I’ve been thinking a lot about a painting lately. Scène du massacre des Innocents (Scene of the massacre of the Innocents) by Léon Cogniet, France,1824, which is currently in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rennes. It may be difficult for some to understand, but for all intents and purposes, this a Christmas painting.

Its subject is from the Gospel of Matthew which tells the story of Herod the Great, the client King of Judea in Palestine under the Roman Empire, who ordered the execution of all male children in Bethlehem who were two years old and under. He did this out of jealousy of a “newborn king” who might usurp his coveted position in the land. But it is the look on the mother that captivates me about this work.

Now, it is unlikely that this horrendous incident ever took place. After all, it is only mentioned in the book of Matthew and the most prolific historian of the age, Josephus, never mentioned it at all. Indeed, most historians believe it to be a literary device. The Gospels themselves were written at least 40 years to a century following the death of Christ. But regardless of its historicity, this painting is one of the most powerful I’ve ever seen.

I’ve thought about it a lot this season. It comes to me often when I think of Gaza. When I see a photo or video of a mother clinging to the body of her dead infant or hiding behind the broken walls of a building to shield their child from an Israeli sniper’s bullet. Of parents frantically digging out their beloved children from the rubble of an Israeli airstrike. Repeated and repeated thousands of times over. And I’ve thought about mothers in southern Israel too. The ones who tried to save their children from the rampage of Hamas militants early in October.

Each time I see these images and videos, I see that look. The look of the mother in this painting. And if I think hard, I can remember seeing it before. In Laos. In Cambodia. In Iraq. In Syria. In Yemen. In Myanmar. In Honduras. In Sudan. In Rwanda. How Cogniet captured such terror and defiance on canvas, and so perfectly, I’ll never know.

The faith of my childhood is a distant memory. Over time and after steadily opening my eyes, it has become unfulfilling to me now. But I still carry many of the stories with me. And this one looms over me large this season. All the carols and bells. All the bright lights, shiny packages and festive foods. They all have a paleness to them. A shadowy cloak that surrounds it all.

Amid this season of light, there is a season of unspeakable darkness. A systemic and calculated genocide of a people living in the world’s biggest, open-air prison. And I cannot help but be stunned by how these modern horrors resonate so much to the tragedy taking place in Cogniet’s work of art. A story of great brutality and greater desperation.

I think that Léon Cogniet’s painting is the most appropriate one for this holiday. With one look, this mother pierces through the manic compulsion of our modern age to wrap things up neatly. Her eyes meet ours with conviction. And then we realize that we cannot tie up genocide with a bow, obscure its ugliness with fancy paper, or silence its knell with a jingle.

The most powerful thing about this painting is that we know that this mother is out there now. And we feel just as powerless as she does in stopping a horror that is so unrelenting, so calculated, and so brazenly cruel.

Kenn Orphan, December 2023

Let’s be clear. What Israel is doing now isn’t about self-defense. It is about ethnic cleansing. It is genocide.

Israel lost approximately 1200 civilians to the Hamas attack. And this was no doubt horrendous. But in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, at least 20,000 have been killed by Israeli airstrikes, shootings and settler terrorism and pogroms, with thousands more scarred and maimed.

Israel has bombed hospitals, UN shelters, mosques, churches, bakeries and it has restricted food and medicine from entering the besieged enclave. Over a million people have been displaced. Their homes gone. It is making Gaza totally unlivable. And it is doing this so that Palestinians can never return there. It is committing another Nakba.

The rhetoric Israeli politicians and pundits are employing is nothing less than genocidal. A music video was even produced featuring children singing “we will annihilate you” to other children only kilometers away. The intent is clear.

All this, after 75 years of home demolitions, indefinite detention of children, collective punishment and systematic apartheid. And all with the financial, military and diplomatic backing of the US, UK, EU and Canada.

Gaza has been called a graveyard for children. But it is more than that. It is a graveyard for our very humanity.

Kenn Orphan, December 2023

Yesterday, I saw a music video of Israeli children singing “annihilate everyone” in reference to Israel’s rampage on the besieged enclave of Gaza. I had to pinch myself to realize that what I was watching was real. How could anyone use children in such a manner? And then I remembered every other genocidal venture in history. Every other campaign against human beings for the stated purpose of revenge or for “purifying” a place. How many children have been given songs to sing about killing people they couldn’t even begin to know? How many of them were rewarded with praises and treats? How many similar songs have been sung before the bodies of rotting flesh and bone?

If you take just a moment to look at Israeli society today, with an objective eye, you will see the signs. Politicians, religious leaders, reporters casually using the language of dehumanization. Justifying war crimes and genocide. We’ve heard this rhetoric before.

Following the atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7th against Israeli civilians, what has Israel’s so-called war accomplished thus far? Has any military target been taken out? Has Hamas been shaken to the point of surrender? No.

What it HAS accomplished however is well over 14,000 dead civilians, thousands of whom are children. It has carpet bombed entire neighbourhoods, mosques, a church, schools, UN shelters, apartment buildings, bakeries, stores, hospitals. It has created an unprecedented humanitarian health crisis, in what has been referred to prior to October 7th as the world’s biggest open air prison. One Israeli official went so far as saying disease and famine were good strategies for victory. It has crushed thousands under the rubble to die a slow, agonizing death or in hospital without anesthesia, food or clean water. And it is rapidly creating another generation of people with missing limbs, missing parents, missing siblings and missing any sense of hope for the future.

For 75 years, Israel has used the support it gets from the United States, the most powerful country on the planet, to build an elaborate system of apartheid. Accusing any legitimate critic of its brutality of antisemitism, it has gotten away with decades of ethnic cleansing, arbitrary and indefinite detention of children, home demolitions, land theft, water theft, economic exploitation, settler violence and terrorism, and widespread discrimination. Other Western nations have colluded in this, including Canada and the UK. Even Russia and China have made sweet deals with Israel. After all, it has some of the best surveillance technology in the world on offer.

Now it is using that same privilege to provide cover for a creeping genocide of a captive people. Its politicians and pundits have made their intentions very clear. When the “humanitarian pause” ends, it will start all over again. And we stand as witness to it, as it unfolds in real time before our eyes. What does that say of us?

It could have been different. There have been voices all along calling for unity. Calling for reconciliation. Visionaries, both Jewish and Palestinian, with the goal of one, secular nation with equal rights for all people in the land. Jews and Palestinians, living at first as equals, then, in time, as friends or even brothers and sisters. A just peace which dismantled the systems of segregation, discrimination and oppression. But those voices were maligned. They still are. Instead, world leaders let the monsters run the show. They let Christian Zionists in the US create a murderous foreign policy to suit their unhinged, eschatological prophesies. They let the war profiteers rake in enormous tons of cash for more military equipment, weapons and contracts. More billions in dollars for a future devoid of humanity.

And this is the result. Children singing anthems of annihilation for other children. Children who live only miles away from them in captivity and squalor. If this isn’t a picture of hell, I don’t know what is.

Kenn Orphan, November 2023

I wanted to take a moment to remember an incredible human being. Canadian-Israeli peace activist, Vivian Silver, devoted her life to building bridges between people, not trenches.

A former board member of the Israeli human rights organization, B’Tselem, she also worked with the Alliance for Middle East Peace. After she retired in 2014, she co-founded Women Wage Peace, an interfaith grassroots organization. In fact, only days before the Hamas attacks, Vivian helped organize a peace rally in Jerusalem which gathered together at least 1500 Jewish and Palestinian women.

Vivian spent her life advocating for Palestinians and raising awareness of the cruelties of the occupation and blockade. She helped ensure the transportation of Gazans with medical needs to Israeli hospital facilities. And worked diligently on building understanding between peoples.

Sadly, Vivian was among the hundreds of Israelis who were massacred by Hamas. Her remains were just identified among many found in Be’eri.

There are some who would point a scoffing finger at Vivian’s life and cynically say: “look at what your activism got you.” But anyone who has picked up the olive branch knows full well that it is often far more perilous than waging war.

Working toward a just peace isn’t about standing on the sidelines. It isn’t for the faint of heart. It requires a steadfast commitment to the principles of universal human rights and reconciliation. And this can often lead to being targeted, both figuratively and literally, by those who are against such things. It can sometimes lead to being caught in the crossfire.

Vivian’s death isn’t the failure of solidarity. It isn’t the failure of the anti-apartheid or peace movement. It is the tragic outcome of a decades long project of occupation and ethnic cleansing, culminating in a vicious cycle of violent barbarity. But it is her life that must be highlighted and celebrated as a testament to the best of humanity, not her death.

Photo is of Vivian and her friend Amal Elsana Alh’jooj, the Bedouin Palestinian-Israeli feminist, peace activist. In 1999, they cofounded the Arab-Jewish Center for Equality, Empowerment and Cooperation.

May Vivian’s life be a blessing and may she rest in peace and in power. 

Kenn Orphan, November 2023

Whenever Israel/Palestine is in the news it is inevitable that there will be those who equate Judaism with Zionism. And there will always be those who accuse any critic of Israel or of Zionism of being antisemitic. Without a doubt, there are some critics of Israel who are indeed antisemitic or who use antisemitic tropes. But since this has become a common tactic against dissent, it’s important to set the record straight. Antisemitism is akin to any other social hatred, such as racism, homophobia, misogyny, etc. It is vile and its legacy is that of prejudice, persecution and cruelty against Jews. It should be unequivocally condemned by any person of conscience.

But Judaism and Zionism are not the same thing. Judaism is an ethnic-religious identity that spans several millennia, cultures and continents. It has a rich, diverse and beautiful history that can be found in the Middle-east, Europe, Russia, the Americas and beyond. And antisemitism is the demonization and dehumanization of Jews for no other reason but their ethnic-religious identity. It has resulted in unfathomable crimes against humanity, the apex being the Shoah, or Holocaust in Europe. But it is probably more useful in this instance to explore the historical context of the latter term.

Zionism is a political ideology which emerged in the 19th century and is modeled in many ways after other colonial settler projects in Europe at the time. It gained support in response to the persecution of Jews by European Christians and pogroms in Tsarist Russia. Its goal was to establish a homeland for Jews in Palestine, which was controlled by the Ottoman Empire and, following World War I, by the British.

There were Jews who lived in relative peace in Palestine alongside their Muslim and Christian neighbours for centuries prior to Zionism. But this ideology, borne of European persecution, was largely premised on the idea of a nation-state for Jews alone. The idea being it would be the only place Jewish people would be safe.

European Jewish immigrants began coming to Europe in significant numbers in the late 19th century. But this massively increased just prior to and following the horrors of the Holocaust, in which millions of Jews were tortured and annihilated by the Nazis and their collaborators.

As European Jews flooded Palestine, conflicts between the new immigrants and the indigenous Palestinians grew. The British Empire played an enormous role in fomenting this conflict. In the midst of the first World War in 1917, when Palestine was under Ottoman control, a public declaration known as the Balfour Declaration was issued by the British government in support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine.

At this time, the Jewish population was a small minority. Understandably, most Palestinians were angered that their ancestral claims to the land were ignored. Although many rented their homes or property due to not having enough money to buy, the vast majority had lived there for centuries. Many Europeans, who had far more capital, were able to come in and buy up swaths of land and uproot the indigenous communities living there.

The conflict eventually culminated into war. Well armed Zionist militias launched attacks against the occupying British and against Palestinian villages. There were many instances of Zionist terrorism, from the bombing of the King David Hotel to the massacre of Palestinian civilians by the Irgun Zionist militia in the village of Deir Yasin. Some armed Palestinian groups launched their own attacks on Zionist targets.

But in 1948, the Zionist project gained the upper hand. The United Nations partition plan afforded them the best lands and resources for a new state. The Palestinians would be left fragmented and with little remaining of their ancestral homeland. A war ensued and the result of it is what is known as the Nakba, or Catastrophe, where up to 700,000 Palestinians were forcibly expelled or fled their homes out of fear. More than 400 villages were emptied of their residents.

In the years following the Nakba, and with the establishment of the state of Israel, new Jewish immigrants were given the keys to Palestinian homes, many of which had the prior occupants possessions still in them. Over the years, an elaborate system of apartheid was codified into law. It began limiting the rights of Palestinians living within Israel’s new borders. Following the 1967 war, Israel occupied the West Bank taken from Jordan and the Gaza Strip taken from Egypt. Those living in these occupied territories, most of whom were refugees, were subjected to Israeli military rule.

Palestinians living in East Jerusalem and in the Occupied West Bank today have been under Israeli military occupation rule for over 50 years. They are routinely subjected to home demolitions, checkpoints and night raids. They are considered stateless and if they leave, Israel can prevent them from returning. In addition to this, illegal Israeli settlers have steadily taken over huge swaths of land in the occupied territories, in violation of international law, with assistance and protection of the Israeli government and military. These settlers have often used violence and intimidation against Palestinian farmers and villages.

As for Gaza, the Israeli government removed Jewish settlers from the strip in 2005 with the stated goal of granting them sovereignty. However, the Israeli military never completely gave up control of the airspace, borders or sea. In the aftermath, a little-known fundamentalist social-religious organization, known as Hamas, won the election in Gaza. This fringe organization gained traction among the population largely thanks to Israel, which bolstered its influence as a way of weakening the secular Palestinian Fatah party. Since then, it has arguably ruled Gaza with an iron fist.

But the biggest cause for misery among Gazans has been the Israeli blockade, which has restricted food and medicine and which collectively punished the entire population with punitive restrictions on travel and indiscriminate shootings of fisherman and drone bombings. The blockade has lasted 15 years. It is worth remembering that half of Gaza are children.

While most of the world rightfully condemns the atrocities against Israeli civilians by Hamas militants on October 7th, it has yet to forcefully condemn Israeli war crimes, atrocities and its ongoing systemic apartheid. It has yet to forcefully condemn the illegal settler terrorism in the Occupied West Bank. It has yet to forcefully condemn IDF military brutality against Palestinian civilians. It has yet to forcefully condemn the genocidal rhetoric from Israeli politicians and apologists and the state’s current campaign of ethnic cleansing.

To date, far more Palestinians have been killed by the state of Israel, than Israelis killed by Palestinian militants. And it is Israel that possesses an army, navy, air force and nuclear weapons, and receives billions of dollars in military aid as well as political, tactical and diplomatic support from the most powerful nation on the planet, the United States. The Palestinians have none of this. In fact, even though the US has appointed itself arbiter, its stated allegiance will always be on the side of Israel.

To be clear, antisemitism is wrong. It should be condemned at every turn. But criticizing the state of Israel or the ideology of Zionism is NOT antisemitism. Condemning Zionism is not antisemitic. This is partly because Zionists are not exclusively Jewish. They can be Christian or secular. There are even some Muslim Zionists. And it is also because criticizing any political ideology is essential to democratic discourse and analysis. Of course, the conclusions of any analysis can and should be openly discussed or even questioned.

But the truth is that Jews have been at the forefront in the struggle for Palestinian liberation. This liberation does not mean that Jewish people living in that land have no right to be there. But it does mean that no group should be elevated above another. That the Palestinians who live there should not be treated as second class citizens or, worse, as subhuman. Like anyone, they deserve equal rights. This is what the anti-apartheid struggle has taught us. No group should have supremacy over another.

As Israel carpet-bombs Gaza, a place which was referred to as an open-air prison and which UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has said is becoming a “graveyard for children,” the world is in the uneasy position of watching an unfolding genocide. If we are to possess the conscience needed to prevent the unthinkable, we must get beyond the terms that seek to obfuscate the situation and silence dissent. This begins with setting the record straight, once and for all.

Kenn Orphan, November 2023

genocide /jĕn′ə-sīd″/

noun

1. The systematic and widespread extermination or attempted extermination of a national, racial, religious, or ethnic group.
2. The systematic killing of a racial or cultural group.
3. The systematic killing of substantial numbers of people on the basis of ethnicity, religion, political opinion, social status, or other particularity.

About a week ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a speech: “You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible”. He was referencing this:

“Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass”. (1 Samuel 15:3)

As of this writing, more than 400 children in Gaza have been slaughtered every day for 25 straight days by Israeli air strikes. Thousands are dying under the rubble and from malnutrition, lack of water and lack of medicine due to Israel blockading the walled in enclave, which has essentially been an open-air prison since 2007. According to the charity organization Save the Children, more children have been killed in the Gaza Strip from Israeli airstrikes and its restriction of clean water, medicine and food over the last three weeks than in every other armed conflict annually since 2019.

Thousands of human beings are literally being starved to death, deprived of water, and bombed incessantly at this moment, with almost full support and assistance of Western governments like the US, Canada and the EU. Read that statistic over a few times if it didn’t cause you to tremble in horror. This is not a natural disaster; it is a human-made catastrophe. And while others may shy away from calling it out for what it obviously is, I will not. This is GENOCIDE.

There has been enormous public condemnation of the atrocities carried out by Hamas on October 7^th. But little to nothing has been said in mainstream media or from politicians concerning the scores of Palestinian civilians killed by Israel prior to that horrendous day. Few to none of them discuss the violent pogroms routinely carried out by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank against Palestinians. Or the daily persecution and dehumanization Palestinians suffer from the IDF via checkpoints and night raids. And there is little to no context given regarding how this has all come about in the first place.

The open-air prison of Gaza has been blockaded by Israel, and to a lesser extent Egypt, for 15 years. This is not to excuse Hamas, a brutal, fundamentalist political entity largely which was bolstered by Netanyahu in order to weaken the secular Palestinian Fatah Party and weaken the Palestinian Authority. But Israel exerts almost full control over the borders and air space of the besieged enclave. And it subjects its captive population to routine drone surveillance and indiscriminate bombings. And Gaza was already becoming virtually unlivable long before the unfortunate events on October 7^th due to successive Israeli bombings of water treatment and other essential infrastructure. Life in the occupied West Bank wasn’t much better. Effectively a Bantustan, the West Bank is a place where the Palestinian population is routinely terrorized by illegal Israeli settlers and IDF raids and subjected to home demolitions, checkpoints and military rule.

For decades, there has been much spoken about the so-called “two state solution.” But one look at a map and how much land the Palestinians have lost over the past 75 years puts this ridiculous pipedream to rest. There are at least 700,000 Jewish settlers in the Occupied West Bank. And they enjoy full protection from the IDF, as well as full rights as Israeli citizens. Their Palestinian counterparts do not. They are subjected to Israeli military rule. The Palestinian Authority essentially as a proxy government which brutally administers the dictates of the apartheid regime.

So, when the idea of a one state solution is scorned, it becomes easy to show that there already IS one state: Israel. And it is an apartheid regime which has afforded one group of people rights, privileges and respect, while another set of people have been treated, at best, as second-class citizens (Palestinians living within Israel’s borders) or, at worst, non-citizens subjected to military rule and without any say in how they are treated or governed (Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank and Palestinians living in blockaded Gaza). But now, the regime is beginning to “take care” of its Palestinian problem, once and for all. And we are running out of time to stop a cycle of slaughter all too familiar throughout human history.

Without a doubt, there has been horrendous rhetoric from both sides. Yet Israel is the only side that possesses an army, navy, air force and nuclear weapons. It is the only side with unequivocal support from the US, EU, Canada and the UK. It is the only side that is exempted from disparaging descriptors like terrorist, despite scores of instances of Israeli settler terrorism against Palestinians with IDF military complicity. Of course, there are clips of idiotic protestors chanting “Gas the Jews” and this should be unequivocally condemned. But politicians, talking heads and most news sites seldom show the yearly ritual of extremist Israelis in Jerusalem chanting “Death to Arabs” as they march through Palestinian neighbourhoods attacking anyone they suspect as being Arab. How often do they talk about Israeli settlers burning a Palestinian family to death in their home? Or chanting “Ali is on the grill” in reference to a Palestinian baby burned to death by settlers?

The difference in these instances is that only one side is given deference in the Western media. And only one side has enormous power to carry out such odious intentions. That side is Israel. And the language of annihilation extends all throughout its government and culture. Officials and religious leaders have been casually referring to the Palestinians as “a cancer”, as “vermin”, or as “human animals”. A group of rabbis and doctors have recently advocated bombing hospitals in Gaza. And now the Prime Minister is invoking scripture as a justification for genocide.

None of this is new. Israel was founded on the racist precepts of settler colonialism. And today we see how this has evolved into apartheid and ethnic cleansing. Israeli textbooks for children often depict Palestinians as primitive, backward or terrorists. As a problem that Israel only tolerates out of its beneficence. And it was only a few years ago where the Israeli state was found to be sterilizing Ethiopian women in the country without their knowledge or consent.

Of course, Israel should not be singled out as the only nation committing these kinds of abuses. Certainly, the US, Canada and European countries have had similar racist trends and policies. And Arab nations are rife with human rights abuses. But Israel has received a special kind of immunity when it comes to its ongoing, decades long, experiment in settler colonialism. And that experiment seems to be reaching its apex with alarming speed.

So far, apartheid has been a useful term for explaining decades of discrimination, segregation and separate legal systems for separate peoples. It has been useful in advocating for one secular, state where Jews, Palestinians and everyone in the land can live with dignity and equal rights. But this term is not useful now. It is time for us to stop mincing our words. It is time (past time, in fact) to call out Israel for its intent. Because that machine has already started grinding. And while diplomats and journalists argue over terms, whole generations of Palestinians will be erased from the earth within weeks by a state hellbent on genocide and ethnic cleansing.

Kenn Orphan, November 2023

There is a surreal feeling of living through a stream of atrocities in this Age of Memes. Pictorial blips of absurdity amongst the bomb blasts and rubble of cities. Sometimes I wonder if people I know in Gaza have seen the latest meme that labeled them all terrorists? I sincerely hope they haven’t. Have they seen my posts attempting to humanize them? And that’s when I feel pathetic. A feeble voice with no agency. As if a meme could stop the siege or the barrage of bombs that have been incessant for over a week now. I can’t lift the blockade to let food and medicine in. I can’t make Israel turn on the taps and let the water flow. So, like others I share memes.

The meme has become a sort of refuge for many of us in these times. A way to make sense of something far too horrendous to consider. How else can we process the images of limp and lifeless babies and small children? Limbs torn from bodies? Of doctors and nurses drinking water from IV bags because there is no potable water left? Surgeons performing life-saving operations and amputations without anesthetics? Hands reaching through rebar and crushed concrete? Hospitals reduced to pebbles and dust? In this Digital Age we’ve seen carnage streamed to us like never before, from Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria to Yemen, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and beyond.

But the memes. Amidst them all the memes keep coming. Punctuating those livestreams. And part of me welcomes that. Those memes that give us an arms length between an unimaginable, excruciating pain and a thick fog of numbness. A separation of comfort, making the lives of others more like a comic strip than some unfathomable nightmare. A string of images that give us some temporary reprieve from emotional darkness.

We are a peculiar species. Living on a ball of moist clay, adrift in an endless expanse. So determined to demonize, then dominate, then rob, then annihilate the other. All the while ignoring the rapacious maw of ecological catastrophe hubris coming for us all. Will there be a meme for that too? And who will be left to respond to it with the right emoji?

Perhaps the memes protect us from a gnawing thought in our head. That, in the end, we will all be Gaza. That this is the endgame, after all. Walled off from the rest of the world and cut off from the most basic tenets of human decency. Labeled so casually by the wealthy and powerful as “animals” and “monsters”. Reduced to numbers in the media. Our homes, our memories, even our children, seen as a sad statistic. Collectively punished for the crimes committed by a few of us. An acceptable number in an ironically ridiculous “war on terror.” We see it already in the way refugees and migrants are being treated. How easily we pretend they are not really us? Or that we could not possibly become them in a nano-second as our planet’s biosphere keeps spinning more and more like a top out of control.

I’ve been reminded lately of that quote by Hannah Arendt: “the sad truth of the matter is that most evil is done by people who never made up their minds to be or do either evil or good.” And maybe that sums up this Age of Memes best. This stream of unconnected digital comics aren’t necessarily evil or good. They are really just projections of our selves, for better or for worse, on to screens. Projections of our better angels and lesser shadows. A two dimensional talisman we use to protect us from looking too closely at that pocket-sized mirror for fear of seeing ourselves staring back amidst pulverized rubble, bones, and blood. And maybe if we realized this, any sardonic impulse we may have next time to otherize that “other” might be erased.

Kenn Orphan, October 2023

As we grieve for the innocent civilians killed in the Hamas attack last weekend and the innocent civilians killed in Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza, we must pay attention to what is unfolding now. And western governments have an enormous role in all of it.

Right now, Israel is preparing a ground invasion of the small, walled-in enclave of Gaza and demanding 1.1 million people “evacuate”. But where are they supposed to evacuate to? The only place is south to Egypt. To the only border crossing open at this time. And Israel has bombed it at least 3 times this week.

Israel has never allowed refugees to return after the wars in 1948 or 1967, which is their right under international law. Why would it now? Gazans have a right to feel hopeless in this regard because there are faced with either the loss of their homes or death from being caught in the crossfire. There is no other definition that would be appropriate other than ethnic cleansing, which is a war crime. And our governments are equally responsible for this atrocity.

One need not understand all the nuances and complexities of this conflict to know that as human beings we are responsible for one another. I grieve for ALL lives lost or destroyed in this senseless war. But the only way to end the suffering is for a just peace, where Palestinians and Jews live in this land as equals. With respect, dignity and fairness.

It may sound naive to be hopeful for this now, but I always think of what Howard Zinn once said:

“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

Kenn Orphan, October 2023

There are some saying that the recent Hamas attack in southern Israel was that country’s 9/11. It’s hard to miss the inference there. A gruesome and “unprovoked” attack on innocent people. An outpouring of grief and international solidarity. A demand for retaliation. As in those attacks over 20 years ago, these were no less horrendous.

But after 9/11, the Bush regime used its muscle to severely curtail civil liberties and start a “global war on terror”. Muslims were demonized, surveilled, detained, often indefinitely. And the antiwar movement was castigated for being unpatriotic, or worse treacherous. How easy it was to distract the public from real threats like economic predation, corrupted social and political institutions and the accelerating perils of climate change.

Israel is in a similar position. The Israeli public has been deeply dissatisfied by its government and their extremist, far-right politics. In recent months, the country saw its biggest protests when Netanyahu’s coalition attempted to weaken the courts power. They were met with tear gas and water cannons. How easy will it be now to crush any opposition with the accusation of treason in a “time of war?” Who will take to the streets in Tel Aviv now to protest a government which becomes more and more fascist by the day?

In the months following 9/11, many were asking how the world’s most powerful nation was so ill prepared for these kinds of attacks. Similar questions are now being raised today. How is it that the strongest military power in the Middle-east was incapable of stopping this brazen invasion by a ragtag group that possess no army, navy or airforce? Where were its vaunted “Iron Dome” defenses against a bunch of paragliders? Israel is known for its surveillance technology which it exports worldwide. How could they have not adequately monitored one of the most watched cities in the world? And how come it took the military hours to reach the besieged enclaves near the Gaza border? These questions aren’t conspiratorial. Incompetence can be just as deadly as complicity. It demands critical review because the stakes couldn’t be higher. These terrible incidents are often used to advance the most odious of objectives.

As in the US, the left was always weak in Israel. It is now all but moribund as war hawks circle the open air prison of Gaza, meting out a bloody collective punishment to anyone on the ground. It matters not that half of the population are children. Everyone there has been dehumanized as a savage, or as one Israeli official said “animals.” That the rhetoric is blatantly genocidal is of no concern to American politicians. On the contrary, they are being encouraged to “finish them,” as presidential hopeful Nikki Haley tweeted.

No matter what one thinks of the politics of Hamas, its right to resist occupation, its ill-advised prison break, or its heinous rampage, the consequences for Palestinians will only become bleaker. Targeting civilians is only something Israel can get away with in the Western media. It can carpet bomb entire neighbourhoods, target hospitals, schools and UN shelters. It can cut off food, water, electricity and medical supplies. It can literally kill thousands of people. And it will all be forgiven as Israel’s “right to defend itself.”

Few to none in the mainstream press will talk about the blockade that has cut off Gaza from the rest of the world since 2007. Or about the crushing poverty. Or about the undrinkable water (Israel bombed the treatment facility years ago). Or about the bleakness of life in the occupied West Bank, where home demolitions, checkpoints, settler violence and night raids are a fact of everyday life. Few to none will discuss the fact that Israel has been designated an apartheid state by the UN, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch or the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem. Or that the former Mossad chief Tamir Pardo, among many other Israeli officials, agreed with these conclusions.

It is understandable why so many Palestinians feel hopeless. They have been among the most maligned, dehumanized and persecuted people on earth for the past 75+ years. Violently dispossessed of their land, treated as second-class citizens within Israel and backward savages in the occupied territories. Demonized in the Western press. When they’ve resisted their occupation, a right they are entitled to under international law, they are cast as genocidal monsters. When they resist nonviolently, as in the BDS campaign, they are cast as anti-Semitic. And now Arab countries are lining up to “normalize” relations with its oppressor. Is it any wonder why they would feel such desperation? How could any young Gazan have hope for a future when all they’ve known is brutal captivity?

The days ahead will be bleaker than any before for the Palestinians. The 9/11 narrative being employed today will be used in a similar manner to strip Israelis of whatever rights they may have left and strip Palestinians of their very lives. We can only hope that they will stop short of the unthinkable.

Kenn Orphan, October 2023