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

To my friends in Israel, Gaza and the occupied West Bank, I am hoping you all remain safe and unharmed. There are no speeches or platitudes that can airbrush the horror which has unfolded or which may come. And no person of conscience would celebrate the slaughter or suffering of anyone, especially of civilians.

But for those of us outside this region, it is urgent to see the context of how this all came about. None of this came about in a vacuum. This is not a justification for terrorism. Absolutely not. But if we truly care about peace, we should begin with understanding.

In much of the media, it is once again being portrayed as a conflict of equals. Of culture against culture, religion against religion. As two countries in some kind of eternal war. And this is a dangerous falsehood.

We can go back over 75 years and explore how following the fall of the Ottoman Empire, British Mandate Palestine continued its colonial project which began the cycle of dispossession and violence. To the odious, centuries-long persecution of Jews in Europe which led to the Holocaust and the forced displacement of millions of Jews, many of whom fled to the Middle-East. To the UN partition of Israel/Palestine which was grossly unfair toward the Palestinians in land allocation and resources. To the Nakba, or Catastrophe, where scores were massacred and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced from their villages and homes by violent militias. To the repeated betrayal of Palestinian aspirations for self determination by American politicians and their biased and militarized foreign policy. To decades of entrenched discrimination, segregation and ethnic cleansing. But I think it is best to look at the past few decades instead.

In recent years, Israel has been designated an apartheid state by the UN, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and by Israeli human rights organizations like B’Tselem and If Not Now. Even President Jimmy Carter warned of this years ago, and the Israeli ex-Mossad chief Tamir Pardo called his country an apartheid state. Mossad is Israel’s intelligence agency. All of this is demonstrated to most reasonable people when presented with the facts on the ground.

Nearly 3 million Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem live under Israeli occupation. Israeli apologists claim that the Palestinian Authority is their government when, in actuality, it is merely a proxy government for the occupation. Thanks to the unfair Oslo Accords, Israel has been able to effectively divided the occupied West Bank into three administrative areas. In all but one of those zones, Israel has absolute control. Palestinians in the remaining area are still subject to the Israeli occupation by way of the administration of its proxy, the PA.

All Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem face home demolitions, walls, barriers, separate roads, scores of dehumanizing checkpoints, daily violence from illegal settlers that include being shot at and the burning of olive groves, and military tribunals instead of civil courts like their Israeli settler counterparts. Palestinian children are routinely spirited away in terrorizing night raids and taken to detention centers that are often undisclosed. There they often face abuse and neglect.

And over 2 million Palestinians in Gaza, which has been blockaded and besieged for nearly 15 years, have absolutely no say regarding their unjustified imprisonment or the routine collective punishment meted out by the Israeli military. These Palestinians are subject to indiscriminate carpet bombing and are prevented from leaving the Strip by Israel and Egypt. Israel has historically targeted schools, apartment buildings, shelters, mosques and the press with indiscriminate bombs. And the UN has warned repeatedly that Gaza will be unlivable thanks to poverty, scant access to clean drinking water, and routine Israeli drone surveillance and bombardment.

Within Israel, towns and neighbourhoods have committees that have the right to exclude whomever they want on the basis of ethnicity or religion. Those that have a Jewish majority can effectively ban non-Jews from living where they want, echoing the redlining practices in the US that excluded Black Americans from purchasing homes in predominantly white, middle-class neighborhoods. Many Palestinian and Bedouin communities are disproportionately discriminated in building permits and are often disconnected from basic services like water and garbage collection. In fact, there are over 65 laws that discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel and it allocates only a fraction of its budget to Palestinian Israelis councils.

This context is vital to understand how persecution and dehumanization foment alienation and rage. It is also important to note that Palestinian civilian deaths far outweigh Israeli civilian deaths. Again, this is not a justification for terrorism. But it demonstrates the disproportionate amount of suffering in reality, opposed to how it is often represented in mainstream media.

The war Israel is going to wage on Gaza this time could be the most devastating one yet. Israel is now governed by some of the most far-right figures on the political spectrum and in the past few months they have used violence against their own citizens at peaceful protests. Some have faced criminal charges. Many have openly expressed racist sentiments and genocidal intent. All food, water and electricity to the small, walled-in enclave has been severely restricted or cut-off. In response, a cornered Hamas will likely become even more violent toward those it has captured.

Therefore, if we truly care for a just peace we must make our voices heard now. Western governments have direct impact on how this will unfold. Billions of dollars have been allocated for a military response to what is, by all accounts, a humanitarian disaster. We must not only demand a ceasefire, but a just peace. For Palestinians humanity to be recognized. For an end to the decades long oppression, dispossession and apartheid. And for a viable, fair path forward for Jews and Palestinians to live as equals and, hopefully, as brothers and sisters in that beautiful land.

Kenn Orphan, October 2023