Content Warning: Genocide in Gaza
Mohamed Abu Al-Qomasan’s wife Joumana Arafa had just given birth to two babies boys. As he waited to collect the birth certificates, he learned that his two boys, along his wife, and the twins’ grandmother, had been murdered by the IDF.
The happiest day of this man’s life was turned into his worst nightmare, because Israel believes that Palestinian life is worth absolutely nothing.
Ayssel and Asser, the twin boys, and Joumana Arafa, and the boys’ grandmother, are gone, because Israel was granted the power to take their lives by a world that at best, looks the other way, or at worst, often at worse, actively aids Israel’s horrific disregard for Palestinian life.
If this was the only thing Israel had done, if the only thing Israel had ever done to Palestine, was to murder two twin baby boys and their mother, and grandmother, that would be horrific. We should live in a society where the grief and rage we would feel that Israel committed this one act, should be overwhelming.
But, that’s not the society we live in. We live in a society where, by a conservative estimate, 40,000 innocent men women and children have been murdered, and the silence from Ireland, Britain, the United States, and many other countries, is simply deafening.
Why is this okay? Why does the world keep turning as if nothing happened? Why aren’t we all screaming?
I have posted this video on this blog before of politician Thomas Gould giving a speech about the horrors in Gaza. I think it’s heartbreaking, but I don’t think the word “speech” really applies. Rather, what he has learned about Gaza, is causing a tidal wave of rage, and despair, and anguish, to simply rush out of him:
This is the only healthy reaction to what’s happening in Gaza. Not the usual laundry list of excuses, “What’s happening in Gaza is complicated.” The murder of twin boys is not complicated. “I stay out of politics.” No you don’t, that’s impossible. “We need to worry about Irish issues.” As if we can’t worry about Irish issues and international issues “There are loads of atrocities going on in the world.” I don’t know how that last one became an excuse to do nothing.
If you believe any of these excuses, would you accept them if it was Ireland being bombed, and the Irish people being wiped off the map? As more and more of your friends died, would you say, “Oh well, it’s terrible what’s happening to us, but the Irish situation is complicated.” As you, suffering from a serious health condition, couldn’t get medical treatment because the hospital was bombed, would you say, “Oh, I don’t want to advocate for this bombing to stop, because I stay out politics.” When all of your children were killed in a single bombing attack, would you say, “Other countries are quite right to worry about their own issues and not worry about Irish issues.” When you lost a limb in an IDF attack, would you say, “Well, there’s so many atrocities going on in the world that I don’t think anyone should really worry about Ireland in particular.”
If this was just complete and total apathy, that would be one thing, but, as I’ve talked about in a previous post, many people still have an infinite capacity to get worked up about non existent or made up injustices before they’ll get worked up about real injustices. I’ve talked before about how there was more outrage over a woman who was wrongly identified as intersex and/or trans, depending on what nitwit you talked to and what misinformation they were going by, than the fact that Israel was allowed to participate in the Olympics:
And the other big outrage with the Olympics was that, there was an opening ceremony that involved drag queens.
Let that sink in.
An opening ceremony that had drag queens in it caused more outrage than the fact that a country that killed at least 40,000 people was allowed to participate in the Olympics.
Why are Palestinian lives worth so little?
I’ve thought a lot about what frightens me most about all of this, and I think it’s this.
A society that can make excuses for the murder of 40,000 people, can make excuses for the deaths of 500,000 people, or a million people, or, a billion people. Now you might be asking, wouldn’t the death of a billion people, no matter what part of the globe they lived on, cause the worldwide economy to crash and burn? Yes it would, but I’m not talking about economic consequences, I’m talking about one billion strangers being wiped from the face of the Earth in and of itself, without consideration for economic consequences. I am arguing that any person who doesn’t care about 40,000 people being murdered, would care about, in the case of a billion people murdered, the economic consequences to they themselves only, not the catastrophic loss of life. I think any civilization that can make excuses for 40,000 people being wiped out, can say, “Oh jayzus isn’t it terrible, BUT” about the deaths of any number of people, no matter how large. Let me explain why I think this.
For years I have been interested in a concept called Dunbar’s number.
https://neurosciencenews.com/dunbars-number-social-brain-19210/
Dunbar’s number is 150, that’s the maximum number for personal social networks and close knit communities. That’s not to say there won’t be cases where the number is smaller or bigger, but it usually works out at 150.
What does this mean?
On whatever day of this horrific genocide that the number of Palestinians killed was 150 (and to be clear, they killed more than that even before this genocide begun) that was already the number of people that a human being can form a community with, exceeded. Anyone who can say, “Oh my God it’s terrible, BUT”, about this low number, is already walking a very dark path indeed.
But it’s not 150. It’s not even ten times that. I’ll say it in all caps to get the point across.
IT’S NOT EVEN 1500.
It is, by conservative estimates.
40,000 OF OUR FELLOW HUMAN BEINGS, GONE
My brain, your brain, anyone’s brain, cannot fully comprehend that number. Even if Robin Dunbar made some serious errors, and it turns out it’s actually, we’ll say, 2000 people that you can form close communities with, 40,000 is still a number that you cannot comprehend. The ability to understand, to fully grasp, what is happening in Gaza, numerically, has already been exceeded.
Any society that can say, “Oh isn’t is awful, BUT” for 40,000 strangers, will never stop with the excuses. “Oh my God, a million people dead, but we have to stay out of politics”. “Oh it breaks my heart, 30 million dead! But there were drag queens in the Olympics and that’s the most important issue!” “Oh my goodness, one and a half billion dead, isn’t it terrible, but I have been temporarily inconvenienced by a trivial matter, and that’s the important thing!”
So, why am I writing this? Haven’t my previous posts about Gaza been a bit more hopeful? More in the vein of, it’s horrific sure, but if we all work together we can stop the genocide?
I still have hope. I still think we can bring this mass murder to an end. And I have talked before about how it matters if we can shorten this horror by even one minute, and I still believe that:
I want hope, but not false hope. Our society is sick. Ireland, Britain, the United States, and many other countries, have the ability to make excuses for the mass murder of 40,000 people. That is not a mild problem, that means that these countries are rotten to the core.
Hope, but not false hope. The sickness that led to this apathy will not be cured this year, or next year, and, sadly, probably not in my lifetime.
But what does giving up do? It guarantees that nothing will ever change. I want you to imagine something. I want you to re-imagine the history of the world, but every single person who fought for change, just gave up. Those who fought for Irish liberation just decided it’s too hard and gave up. Those who opposed the Atlantic slave trade? Just decided it was too hard. The people who fought for women’s right to vote just decided, this is too difficult, I can’t do this.
Now imagine the terrifying, horrific dystopia we would live in now, if everyone who fought for justice, and an end to oppression, just hadn’t done so. Do you want to even imagine that society? I know I don’t.
I still have hope that future generations can live in a society where the murder of two twin boys, no matter where they are from and no matter what colour their skin is, will cause everyone to say, “No excuses, this horror has to stop, now!” The road to such a wonderful society is long indeed. The sickness that caused there to be more outrage about a triviality like performers at the Olympics than the death of, an amount of people the brain cannot process, cannot be cured over night.
And, I can’t predict the future. Who knows, things might never change. Perhaps a million years from now, if humans are still inhabiting this rock of ours, humans will still think it’s okay to murder ten of thousands of other humans, or more. But, we have two choices, fight for change, meaning things may or not get better, or do nothing, and guarantee that they definitely won’t. I know what option I’m going with.
And if it were the case that things will never change, no matter what we do, then, I would rather try and fail to bring about a society where human life actually matters, then to succeed at being the kind of person who gives a shit about drag queens at the Olympics.
Ponderings Of An Autist 
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