While we in the US have been distracted by our own difficulties this past few months, the situation inside Gaza has become catastrophic: life in Gaza is probably more desperate and precarious now than it’s been at any time since the start of the war nineteen months ago. As bad as it is, the already disastrous situation in Gaza is in danger of getting much, much worse - maybe starting as soon as the end of this week - unless food shipments resume and Israel can be dissuaded from launching a massive new operation in the Strip.
Since March 2, Israel has blockaded the enclave and prevented all food, medicine and humanitarian aid from entering. Blockading food intended for the trapped and traumatized civilians of Gaza - most of whom are women and children - has lead to an atrocious and utterly predictable disaster: on Monday, a UN-backed consortium of food security experts known as the IPC warned that the people of Gaza face “a critical risk of famine”. Their report states, in part “The entire population is facing high levels of acute food insecurity, with half a million people - one in five - facing starvation”. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization also warned on Monday of the “imminent risk of famine” and “the possible outbreak of deadly epidemics in Gaza”. In those places where food and medicine haven’t run out already, the dwindling supplies are expected to be completely exhausted in the coming days and weeks.
Meanwhile, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and other members of Israel’s right-wing government are openly calling for the total destruction of much of what has not already been reduced to rubble inside Gaza. This destruction is part of a plan - called Operation “Gideon’s Chariots” - that also includes flooding Gaza with troops and driving the surviving Palestinian population into a small, designated “humanitarian zone” in the south. According to Smotrich, the final act of Gideon’s Chariots appears to involve making life in this humanitarian zone unlivable in order to force the remaining Palestinian population out of Gaza. In Smotrich’s words from last week “They will be totally despairing, understanding that there is no hope and nothing to look for in Gaza, and will be looking for relocation to begin a new life in other places”. As described by Smotrich, this process and the desired outcome would clearly seem to meet the internationally recognized definition of the crime of ethnic cleansing.
In the midst of our own escalating struggle against a depraved and aggressive would-be dictator, it’s more important than ever to acknowledge those who are suffering through a more violent and advanced stage of democratic collapse. It’s important to use the power we still have to try to make things better in Gaza, as we would wish others to agitate on our behalf if we were the ones being bombed and starved by the government that’s supposed to protect us. It is morally and politically necessary that we try to alleviate or prevent the accelerating catastrophe in Gaza. Ironically, it appears that the greatest hope for de-escalation in Gaza lies with our own ever-escalating, orange king. On Tuesday, Donald Trump arrived in Saudi Arabia to begin a three day diplomatic tour of the Middle East. Netanyahu’s government has threatened to launch Gideon’s Chariots once Trump leaves the region, unless some kind of deal is reached before his departure. Should Trump choose to support a deal and pressure Netanyahu to immediately resume shipments of food and medicine, thousands of lives could be saved. Many see Trump’s presence in the region this next few days as a last chance to avoid a calamitous escalation in suffering and death inside Gaza.
Please watch the video above, it’s only 44 seconds long. Rashaf is twelve-years-old and so gentle as she talks about wanting to be able to go back to how she used to be, about wanting her hair to grow again so she can brush it. My daughter is twelve and this could be her, or your kid. There’s no world in which this is ok…
Please spread the word and call your representatives.
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What follows are lightly edited excerpts taken from an essay called “Tipping Point: The Rise of Uncivil Society”, written in the weeks following October 7, 2023 but which Long COVID prevented me from releasing at the time. By way of introduction, let me say that opposing the slaughter of innocent civilians should not be a hard or controversial position to hold - in Gaza or anywhere else - and if you find this position to be for some reason difficult or offensive or threatening to you then I respectfully suggest that fear and anger are clouding your judgement and that you’re in danger of losing touch with your humanity. Also, not that it should matter, but my wife is Jewish as are all the relatives on her side of the family. My stepfather is Jewish, as are many of our closest friends. Under Jewish law, my daughter is Jewish. The following essay is not in any way anti-Jewish or anti-semitic. Likewise, calling any criticism of Benjamin Netanyahu’s atrocious far-right government “anti-semitic” is foolish and absurd. Before October 7, hundreds of thousands of Israeli Jews regularly flooded the streets protesting against Bibi’s authoritarian power grabs, and protests against Bibi inside Israel have picked up again this spring, with more than 100,000 people hitting the streets in late March and protests continuing into the present. Declaring any criticism of Netanyahu to be anti-semitic is either profoundly ignorant or it is - knowingly or unknowingly - part of a deeply cynical and manipulative propaganda campaign which undermines and distracts from the fight against actual anti-semitism.
The following is offered in solidarity with the people of Gaza, and the people of southern Israel who were brutalized on October 7. It is also offered in solidarity with Rumeysa Ozturk and Kseniia Petrova and the many other foreign-born students and activists here in the US who’ve been harassed, detained, deported or driven into hiding for exercising their First Amendment rights by protesting against atrocities and abuses in Gaza and Ukraine and elsewhere.
This current essay is number five in a series of six that have been delayed by an unexpected Long COVID flare-up. I’m releasing this essay first in hopes that it might raise awareness about the horrors now unfolding in Gaza. I’ll publish the other five essays in the coming days on Substack and at MUDandFeathers.org. The first two essays in this series mostly focus on Rumeysa Ozturk and Kseniia Petrova, two foreign-born academics here in Boston who have been targeted by the Trump Administration, which is why their names are mentioned above. More context and a longer intro to this piece will be available in Tipping Point, Part IV when that essay is posted.
ON GAZA, ISRAEL AND UKRAINE
HAMAS IS NOT THE PEOPLE OF GAZA. The CIA World Factbook tells us that among the roughly two million residents of Gaza there are believed to be between 20 and 25,000 Hamas militants. There’s some debate about all these numbers, but even going with the higher estimates it works out to at least 75 civilians for every militant, meaning that - at the time of the attack - Hamas militants made up less than 1.5% of the population. To put this in perspective, believing the entire population of Gaza to be Hamas militants makes about as much sense, statistically speaking, as believing that everyone in the entire world has red hair; that everyone in Ohio or Detroit or Colorado is Jewish; that all Jamaicans are in fact Chinese; or that every single resident of the state of Mississippi - the poorest state in the nation - is a millionaire. In a war between Israel and Hamas, Hamas militants are legitimate military targets. Civilians, who make up more than 98% of the tightly packed population, are not.
THE ATTACK OF OCTOBER 7 WAS AN ATROCITY. Hamas’s attack on October 7 was an appalling, cowardly, deliberate and long-planned massacre targeting the unarmed civilian population of Southern Israel. The attack will be remembered as a defining moment not just in the history of Israel and Palestine, but in the history of the twenty-first century. As has been widely reported, the approximately 1,200 people - including 38 children - who were slaughtered on that day represent the greatest single-day loss of life in Israeli history, and the largest slaughter of Jewish people since the Holocaust.
THE ATTACK OF OCTOBER 7 WAS NOT UNIQUE. The slaughter of October 7 exists within a wider context. Without context there is no comprehensible response to atrocity and the overwhelming vulnerability it evokes other than rage and retribution. Massacres have been documented throughout human history. Horrors just in the last few years include Srebrenica, and the Yazidi, Rohingya, Darfur and Rwandan genocides. The Russian invasion of Ukraine - in particular the 2022 slaughter in Bucha and surrounding villages, and the Russian siege of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol where thousands of Ukrainians are believed to have been killed - certainly count as atrocities. Elsewhere and earlier, Armenians, Cambodians, Romani, the Irish, African Americans in Tulsa and Rosewood and countless other towns, and Native American and indigenous communities literally everywhere have been targeted for massacre and atrocity. This list may seem overlong, though it could be much longer. It is not included in order to minimize or distract from the horrors of October 7. It is included because without context we are alone in our suffering. It is included because the first consequence of trauma is to narrow our focus to our own overwhelming emotions and the struggle to survive, and because the necessary first step in recovery from trauma is the re-establishment of connection to the other. It is included because a mysterious balm for our own suffering lies in the recognition of the suffering of others, and the community that this implies: a homecoming, and a visceral proof of our interconnection. In Israel and Gaza there are generations of trauma to be worked through. Jewish people have been relentlessly targeted for massacre and atrocity throughout their forced migrations over thousands of years. The slaughter of October 7 belongs to a particular sub-category of massacre known as a pogrom. Oxford defines a pogrom, in part, as “an organized massacre of a particular ethnic group, in particular that of Jewish people”. That there exists a specific word to describe the periodic and recurring slaughter of Jewish people is in itself an atrocity. The drive for a Jewish state grew from this sense of endless vulnerability, and the longing for a homeland where Jewish people might finally be safe and from which they could not be expelled. All of this is undeniably true. That said, any discussion of the context of October 7 must also include remembrance of the massacres at Sabra and Shatila, and the many other historical atrocities and displacements suffered by the Palestinian people since the Nakba, the catastrophe that for them heralded the establishment of the state of Israel. To this long list we must now add the ongoing Israeli invasion of Gaza, which has claimed the lives of at least 52,000 people, of which - according to the UN - at least 15,000 of these Palestinian dead are children. We must remember all of this because grievance and vulnerability and lack of context impair our ability to accurately perceive our world, and because without context there is no comprehensible response to atrocity other than rage and retribution.
THE ATTACK OF OCTOBER 7 WAS NOT JUST AN ATTACK ON JEWISH PEOPLE. Hamas is marketing their atrocity as a slaughter of Jews, and it certainly was that, but that’s not all it was. The massacre on October 7 was indiscriminate: there were no fastidious Nazis saying “your papers please”, trying to sort Jews and gypsies from their Aryan neighbors. Hamas launched thousands of imprecise rockets with no idea where they might land. They threw grenades into shelters crowded with civilians without looking to see who was there. They strafed moving vehicles, shot into running crowds, set fire to homes without curiosity or concern for who might be inside. In their rampage, Hamas killed not just Jewish Israelis, but also Palestinian Arabs, Nepalis, Bedouin, Thais, and Filipinos. They killed people of all ages from 40 different nations spread across Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas.
It’s necessary to understand the underlying dynamics and injustices that drive people towards violence. It’s necessary to understand so we can reduce these injustices and heal our societies, so we can strengthen and protect our communities. That said, if we asked one of the militants on October 7, Why did you just kill that grandfather? Why did you shoot that particular young woman? Why did you murder that 8 year old boy? What answer could they possibly give? What rationalization could there possibly be for slaughtering civilians without knowing anything about them: their name, their religion, the languages they speak, their political or ideological leanings, their ethnicity or nationality? And what would we gain from hearing such rationalizations, such excuses for the inexcusable?
Whatever Hamas might say out loud, whatever Hamas might say to themselves, an uncomplicated insight into their motivations can be gained through a consideration of their behavior on October 7: Hamas’s actions speak clearly enough to make up for the absence or emptiness of their words. Hamas does not hate us. To hate something requires specificity and familiarity. To hate something requires that you see that thing clearly enough to be able to differentiate it from some other kind of thing. Hamas does not see us, nor do they care to. They couldn’t be bothered to differentiate us one from another, even through the sights of a gun. As demonstrated through their indiscriminate brutality on October 7, what Hamas hates is not so much any particular tribe or ethnicity, what Hamas hates is multicultural civil society itself. What Hamas hates is a world in which we might all live together in imperfect peace despite our many apparent differences. What Hamas hates is none other than the rickety foundation of our supposedly modern world.
All of the above is demonstrably true, but it’s also true that the same unanswerable questions that stumped the rhetorical militant above might also reasonably be asked of ourselves: What do we gain by killing this particular mother, this daughter, this beloved grandfather with his bad jokes and his funny songs, whose name is unknown to us? It is obviously true that there was something especially broken and depraved in the militants who covered themselves in blood on October 7. But this does not absolve us, or justify the slaughter taking place in Gaza now. How large and how meaningful is the moral distinction between those who revel in seeing the fear in their victims’ eyes and those who kill dispassionately and from a distance? Between retail butchery, up close and personal, and the wholesale slaughter of bombs that flatten an entire apartment building, or an entire neighborhood? How sure are we that one of these things is righteous, and that only one of them is an abomination? If we do not see or even know who we kill, who lies beneath the rubble, then have we not joined Hamas in making furious war on the very idea of civil society? Have we not become active participants in destroying the foundation of our world?
BENJAMIN NETANYAHU IS FINISHED. [please see note, below] A dictatorial strongman who is revealed to be not strong is an unseemly thing without purpose. In the seventies and early eighties, in the name of protecting “Christian civilization”, the military dictatorship in Argentina murdered with impunity tens of thousands of their own citizens. Anyone could be disappeared. The bodies of the disappeared were often thrown - sometimes still alive - from planes that circled regularly off the coast. As a final, flamboyant atrocity - a later inspiration to Margaret Atwood in creating her dystopia of Gilead - the young children of the disappeared were often taken and raised by high ranking supporters of the dictatorship. The mothers were murdered shortly after giving birth. Eight years of unaccountable, unrelenting, unstoppable horror. What finally ended the generals, and quickly, was their utter failure in their war of choice with Britain over the Falkland/Malvinas islands. If the generals can’t even win a war (their supposed area of expertise) then how can they claim to run a government? And they were done. Likewise, Bibi’s blustering strongman persona is forever blown. Netanyahu and his corrupt, incompetent, greedy, bullying, racist cabal are finished, though their actual fall from power may be a while in coming. Clearly guilty of staggering military and intelligence failures, plummeting in the polls, hiding from the shouted outrage of his constituents: Netanyahu appears to believe that prolonging the violence in Gaza is his best chance to cling on to power and to avoid the consequences - and maybe the jail cell - that await him after the war is over. But Netanyahu can’t hide in this river of blood forever, and his war cabinet and the temporary consensus that have allowed him to stay in power while the war is ongoing may be coming apart. It may prove to be the case that Hamas’s nihilistic brutality has (obviously unintentionally) saved Israel from dictatorship, in a way that months of furious mass protests before the war could not. Whatever the cause, Benjamin Netanyahu is finished, and it’s likely true that hastening his removal from power will be a necessary step towards a just and lasting peace.
[I’m sharing this bit about Bibi pretty much as written in late 2023 because I think it’s still fundamentally true. I’m leaving in the bit about October 7 possibly contributing to his downfall more than the mass protests preceding the attack because it may be the case that Bibi’s savagery and self-interested bungling in the last nineteen months have discredited the Israeli right-wing like almost nothing else could. In the same vein, It’s my hope that Trump’s astonishing greed and incompetence will likewise drag down and discredit the American right-wing who’ve enabled and embraced his corrupt rise. Bibi is in many ways Israel’s Trump, and he’s clung on to power longer than many people ever thought possible, but - like Donald - he’s getting older and more disoriented and he appears to be running out of moves. Recent polls show the vast majority of Israelis want to be done with Netanyahu rather than allowing him to drag the whole region down in flames. I think Bibi may end up being the canary in the coal mine of the international fascist resurgence, and that when he’s finally removed from power it’ll be a sign that the tide is turning and that Donald’s time may soon be coming to an end as well. Finally, it’s clearly true that “a just and lasting peace” is going to be hard to achieve after the relentless horrors of the last nineteen months. That said, the only alternative is annihilation or endless war, so I’m all-in for justice and peace, and Bibi’s removal is a necessary step towards both of these goals.]
MEANWHILE, HERE AT HOME
THE MOST IMPORTANT FRONT IN THE BATTLE BETWEEN DEMOCRACY AND DICTATORSHIP. The greatest threat to democracy and civil society worldwide lies almost certainly right here in the United States. Most Americans, most White Americans anyway, think Bucha or Be’eri or Gaza or Argentina’s Dirty War can’t happen here, that we’re protected by some kind of bubble that will magically keep life more or less how we imagine it’s always been. That American exceptionalism makes us somehow invulnerable to fascism, and immune to serious political violence. But it can happen here. America came terrifyingly close to dictatorship on January 6, though for the most part we carry on as if this were not true, because it’s scary and overwhelming to acknowledge this is true. Because acknowledging our vulnerability means allowing ourselves to recognize the abyss that is opening beneath our feet. The same people who tried to overthrow our democracy on January 6 are openly trying to do the same thing again now, but much more aggressively this time and with the benefit of hindsight and years of preparation..
HURRY UP PLEASE IT’S TIME. The ongoing failures of imagination and attention that prevent us from recognizing the immensity of the threats before us will not protect us from these threats. American democracy and civil society are under furious assault and may fall within our lifetimes, maybe within the next few months. They are falling already. It’s worth saying again that this isn’t just a problem for those of us who live here in the US. If American democracy and civil society collapse then democracy and civil society worldwide are in grave danger, and it becomes very unlikely that we’ll succeed - for instance - in our urgent task to prevent the planet from overheating. This last consequence would represent a disaster of a completely different magnitude. In the long history of our species, one society after another has periodically fallen into darkness and then re-emerged (or not), and this has been apocalyptic for the people living in that particular society in that particular time and place, but it’s not been THE apocalypse. Unmitigated climate change, on the other hand, would pose an existential threat to the entirety of human civilization, a centuries-long parade of catastrophes that would make all our other challenges look like the demoralizing but manageable dumpster fires that they are. Dictators like Putin and Trump will prevent us from making the changes necessary to avoid disaster. We can’t afford to waste decades removing them and their minions from power while the temperature blows past one red line after another.
THERE IS GREAT DANGER IN THIS MOMENT. The two ongoing bloodbaths in Europe and the Middle East represent era-defining calamities for the people of Ukraine and the people of Gaza. They also represent an escalating threat to peace and stability worldwide. Likewise, Trump’s return to power here in the US may represent an accelerating decline towards the brutal norms of an earlier age. For hundreds - if not thousands - of years before the early 20th century, constant, predatory war and rule by tyrants were the norm rather than the exception. The powerful took what they wanted when they wanted it, with minimal concern for the well-being or even the survival of anyone else. “Human rights” were not a thing. Slavery, starvation and public executions - on the other hand - were very common things, and 40% of kids died before reaching puberty: a long age of brutality, vulnerability and deadly inequality. And this wasn’t true always and everywhere, but it was emphatically true in Europe and its many colonies. The last 125 years, roughly since the turn of the twentieth century, have witnessed a profound transformation in human affairs: the expansion of a more civil society - of democracy, equality, human rights and opportunity - to billions of people around the world. This process has been messy, very imperfect, and is far from finished, but it’s broadly true that most of us have vastly more power, stability and options than our great-grandparents did in 1900. Specifically, much of the world has seen transformative growth in: literacy, education and access to information; political empowerment; economic and racial justice; healthcare, longevity and prevention of childhood diseases; civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights and personal agency generally. All of this within a shared and growing and increasingly diverse civil space. The change has been profound, and resistance to this change has sometimes also been profound: in many parts of the world, including here in the US, these new rights and the space in which they are exercised are under sustained attack. The arc of the moral universe does not bend toward justice all by itself, and - on the most profound and dangerous level - it is this shared space and this shared progress that we stand to lose if we’re not bold and vigilant as we navigate this moment.
MEANWHILE, HERE AT HOME. Overthrowing a democracy is an inherently violent act, but the phrase itself is a vague and bloodless abstraction: what exactly is it that’s being overthrown, and where? Maybe it’s just about burning some old parchment and firing a bunch of annoying bigwigs and bureaucrats, which maybe doesn’t sound so bad because parchment’s weird and not super useful, and who loves bigwigs and bureaucrats anyway?
Trump sold his coup attempt like a block party or a monster truck rally: as an exciting patriotic outing, a “Throw the Bums Out” adventure for the whole family. “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!” Glib, festive, fascist-curious FOMO. Not just “wild” but “wild!” with an exclamation point. But overthrowing a democracy is not just about forcing your way into some government building, or burning the Constitution, or running out of town all the people who make it possible for us to govern ourselves, as transgressive and awful as all these things would be. Overthrowing a democracy is also not black and white and aw-shucks wholesome like a Jimmy Stewart movie: Mr Smith Goes to Washington, but with bear mace and with flagpoles used as spears and clubs. Overthrowing a democracy and installing a dictatorship is about two things: it’s about power and accountability. It’s about taking power away from ordinary people, and it’s about making the dictator and their minions unaccountable for any claim of harm. Sound familiar? For those of us not obsessively tracking Trump’s increasingly open embrace of fascism, it’s worth remembering that Trump’s lawyers actually argued in court during the campaign that presidential immunity should prevent a former president from being prosecuted even if he’d ordered SEAL Team Six to kill a political opponent while in office. Trump’s lawyer actually said this. Out loud. With a straight face. In front of reporters. In a fucking court of law. Just this one astonishing, depraved, shameless lunatic fact should tell you everything you need to know about Donald Trump, and about all those who continue to enable his utterly corrupt power.
MAY YOU LIVE IN INTERESTING TIMES. Lately, it seems like we’ve been living in a disaster movie mash-up written by glitchy AI. The frankly ridiculous and overstuffed script includes: spreading fire and war; looming environmental catastrophe; lingering plague; international intrigue; attempted coups where there have never been coups before; creepy, grotesquely rich villains to rival anything out of James Bond (we’re looking at you Elon, Vlad, Jong Un, and Donald); and icky, scheming henchmen - and henchwomen - as far as the eye can see. At this point, we’re still in that early, nerve-wrecking part of the movie where our heroes haven’t yet recognized the danger. They’re distracted, squabbling over the pizza, vaguely puzzled by all the blinking alerts and flashing red lights, but not yet really paying attention or registering the growing threat. One other thing the script does not include is Bruce Willis or Denzel Washington or Michelle Rodriguez coming to save us. We are going to have to save ourselves.
“May you live in interesting times” is not, in fact, an ancient Chinese curse. It appears to have originated - somewhat more ominously - with the aristocratic Chamberlain family in England in the very late 1800s. Neville Chamberlain, you may recall, was the British Prime Minister who earned lasting disgrace for appeasing Hitler: for allowing the Nazis to occupy much of Czechoslovakia in exchange for a promise of “Peace for our time”. This did not end well. “May you live in interesting times” appears to have originated with Neville’s father, who claimed it was a saying he’d heard during his time in Asia, though there’s no evidence of such a saying originating there and it appears he just made it up. Oh dear. An uncomfortable origin story for uncomfortable times, and a reminder - if one is needed - that we must ferociously oppose the monsters slouching towards our gate. Pretending they’re not there, or trying to bargain with them, or declaring them to be Something Other Than Monsters will not keep us safe. We need to abandon our comforting dreams of normalcy and rise to our own defense. The approaching dangers must be recognized, explicitly named, shouted from the rooftops, and fiercely and relentlessly opposed. Failure to do so, starting immediately, risks disaster. They are almost upon us.
HURRY UP PLEASE, IT’S TIME. We have been too long watching through our fingers, in shocked disbelief, as the slow-motion clown-car-train-wreck that is Donald Trump bashes its way unceremoniously through one pillar of American democracy after another. Despite the punch-drunk, smash-mouth, nursing home brawl aesthetic, these flailing and relentless attacks could still bring about the end of our nearly 250 year experiment in civil society and self-governance. We need to stop treating Donald Trump like a normal politician - or like some party-crashing crazy-uncle to be gawked at - and recognize that he represents the flat-out deadliest and most depraved threat to American democracy since the founding of the republic. America’s own Caligula, the debauched and maybe insane Roman emperor whose brief and bloody reign may have marked the lowest point in Rome’s descent from republic to dictatorship. We need to rise - now - to our own defense. We must de-normalize Trump and his minions over and over and over again. We must hold them accountable for their treason. To their face. We must not be polite, or reasonable, or patiently wait for them to stop telling yet another ridiculous lie. It is unnecessary and inappropriate to be polite when dealing with someone who is coming to steal your power, your dignity, your safety, your ability to provide for and protect your kids. It is appropriate to fiercely oppose them. It is appropriate to shout them down. We must hold Trump accountable for all of his crimes and schemes and scatterbrained, nit-wit lies and betrayals, and we must let him be seen as the shuffling, disoriented, feckless orange asshat that he is. Because it must be remembered that, once upon a time, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini were also just absurd, scowling buffoons. Until suddenly they weren’t.
