Genocide and American Complicity

This week Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights, joined Colombian President Gustavo Petro and South Africa and representatives from 30 nations at the Hague Group conference in Bogotá, Colombia. The Hague Group formed this year to protect and uphold the rulings of the International Court of Justice in relation to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Their aim is to stop the genocide.

Not only is the United States absent from this effort, but our national press—The New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and almost everyone else have not even reported on it. The American silence on Israeli atrocities—and on efforts to stop them—is complicity.

I was horrified by the Hamas terrorist attacks. The brutal murder of Israeli civilians, including women, children, and entire families, was close to home. The taking of hostages was horrifying. This was outrageous and it is intolerable.

However the response of the Israeli government is murdering 50,000 people or more and it hasn't stopped. That is not war, that is genocide. The collective punishment of an entire population, the mass bombings of civilians, the displacement of over a million people, the destruction of hospitals, schools, refugee camps, and the starvation of a besieged people—this goes far beyond any claim of self-defense. These are war crimes, and our government has supported them. It is our bullets and bombs that make this genocide possible.

The International Criminal Court has found probable cause to pursue charges against both Hamas leaders and Israeli officials for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Francesca Albanese’s efforts are rooted in these findings and in the United Nations General Assembly’s vote calling for an immediate ceasefire and full humanitarian access. She is not acting alone—she represents the consensus of international law and the conscience of the world.

Yet the United States continues to supply weapons and funding to the Israeli government—even as that government has shut out United Nations relief agencies, targeted journalists and aid workers, sabotaged U.S. aid corridors by firing on crowds, creating chaos, and making aid delivery unworkable.

As things stand, we are not passive observers. We are active participants in genocide. Our tax dollars are funding the bombs. Our silence is enabling the starvation. Our failure to act is eroding any moral authority we once claimed.

I support the Israeli people. I believe they have a right to defend themselves and to establish themselves as a people and a nation. But I do not believe in apartheid. I do not believe in genocide. I do believe that if Israel is to survive, it must deal honestly with the people who were there before them. It must come to terms with the Palestinian people—no matter how difficult—to create a new state. A state that is just, fair, and grounded in the shared talents and histories of both its peoples.

This is not an easy path. But it is the only path that leads away from permanent war. Northern Ireland is trying to do that now with fits and starts. South Africa prevented a civil war by forming a new Republic. The Republic of South Africa is not perfect, it has many problems, but they are trying. Israel’s current version of a "one-state solution" is not unity—it is genocide by occupation, displacement, and denial.

Somehow, Israel must return to the path that Yitzhak Rabin and Anwar Sadat opened—before it was slammed shut by Likud, by Netanyahu, Ariel Sharon, and now again by Benjamin Netanyahu. I am not against Israel. I am against the policies of its current government—policies of apartheid, permanent occupation, and collective punishment. Israel’s leaders want to label any opposition to their extreme agenda as anti-Semitism. It is not. Israel cannot exist in opposition to justice and humanitarian principles. In fact, it is only by returning to those principles that Israel can survive as a nation.

The path Netanyahu is taking is the path of a pariah state—isolated, illegitimate, and ultimately unsustainable. I believe Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal. His motivation is not the survival of Israel but the survival of his own political career—and staying out of prison.

Anti-Netanyahu is not anti-Semitic. Anti-apartheid is not anti-Semitic. Opposing genocide is not anti-Semitic. These accusations are used as a shield. It is a lie.

I condemn terrorism. I mourn the Israeli dead. But I cannot support a government that slaughters civilians and uses American weapons to do it.

The United States must immediately stop supplying arms and funding to Israel. We must join the international community in demanding a ceasefire, full humanitarian access, and a return to negotiations. We should be standing with Francesca Albanese, with the Bogotá conference, and with the global consensus that genocide is never justified.

The time for moral clarity is now. Calling out genocide is always the right thing to do. It is never acceptable—for any reason, by anyone.

The Hague Group

1. Algeria

2. Bolivia

3. Botswana

4. Brazil

5. Chile

6. China

7. Colombia

8. Cuba

9. Djibouti

10. Honduras

11. Indonesia

12. Iraq

13. Ireland

14. Lebanon

15. Libya

16. Malaysia

17. Mexico

18. Namibia

19. Nicaragua

20. Norway

21. Oman

22. Pakistan

23. Palestine

24. Portugal

25. Qatar

26. Slovenia

27. South Africa

28. Spain

29. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

30. Turkey

31. Uruguay

32. Venezuela

Israel Gaza

Last week was the 69^th anniversaries of the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I've never struggled much with the morality of dropping the bomb. Less than a week after Nagasaki Japan surrendered and the War in the Pacific was over. In March before the bombing nearly 7,000 Americans lost their lives in the invasion of Iwo Jima, a small island east of Japan. It is said that the invasion of Japan would have cost 100,000 American GI lives. Between 130,000 and 250,000 were killed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, without doubt almost completely civilian, non-combatants. There was no point to the bombing except to kill as many citizens of Japan as possible in order to convince Japan to surrender and it worked.

Last week in a discussion about Israel Gaza with Jewish friends, men of moderation I respect and like, the argument was made that killing Palestinian civilians while not intended, collateral to killing Hamas leaders, would convince the Palestinians to give up Hamas and terrorism. My belief is that the death of three Israeli civilians does not justify an invasion that killed 1800 people mostly civilians.

The argument that is strongest for me is my firm belief that violence begets violence, that the abuse of the Palestinians stokes hate on both sides and strengthens the hand of Hamas and any group that resists Israel, and that the State of Israel cannot survive by killing as many Palestinians as possible and depriving the survivors of any human rights.

I have to admit it is not a rational argument that moves me against the State of Israel, it is visceral. My visceral reaction is based on the memory of the USS Liberty and the 34 American GIs killed in the Israeli attack on the US Navy vessel monitoring the Six Day War in 1967. My job in the Air Force one year later was the same as the sailors, we monitored everybody, and I identified closely with the Liberty sailors.

Around the same time I was in the UK when the Troubles started in Northern Ireland in 1968. As an Irishman I identified with the Palestinian victims of colonialism in an insoluble problem similar to Northern Ireland. I grew up in the American spirit of support of the new state of Israel and the hope it held for the Jews of the world to finally have a homeland again. Later seeing the brutality of the Zionists against the Arabs in the West Bank converted me to a dissident to the Jewish occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. I stopped short of supporting the Palestinians, the PLO, the Palestinian Authority or Hamas. I sent my check, the only thing I could do, to Yesh Gvul, a group of Israeli soldiers resisting service in the occupied territory.

The violence that created Israel was as much Arab as it was Jewish, fundamentalists and nationalists on both sides justified brutality in an intransigence that ended in stalemate that continues to this day. But if the violence in Israel is to end it's the Israelis who have to end it. Unfortunately there is no Palestinian Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King.

Things I know, judgments about right or wrong, the rights of return for Israelis or Palestinians are not the basis of a solution. While a large number of Americans acknowledge that the land grab and genocide against the Indians was wrong, no one is considering giving back anything our ancestors fought so hard to attain. They may have been wrong but they are still heroes of the American imagination.

I know that a one state solution, where Jews would eventually be a minority, is impossible for Israel to accept. I know that peace between the two parties as they currently stand is impossible.

I believe if peace is ever going to happen between the Palestinians and the Israelis, that the aggressive settlement of the West Bank by Israelis has to stop. I believe that the Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza have to be treated with respect and their basic human rights respected. Important first steps would be fair water rights for everyone in the West Bank and freedom from harassment and violence. The Palestinians will have to accept that Israel can protect the border of Israel Palestine and stop the inflow of weapons to be used against Israel.

I believe the United State should stop supporting Israeli aggression and stop all military aid to Israel; and Egypt and Saudi Arabia while we're at it.

I don't know how the conflict between Arabs and Israelis in Israel can ever be ended. But I do know that bombing and killing civilians is the problem and not the solution. I also know that civilian casualties on either side do not justify killing civilians in revenge.

Both sides need to stop the senseless killing, stop the revenge for past wrongs. Is it going to happen soon? No, but we need to condemn the murder of civilians by both sides and stop our unquestioning support for Israel to murder civilians. It's ironic that there is more criticism of the Israeli government in Israel than there is in the United States. In the United States we need to discuss our support for Israel.

I think if Israel stays on its current path led by Netanyahu and the Likud Government world opinion will eventually turn against Israel, may have already done so, and Israel's brutality more than anything else threatens the continued survival of Israel.

I started this essay with Hiroshima and Nagasaki because my argument is against violence but I have to admit to not having the same problem in a far worse killing of civilians.  I think we have to acknowledge that we have different points of view even within ourselves and that this is not an easy topic to discuss.  It is a discussion we have to have because what is happening now is not leading toward peace and the United States is an active partner in the problem.