Israel and Palestine: Death, Words and Power

I want to write, quietly, about what I felt last week.

Death and Power

Here is the context in which I am writing.

Last year, I lived with death for months. I had suffered things I could not endure, and I had a physiological response to it. My entire being wanted to die.

Moment-to-moment, I would see commonplace objects and think about how I could use them to end my life, and end the suffering. Every chemical substance was an opportunity to choke, vomit, and then perhaps rest forever. Every tall building was an invitation to jump. All of this was weighed against the large probability that I might survive and return to greater suffering.

This went on every moment of every day, for weeks. People tried to help, but there is no directly helping someone in that state.

I clung to my faith -- and to those who reminded me of it -- for literal dear life. I chanted for hours every day.

It passed. I did well. But now, death is always with me. I go to bed each night fundamentally feeling like it is an open question as to whether I will live or die tomorrow. It changed me.

While I wish it hadn't happened, I think it changed me for the better. I feel like a better person now.

My perspective is that power, life, and death are closely linked. When I was at my weakest, almost everything had power over me. I could not work, so I felt threatened by commerce and by not having an identifiable place in the world. I could not relate with other people, so I felt threatened by anyone -- including loved ones -- who desperately wanted me to be a different way, even when it was out of love.

I now feel vulnerable in a way I never did before. I still have power, and I still feel powerful, but in a different way. Mixed with it is a knowledge of how close I live to suffering, to the death of peace and love. And that's why I feel so light and warm when I'm given another day of relative ease.

I think this is why I feel especially sensitive to how power is used in any situation -- especially when it is used without awareness.

Speech and Power

We all know what happened last week.

I was surprised at how much it affected me. I was very angry. It took me some time to realize that I felt furious at how power was being used in this situation.

After letting it move around inside me for a while, I've identified two things that made me very angry.

Analogy

There are two analogies I see being used that make me incredibly angry.

The first: Analogy between this situation and the Holocaust.

The Holocaust was inflicted on disparate people who had very little systemic power. It was inflicted not just on Jews, but on other powerless people as well. 200,000 people with disabilities were murdered in the Holocaust.

People with a great deal of power used it to inflict horrors that, a hundred years later, we still find it difficult to find words for.

What happened last week was also horror. It was a war crime. For people who still live with the human memory of the Holocaust, I understand why this situation would trigger them to relive it, even if they did not directly experience it themselves.

For those who do not live with the cultural memory of the Holocaust, though: I am horrified that we would draw this analogy of our own accord, without acknowledging that the power dynamic in this situation is extremely different.

Israel has one of the most powerful military societies in the history and present of mankind. Power this great is impossible to use responsibly: It does great violence just by existing. And at this time, it maintains a prison camp of three million Palestinians.

This situation is horrific, but is *not* the Holocaust. The victims of last week's horrors, and those who have been traumatized by it, are supported by immense power. And it is extremely dangerous for people with power to feel like they are victims, because it gives them permission to righteously use their power without question, and without consequence.

The second analogy that made me furious: North American folks equating solidarity with Israel, to solidarity with Black people.

If you ask me to stand with a black man like George Floyd, who:

lived in a position of very little power,

had violence done to him on a daily basis just by being visible, and then

was murdered by those with power,

I understand that I am standing in support of those who are subject to a systemic abuse of power.

If you ask me to stand with Israel because we stood with Black Lives Matter, you are asking me to support and give a moral carte blanche to a militarized nation that uses their power to cause great harm, regardless of their reasons.

I think that it is an abuse of power for any North American to equate these two situations.

Power co-opting power

LinkedIn is the only social network I still use. Last week, what really stuck out to me were the titles of people who "stood with Israel". I saw them scroll by my feed like a roster on a stacked team:

CEO. COO. VP Marketing. Head of Sales. VC. VC. VC. Investor. VC. Chairman of the Board. MPP. Head of Data Science. CFO. VP Product. The list went on and on.

For the folks who made their own impassioned pleas without naive analogy, I felt fine. This was them expressing their own view of the situation, and reacting to it in a way that felt natural to them. Many non-Jews, many non-Israelis have close friends and families who were harmed. (Interestingly, I think very few people I'm connected with on LinkedIn have any connection to Palestinians.)

What made me incredibly angry were messages in these two styles, of which I am paraphrasing:

1. "I stand with Israel. It is not OK for you to be silent; you must also stand with Israel. Your silence means you support terrorism."

2. "I usually speak only about business topics here, but I realize that I am doing harm to Israelis by staying silent. So I am speaking up to say that I do stand with Israel."

I felt a deep, visceral reaction when I saw this pattern play out among people who have only a peripheral connection to the situation at hand.

This is power co-opting power.

A person who has power speaks out and says: "Hey, you other people with status and power; if you don't parrot what I am saying, you are identifying yourself as not part of the club. Your status is reduced by doing this."

And then, those silent folks with status who feel uncomfortable to speak up: Their passive fear is overridden by an active one of tarnishing their status with their silence.

So, despite their actual feelings, relation to, or understanding of the situation, they tentatively post: "I am so sorry for being silent. I stand with Israel." The subtext is that they are not sorry for being silent; they feel threatened that they will lose more status if they don't play along. And so they parrot the message under duress.

This is dangerous. It takes a horrific conflict that is largely confined to Israel and Palestine, and uses it to enforce power and status in places that are otherwise only peripherally affected by the conflict itself. It uses a local excuse to inflict global harm.

If you challenge others to unilaterally stand with the Israeli government and the Israeli military -- not their people, but the power structures that they support and fund -- you are using their power to reinforce yours.

When we look back at the history of our own ancestors and see times when they fell victim to "propaganda", I think we feel an element of collective surprise. How could they have been so stupid? How did they not see through it?

I don't think they were stupid. I think all of them went through many moments where they felt that wiggly feeling in their stomach, like they were feeling challenged to unilaterally agree with something they didn't fully support or understand. But it was too dangerous and too difficult for them to resist a situation that had immediate impact on their status and safety, when the repercussions would be borne by others. And so they played along.

None of us are perfect, and most of us will choose safety when we feel the balance of power is against us.

A Deep Breath

Here's an example of a post I saw last week that helped me feel calm. I felt a great appreciation for this person, because they were able to do what I could not: Speak for themselves, speak without violence, and speak in a way that brought warmth to everyone affected:

> I denounce Hamas, Hezbollah, and all terrorist groups who have been murdering in the name of whatever cause they pursue. It's vile and unforgivable.

> I support Israel in having safe borders, a safe society, dismantling terrorist groups, and retrieving their abducted citizens.

> I also hope Palestinians in Gaza can regain power, water, and food as soon as possible to reduce the civilian suffering for all those who never asked for Hamas to condemn them.

The situation this person describes is impossible. There is no way that both Israel and Palestine can achieve these things in the short term. People are going to die, communities will be destroyed. But this person spoke with sensitivity and hope. I love them for it.

How much of this is me?

As I've lived through my own reactions to these events, I ask: How much of this is me? I have been shaped by my own experiences with suffering and mortality. How distorted are my views?

I don't know, but I hope others ask the same. Not to undermine our belief in ourselves, but to help us understand that we are not just stating our beliefs on a topic, or taking a moral stand; we are using our power and status to shape our own communities and relationships with our words.