A Modern-Day Genocide

As I sit here writing this today, the death toll of Palestinians has surpassed 8,000, predominantly comprised of women and children, as well as men. Think of how many people that is. Think of the events and functions you’ve attended. Think of what capacity 8,000 people is. And now think of them gone.

This number carries significance to me. It encroaches on a different number of people slaughtered that I am much more closely related to - that of Srebrenica in Bosnia, July 11, 1995, as my family and I survived the genocide and ethnic cleansing that occurred against Bosnians from 1991-1995. Many who know me know I’ve been sharing a lot of content as it pertains to the slaughter of Palestinian people in the hopes of providing access to valid, informative facts as the situation in Palestine unfolds. While I have been sharing, I have worked hard to bite my tongue from diving into a deep analysis via social media because sometimes, it all seems a little worthless. Shouting into the void while everyone goes about their business, failing to even acknowledge the atrocities occurring in our world, doesn’t seem to really cut it at this point and honestly makes me more disappointed in humanity, shifting my world view. However, I’ve reached a state where I have so many emotions, thoughts, analysis, reasoning, and critical thinking bubbling under the surface, that I find writing to be my source of therapy, so I’ve sat down to put pen to proverbial paper and talk through this situation, even if I’m the only one hearing myself.

I am not anti-Semitic or intolerant. As a person who has been discriminated against for my ethnicity and background, I tend to lean on over-accepting and gracious towards others, never wanting to make someone feel othered or less than. I commiserate and grieve with all who have lost in this current horrendous situation. I extend prayers and hope for all whose lives have brutally been imploded on and after October 7, 2023 and condemn Hamas’ actions, as well as the Israeli government’s. My view is my own and it is carved out of experience, education, intellect, and critical analysis. You may not agree and you do not have to, but I hope you find some perspective here that maybe you haven’t gained otherwise. I hope this can set the record straight on so much misinformation plaguing the media we have access to and derive our news from. Most of all, I wish for peace - a peaceful world not run by the greed and self-interest of our governments who continue to fail us so horrendously on both the domestic and international stage.

I distinctly remember sitting next to my mother and father in the dark apartment building basement that had become a bomb shelter of sorts for the people living in our building. As the sirens wailed their warnings outside and I felt the ground rumble, my parents sought to normalize life during war. I know this because in all my wartime memories, in all of my snippets of recollection, what I don’t recall is panic, worry, or distress on their faces no matter how limited food and water became or how fragile life seemed, the only panic I recall is of families other than my own. Thinking back now, I can imagine they felt these emotions regularly - targeted as Muslims, traumatized by the death of siblings, cousins, and a nephew. I can recall looking around the space, a dark, dimly lit room full of my neighbors wondering what we were doing there as they held onto their children, some food, and flashlights. Even at that age, I was sure that we were in danger, but I was unsure of why the world rumbled around me. This memory is engrained in me - so distinct, so vivid. I even recall the warm hue of the light. A toddler at the time and I an still close my eyes and remember the space and people that surrounded me in that time. The small rectangular window. The knowledge that none of this was normal.

I often recall the weeks my extended family came to stay with us. They were in the thick of fighting and had managed to escape and reach us, where the war continued to rain all around, but cloaked in a little less death than in Sarajevo. I would later learn my aunts and toddler cousins navigated escaping through tunnels carved into Sarajevo’s landscape - an unimaginable feat with babies, knowing the Serbian military was targeting them from the other side of the mountains. There is a night of their stay that is seared into memory. My mother had made pasta - a giant pot, 18 inches deep, it’s silver coloring a mirror of the scene. I stood silently near the dining room table observing my 18-month old cousin as he climbed a chair, elevated himself onto the table, and stuck his arm into the pot pulling fistfuls of pasta into his mouth, sauce leaving trails on his skin and clothes. He didn’t stop until my aunt quickly scooped him up and set him up in his dinner spot. He hadn’t eaten pasta for many many months.

The many snapshots of my early childhood that I can recall, particularly those so stark during war that I’ve discussed with my family, remind me of something so basic - the innocence of children. How children, despite the chaos of the world around them, much of what they do not understand, are still so inherently children - wanting to play soccer, build blocks, listen to stories, have books read to them - so innocent and unassuming as they navigate their environments, no matter how tumultuous - resilient. Children who will forever be changed for having experienced war, as if their DNA somehow manages to alter. Children who will carry the burden of that trauma, as I have, well into their adulthood. Children, who in the future, will want to scream and shout and rage, as they watch others experience the very thing, war, diminish their innocence and forever alter the very universe they knew.

I know this because I am one of those children, now an adult, watching the screens I own so helplessly wanting to scream, shout, and combust at the atrocities I am witnessing Israel commit against the innocent Palestinian people. While I am fully capable of agreeing that the terrorist attacks by Hamas on October 7th were horrific, I cannot begin to agree with or support Israel’s response and the eradication of the Palestinian people we are bearing witness to. It is terrorism. It is genocide. It is brutal, animalistic, and evil. It is the erasure of history and ownership. And it is the spreading of a narrative that is dangerous, dehumanizing, and categorically false.

Historical Background

Since I am a girlie who loves history, I find it important to set the scene to level-set the state of things. The region of Palestine, deriving from ancient Greek, “Philistia,” held strong ties for Islam, Judaism, and Christianity (the people were Philistines, occupying the region in 12th century B.C.). Over time, the region was conquered by numerous empires, including the Babylonians, Persians, and Romans. It first fell under Islamic rule in 637, after which various groups for for control of religious sites until between 1517 and 1917, the Ottoman Empire, whose official religion was Islam, ruled the region. After the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, Palestine was generally the region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. At this time, the British took control of Palestine, whereby the League of Nations issued a British mandate, which gave Britain administrative control over the region and included tasks for establishing a Jewish national homeland in Palestine, which went into effect in 1923. Not sure why the Western world felt it was their right to establish any kind of homeland on another’s territory, but here we are.

The British failed to accomplish this with any kind of urgency and in 1947, after more than 2 decades of British rule and following World War II, the United Nations proposed a plan to partition Palestine into two sections: an independent Jewish state and an independent Arab state. Again, not sure why this was decided by Western powers over territory they did not control, but such is a story of power and interest. As you can imagine, many Jewish leaders were supportive of the plan, while Arab leaders were opposed to it arguing that a majority of the population should be granted more territory given the Jewish population comprised less than 1/3 of the population and owned less than 7% of the land.

In May 1948, Britain withdrew from Palestine and Israel declared itself an independent state. This process commenced an almost immediate conflict between Israel and 5 Arab nations commenced (Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and Lebanon). Most often referred to as “the Nakba,” during which Israelis murdered 15,000 Palestinians, destroyed 531 Palestinian towns and villages, and led to the displacement of 750,000 Palestinians. Post conflict, Israel controlled 2/3 of the territory in the British Mandate and gave rise to the Palestine Liberation Organization (“PLO”) in 1964. In 1967, Israel gained significant land following the Six-Day War, where they took control of the Gaza Strip, West Bank, and Sinai Peninsula. The Camp David Accords in 1978 returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt and further negotiated Palestinian control of Gaza and West Bank.

Moving forward, a number of conflicts ensued based on the leadership of the region and tensions over the way Israel’s occupation unfolded and the brutality which Israel continued to apply to the Palestinian people remaining in Gaza and the West Bank. These ongoing conflicts continued to displace and slaughter innocent people. Hamas, often described as a Sunni Islamist militant group, won the Palestinian elections in 2006 and further defeated Fatah (political group controlling the PLO) in a battle for Gaza utilizing terrorist tactics. Hamas and Israel have continued to fight each other in horrendous fashion in 2008, 2012, and 2014. Fast forward to October 7, 2023.

Personal Experience & View

I am a lawyer by trade with a personal interest in history and more specifically, the psychology and strategy of decision-making in conflict and war. It is something I have always found fascinating, yet conflicting and often difficult to understand, but I have continued to read and find resolve in what has unfolded in the past as an educator for the future. I, by the nature of my education and work, am cursed with being able to break down various and differing arguments in their composition and understand each position with the capacity to defend it if forced to. It is both the thing that makes me excellent at my job and the thing that drives me absolutely insane when I have strong opinions about a situation. Despite my awareness of arguments and their counters in our current world, there is one thing that is abundantly clear: there is no dichotomy of thought when it comes to the murdering of innocent people. It is simply unjust and to be rejected in every situation, without abandon.

The current attacks on the Palestinian people are acts of genocide. Just today, we lay witness to a massacre at a refugee camp. We watched Israelis tie up, torture, and murder sons and fathers as they begged for mercy naked and blind folded. This is inhumane brutality in the most disgusting of forms. It is genocide. You see, words are important and every day when I turn on the news and see words like “conflict” or “Hamas-Israeli conflict” I want to crawl out of my skin and scream. A “conflict” implies there are armed fighters on each side. That does not apply here. The Palestinian people do not have bombs, artillery, guns, or even a military. Have you seen a Palestinian soldier? What does their uniform look like? You don’t know because you haven’t seen one. The Palestinians are not armed. They are simply trying to survive. The use of “Hamas” indicates that those are the only targets of an equal fight, when in reality, the only people fated to pay the price of Israel’s attack are innocent children, women, and men who did not commit the crimes for which they are being punished - paying with their lives. Hamas will live on, both in ideology and in form, because if this genocide has done anything, it has paid more credence to Hamas’ position to the vulnerable people living in this region. And let’s be clear - while Hamas does operate primarily out of this region, they are found in other jurisdictions, such as Lebanon and the key regional capitals of Doha and Cairo. Flattening Gaza will not solve the “Hamas problem.”

“Genocide” is defined as the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group. Let’s put a big ol’ checkmark next to that one.

“Terrorism” is defined as the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims. If you think Israel is acting in a capacity as anything other than genocide or terrorism, you are simply inaccurate. Yep, check.

The Western world likes to twist and carve these to words to their whims - supporting narratives so carefully crafted to alter the very framework of individual critical thinking until we no longer can independently distinguish what applies and when. Until we consume the reasoning and are beaten into submission, ostracized for questioning and challenging what governments spoon feed to us.

Here is the thing - I’ve grown up in the United States, although I was not born here, watching leaders and the media manipulate people by using certain rhetoric. Remember when I said words are important? The truth is, my family is Muslim. I was raised from traditions of culture - respect, love, faith, and peace. My life, despite being a genocide survivor and refugee, was rich - full of love, support, respect, and kindness. But on September 11, 2001, the ability to be Muslim in the US became greatly restricted. Each person you interacted with viewed you differently, like every Muslim they envisioned was someone with a bomb strapped to their chest hoping to harm the largest amount of people, shouting “allahu akbar.” It was in this time I began to feel a sense of obligation to prove to the world that “Muslim” is not synonymous with “terrorist.” That I, a seemingly white girl, with no trace of distinct Arab features or hijab, was someone raised in a Muslim household maintaining the same beliefs. That despite the “war on terror” that Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld had so carefully curated, the conduct of terrorists in the name of Islam was just as foreign to me as it was to the rest of the world. History has a way of dehumanizing Muslims making the atrocities we endure easier to turn away from. Easier to ignore as a far-away problem not worth the effort or advocacy of the Western world. Easier to deem as “complicated” than to open the covers of books to understand the detailed history. Easier to obliterate, even as millions of people stream videos on Instagram and TikTok, watching the slaughter of children in real time. It is truly unbearable.

For the past several weeks, I have had difficulty sleeping. I keep waking with nightmares of a past endured, thinking of my children. Thinking of the mothers and fathers who have buried their children. Young lives lost with so much potential and love. Thinking of the children who will never see their mothers and fathers again. Orphaned and covered in devastating loss and trauma. The wife identifying her husband. The brother holding his dead sister. The absolute heartbreak of losing those most important to us. I keep crying, imagining being that mother or wife and what type of grief these people are forced to endure. The weight and enormity of their sadness. I cannot stop thinking of my own mother and father, my aunts and uncles, my grandparents - all carrying the burden and grief of indescribable loss. My family lost 9 people during the war in Bosnia. My young cousin was a casualty when a bomb was dropped on my aunt’s house, killing him and maiming her, submitting her to a life in handicap. My uncle died in a car accident, getting water, while oncoming traffic was shot by snipers and driving erratically. My entire life I watched my grandmother, in moments when someone mentioned my uncle’s name or told a story about him out of love and longing, in which she would lose herself, tears streaming down her face uncontrollably. I saw my aunt become a shell of herself as she grieved losing her child, unable to come to grips with what her “new normal” was supposed to look and feel like. I watched loss carve out a hole in each of their hearts, failing to beat in those places where the pain was most unendurable. Forever changed. And I think to these poor people and fail to imagine what their lives will look like post-genocide. Incomprehensible. Their strength - inconceivable.

There is an inexplicable occurrence in the United States. We, in this country, have the inability to criticize the Israeli government. We view such conduct as an attack on the Jewish population versus simply a critique of leadership. We welcome criticism of Arab nations and engage in the criticism of our own government with debates and political parties, and yet, when one speaks out against the political position, economic structure, or political goals of the Israeli government, we immediately view such criticism as anti-Semitic. The Israeli government and its Western allies are quick to conflate anti-Semitism, which is horrendous and intolerable, with anti-Zionism (a counter to the belief that views Judaism as a nationality and religion interpreting that Jewish people deserve a state in the ancestral homeland much like Italian people having Italy or Swedish people having Sweden), which has legitimate reasoning and foundations as a protest to its evolution. Anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are two distinct ideologies, but it serves Israel and the West’s narrative to intermingle the two so closely that only anti-Semitism becomes the explanation. I often ask myself why that is. Why are we incapable of objectively providing opinions about Israel? It is vulnerability? Is it fear? Is it power? If we objectively look at Benjamin Netanyahu’s ratings prior to this genocide, there were mass protests throughout Israel against his leadership. And yet, god forbid you say anything negative about his government. I am still at a loss as to why this is. Why are we able to criticize global leaders, Western governments, Eastern governments, and cultural groups, but we can’t objectively disagree with Israel?

I’ve read many posts stating “never again” in reference to the Israeli current position in light of the Holocaust. A statement wholly understood when we reflect on the horrors the Jewish population endured during such time. What I find incredibly difficult to resolve is the irony of that statement juxtaposed against Israeli brutality against the Palestinians, not only in this genocide, but in the past 75 years of murder and occupation fueled and sponsored by the United States. The hypocrisy of what has been endured and what is being done by the same people is incredibly stark. How does such a population support the genocide and eradication of a group of people, with the knowledge of its own history, of those not guilty of the crimes they seek to punish? What a disconnect in critical and rational thought. What a disservice to your own history and the empathy that has been built up globally for what has been endured.

Sun Tzu, the author of The Art of War, wrote, “[v]ictorious warriors first win and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first then seek to win.” Israel is a defeated warrior, acting in unorganized and criminal capacities, breaching international laws and treaties in its genocide against the Palestinian people. In its dangerous, destructive, and toddler-like approach, it seeks not to achieve resolution, but rather, physical obliteration - retribution on those not guilty of a sin. Its “strategy” (if you want to call it that) is a shoot from the hip approach without tactical evaluation in furtherance of its own Zionist interest, which includes the eradication of the Palestinian people who will no longer be able to claim their homeland when they are 6 feet underground. It is arming settlers (Israeli people living on native Palestinian lands seeking to occupy the same) with guns and encouraging them to join the fight in the West Bank, from where Hamas is not located. We are watching normal citizens being emboldened and equipped to murder - MURDER - torture and brutalize, in cold blood, farmers, children, residents, and a peaceful population, all the while being filmed by onlookers for their grotesque and brutal conduct. It is unimaginable to me that Western leadership not condemn these acts openly and promptly submit the Israeli government and actors to the Hague to stand trial for the war crimes they are committing so blatantly and openly. You don’t have to look far to see the deterioration of the collective global moral compass. It seems like its a stone’s throw away these days.

Those who state civilian casualties are a byproduct of war, using Hamas as a fear tactic and citing to war strategy, I cannot begin to underline the mistake you are making in your reasoning. This rationale is dangerous and completely undermines the value of human life. If you think there is no other way to attach Hamas than this, you are mistaken. Look no further to the technologies, weaponry, and warfare at Israeli’s disposal and you can find a pathway to direct impact on Hamas. If you still think this is the best way, then I ask, why not allow Palestinians to evacuate? Why send 24-hour notices and force people in decisions of the impossible only to bomb and murder the ones who attempt to comply? Why bomb hospitals, mosques, schools, and crossings in the most cruel manner? Why cheer and celebrate with each bomb dropped and increasing death toll tick? Why recite religious verse to unleash and encourage terrorism and murder? I don’t buy this argument for a single second. It is a cowardly approach and it is one not set in reason or reality. Would you be willing to cast your family off as byproduct civil casualties if this genocide was reversed? If this genocide was on your doorstep immediately impacting your family as you pick out a child sized casket? No, you wouldn’t. So why do you justify Palestinian casualties in this way?

I have been left speechless too many times as I watch videos and read news updates on the unfolding situation in Gaza. My mind races begging to understand how people have remained silent. How individuals can go through their daily routine without tears and heartache. How dismissible this genocide has been on a global scale. How flippantly people can change the channel or swipe past a story simply because it makes them uncomfortable. This is astonishing to me. To be able to view such massive suffering and not feel shaken to your core, trembling in the very place you sit. The genocide in Bosnia occurred from the end of 1991 to 1995. 4 years. For 4 years Bosnians begged the world to react to ethnic cleansing, mass rape, torture, and death. 4 years. There is a special kind of emotional devastation that comes from having to convince the world that you do not deserve the very atrocities being committed against you. I can only pray each of you never personally understand this kind of pain.

-agl.