It is a privilege to be a viewer of history’s atrocities rather than a victim. And it’s difficult to walk the line of spectating versus witnessing the suffering of others. There is a burden to opening one’s eyes to brutality, but it’s not so burdensome as to live caged, starving, sickened, and awaiting one’s own death at the hands of a people who wish to see them erased, as is happening in Gaza. The alternative is willful ignorance: a blind eye turned because it doesn’t affect you.
These days I wonder, what makes people feel? What is worthy of one’s emotion? What, if anything, makes violence justifiable? If it’s nothing, at what point is it necessary to stand against the perpetuation of violence?
I recently attended a talk in Reno by Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, an American trauma surgeon who has volunteered in multiple war-torn areas, including Gaza. He noted the unfathomable devastation in the territory. Though every tank, every bomb, every soldier is emblazoned with the Star of David, the Gazans he met held no animosity towards Jewish people. He plainly called it what it is: genocide. Gazan civilians are deliberately starved and brought into contact with the Israeli military so they can’t flee violence.
One of Sidhwa’s patients was a 29-year-old orthopedic surgical nurse who was shot, abducted, and tortured. When Sidhwa treated him, he thought the man was 80 years old because of how broken he was.
Everyone has causes they prioritize, and just because they don’t think about an issue every day doesn’t mean they can’t recognize its cruelty. But when we ignore atrocity, we’re all complicit in its devastation. What did Americans and society as a whole do to stop the genocide of Jews during World War II, and what were the consequences of delayed action? The decision by the Alliance to save Jews from the Holocaust was because we viewed them as human. Are Palestinians only worthy of death?
There’s no justification for killing innocent people and aid workers, for confining whole societies within closed borders, preventing them from even fishing in their sea, and dehumanizing them so thoroughly that they are killed arbitrarily and without remorse. It’s dumbfounding that an oppressed group can so quickly become the oppressor and justify atrocities due to its centuries-long experience of discrimination. Israel benefits from the world’s cognitive dissonance — the contradictory nature of a people who have always been known as the victims becoming the perpetrators of violence.
It’s dangerous business to start conflating distinct groups, mistaking one’s struggles for another’s crimes. But for some reason, genocide has people confusing anti-apartheid with antisemitism.
It’s willful ignorance or misguided incomprehension that there’s any justification for the many children showing up in the hospital with single, seemingly targeted gunshot wounds to the head. The people of a nation should not be condemned for the actions of their government or a terrorist organization.
An image of a desiccated child, all ribs and sunken-in eyes, cradled like a thread-bare rag doll, should be more alarming than it has become. It shouldn’t simply make you feel upset and remind you of your capacity to emote, it should compel you to act, to witness history unfurling, and to understand the context and the part you play.
Atrocity is not lessened by other crimes, and it should not be accepted as simply an unfortunate reality of life. A society is poisoned by the apathy and negligence of one’s moral conscience.
While Israel calls for the annihilation of Palestinians, the least we can do is bear witness and hold the perpetrators of genocide accountable for their crimes. We have more power than we think — protest, vote, write letters, boycott brands, run for office, speak up. If champions of atrocity remain unchecked, who will follow in their footsteps?
When the last journalist, the last child, and the last grandmother are killed, and the West Bank is next, nothing is going to get better.
Learn more about local activism at codepink.org.
