
on silence & virtue signals
The other night, Hamas launched an assault out of occupied Gaza, bulldozing through the border wall, sending thousands of rockets toward Israel, and retaking at least one illegal settlement. It’s their most ambitious and successful resistance action in decades, and has led, as per the horrible norm, to indiscriminate shelling from the Israeli airforce. Israel also cut off all the electricity in Gaza, one of the world’s most densely populated regions in the world, with 2 million people sealed within, some 50% of whom are children. Around 600 Israelis are said to have been killed, with over 1,500 injured; the Palestinian Ministry of Health says at least 430 Palestinians have been killed so far, including 78 children, with thousands more injured, and tens of thousands displaced. Hamas has allegedly captured dozens of prisoners, and some hostages.
There are so many factors leading into this moment, so many things that warrant scrutiny, not least of which is Netanyahu’s status as a corrupt criminal facing massive internal protests from Israelis, and the way his extremist far-right government has been brutally oppressing Palestinians—prior to this war, the UN said that 2023 is already the deadliest for Palestinians since it started counting the death toll in 2006, with 200 Palestinians killed, 47 of whom were children. Only two days ago, 4 Palestinians were killed, with hundreds more injured in raids, and settler attacks. There’s the fact that Israel is in the top ten exporters of weapons and military technology in the world, and it relies on testing and developing this technology “in the field”, which is to say, on Palestinians directly.
I’m not going to get into all of that, each requires its own essay, and then some. Everyone inevitably talks about the “cycle of violence”, but I want to talk about aspects of the equally inevitable discourse which immediately follows it, both in the political and public spheres.
In the wake of any successful attack on Israelis—I say successful, because there are many, many more attempts that fail to penetrate the Iron Dome defence system, or cause any harm—most governments in the world will rush to put out a statement that is effectively the same, almost word for word, as statements they have put out before, and will put out again. It will look like something like this: “We condemn this horrible attack, for which there can be no justification, and stand wholeheartedly with Israel. We call for the attack(s) to stop and we recognise Israel’s right to defend itself.”
I’ve seen it so often, I almost don’t register the words, or how unusual it is as a statement, but it is distinctly and disquietingly unusual. The first part, the recognition of a violent loss of life, the expression of sympathy and or judgment, is normal enough. The two parts that are unusual are 1) “there can be no justification for this” and 2) “we recognise Israel’s right to defend itself.”
Let’s think about that for a minute. First, the claim that violent Palestinian resistance is unjustifiable. On what basis is this claim possibly being made? It’s not a legal argument, surely. As Fatima Bhutto noted on Twitter, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution in 1982 asserting the right for colonised and occupied people to armed resistance:
It’s not a claim that is based on any political reality, as the US and Western powers are routinely justifying the catastrophic violences they unleash in the form of hundreds of thousands of bombs, drone strikes, and military strikes that collectively claim more innocent lives than any Palestinian ever could. If it’s a moral claim, they are in no position whatsoever to wield it, and even then, it’s debatable.
Violence, to be clear, is an ugliness in the world that stains every one of us. So long as violence is required to survive, no society can claim to be civilised. We do not live in a civilised world. We live in a profoundly unjust world, whose inequalities are enforced by violence.
The situation in Gaza reflects this. If the illegal military occupation of your land, the routine murder of your people, the arbitrary incarceration and systematic abuse of hundreds of your children annually, the violent raids and dispossession of your homes and villages, the enforcement of an apartheid system, is not grounds for armed resistance, what is? Let us consider the fact that non-violent resistance to Israeli oppression, in the form of BDS, has also been labelled “terrorism” and made illegal in 35 US States. Let me say that again: non-violent solidarity with Palestinians has been criminalised. In Australia, our current Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has “pledged opposition” to BDS, and endorses the Zionist IHRA definition of “anti-Semitism” which counts any criticism of Israel to be an example of bigotry. In short, the same powers, the same leaders currently saying there’s no justification for violent resistance, have also condemned non-violent resistance, and even made it illegal.
Nor is BDS the only form of non-violent resistance attempted. I’m reminded of the Great March of Return, the daily walk into live fire Palestinians undertook as a show of desperate defiance, one of the most astonishing and courageous acts I’ve ever seen. And also one of the most horrifying mass disabling events, as Israeli soldiers deliberately maimed and murdered them in response, killing 220 and injuring 36,143. As usual, this led to no consequences for Israel, no censure. From this, there is only one conclusion we can reasonably reach: the West opposes Palestinian resistance in any form. Their only desire is the complete capitulation and subjugation of Palestine, no matter the degree of human rights afforded them, no matter the material consequences, the quality and dignity of their lives. Knowing this, it’s galling that there’s never any pushback from journalists about these stock-standard official statements with their blatantly absurd claims.
Now to the other part: “we recognise Israel’s right to defend itself.”
Maybe I’m just creeped out by the rote recitation of the statement, its unchanging zombie language sleep-walking out of the mouths of different politicians, no matter the circumstances, and so I’m hyper-fixating on these phrases, but still… In which other circumstances, for which other countries, is this said? Certainly, they never say “Palestine has the right to defend itself”; as discussed, Palestinian resistance is unacceptable to these powers, but it’s more than that. Who is saying that Israel shouldn’t defend itself? Who is saying, for example, the Iron Dome is unacceptable? This is the part that disquiets. It’s not about defence at all, not about killing Hamas soldiers, and *stopping* the attack. It’s about what comes next. Whenever this phrase is used, it’s typically after an attack and before the response—what is actually being said is, “We support Israel’s retaliation.”
Given this retaliation is as predictable as all the other aspects of this ongoing nightmare and involves collectivised punishment, carpet bombing, flagrant war crimes like the targeting of hospitals and media, and other illegalities in the vile name of deterrence, this otherwise benign-seeming statement is a haunting example of political doublespeak.
Then there’s the public sphere, in the form of social media. In most areas relating to the news or public affairs, those of us who are terminally online will typically offer a thought or comment, no matter how little the news in question impacts us—with one major exception, which is anything that involves the oppression of Palestinians. It’s so common, so obvious, there is in fact a name for it, at least on the left: "Progressive Except for Palestine”. Few care enough to be seen supporting them when the cost is being labelled anti-Semitic, and that was before the increasingly adopted IHRA definition of it, which includes any criticism of Israel. They keep their heads down. They look away. It’s complicated, they mutter. It’s murky. I mean. Terrorists, right? Or? Um. Yeah. I don’t know.
There is an exception to this non-commentary, though, in the form of a generalised expression of despair, a blanket acknowledgment of tragedy I’ve seen repeatedly over the last 24 hours, and which only comes to light in the event of open warfare, as opposed to the covert warfare of occupation, and particularly when the framing is one of Palestinian provocation. “I just wish they would all stop,” they say. “It’s all so senseless.” “There’s nothing good about any of this, it’s all bad.” And so on, and so forth. I imagine they think this is a safe statement to make, and were it not for their preceding silence, it might be. We are not speaking into a vacuum, however, and it matters who we lend our voice to, and when we decide to speak.
If you’ve been silent through the almost daily reports of Israeli violences against Palestinians, if you looked away because it made you uncomfortable, or didn’t want to risk your social capital, but choose now to wring your hands and speak up about how violence is useless or equally bad in every instance? You are, through your inconsistent silences, revealing something of yourself. I don’t think that these comments are deliberate stratagems, only that there is an observable pattern here that makes obvious how conditioned many people are to hew to the status quo, the socially acceptable, the safest grounds of speech.
In the same way that saying “I’m not political” is evidence of a political stance, so too these generic expressions of tragedy, in this context, articulate something specific. It’s as though only in the blatant excess of war can these people stir themselves to extend a sense of grief for Palestinians, and in the commentary, we can see it stems not from any care for Palestinians or the desires they are actively working towards—because regardless of your feelings, none of this violence is senseless, both Israeli forces and Hamas have goals in mind—and not from any care for Israelis, even, but comes more from their own desire to not have to think about it anymore, to rid themselves of guilt or unease.
The reality of apartheid, of military occupation, is that it requires daily violence to maintain the nightmare. It’s inane to say something as obvious as this is tragic, and innocents are being hurt when thousands of innocents have been hurt, detained, dispossessed, or killed year on year, decade on decade.
Declaring that violence is abhorrent only in specific moments like this one where people valued as people—Israelis—have suffered, is not progressive. It’s an insidious invalidation of resistance against pervasive injustices. “I want you to stop,” you say, after ignoring every plea for help, and deriding every effort at non-violent resistance, right at the moment they break through the crushing force of despair and oppression to fight back, “I want you to stop, this is all bad.” There is a revolutionary potential in such moments, from major protests or strikes to the uprising of the oppressed, and it is invariably suffocated by authoritarian appeals for safety, or cowardice dressed in good intentions. Or worse, in condescension, a wilful smearing of a guerrilla insurgency as being equal to a nuclear military superpower, an apathetic futility the middle class love to drown themselves in.
“There they go again, continuing the cycle of futile violence, those poor foolish apes”—this is the implicit and often explicit thought used in response to Palestinian resistance, because to many, the violence stopped at the last “outbreak” of war. They look away after the ceasefire. When Israel builds another illegal settlement, illegally destroys another Palestinian village, dispossess more Palestinians, raids Al-Aqsa mosque, brutalises innocents, these progressive bleeding hearts are not saying “Why is Israel continuing the cycle of this violence?” The onus of violent continuance is always put on Palestinians and in this way, this type of social media commentary reflects the official political position of Western governments, which have no desire whatsoever to see an end to this conflict, this profitable breeding ground of innovation in death and misery and mass coercion, unless it ends with the erasure of Palestine entirely, or its total subjugation, which is not going to happen.
In typical fashion, after writing all that, it finally occurred to me that what I was trying to articulate about the Progressive-Except-for-Palestine crowd is called virtue-signalling and I could have just said that. Fuck. Well, I’m not going back now. Let me add a little bit to that, though, and pick up on an earlier thought that it demonstrates a lack of care for Israelis as well as Palestinians.
There are plenty of Israelis who deserve your attention and support outside of these moments; there are Israelis who refuse to serve in the military, who are imprisoned and shunned for their heroic resistance; there are Israelis who work in human rights organisations, as journalists uncovering systemic abuses and corruption; there are those who advocate for an end to the occupation, who see it clearly as apartheid.
More broadly, the poisonous impact of colonisation wounds the coloniser as well as the colonised, and we forget this at our peril. You should desire for them, too, the freedom that is only possible with equality. There can never be peace or safety within apartheid. And for this to be possible, you—we—need to be engaged. Need to put pressure on our sick governments who are propping up and enabling every fascistic impulse of this colony through military aid and suppressing even the expression of solidarity with Palestinians.
This is an element commonly missing from discourse today, an understanding that we need to work together to dismantle the system, that our political rhetoric needs to be aimed at governments, at the elite, and not at each other. I’m tired of the hollow show that passes for the norm these days, tired of the constant expression of the inevitable or the futile, which is just a bullshit way of excusing our own inaction, our own refusal to dare to imagine a better world and more, to risk our capital and our safety to work toward making it a reality. If we don’t actually try, all we will have is more of the same: an accelerated fragmentation, a status quo working overtime to splinter any solidarity, while we stay stuck in the death throes of late capitalism’s fossil fuel frenzy.
I believe we can and must do better, and that it begins with refusing to stay silent, refusing rote expressions, refusing the usual. I pray for peace, the kind described by Martin Luther King Jr. as not the absence of tension, but the presence of justice.
Salaam,
Omar
I was waiting for your words on this. Thank you for your clarity and insight.