Opinion
For me, the story of mass murder never ends. And so are the lessons for today
Sat Nov 11, 2023 11:11 GMT
The world’s attention is on Gaza. The range of opinions discussed in the media today ranges from the claim that what we are witnessing is the beginning of a genocide to the view that Israel is engaged in self-protection and is responding appropriately to a real existential threat. The need for empathy for the horrors currently facing the Palestinian people should be clear to all decent people, as well as to the victims of Hamas’s unspeakable cruelty. But it is necessary to go beyond these reactions and evaluate the arguments and their consequences.
It is no exaggeration to say that the genocide of the Jewish people in Europe shaped my life. This story never ends for me. Recently, I was contacted by email by one of my mother’s distant relatives who sent me a list of my maternal relatives murdered in Sobibor – there were twelve people on this list, including my great-grandmother and several great-uncles. This past has shaped my recent professional life, in which I have dealt theoretically with the conditions that make mass killings possible.
The Hamas massacre filled me with a special horror, reminiscent of the worst stories of my ancestors. The massacre of Jewish people brings back the worst of my generational trauma. And when I think about the nightmare that is unfolding in Gaza, the destruction of so many families by slow suffocation or fire, I feel equal horror at the situation in which the people there find themselves, children who face the same fate as this innocent victims of Hamas. For me, with my background, that’s exactly what being Jewish means – having compassion for the innocent victims of mass killings, regardless of their identity. I believe that Israel’s current actions make my safety as a Jewish person more uncertain rather than less secure. But I also perceive Israel’s actions, not only here but also over time, in a different way – as an attack on my Jewish identity.
My training is in philosophy of language. For this reason, I have focused on the kind of speech that enables and justifies genocide. The classic justification of genocide is the justification of mass killings through self-protection, that is, by claiming that their targets represent an existential threat. Going back to Cleon’s speech in Book 3 of Thucydides’ The Peloponnesian War, the paradigm example of demagoguery in antiquity, would-be genocidal people always justify their actions by saying that their goals represent an existential threat to their own people.
Of course, some Palestinians have genocidal ambitions against Israel’s Jewish residents, as the actions and words of Hamas and its supporters have clearly demonstrated to the world. But this hardly constitutes justification for Israel’s mass killings of innocents. Typically, the justification for such mass killings goes far beyond the claim that some of their targets merely have genocidal ambitions. The justification for such drastic measures is that their targets pose a legitimate existential threat. Hitler justified the Final Solution by saying that the existence of the Jewish people supposedly represented an existential threat to the German nation. The Jewish people posed no threat at all to the German nation. We must always be careful with claims of an existential threat.
In this case, Israel faces a serious threat from Hamas. However, due to the large power difference between Israel and Hamas, it is highly unlikely that Hamas poses an existential threat to Israel. In fact, Hamas would not have been able to murder so many innocent Israelis had it not been for the complete collapse of the security situation by the Netanyahu government. Obsessed with his own concerns and those of the extremists who brought him to power, Netanyahu forgot about the country he must protect. Netanyahu has long treated these terrorists as partners in his efforts to marginalize any moderate Palestinian leadership.
Of course, Israel faces an existential threat if all of its neighboring countries join forces in a war against the country. But this threat is heightened rather than diminished by the atrocities Israel is currently committing in Gaza.
The time for analyzing excuses and justifications is over. Israel suffered an indescribably horrific terrorist attack by a criminal group dedicated to the destruction of the country. But in its desire for revenge, Israel is carrying out mass killings of innocent civilians, mostly children, that could spiral even further out of control. Israel claims it does not target civilians. But what does such a claim mean when Israel is bombing so heavily an urban area as dense as Gaza? For those of us who are Jews, and especially for those of us who endured the trauma of the genocide of our own ancestors, it is time to face the consequences of these acts, not just for the Palestinians, whose tragedy is obvious is, but also for ourselves.
Gaza is largely populated by the descendants of those expelled from their homes by Jewish nationalists during the Nakba. The current moment must be understood against the backdrop of decades of Israeli oppression of Palestinians and denial of their basic human rights. All over the world, including in my homeland of the United States, those who have always harbored antipathy and resentment toward us are using this moment and its history as an excuse to express those feelings. In this way, Israel’s actions create fertile ground for existing anti-Semitism to become increasingly virulent. . Anyone who denies this is not paying attention.
To my fellow Jews: The actions of the State of Israel are being committed in the name of our global preservation. It is incumbent on those of us Jews to call clearly and openly for a halt to the Israeli attack on Gaza. If we fail to stop the bombing, our children and grandchildren risk inheriting a dual identity: not only as the targets of mass killings of civilians, but also as those who watched mass killings being carried out in their name.
Jason Stanley is a professor of philosophy at Yale University and most recently the author of How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them
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