Seth Kaper-Dale: Why I Keep Speaking Out Against Genocide

Why I Keep Speaking Out Against Genocide

There are some who have asked why I insist on speaking constantly of the genocide in Gaza. I am amazed that anyone who has known me for any period of time would expect anything less. I have, for 24 years as a pastor, tried to speak the truth. Genocide in Gaza is the hell beyond all hells that the United States is actively participating in today.

I cannot see body parts of children splayed across the pavement–dead children numbering in the many, many thousands–without insisting that this is horrifying and must be stopped!

I am particularly disgusted, disturbed, furious with so-called liberals in the United States who expect all Americans to call out Donald Trump for absolutely everything but who cannot find it in themselves to call out our elected Democrats and Republicans, and the state of Israel for its ongoing Genocide in Gaza. Every congress member who didn’t vote to stop sending weapons should be challenged in the primaries. Also, any eventual Democratic nominee who runs against a Republican will lose, without a doubt, if they are not loudly and strongly against genocide. Hypocrisy has been exposed for enough of the once-upon-a-time Democratic voters that there is no going back to a ‘fragile coalition.’ The cat is out of the bag. The Democratic Machine doesn’t care about Palestinians…and, if they don’t care about Palestinians, who else won’t they care for, when it is personally politically expedient to throw some other black or brown population to the curb.

Trump is horrible. Everything that Trump and his people are doing, in terms of deporting U.S. Citizens, utilizing El Salvadoran prisons, ending USAID, threatening Canada/Greenland/the Panama Canal, challenging birthright citizenship, paying women to have more babies, cancelling refugee resettlement, ruining the economy, fomenting hate against the transgender community…the list goes on and on…it is all horrible. And yet, it all pales in comparison to the starvation, the annihilation, the disgraceful endless destruction of two million Palestinians in Gaza.

Again, (in case you missed it the first time) I cannot see body parts of children strewn around the streets of Gaza without continuing to say this is sick and wrong. I cannot see the children who are still living emaciated for lack of food and water day in and day out.

I am a pastor, a follower of Jesus Christ, how can I not speak of genocide when it is occurring and is blessed by my own government? And, of course this would matter to our wonderful, peace-filled, conscientious college students! How can any concerned citizen not be constantly speaking of genocide in Gaza right now?

The question should not be “Seth, why do you constantly speak of genocide?” The question should be, “Democrats, so called liberals,” and “People of faith, evangelicals, all of you, how can you NOT be speaking constantly of this genocide?”

It would be like looking past or justifying the decimation of Native Americans and asking us to care about other moral matters at the same time tribes were being annihilated. It would be like denying or not addressing the holocaust against the Jews in Germany while telling us not to rock the boat and instead to focus on other serious issues of social justice. Of course, lots of people did that–but we don’t remember their in-action, their lack of attention, kindly.

Sometimes the elephant that is genocide in the room is so large there is no way to pretend it’s not there–and if you try that trick on a caring public you will fail–and the fallout will be brutal.

As Chris Hedges says in his incredible new book A Genocide Foretold: reporting on survival and resistance in occupied Palestine, “Genocide is the core of Western colonialism. It is not unique to Israel. It is not unique to the Nazis. It is the building block of Western domination. The ‘humanitarian interventionists’ who insist we should bomb and occupy other nations because we embody goodness—although they promote military intervention only when it is perceived in our national interest—are useful idiots of the war machine and global imperialists. They live in an Alice-in-Wonderland fairytale where the rivers of blood we spawn make the world a happier and better place. They are the smiley faces of genocide. You can watch them on your screens. You can listen to them spout their pseudo-morality in the White House and Congress. You can read their books. They are always wrong. And they never go away.” Hedges continues…”maybe we are fooled by our own lies, but most of the world sees us, and Israel, clearly. They understand our rank hypocrisy and self-righteousness.” (86)

I will not stop speaking about Genocide in Gaza, and I encourage everyone, for the sake of the entire human family, to also be loudly intolerant of genocide.

Peace, Seth Kaper-Dale

ps. I chose to not include the photos of scores of dead or starving children, but please do not turn away from those photos. Those photos are everywhere. Heroic individuals are giving us the chance to see the depth of our collective violence and sin and to writhe, at least a little bit, in human solidarity.