It is hard to see the purpose of speaking out when no one seems to be listening but there is strength in numbers and we must continue to grow ours.
“Many of us like to ask ourselves, “What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or Apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?” The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.”
Aaron Bushnell’s last words to the world
Change is coming.
The reporting coming out of Gaza and the West Bank is harrowing. The world is speaking out against this horror with protests, marches, vigils, sit-ins, rulings and resignations; thousands of words are being written and spoken everyday with one single message: enough.
On 26 Janaury, 2024, The International Court of Justice ruled (14–2) that Israel may be committing genocide in Gaza and voted (15-1) to call on Israel not to deny Palestinians rights protected under the Genocide Convention. On 1 April 2024, Israel bombed a three car aid convoy belonging to the World Central Kitchen, a food relief non-profit, killing 7 international aid workers. On 20 May 2024 came the announcement that ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan had requested arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant (as well as the leaders of the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023) on charges of crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip.
An active-duty member of the US Air Force named Aaron Bushnell burnt himself alive in an extreme act of protest.
Yet the bombs continue to fall and Palestinians continue to die in Gaza and the West Bank. Despite Israel’s brutal and continued aggression in Gaza, it is the protesters who are being detained and arrested, fired and suspended, shut down and pushed out. Student protests against the assault and siege of Gaza have been met with raids, arrests and violence across the US and Europe including France and Germany. In Israel, dissent is fraught with danger – protesters are attacked, assaulted and arrested – and few dare to report on it for fear of reprisal. The rules of warfare and international law seem to have been suspended with Israel allowed to pound Gaza with the blessings of the west’s most powerful governments and seemingly tacit acceptance from its Middle Eastern neighbours.
And yet, when asked if the protests had forced him to reconsider his administration’s policies towards the region, President Biden said ‘No’.
Naturally many of us feel ineffectual, powerless to stop anyone, change anything. Speaking out feels like a pitiful gesture. But if everyone who felt that way was to fall silent, there would be no one to speak for the 2.3 million starving Palestinians enduring genocide in real time trapped in one of the most densely populated areas in the world.
Change, as Norman Finkelstein reminds us, begets change. Raising our voices is only the first, but a very important, step. Aaron Bushnell’s extreme act wasn’t the prelude to an American Spring. The violence hasn’t ended and Palestine is a long way away from being free. But if ‘all’ it did was spark a few more conversations, embolden a few more people to speak out, attract a few more supporters to the Palestinian cause, Aaron Bushnell’s call to action was a success.
And change is coming. Every voice, every protest, every action emboldens another. The rhetoric, as Phyllis Bennis put it, is changing: the use of the word ‘Genocide’ has been normalized in reference to what Israel is doing; the ICJ ruling has become a ‘tool’ citizens can hold up to their governments to force them to act; President Biden is in danger of losing the next election for being seen as too pro-Israel with thousands of Democrats voting ‘uncommitted’ in May’s primary election.
Following Israel’s airstrikes on the food aid convoy, over three dozen congressional Democrats petitioned the US government to halt weapon transfers to Israel. Nine government officials have resigned over the US government’s handling of the Palestinian cause as have fifteen in Scotland while Muslims more broadly are deserting the main political parties in both countries. Politicians may not be bothered by the loss of Muslim votes but the reality is that they are also losing the votes of ‘many who are neither Muslim nor left, but react with horror and disgust to the spectacle of a civilised, articulate people reduced to clustering around tiny body bags and moving from one rubble heap to another to escape merciless bombardment.’
Their votes will matter. Your votes will matter.
The road to changing policies and perspectives, quite like the road to changing hearts and minds, is a long and difficult one. We are living through tragic times but as Angela Davis reminds us, “we have to believe that it is possible to make change, we can’t give up. We can’t not hope because hope is the condition of all struggles.”
Real change has yet to happen. The sound and fury of our voices will one day signify something momentous. As it did not so long ago, the end of Apartheid in South Africa, the emancipation of women, and the end of imperialism and of slavery.