Richard Krawiec: Looking at Gaza

What images will we remember?

People are moved by images, some of which stay in our collective memory.  Photographs and videos from wars have done much to define us, and also influence  public opinion. From WWII the two strongest images retained by most Americans are the flag being raised at Iowa Jima and the atomic bomb mushroom cloud rising from Japan. Both display an uplifting. The flag. The bomb cloud.  Initially, these were received as heroic images, but over time the image of the mushroom cloud has sat uneasily in the American conscience as attitudes towards the ‘necessity’ of killing civilians in wartime have changed..  

During the Vietnam War, an unpopular war, the images we remember were not of heroism, but of horrors our country perpetrated. Among the many images which made people aware of the atrocity of war, and played a role in turning public opinion against U.S. militarism, several still haunt us. The photo of the Buddhist monk self-immolating in public to protest the war. Slaughtered villagers at My Lai. The image of the naked little girl running down the street, severely burned by a South Vietnamese bombing that used American-made napalm.

In the Israeli siege of Gaza there are so many photos and videos of horror it’s difficult to keep track of them. Every day we see more and more atrocities on social media. We are overloaded with evidence of innocents being killed, maimed; neighborhoods left in rubble. The premature babies left to die in incubators after the electricity had been cut off in the hospital where all staff were forced to leave. The children shot dead in the streets by Israeli snipers. Naked civilians kneeling on dirt. Trenches of executed men. Dead babies pulled from the rubble of someone’s home. Hospitals swamped with refugees, wounded people, amputees, lying on every inch of floor. People eating grass and animal feed. The emaciated cadavers of children who starved to death because of Israel’s blockade of food to Gaza. People rushing towards a rare arrival of aid trucks, allowed in only to be met by an assault from tanks, snipers and drones. The Flour Massacre has brought to light images of crushed bodies, blood-stained flour packages, wounded people carried on donkey carts. The next day, more human carnage. It is overwhelming.

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Among the images that will remain seared in the American collective psyche, I believe there are two we will remember. The first is the photo of Aaron Bushnell self-immolating in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington D.C. painfully screaming “Free Palestine” seven times as a policeman held a gun on him and demanded he get down on his knees.   

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The other image, perhaps the most lasting, seems startlingly benign at first. The type of image anyone in this country might discover in a photo album, or a first grade yearbook. It shows a smiling 6-year-old Hind Rajab. It seemed such a pleasant image, except it was accompanied by an audio recording of her terrified voice. “They are firing at us; the tank is beside me. I am so scared. Please come.” Hind asking for help as she sat inside a car beside the dead bodies of 4 cousins, 4 children, and her aunt and uncle, murdered by Israeli troops, Hind beseeching someone to rescue her as the night came on and the tank pointed its gun at her car and she sat trapped with the dead bodies of those she loved. 

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They killed her, of course, as well as the two Red Crescent workers rushing to rescue her when Israel deliberately targeted their ambulance, which had set off on an IDF approved rescue mission. They bombed the ambulance blocks away from reaching Hind’s car.

For those of us in the United States overwhelmed by the scope of the killings, perhaps another lasting image of this tragedy will be one of horrifying indifference. That of President Joe Biden eating an ice cream cone and talking casually, unemotionally, blithely about maybe there will be a ceasefire. While 30,000 people are dead, 25,000 of those, according to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, innocent children and women. Killed in what most of the world recognizes as genocide. A genocide the United States is complicit in by their support of Israel through delivery of weapons and money, intelligence personnel who are directing the Israeli missiles and bombs to their civilian targets, and vetoes of UN Security Council resolutions designed to hold Israel accountable. The United States is just as complicit in Gaza as we were in providing the napalm used in Vietnam.

There are moments in history when things shift. An era ends, a new one begins. It’s not immediate, it takes time, and the transition period is often prolonged and bloody. I think we are in one of those periods now. This shift was already in motion, and the Flour Massacre pushed it over. 

A lot of young people, new generations, will no longer care about a Holocaust that took place over 80 years ago. Netanyahu’s scorched earth siege of Gaza, his total blockade of food, water, medicine and electricity that targeted all Palestinians, his heartless murdering of civilians, journalists, hospitals, schools, cultural centers has completely lost Israel the right to claim a moral basis for their actions. Under Netanyahu, who heads the most extreme right wing government in their history, Israel has come to be seen as a terrorist state by several generations of young people, not just in the U.S. but globally. There will be no recovery from that. Along with that judgement, the United States will be remembered as the country that worked hard to allow the genocide to happen.

My generation, the Boomers, will die off, taking with us memories of the Holocaust which have informed our reactions to Israel’s actions during our lifetime. The new generations will have their attitudes towards Israel  formed by what they have witnessed – Netanyahu’s dismissal of all international law and prosecuting genocide against the Palestinians. With the active complicity of the United States.

Once upon a time people believed the news. They thought mostly reporters and TV anchors were trying to tell the truth.  That blind faith no longer exists. People are aware of how corrupted the mainstream news has become, how too often it functions merely as propaganda organs for the major political parties. The generations under fifty are being informed by citizen journalists via live videos on Instagram, TikTok and other social media, analysts more likely to appear on Youtube than on major TV networks, informed in a way that allows them to make their own decisions on what to believe. They are no longer willing sheep to government manipulation.

Progressives in the U.S. look back at a president they despised, Ronald Reagan, and realize he stopped an Israeli siege in Lebanon by simply telephoning the Prime Minister and threatening to cut off delivery of U.S. weapons systems. We look back at that now with amazement.  If an arch conservative could do that, why can’t a Democrat? How many bodies, how much rubble does he need to see? What can we expect from Joe Biden?

How about Biden licking an ice cream cone? That’s an image we’ll remember.

The modern version of Nero and his fiddle.

While the world outside burned with demands for justice.

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Published in Vox Populi under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

Richard Krawiec has published 4 novels in France to acclaim from Rolling Stone, Telerama and elsewhere.  His 5th, Croire en Quoi? is forthcoming this Fall. He is founder of Jacar Press, a Community Active publishing company.