JOE BIDEN’S AMERICA SHOULD NOT BE OUR KIND OF AMERICA
PRIDE WITHOUT DIGNITY; JUDGMENTS WITHOUT JUSTICE
There is a graveyard smell in one part of the world; it is not the strong scent of the fumes of Palestinian people who lost their lives in a war that seeks their extinction, but it is the stench of democracy in decomposition. It is the decay of truth and the dissection of decency.
For more than 50 years, Arabs have mastered the power to smell an enemy: the odor of Netanyahu. Such a scent has not only attempted to pulverize the lives of these Arab people, but after killing them, the Israelis have harvested their organs. It was not only Theodor Herzl’s creation of Zionism that gave birth to Palestinian oppression; it was those who facilitated the evil and colluded in the killing. It was the foul smell from the mouth of a man named Biden who sought to soothe the sins of the murderers of children as they needed medicine and bandages, composing their tears in a hospital that no longer stands to offer help to anyone.
Through the recent carnage in Gaza stood an American president who tried to rationalize the evil and defend injustices which, like cancer, have metastasized through the Palestinian lands, their lives, and the history its Western allies have sought to erase from the minds of a world that has come to such see it as a political inconvenience. Mr. Biden supported Israel’s mass murder of the “huddled masses” of Arabs who have been jailed, bulldozed, and left without a place to sleep. Brute force, economic inequality, and political corruption have sanctioned targeted assassinations of Palestinian leaders. Worse, the stigma of criminality has been attributed to the Palestinian people, an intellectual offense that permits torture, murder, and, ultimately, genocide.
It was not long ago that Biden spoke with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan about improving bilateral ties, even as the US president considers officially recognizing the Armenian deaths of the Ottoman Empire during World War I.
The genocide involved mass killings, forced labor, death marches, and deportations and was characterized by extreme brutality and violence. One must wonder why a president of what is supposed to be a Western democracy would pressure President Erdoğan to acknowledge a historical phenomenon that occurred more than a century ago but see the smoke of a genocide occurring from the window of his hospitality room and deny that 7,000 people in Gaza have died.
The origin of the term genocide and its codification in international law have their roots in mass murder. Armenian Christians were one of many distinct ethnic groups in the Ottoman Empire. In all, at least 80,000 Armenians were killed between 1894 and 1896. This resulted in thousands of Ottoman deaths as well.
After more than a century of Biden’s pleas for recognition of the deaths of the Armenians, he allowed vested interests to ignore recognition of the systemic attempt to eradicate the Palestinian people. Democracy continues to ignore their journey and recognize the genocide for what it is.
No excuse was offered, and no mercy was given. But then, a killer rarely conveys to the corpse the reasons he has made him one. However, truth has a power of its own. Those who treat others as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.
The way homes have been destroyed, lands pilfered, children orphaned, and tens of thousands have died, it is no secret or surprise that it would be the end for so many. The massacre should be a shock to the instincts of every human being. Here are people who have been dying since they were born. Even a young child is forced to come to terms with what will be an unordinary death, and that resistance is the only term on which he may survive.
More than others, Palestinians have understood the reality of death and have been spiritually ready despite the pain. The idea of certainty limits all, and that inevitability does not rob death entirely of its significance. What matters are the things that are not inevitable. The things we create, the things we find, the left we take when everything in our life is leading us right.
Imagine a child surrounded by death in so many ways, so passionately committed to embracing life, yet he witnessed death more than a thousand times. He steps around the bodies until the light of death reaches him. But instead, he chooses to reach against the dying light and against the bad people that would do them harm. He rages to protect those he loves and to experience moments of peace and joy. Even though he knows death, he seeks to live a most passionate life, knowing it will still lead to the same inevitable death. It is perhaps the most deeply moving place one can make.
What the Israeli government may fail to recognize is that a Palestinian is not an empty vessel onto which policies can be imposed. They cannot be molded into rigid conformity. Palestinians cannot be handed a world they must unquestioningly accept and adapt to. They are not a puzzle to be solved. They are human beings with emotions shaped by their social context, and while they may strive to adapt, they respond to external conditions in specific and understandable ways.
These are the lessons at the very core of my time in Palestine and the people whose ancestry follows them, like my son-in-law Omar and my grandchildren, whom I love more with every beat of my heart. And then there are lessons I have learned from his father, Abu Amer, a man who carries his traditions wherever he goes that originate in the West Bank, and the harsh realities of life in peril from my student, Hamzah, who has lost 40 members of his family so far. Lastly, a Palestinian teacher, who was a man of conscience and mercy, Sheikh Azzam. Our time with him was not as long as I had hoped. His sacrifice was never about ethnicity but about justice. He fought on the battlefields of Afghanistan against the Soviet regime. It was also about his dream, which he constantly reminded me to remember: “It is a common belief that the human drive is the will to live, but it is not accurate to claim that every individual is compelled to live, regardless of their circumstances. The real choice for someone in a situation of resistance is not merely between life and death; rather, it is the choice between a life of freedom and dignity and a life of oppression.”
Khalilah Sabra, Attorney at Law, MAS Justice and Advocacy Center
