“Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy.”
– Proverbs 21: 8 & 9, from the Jewish Old Testament of the Christian Holy Bible
It is against my faith to be silent in the face of injustice. I claim a religious exemption. My Holy Bible, written by Jews over thousands of years, commands believers –Christians, Jews, and Muslims–to do justice by speaking up for the oppressed. All Abrahamic faiths share this mandate.
But wait. Speaking up is now against the law.
Just days ago, a law was passed in the House of Representatives to the effect that “anti-Zionism is the same as anti-Semitism.” First of all, this is not true: Zionism is only a sect among Jews, and many Jews are anti-Zionist. Zionism can be considered a political movement within Judaism, but it does not represent all Jews.
So why is the United States so adamant about labeling protesters–even Jewish ones–anti-Semitic if they call for a ceasefire?
Why does the United States government find it necessary to legislate silence?
A Democratic government, by definition, is compelled to listen to the voice of its people. Instead, it has made a law that illegalizes speaking up, thus silencing the voices of its constituents. We need to think about what this means: Speaking up against the genocide in Gaza (and now in the West Bank) is against the law in the United States.
But despite this political fear tactic, people continue to speak up. And many of those who speak up are being arrested or fired or blacklisted from their careers.
“Go to where the silence is and say something,” said Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now! speaking at the conclusion of a Press Club meeting of journalists in January, 2023. This was before October 7th.
Journalists, whose duty it is to investigate and report the facts, are being silenced, and too many of them have died in Gaza while attempting to bear witness to the truth.
It simply goes against human nature to be silent in the face of injustice.
“There is no voiceless, there’s only the deliberately silenced, you know, or the purposely unheard.”
-Arundhati Roy, Indian author.
We are witnessing the systematic dehumanization of an entire population of human beings!
When Israeli bombs indiscriminately bomb children, unborn babies, and the elderly, who wouldn’t want to shout, “Stop!” But now, those who are shouting, “Stop!” are breaking the law.
We now have a new law that forces United States citizens to be complicit by our silence. But even our silence is not enough: now we are being coerced into joining sides with Israel.
The Israeli government’s propaganda campaign wants us all to believe that its Palestinian victims are evil and must be exterminated. It attempts to gaslight the watching eyes of the entire world by declaring that no one in Gaza is innocent; that they are all “human animals” and “vermin,” and therefore it is necessary for the Israeli military to exterminate them. And we must cheer them on–or else!
However, this propaganda tactic has failed to silence the outrage. Which is why the Israeli government has shifted its propaganda campaign to the West Bank, where now the word “Nazi” is being used to label the entire population of the West Bank as well.
But those who are speaking up are not allowed to use the words Hitler or Nazi in their protests: only the Israeli government is permitted to use these words when claiming that Hamas, and now the West Bank Palestinians, are Nazis. All of them?
Let’s stop a minute to consider this Orwellian nightmare in real life. Vermin = Exterminate. Extermination of an entire population? Absolute dehumanization? Where has this happened before? Millions of ethically conscious Jews remember, which is why they are protesting with “Never Again,” and “Not in our name.”
And millions of Palestinians remember, because they have been living as prisoners in an occupied territory since (I will use the passive voice here) “being systematically and violently evicted from their homes in 1948” (I didn’t use “that word”).
The rest of us, who are neither Jews nor Palestinians, have been speaking up in protest of the indiscriminate butchering of innocent civilians because it’s the right thing to do.
We who are speaking up for a ceasefire are not anti-Zionist or anti-Semitic: We are pro-humanity. Pro-peace. Pro-justice. Pro-truth. Pro- “other solutions besides merciless killing.” But our government does not want to listen.
It is our human right and our ethical duty to speak up for innocent civilians who are being slaughtered by a powerful government that is being supplied with unlimited bombs and guns at the expense of United States taxpayers.
I fear for what will happen if this deliberate silencing continues. I pray for peace in Israel. But perhaps nothing will stop what W.B.Yeats prophetically declared in his poem:
The Second Coming
by William Butler Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Source: The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats (1989)
