Let's call out indifference for the violent form of racism it actually is

“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference“
– Elie Wiesel, Romanian-born American writer, professor, political activist, Nobel laureate, and Holocaust survivor

When you walk outside, you don’t take great care to avoid stepping on ants. Not because you hate ants, but because it’s no big deal if you step on one. There will be no consequences. No one’s going to arrest you. You’re not going to be asked to reflect on what impact it had on the ant colony. If anyone asked, you simply say “I didn’t see it. I was multi-tasking”. If you did step on an ant and noticed, it’s an ‘oopsie’ and not something you get hung up on for beyond a few seconds, if that.

This is how it is with many racists and their victims – they may not actively detest each individual (that would take too much thought and energy) but they are so indifferent and immune to their existence they don’t consider them.

If you read most articles about Churchill, like even his Wikipedia page, you’ll see a lot of praise for his leadership in fighting the Nazis, and an immense distortion and toning down of his hand in the Bengal Famine of 1943, which killed up to 3 million Indians. Essentially, the British Government, led by Churchill, didn’t give a crap about Indians (big surprise) and was busy extracting resources from India for World War 2.

A 2019 Guardian article, which summarizes results of a study using weather data that adds to the already high level of evidence that there was enough food and the famine was man-made, notes: “The cabinet was warned repeatedly that the exhaustive use of Indian resources for the war effort could result in famine, but it opted to continue exporting rice from India to elsewhere in the empire. Rice stocks continued to leave India even as London was denying urgent requests from India’s viceroy for more than 1m tonnes of emergency wheat supplies in 1942-43. Churchill has been quoted as blaming the famine on the fact Indians were “breeding like rabbits”, and asking how, if the shortages were so bad, Mahatma Gandhi was still alive.“

It should be wholly obvious, just with this piece of information (there’s plenty more), that Churchill was a blazing racist. But that would be a blow to the narrative of the glorious Allies defeating the Nazis. A clean story of Good vs. Evil taught in textbooks. How could the leader of the Allies be evil?! Stories of one may-be-lesser evil versus another evil are not so digestible for simple minds. So you will find a lot of equivocation and justification for Churchill starving to death 3 million people. In some of the defenses of Churchill, people will say he didn’t realize how bad the famine was. Even if you buy this BS, willful ignorance is just another form of indifference. If you choose to not learn about a subject, or to ignore or deprioritize what people are telling you on a matter as grave as famine, it’s indifference and it’s racist.

Fast forward to 2024, when we’re so progressive and have learnt so much from history that there wouldn’t be a man-made famine now and people would be watching out for racism and making sure they’re educated about big issues…right? Oh wait…

I’ve observed shocking levels of indifference countless times when I hear discussions on podcasts from media personalities justifying Israel’s siege on Palestine. Quite often it’s not what they say about Palestinians but in many cases, what they fail to say at all. The entire discussion will be centered on Israel and Israelis and Jews and the terrible history of Jewish trauma. This history is undeniable and important. But it’s very unfair to have a discussion about the current genocide, in which there are thousands of Palestinian civilians being killed every day, with their access to food and water cut off – and to not mention Palestinian trauma at all, or mention it as a side-note. In the current reality, Palestinian loss of life and suffering is the central story. It’s the reason millions march around the world – to ask for an end to the suffering.

Yet American Zionists want to center themselves in the narrative. They imagine every protest is against them, rather than for humanity, of which they are also a part. It reflects a kind of sick narcissism (‘everything is about me’) and dehumanization of Palestinians (because Palestinian suffering is invisible or insignificant to them, they can’t fathom any other reason for protest than Jew-hatred, and thus they choose to malign the many prominent Jewish voices in the Palestinian movement too – as “self-hating Jews”). The most face-palmy example of this centering was recently one of my Israeli FB friends posted how offended she was that someone had stuck a “Free Palestine” sticker on an Amy Winehouse statue in London. This was a news story. Distasteful and interpreted by some as anti-Semitic. But is this sticker-vandalism the most important thing for us to lament when kids are getting their limbs amputated without anaesthesia? And if this is the thing that bothers you the most, what does it say about your values?

The very fact that the discussions have become so intellectualized (mostly psuedo-intellectualized) and drawn out, whilst millions suffer daily, is testament to racism. Most of us imagine that if we see a child in physical harm, we will do what it takes to save them – give them food, put out a fire, give them a blanket. We don’t imagine having long debates about the child’s ethnicity, race, religion, who their parents were, did the child deserve this?, is their suffering part of the greater good? By the time you’d have figured all that out, they might be dead. But Zionists have manufactured great noise and debate around simple humanitarian issues like a child’s right to food or medicines. Some of it is valid debate (like what should the future of Israel-Palestine look like), but I’d much rather have the valid debates whilst children were not starving or being bombed.

In his 2014 VOX article, Max Fisher observes the nature of discussions about Palestinians: “There is validity to asking whether Hamas should so ensconce itself among civilians in a way that will invite attacks, just as there is validity to asking why Israel seems to show so little restraint in dropping bombs over Gaza neighborhoods. But even that argument over moral superiority ultimately treats those dying Palestinian families as pawns in the conflict, tokens to be counted for or against, their humanity and suffering so easily disregarded“

The indifference towards Palestinians also manifests in a weird burden of work requirement on the anti-war protesters. We’re supposed to provide a detailed playbook of how to counter Hamas without hurting as many Palestinians. People have risen up to the challenge. People like Zack Beauchamp, Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappe, have written at length about the root cause of the violence, and the importance of addressing the root causes, but it’s ignored because the Netenyahu administration don’t want to actually negotiate a fair peace deal with an end to occupation, reparations and right of return for refugees. Interestingly, there’s no burden of work required from those blowing up thousands of civilians to explain why this was the strategy they landed on. People causing immense harm, that have access to military expertise, don’t have to have a strategy or a plan. But if you’re an activist calling for a Ceasefire on the streets, you better also be a military expert, you’ll be quizzed about what else Israel could have done instead. As if there was no other option than to starve 2.2 million people.

Pro-war people don’t need to show a detailed plan and justification for why they need to hurt people. But anti-war people must show in a lot of detail what their alternative strategies would be. Who should the burden of proof be on? Those campaigning for peace or those for harm?
Brown Girl Confidence

Harm to people you are indifferent about doesn’t register as real harm. So instead, the debate rages on relatively less critical issues like anti-Semitism in campuses (some of it undoubtedly real, but a lot of it also fabricated like labeling someone carrying a “Save the Children” sign as anti-Semitic) and people’s feelings about slogans that they don’t bother to actually research (“From River to the Sea” – used in many marches as a chant for equal rights for all from the river to the sea). A feeling that someone in the comfort of their New York or Bay Area home has is worth more than the real physical harm inflicted upon millions of Palestinians. This is the level of indifference we’re dealing with – it is staggering. Let’s call the indifference out for the violent form of racism it is.

References

Netanyahu’s ‘Day After’ Plan for Gaza Is Not Feasible, and Is Not a Plan – Haaretz article