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You don't have to read this, but I have to say it. [1]

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Date: 2023-10-14  

When I was in high school, George HW Bush launched the war in Iraq.

A sophomore at the time, I was quite idealistic and already engaged in political thought. For starters, I was already committed to feminism, which boiled down to the right to bodily autonomy; and I was firmly pacifist.

This was the first war that I as an American had known. And as we were directly involved, I felt that I should have a stance. It’s true: I didn’t know the backstory of the presence of the US in the Middle East at that time. Still, it was important for me to express my value of non-violence.

I wore a pin in school that had the word “war” with a circular cross-out symbol over top. Wearing a pin fit my style: I tended to keep quiet, but I had opinions and wanted to express them. This way, people could know where I stood without me having to be too forward about it. I wore that pin to school every day after the launch of the war.

My chemistry teacher visibly frowned when he first saw it. While he and I had not had a close student-teacher rapport, his displeasure came through very clearly. I know how he felt because he kept giving me the same look every time I wore the pin. None of my other teachers gave me that look.

It was a heady time. George Michael had released Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1, and there really was very little music at the time that directly addressed war. This wasn’t Vietnam where there was an entire segment of the culture devoted to anti-war protest; and Mr. Michael was the only one who seemed to speak to the injustice of war with his song “Mother’s Pride.” I helped organize a small group that summer at an academic institute where we performed the themes of that song in three acts. Even now, just thinking of that song brings goosebumps.

While I was in college, the Oklahoma City bombings occurred. Then, not too long after, was September 11, 2001.

I remember very clearly hoping, truly hoping against hope, that what had happened that infamous day was a result of domestic terror and not anything international. I knew that if it had been the result of foreign actors that our country would retaliate in the most stringent way.

This is a terrible hope. I want to make that clear. But after the deed was done, what else was there to hope?

But it wasn’t domestic. And we all know the history.

When Bush the Second declared war in Afghanistan, I still was anti-war. I still was pacifist. But I remember to this day the absolute suppression I felt regarding the ability to express my beliefs. Many people here will not remember this, because most people were for that action. I remember listening to the radio where the news relayed a poll of the percentage of Americans who supported Bush’s decision to launch that war.

98%. 98% of people were for it. I was of that small sliver of 2% of people who were against, and when you are that far in the minority, against that overwhelming wall of support, your voice gets lost in your throat. It’s not even a whisper. You’re lucky to even breathe.

I’ve never felt anything like that before or since, in terms of the ability to express. The unanimity was smothering.

The second Iraq war was easily perceived as manufactured, yet so many people backed Bush’s action primarily because they were still in vengeance mode. Their desire to return the favor had not yet been slaked. The psychic wound hadn’t healed. While I’d felt helpless and constrained regarding the entry into Afghanistan, I felt only dread during the launch into Iraq. It was clear that we’d be dragged into a trajectory that would define our country for decades to come.

I’m still not very well-versed on the overall conflict in the Middle East, which is a shortcoming in my understanding that I need to rectify. I realize that and own up to it. It’s one of the reasons I have not delved into the broader discussion here over the last week. So many raw emotions are evident. And I don’t want to add to any pain anyone here is feeling by simply speaking out of turn or out of ignorance. That’s not my desire.

That was my first inclination, after the horrific bombings and slaying by Hamas. It goes without saying that Hamas sponsors terrorism, and terrorism is one of the worst things on Earth. If anyone understands this, it’s people who’ve previously undergone a terrorist attack. Americans lived through that: we lived through an era of terror. I could only imagine what Israelis felt in the wake of that coordinated attack; and while I couldn’t know, I could sympathize.

The response of the state of Israel, though—the scaled-up response that has grown more and more disproportionate in nature—has made it more and more difficult to stay silent. The abject mischaracterization of the left as a monolith as supporters of terrorism, even by the Biden White House, has made it impossible to stay silent.

In the face of what seems more and more like clear genocide by a state actor, the United States is still supporting Israel’s actions, even though those actions seem to be driven by blind rage and a need to get back at the people who caused the pain, as though blood for blood could balance the books.

The bombings last Saturday were a frightening shock, and my sympathy of course went to all Israelis who lost loved ones and who were traumatized by that violence. Yet—and I want to stress this—what the Israeli government is doing in response is not sudden. They are doing this with eyes open. The denial of electricity and water is barbaric. Water is a basic human necessity. This is without speaking of the inexorable march to destruction that the state of Israel has committed itself to unleashing, because they need to extract a price for their dead.

It may be a distortion, and it may be unfair, but I think about (and I can’t help but think about) similarities between what the Palestinians are going through with the Tulsa race riots, or other race riots, where an indignation or crime by one person of a despised group led to the disproportionate and indiscriminate attack by those with enormous power against a community corralled in quarters they could not easily escape, made to pay the price for someone else’s act, or alleged act.

There’s a direct parallel in my mind. And you could go back to slavery before that, where plantation owners and community members alike worried about revolts, which turned into wholesale scourging by those in power.

Not a fair comparison, some I’m sure will say. But the comparison comes to me unbidden. The Palestinians are in what many have termed an open-air prison. They have no means of escape. They live in apartheid conditions. They are being bombed into oblivion. I can’t help but make these connections. And we wonder why it’s taken so long to excavate and recover the history of Tulsa to a wider, shared memory. Those riots occurred because, for those in power, they were righting a score.

We have law to make sure that people do not act out of extreme emotion such as anger or rage. We know that crimes of passion are endemic to the human condition. But what Prime Minister Netanyahu and the people in his inner circle are doing now is in the same spirit of murderous passion, that same spirit of hurt and pain and unimaginable vengeance that feels to them like righteous anger. It feels righteous, but it’s wrong.

It’s the disproportionate and scorched-earth nature of the response that makes it a war crime. A whole host of extremism will follow this act. Meanwhile, more and more people are due to suffer, and the pain on all sides will grow.

I don’t think that’s a controversial thing to say. I say it now because I don’t think I had the space to say something similar 22 years ago. I merely hope the killing will stop.

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