"Palestine and the American future."
The price of passivity will be high.
27 NOVEMBER—For too many decades I thought—as so many others continue to think—that there was nothing I could do that would make any meaningful change or difference to remedy the crisis of corruption and dysfunction in my country. A profound sense of futility, or perhaps laziness, causes many of us to give up and withdraw from political engagement—if, indeed, we ever bothered with it in the first place.
But what is the price of a withdrawal from public life? What is given up? What is lost? And what is made possible by it? The Israeli campaign against the Palestinians of Gaza pushes us up against these questions.
As if in reply to them, the novelist Peter Dimock has just published an open letter to Joe Biden on The Floutist that provides devastating answers to the questions I pose. His letter addresses the unfolding genocide in Gaza, our collective responsibility for it, and, to the extent we remain silent, our individual complicity in it.
Events in Gaza call us to action even as they were made possible by our collective failures to act—failures that span decades.
Americans have failed to take responsibility for—failed even to pay attention to or to learn anything about, let alone do anything to stop or change—a foreign policy so disastrous that it has, in this century alone, resulted in the outright killing or indirect deaths of 4.5 million to 4.7 million people—this according to Brown University’s Cost of War Project.
The reality from which many of us still flinch is that the United States government is an open sponsor of genocide as this unfolds daily in Gaza. America now embraces the very evil that it fought against in World War II, while normalizing the racist ideology that drove it. Dimock’s insights are particularly to the point on this matter. Under Biden’s leadership,
. . . American policy constitutes the absolute evil of the crime of genocide. Such evil should never be invoked in support of a nation’s “right to defend itself.” Not to oppose the crime of genocide is to join in its commission. If genocide is not opposed now, it will forever become the norm in international relations. In retrospect, the logic of exterminist Nazi political ideology will have proven itself not to have been an aberration—the temporary and unrepeated suspension of humanity’s implicit universal valuing of every and all life—but the fulfillment of the depravity of political power’s assertion that the unlimited exercise of the violence of unanswerable force finally constitutes power’s only universally recognized relevant currency of self-justification.
It is worth reading this paragraph several times to let the full import of it sink in. If we do not stop this genocide, if we allow it to continue, then we will have embraced and elevated Nazi ideology—its “exterminist” theory and practice—making it the rule rather than the exception and the logical, and indeed inevitable, expression of unrestrained political power.
The perversion of political power so devastatingly described by Dimock becomes possible when ordinary citizens withdraw from public and political life. That is one price we all now pay. But there are others as well, which Dimock identifies with penetrating acuity, as he addresses Biden directly:
Your and your administration’s active participation in the commission of genocide over the last forty-six days implicitly makes every American citizen complicit in that crime to the extent that we do not directly and actively oppose your policies. By refusing to investigate, prosecute, and intervene to prevent the genocide now unfolding in Gaza—as is required by law under the Genocide Convention—you force every American to participate in the unmaking of our moral and ethical selves and of our coherence as a democratic people dedicated to a universal pursuit of human emancipation and universal historical justice.
There are moments in history when we are called upon to act, when the price of failing to act is so great we risk forever relinquishing our moral and ethical ground. This is one such moment. Beyond a revitalization of our democracy, which political participation might enable us to realize, action is demanded if we are to preserve that which is best within us as individuals and as a people united by the ideals expressed in the founding documents of our nation, among them, freedom, equality, and justice—however imperfectly they may be realized.
America cannot withstand the complete corruption of its ideals—which is precisely what is now happening—and still retain its legitimacy and standing in the world. And so it is that the fate of America is now tied to the fate of the Palestinian people—the course of that fate being ours to determine. As Joe Lauria, Editor in Chief of Consortium News wrote in a commentary titled “The Thanksgiving Truce,” 24 November, “the power to end this war is ultimately in the hands of the American people . . .” This genocide will stop only when the American people end it.
Events in Gaza call us to action. How we chose to act will determine the meaning and value of our life, as it determines the fate of our nation, and the direction of our future.
" . . . artist and writer with a PhD in American Studies . . . ". You'd know something about matters dealt with below. And you deserve more reader comments.
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On related themes . . .
Of Washington's lost Ukrainian Proxy War to weaken Russia and pillage its resources, perhaps the greatest and most feckless imperial play, something of a progress update.
The long and rich history of the contemporary genocides of the cultured, cultivated Europeans, The Americans and the Brits., to nominate yet a few.
https://les7eb.substack.com/p/genocide-and-economics
Free to subscribe . . . The Dead Do Not Die.
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Sorry to be so late to the party, Cara. Daughter #3 stayed with me for a few days and left me with a case of bronchitis. I am at least partially healed so now I can share my wisdom(?), My reaction to your piece was first that it was the usual well written piece but my reactions were:
(1) Don't just stand there – DO SOMETHING! OK, like what? Well, I've given money to an organization that was buying olive trees for Palestinians to replace the ones cut down by the fucking settlers. There's also an organization called MPower change that does petitioning which is important because they're not going to listen to you and me. But, as Arlo said, Can you imagine 50 people a day, I say 50 people a day walkin' in sangin' a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walkin out? They might think it's a movement.... and, finally, there's an organization called change.org. I was one of the first to sign on to and financially support the petition to get Pope Francis to go to Gaza through the Rafeh gate.
(2) "The great strength of the totalitarian state is that it forces those who fear it to imitate it." I know you've seen this quotation before but it's very important because here's a hint. The totalitarian state isn't Hamas.
(3) “Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny. Consume you, it will.” It is too late for us.