Matthew Slater – What did you do in the genocide Daddy?

Jem Bendell: Why should we talk about Gaza and genocide on Earth Day? Partly because we should be talking about it everyday. Partly because the same mix of forces that are destroying the planet are destroying life and land in Gaza. 

Matthew Slater develops software for complementary currencies. He co-founded Community Forge, which free hosts software for collaborative credit schemes

Cross-posted from Jem Bendell’s website Living with metacrisis and collapse

 

I find it difficult talking about Palestine.

What is happening is so much more than a regional conflict or an antiterrorist operation. So much more even, than the alleged genocide that is picking up pace. Before I put my case, it will help some readers who rely on mainstream media if I lay out some facts. I will limit myself to 10!

1. Zionist rhetoric typically claims that it represents all Jews and that anyone who opposes the Israeli state or its illegal actions hates all Jews. Their claim is that only Jews are ‘native’ and have legal, genetic or even biblical rights to control the territory. However, this idea is not intrinsic to Judaism and arose from a sect of European Jews in the 19th Century. Such claims are not supported by the law, genetics, or even the Torah, at least according to many orthodox jews, who believe that the diaspora is God’s intention: “The Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations where the Lord will drive you.” (Deuteronomy 4:27). Therefore, any initiatives to equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism are infringing upon the rights of Jewish people to hold a diversity of views about their religion and Israel.
2. Hamas’ founding charter in 1988 can be read as expressing genocidal intent towards Jews, but this was much clarified in the 2017 update, which stated that the “conflict is with the Zionist project, not with the Jews because of their religion”. This fact has not been reported, as it does not fit with the narrative that Israel has no choice but to obliterate Gaza.
3. The militants committed war crimes on October 7th, but the headlines that went around the world about babies being beheaded and baked were false and almost certainly designed by public relations consultants to maximise public outrage. Widely reported, this story helped dehumanise the enemy, providing psychological cover for atrocities to come. Sadly, for evidence of beheaded babies, we need only look to Gaza.
4. After initially reporting 1400 victims, the actual count of Israeli civilian victims (because 373 soldier deaths are not illegal) is half that (695). Many of these were not killed by Gazans though, the IDF (Israel Defense [sic] Forces) admitted an immense amount of intentional friendly fire incidents, owing to Israel’s policy of killing its own soldiers, perhaps even civilians, rather than allow them to be taken captive.
5. Israel’s PR machine put out the slogan “Israel has a right to defend itself”. This line was repeated for months but is actually false and misleading in relation to illegally occupied territories. False, because international law states the exact opposite, that occupied people have a right to resist while occupiers do not have such rights. And misleading, because Israel’s actions in no way constitute defense; in law, only a proportionate response can be counted as ‘defense’. If a recent Lancet study is correct about 186,000 Gazan dead, then subtracting 20,000 militia (an IDF estimate) leaves the ratio of killed soldiers at 50:1 and the ratio of murdered civilians at well over 200:1.
6. Israel’s indiscriminate slaughter and imposition of mass starvation is doing nothing to achieve it’s stated war objectives – in fact rather than Hamas being eliminated, recruitment remains strong. Yet Israel’s strategy of bombing and starving of civilians continues. Israeli government ministers sometimes admit it: Defense minister Yoav Gallant boasts about using food (and water) as a weapon, which is a war crime “We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly… There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed.” Prime Minister Netanyahu evokes biblical history to justify annihilation of a population: “You must remember what Amalek has done to you.” That passage continues “you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven”, which implies killing everyone, including the animals, and burning the crops. President Isaac Herzog calls for collective punishment, a war crime, when he claims: “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible.” These statements, along with the facts of destruction on the ground, indicate that ‘eliminating Hamas’ has been a cover story for either killing or expelling everyone from Gaza.
7. The IDF, and parts of wider Israeli society, have so normalised hatred and murder of Palestinians that many soldiers celebrate their crimes on social media. This is so prevalent that a foundation has been set up to collect this evidence and call for specific arrests.
8. Despite significant amounts of coverage of the conflict, mainstream media in the West has been consistently choosing language that casts doubt on Palestinian sources and diminishes Palestinian suffering, while softening Israeli aggression and downplaying global resistance and protest.
9. Political leaders of the USA, UK, Germany and others shamelessly sell Israel the bombs knowing they will be used illegally. EU leaders like European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and High Representative Josep Borrell affirmed Israel’s ‘right to defend itself’ but not Palestine’s, and called for the freeing of 250 Israeli hostages but not 10,000 Palestinian hostages. UK does reconnaissance flights over Gaza to support the IDF. Several EU countries failed to abide by their international commitments to the ICC and allowed Netanyahu to fly over their territory – and even to visit. However in UN votes, the vast majority of countries are sympathetic to Palestine.
10. Alarm bells have long been rung about Israel’s lobbying of foreign countries, cultivating relationships with politicians from key countries which can easily be construed as bribery and blackmail. See the Al Jazeera documentary, The Lobby for an undercover investigation in the UK.

The motives in this case seem simple enough – it’s the classic colonial operation: covet the resources, kill the natives, and whitewash it for the consumers back home. Once Donald Trump offered a vision of Gaza as a luxury resort, efforts redoubled both to kill Gazans and to persuade them to leave voluntarily, to a destination yet to be determined. Tensions have also risen in the West Bank which, without international action, might share a similar fate.

The facts I have listed have been readily available, so it is neither credible nor moral to say that indiscriminate slaughter is “complicated” or “there must be another side to the story”. There is no law, written or otherwise, that permits assassination of journalists, medics, aid workers, the slaughter of women and children, and the demolition of houses, hospitals, schools, bakeries, and religious buildings, nor the destruction of agricultural lands.

So this genocide isn’t fundamentally complicated, but it can’t be understood without acknowledging the role of USA. The ties between the countries run deep:

• US Military aid to Israel in 2024 was over $2000 per Israeli, compared with less than $400 for Ukraine and $130 for Egypt.
• Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk said 2 years ago “we depend on Israel to stabilize the region”, leading me to wonder how Israel achieves that – by sending waves of refugees to their neighbours, or through Mossad’s prolific assassinations, or its constant aggression towards Iran.
• Israel also has illegal nuclear weapons while USA pretends to the world it doesn’t.
• The US always uses its Security Council veto to defend Israel at the UN.
• Many US senators engage in Christian Zionism, arguing that God supports Israel.
• Israel has the largest political lobby (AIPAC) in the USA. It finances politicians in many ways, and not only Christian Zionists. Conversely senator Bernie Sanders recently said “If you vote against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his horrific war in Gaza, AIPAC will punish you with millions of dollars in advertisements to see that you’re defeated.”
• Israel develops and tests urban warfare weaponry on Palestinians prior to sale to its allies.
• Jeffrey Epstein is suspected of passing blackmail to Mossad, giving them leverage over US and other decision-makers.

No matter how abhorrent Israel’s actions, the USA provides the material and political cover. After WWII, USA styled itself as global lawmaker, policeman, judge, and bank, using those privileges to neuter the United Nations and subjugate other countries. As a capitalist entity, the US depends absolutely on growth for its wellbeing, so as global economic growth is happening more in China and the BRICS coalition, US foreign policies can seem like those of a cornered animal, thrashing around making desperate attempts to ‘rage against the dying of the light’. Sadly, some of the collateral damage is international law. I don’t mean to suggest that the US ever confined its actions to international law – it was often ignored and sometimes used as a justification for trashing countries and prising open their markets. But over 18 months of indiscriminate bombing of Palestine, US hypocrisy seems to have reached an unprecedented level which renders international law largely superfluous – witness South Africa’s legal attempts to stop Israel in the International Court of Justice, where after a provisional judgement, Israel has just been granted another 6 months to respond to last year’s genocide charges.

“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, pull back the curtains, and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.” — Frank Zappa, The Real Frank Zappa Book (1989), p. 185

If we want to help reduce suffering in the world, how can we try to make sense of this situation? First, we could admit that many of us do not live in democratic countries. Poll after poll shows citizens in the West not wanting their taxes to support genocide, nor their pension schemes profiting from it. Yet I couldn’t name a single major political party in the West proposing to intervene in a significant way. What will happen when enough people realise that their opinions don’t matter and their nations aren’t even sovereign? Perhaps a wider range of possible responses will open up – I will turn to these in a moment.

It struck me that Palestine was relevant to the field of collapse anticipation which we call ‘Deep Adaptation’ not only because a country is being demolished, but as I explained above, it is part of a wider collapse of international law, if not of the United States world order. So I checked out the large Deep Adaptation group on Facebook, and was disappointed to see only one post on the subject, which was more concerned with the psychological impact of witnessing a genocide than strategies to resist it. Moderators of the group confirmed they weren’t censoring posts on the topic.

If not Deep Adaptation, what are other social movements doing? I was very happy to see Greta Thunberg’s ardent support of Palestine and her explanation that climate justice is about human rights and that’s why Palestine is important. Greenpeace UK recently filled the US embassy pond in London with blood-red dye. The Ecologist magazine and the Planet Critical podcast have both produced content on Gaza and mentioned it in other contexts. But in general I was disappointed by the lack of attention, and perhaps a lack of joining the dots in both the climate change and trade union movements.

It’s not that individuals don’t speak, it’s not even that there is no collective action, but it seems like many social institutions like employers, local communities, religious groups and NGOs are staying in their lanes, unwilling to challenge the sabotage of human rights and international law. Some Zionists have successfully germinated the idea that criticising Israel puts you, and possibly your associates in the same camp as Nazi Germany, and enough people (like former leader of the UK’s Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn) have been shamed or fired to make people in polite circles self-censor on the issue.

With that in mind, how is one supposed to even resist this genocide, when the largest military on Earth and its money-printing machine are standing right behind the perpetrators?

My personal answer, as a person with few collective affiliations, is marching. Several times a week, I conceal my rage, despair and impotence behind a dour expression, unfurl a large Palestinian flag, and slow march along the high street holding it aloft. I don’t shout slogans, or try to attract attention to myself, I let the flag do the talking.

I also speak up online, like many of us do. But we know this is not very effective as the big platforms construct echo chambers around us so that speaking out is more like therapy than taking a stand. Talking to Jem Bendell, the publisher of my commentary here, he compared sharing on social media with the modern day equivalent of living somewhere that overlooked a concentration camp and going into your bathroom to shout and cry about it in front of the mirror. A few neighbours might hear some distress echoing from your house, but that is nothing like a discussion about how to intervene together. I agree we probably aren’t helping if we don’t focus on an audience and contribute to a plan. Jem went on: “One way that speaking up can be useful is if we help to normalise discussion of the genocide in spheres of social dialogue, whether that’s our profession, trade union, church, or interest groups on matters like climate change, deep adaptation, regeneration, or the commons. Only then can we begin to discuss what could actually be done together.”

So what might we begin to discuss? I am curious about the following acts of resistance:

• Protect Palestine – an attempt to lobby certain countries to form a defensive military alliance and forcibly enter Palestine.
• There are apps which scan barcodes and tells you if the producer is on your boycott list. (there are other boycott apps)
• Bringing the ‘war’ to the weapons manufacturers themselves through peaceful direct action.
• Joining a revamped boycott and divestment campaign

I think that the boycott angle could go much deeper. Currently it focuses mostly in the high street, avoiding products like Coca Cola, McDonalds, and Nike, for various reasons such as supplying the IDF. But even if such global corporations could be shamed into changing policy, it adds up to peanuts. The impacts are much larger off the high street where technology companies are directly equipping the IDF and financial corporations are salivating over questions worth billions of dollars like, who will finance the reconstruction of Gaza, who will get the construction contracts, who will get the oil revenue, who will own the stolen land?

Consider Microsoft, which publishes Windows and Office. Microsoft reportedly provides services to the IDF, including Artificial Intelligence. Therefore, by paying money and providing data to Microsoft, it’s not a stretch to say that Windows customers are indirectly complicit in the genocide. If Microsoft services can be bought to help kill Palestinians, who wouldn’t they help to kill in future? So one response would be to approach unions and staff councils to demand that senior management stop forcing us to be indirectly complicit in crimes against humanity when they require us to use Microsoft systems in our workplace.

Of course the whole field of ESG (Environmental, Sustainable, Governance) exists to help investors be responsible, including matters of conflict and human rights – so what are they doing about it? Well some pension funds and other investors who have voluntarily signed up to global principles have divested from firms that operate in occupied territories or who sell weaponry to occupying forces, such as the IDF. However, groups like UN Principles for Responsible Investment (UNPRI) do not advocate for such divestment but for investors to engage with the companies, which they believe is more impactful. (See principle 2). Unfortunately, this ‘investor stewardship’ is not working; even signatories from countries you would expect to be more supportive of Palestine don’t seem to be restraining Big Finance. Discussing this with Jem, who has a background in this field, he said “we should all be writing to our banks and pension funds, especially if they have signed on to ESG commitments, to demand more action against genocide. Having led the birth of ESG, it is both ironic and ridiculous that University pension funds have billions invested in firms complicit in genocide. Due to the total silence of the UNPRI on this matter, it would not be surprising if there is mass resignation from the initiative by investors from predominantly Muslim countries, and even protests at their London headquarters by anti-genocide campaigners.”

I’ve observed, complained and marched for 18 months. But in future, if I am ever asked what I did during the genocide, I want to answer that I kept trying to find new ways to reduce my complicity and join others in applying new pressure, without expecting an outcome and while also preparing, both emotionally and practically, for worse to come. How would you like to answer the question of what you did during the genocide? Do you think “I felt upset and posted on Facebook about it” will be good enough?

Listen to an audio of this essay.

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