Interrupting Genocide: Humanity Challenged as Never Before

25 Nov

[Prefatory Note: The post below is a modified version of an opinion piece published in CounterPunch on November 24, 2023. The ‘pause’ or ‘truce’ as it frequently called, in Western media is detached from the genocide that preceded and closely linked to the Hamas Attack of October 7th, which is characterized as ‘terrorism’ whereas Israeli genocidal violence is treated as Israel defending itself or less approvingly as an excessive and disproportionate recourse to violence that seemed to focus its fury on target inflicting massive casualties on Palestinian civilians. Sustained warfare almost inevitably produces suffering for the innocent, often minimized as ‘collateral damage,’ but the Israeli campaign has seemed to aim at maximize acute suffering of the whole of civilian Gaza. If this is not ‘terrorism,’ public language serves as a tool to validate the priorities of the powerful while casting the actions of its adversary as pure evil, distorting expectations about a reasonable outcome.]  

The ‘humanitarian pause’ started on November 24 after elaborate negotiations between adversaries who must interact despite an atmosphere of intense hostility and bitter resentment. The pause now often referred to as a ‘truce’ is supposed to last for four days, but is thought likely to be extended if Hamas can be induced to release additional hostages. Israel’s Prime Minister, Netanyahu, and leaders of Israel’s unity government repeatedly pledge to renew their ‘war’ when the pause ends, and resume pursuing its earlier objectives in Gaza until all are achieved.

We in the public, are not told very clearly about the attitude of Hamas toward the pause but we can imagine that any relief from Israel’s devastating 24/7 attacks brings welcome relief, yet is accompanied by a sense a continuing resolve on the part of the Hamas leadership to resist Israel’s oppressive occupation of Gaza, and its preferred outcome that seems to include substantial ethnic cleansing in the form of permanent forced evacuation of more than half of the 2.3 million Palestinians from northern Gaza leaving what remains of the Palestinian in the previously overcrowded southern Gaza to be utterly dependent on UN relief efforts for the necessities of life including housing and daily needs. If funding becomes available on more that a subsistence level of ‘bare existence’ it will undoubted come, not from Israel, but  from those ‘humanitarian’ governments,  guilt-ridden by their positive entanglement with Israel’s genocidal onslaught, especially if it resumes in a few days.

We know something about ‘the fog of war,’ the hidden motivations and the confused perceptions, the devious methods and justifications, and the subtle unacknowledged change of goals, but most of us trust the specious clarity of mainstream media and ‘never-wrong’ leaders despite the ‘discourse fog,’ that is, the partisan use of language and ‘facts’ by opinion-maker twist ‘the hearts and minds’ of viewers and readers. Even when, as during this period since October 7th, the events and images are so rending and so extreme if regarded from a humane angle, there is a deliberate, unacknowledged, perhaps automatic tendency, to create perceptions of ethical symmetry between antagonists and indulge ‘war is hell’ reactions in which both sides are locked in a death dance.

In all respects, going back to before the establishment of Israel as a state and member of the United Nations in 1948, Israel has worked hard to neutralize criticism based on law and morality, by itself occupying the high moral ground based on empathy for the victimization of Jews, on the myth of ‘a land without people for a people without land,’ on the romanticizing of the kibbutzim and ‘making the desert bloom,’ on the Orientalist reductive distortions of ‘the dirty Arab’ or the Arab mind that only can be tamed to behave properly by ‘pressure,’ a coded word that acts as a synonym for genocide in the context of the Israel Operation of Iron Swords (Biden implicitly chooses these tropes and partial truths to cast Hamas into a realm of outer darkness while staying mum about moral and legal accountability on the Israeli side), on the master premise of modernist world order that deifies the state and demonizes its victimized adversaries that is in denial about the minor premise of rights of resistance that rose up to defeat the superior military forces at the disposal of the imperial Global West. The Palestinian ordeal epitomizes the confluence of these and other adverse features of political life during the last hundred years to produce an appalling human catastrophe made worse because it has unfolded so transparently and exposed the pathetic weakness of moral scruples if clashing with strategic interests of onlooking political leaders.

The rhetoric of ‘humanitarian pause’ is illustrative of a media disinformation campaign designed to affirm certain attitudes and stigmatize others. For instance, the Israeli pledge to resume the war after this brief interlude of relative calm rarely includes critical comments on the sinister nature of this commitment to reengage Hamas by recourse to genocidal warfare victimizing the entire population of Gaza. In contrast, when released hostages report humane treatment by their captors this is either belittled or altogether ignored, whereas if released Palestinian prisoners were to make analogous comments about how they enjoyed Israeli prisons their words would be highlighted. We can only imagine the harsh response of Western media outlets to Russia’s participation in a comparable pause in the Ukraine War, dismissing any humanitarian pretensions by Moscow as cynical state propaganda, and insisting with righteous indignation that the pause be transformed into a ceasefire unless the war was going well for the Ukrainians. A critical media would feast over the double standards and moral hypocrisy, but that presupposes what doesn’t any longer exist, an independent media on global issues.

Unless properly addressed the whole provenance of ‘humanitarian pause’ is misunderstood. Remember that Israel’s political leaders went ahead with such an alternative only when it was made clear that Israel had no intention of converting the pause into a longer-range ceasefire, to be followed by ‘day after’ negotiations as to the viability of continuing occupation and a new agreement as to governance arrangements for Gaza and the role to be played by Hamas. Rather than sustaining their statist cult by dismissing Hamas as ‘terrorists’ the security of Israel would almost certainly be dramatically enhanced by treating Hamas as a legitimate political entity, which although guilty of violations of international law, is far less guilty than Israel if an objective comparative evaluation is made, and some account is taken of Hamas’ long-term ceasefire diplomacy summarily rejected by Israel, although a preferable security alternative than the decades of cross-border violent eruptions that kill, deepen enmity, and solve nothing.

In retrospect, I understand better the rationale behind this apparently genuine Hamas efforts, which I received first-hand contact with as a result of my extended conversations with Hamas leaders living in Doha and Cairo while I was UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories a decade ago. Israel could not take seriously what appeared to be beneficial from its security perspective of such Hamas initiatives or the 2002 Arab Peace Proposal issued in Mecca. Both Hamas and the Arab proposal conditioned peace on withdrawal from the Occupied Territory of the West Bank, which has long been in the gun sights of the settler wing of the Zionist Project, and consistently privileged over Israeli security by its leaders, long before Netanyahu’s Coalition Government made this unmistakably clear when it took over in January of 2023. Israel never convincingly accepted the internationally presumed notion that a Palestinian state would include the West Bank and have its capital in East Jerusalem, despite gesturing at various times in such a direction, but always framed in a manner that was so one-sided as to ensure Palestinian rejection, although the Palestinian leadership did their cause no good by failing to put forward a counter-offer or make a stronger effort to achieve unity as between the PLO and Hamas so long as the liberation struggle was not resolved.

It is this unwillingness to take account of the master/slave structure of a prolonged, abusive occupation that renders plausibility to the both sides’ narratives embodying the delusion that Israel and Occupied Palestine are formally and existentially equal as profoundly misleading. Such narratives equate, or invert, the Hamas attack with the Israeli genocidal onslaught that followed, regarding the former as ‘barbaric’ while the latter is generally sympathetically or at least neutrally described as Israel’s reasonable and necessary entitlement to defend itself. Variations of such themes are integral to the apologetics of former US mediating officials such as Dennis Roth or liberal Zionist casuists such as Thomas Friedman.

A final observation relates to the inappropriateness of the word ‘humanitarian’ if the object is to understand and express the motivations of Israel. Of course, Israel seeks both security for its Jewish citizens, including the settlers, but when forced to choose between security and territory it has consistently opted to pay the costs associated with fulfilling the territorial goals of the Zionist Project. The current unity government of Israel only accepted the pleas of the hostage families and succumbed to pressures from Washington after its several security services and military commanders gave reassurances that Hamas could not take tactical advantage of the pause, and that the Israel campaign could resume within the pre-pause unrestrained parameters after it was over. In other words, the pause was politically motivated as a way of allowing Israel to seem responsive to domestic and external humanitarian pressures without the slightest show of responsiveness to the governments throughout the Global South that called for a ceasefire to halt genocide and by the enraged protesters in city streets in all parts of the world. The ‘humanitarian pause’ as the deal has been presented is totally an initiative rooted in the Global West, admittedly with support from a scattering of autocratic governments elsewhere. We do not know why Hamas went along with such a plan, but a safe conjecture is that it sought some days of relief from Israel’s tactics of devastation and may have wanted to reduce its responsibilities of caring for children and injured or elderly hostages under such dangerous circumstances.

As the ‘humanitarian pause’ goes into effect, it is bound to create surprises and impart a greater understanding of the ‘fog of humanitarianism.’ What it should not do is to induce complacency among those who honor the fundamental commitment of the Genocide Convention to do all in their power to prevent the onset or continuation of the crime of crimes and to take steps to punish its most prominent perpetrators.

7 Responses to “Interrupting Genocide: Humanity Challenged as Never Before”

  1. Sean Breathnach November 25, 2023 at 12:00 pm #

    Thank you Professor for this explanation. Hamas have been demonised for the Oct 7, attack, while in previous years, 2021, 2018, 2014, 2008, Israel has committed atrocities against the Palestinians in Gaza, with impunity. Never paying a price, getting cover at the UN by America. Any of those attacks is comparable or worse than what Hamas done and I condemn Hamas and I also condemn Israel.

  2. Jerry Alatalo November 25, 2023 at 1:20 pm #

    Variations of such themes are integral to the apologetics of former US mediating officials such as Dennis Roth or liberal Zionist casuists such as Thomas Friedman.

    *

    Many will look forward to debates on Israel-Palestine between the author and Mr. Roth and Mr. Friedman, although unfortunately the likelihood of such debates occurring are the same as Benjamin Netanyahu publicly promising to end, – and then, literally, ending – Israeli apartheid…

  3. Walker Percy November 25, 2023 at 3:54 pm #

    Greetings, Richard.
    It’s been at least ten years since I left a comment here. Back then, there could be 300 or more comments on your posts. Now, it looks like I’m the only one. I guess you are no longer UN Special Rapporteur, so they don’t think you are a threat and they don’t bother with you.

    I believe that our activism back then planted the seeds for what is now happening. Time moves in one direction, and it appears that the next generation will not accept an apartheid state that we support, and the current oligarchs will die. The few remaining sane people will get out of Israel, especially the ones with second passports, leaving just Ben Givr and his Hebrew School all-star behind. Then, we can impose the One State Solution, and the world can begin to heal.

    Religious Jews and Christians appear to want this conflict, because it seems to confirm absurd religious beliefs that were implanted in them as children. Maybe that’s why so many Jews did not resist the gas chambers: because they thought it was a biblical event, and they would be stars of the next Book. Miriam Anderson said that she was giving Trump $100 million to run for president so that they could write the next book of the BIBLE.

    The problem is Judaism and always has been. I must say that it feels good to be right. But I won’t be completely happy until those nudniks are finally shut down.

    Walker Percy

  4. Kata Fisher November 27, 2023 at 10:39 pm #

    Walker, what a joy to read up on few items.

    Everything will be just fine, and everything is just perfect in every second of the human existence.

    There is eternal hope, for sure that it is. We bless all our Martyrs of the Abrahamic Faiths and Noah’s descendants in their Natural Revelation, and we bless Imam Maghadi Kaliphath (PBUH) that is to come, and no matter in which pint in time of human existence he comes and greats the human race in his Peace bringing of Promises of Justice.

    Rewriting the human order, looks like, and has been in a full steam ahead, by wackypsychos, who are really, really, accursed — but really, really, effective.

    Everyone is entitled to be the cult, and the sect of the Religions – of any kind, but look and see who is paying for all of that they do and want? Zionist should have their own “religious tax” and pay into it and keep establishing them self’s and Christian Cretenizam can help them, just as well. Don’t have anything against self-determination of the Faiths of the Believers — and Judaism is very real Faith of that..

    Those who are interpreting the Secret Texts in the exactly the same Spirit in which they were received, and written down may just have some Anointed Fear? It makes real, real difference.

    Maybe, just interpreting the Secret Texts in the exactly the same Spirit, and the Atoning in which was written down, and has been preserved, instead?

    Reading the Scriptures is one thing, but interpreting it, systematically, is almost as just impossible.

    There is real difference between Anointed Fear, and grave stupidity (the accursed in Abyss).

    The Problem is Jewdeo-Creten-ity and/or Christianity.

    Judaism actually has another two Branches of the dispensations of the Grace to the Faiths. One is the Church Age (and Faith of it), and the other is the Prophesy in the Church Age / Islam and Age of it, and Faith of it.

    Prophesy is for Believers and not Unbelievers (no one is required to do any conversion to believe in Prophesy).

    I do hope that Muslim Ummah can be united, and there after all other humanity of the Faith/s (in Natural and Special Revelation) can be united against evil that is containing itself in the entire cosmogenesis / and, not since.

    It is a lot, is it not?

    It is impossible outside it’s space and time (just as interpreting of the Secret Texts, all together).

    Secret Texts are just copies, but without observable evidence are almost impossible to be interpreted, and without the Spirit that Works are as good as to do death, and mankind they do and have the death (spiritual, natural) within themselves.

    And, that is the human reality, and human order that is in the World, in this point in times. It can be observed and seen just by Natural means.

    I can’t blame you if you can’t keep up with this, because it is a lot to keep up with.

    I hope it’s helpful for the growth and changes ahead of the human species and its redeemed and unredeemed race.

    Its a horrific thing for human species to be accursed on the hour of their death, and this, too, is a reality.

    Thank you, Walker, stay strong, brother.

    K.F.

  5. Beau Oolayforos November 28, 2023 at 1:10 pm #

    Dear Professor Falk,

    “The Palestinian ordeal epitomizes the confluence of these and other adverse features of political life during the last hundred years to produce an appalling human catastrophe…” Certain Israeli politicians take us back to what might arguably have been the beginning of this, when they threaten to make Gaza “another Hiroshima”. The lurid dream of abject, unconditional surrender; of an entire people brought to their knees by unbearable, innocent, civilian suffering – is this what allows Zionists to sleep at night?

    Or could it be the process by which a lesser state seeks to curry favor with its more powerful patron? The Ustasi in Croatia and the Banderists in Ukraine kissed up to Hitler by trying, and sometimes succeeding, to out-do him in atrocities.

    The “war-is-hell”, symmetry sham is (probably) on full and frequent display on Fox News. I wouldn’t know for absolute sure, because I wouldn’t be caught dead watching such tripe. But one internet clip of that channel featured some slimy “author”, after the hosts had lauded his new book, sanctimoniously pronouncing that so many children’s deaths were really necessary, because, after all, “war is hell, and Hamas started it.” At least this scribbler didn’t literally go as far as Mr Seldowitz, though he implied it.

    Speaking of which, my own little daughter told me something I hadn’t seen in the media: Gazan children are now writing their names on their arms and legs…so that they can be identified later – don’t you know, Messieurs Netanyahu, Blinken, et al – after they are blown apart…ah – the responsibilities of leadership.

    • Richard Falk November 29, 2023 at 2:05 am #

      Grateful, as always, for your robust moral affinities to my own views. Your daughter’s anectdote is so movingly horrible. The whole spectacle of genocide brings to the surface of the human condition the potential to dd pure evil to the.dehumanized other. Galllant’s reference to ‘human animals’ epitomizes this potential in a form that demonizes animals. My greetings of apprdeciation, Richard

  6. Kata and Daniel Fisher November 29, 2023 at 11:21 am #

    Dear Professor Falk,

    Blumenthal’s analysis:

    Also, Yocheved Lifshitz has trustworthy accounting of the events. It’s good to get Ms. Yocheved Lifshitz entire press conference on the record, but it seems that there are serval cuts. (most likely to protect the state crimes and the propaganda of the American and Israeli state/s). I watched serval of parts of the press conference.

    About the Fascism of America, in satanic seals/Abuse of the Ancient and the Apostolic Church Order:

    This abuse of the Church order was predominant mainly in Greco-Roman empires at the beginning of the Church, Corinth, mainly. In the 4th century, and then during the end of the 11th and beginning of the 12 centuries, from which the Cult of Bogomils originated and spread throughout the entire Europe — that has passed on in the generational lines to the New World / Non-Roman-Catholic Americas, mainly.

    American Awakenings, I, II and thereafter were all in Abuse of the Ancient and Apostolic Church Order, and satanic seals. There are reports that there are as many as 53. 000 of the different, of the protestant origins (just in us).

    To this day, unevangelical “Cretans” of the Christianity, in satanic seals and international War Crimes, and Genocide. During the wars with Byzantines there was historical mentioning that they ate humans (they were actually, and in reality, cannibals).

    I myself can’t grasp the concept of a “human cannibal/s” without knowing in fact that it must be another seed/seeding of the human race, altogether. No doubt accursed one, too.

    But I do ask myself: “what exactly is all condition of the human race.”

    After the study of the History of the Church and the Abuse of the Ancient and the Apostolic Church Order “human cannibal/s” is credible fact to the contemporarily events.

    I hope that Ceasing of the current Warfare and War in Gaza for the humanitarian reasons can transition into the Imminent and for good, permanent Cease Fire, and they can go on creating the security, and conditions for the security for the territories, in Holy Land.

    Thank you, K.F.

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