On Monday I interviewed a member of the Executive Committee of AIPAC. I asked him how he could defend and promote apartheid and genocide. He was not a legal witness; I could not order him not to change the subject. Still, he provided pretty clear (if very weak) excuses for genocide, which I think can be broken up into five types.
- Others have done it.
The U.S. killed Native Americans, he pointed out. The U.S. starved Germans and Japanese. Israel labels half the people it kills as Hamas, and a ratio of 1 proper person killed to 1 improper person killed is well within the norms of recent wars and massacres.
Of course, horrific outrages committed by the U.S. government or anyone else do not justify or legalize them from Israel. Murdering tens of thousands of people “accidentally” but in proper proportion to murdering tends of thousands of other people “intentionally” isn’t legal or moral. Neither half of that sick calculation is legal or moral.
- Israel isn’t doing it.
Hamas is causing Israel’s actions, over which Israel has no power or responsibility, and any non-Hamas people could survive just fine by living underground.
Others will claim that Israel causes Hamas’s actions, but in fact everyone causes their own actions. Israel’s atrocities in the West Bank where there is no Hamas are no more or less Israel’s responsibility than Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Blaming a population for not living underground while you bomb their homes flat won’t convince people who haven’t been paid to be convinced.
- Those aren’t people.
They’re savages.
Dehumanizing, labeling certain people “savages,” is the oldest propagandistic nonsense in the book.
- You are an anti-Semite.
If you haven’t objected exactly as strongly to every other murderous outrage in world history as you do to this one, you’re an anti-Semite.
My interviewee may have actually believed that the only war I’ve ever objected to is the one he’s currently shilling for. But correcting him couldn’t sway his belief that the world in general, the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, and various human rights groups — including Israeli ones — are all simply prejudiced against Jews / Israel (the two being the same apparently). And yet, what if the entire world including me were actually anti-Semitic and for that reason objecting only to this particular incident of mass murder? Wouldn’t it still be mass murder? Wouldn’t we be right, not wrong, to object at least this one time?
- Israel kills people for the benefit of the United States.
It doesn’t even ask for U.S. troops to die.
And yet the people of the United States do not benefit from the killing and ought to object to anyone dying.
There are variations on these five themes, but I think you’ll find that supporters of the genocide in Gaza generally switch from one of them to a different one when challenged, rather than producing any actually substantive or convincing case for the horrific destruction, torture, and murder.
I asked this AIPAC Executive Committee member other questions too, such as why AIPAC spends so many millions of dollars on the U.S. electoral bribery system. He replied by claiming that the money doesn’t impact the elections. I’m sure AIPAC’s donors will be delighted to hear that.
I asked him whether he supported the denial of freedom of speech and assembly on college campuses — he being on boards at Yale and Columbia — and he replied that he pays for the education of one Palestinian student (presumably a good savage). You can probably tell (without even getting an education from Yale or Columbia) that this response does not even attempt to answer the question.