Dissenting for Gaza?

Somewhere in Northern Gaza - A City Left in Ruins

Does genocide merit public dissent? Can the support for systematic rape, and calls for its increase, be obstructed by mere colloquial objection? Will the eradication of an entire people along with centuries-old roots be matched with civil, mannered disagreement?

After attending CCAS's event titled The Duty to Dissent: Objections to US Policy on Israel and Palestine, these questions arose, stark and haunting, in my mind—questions that, for someone invested in halting the genocide unfolding live on our screens, seem unsettlingly subjective. The event hosted four individuals who resigned from their positions in various U.S. government departments as a protest against the U.S. support for Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza. 

The panel included Josh Paul, a former director at the U.S. Department of State; Harrison Mann, a former U.S. Army major and executive officer of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) Middle East/Africa Regional Center; Lily Greenberg Call, a political appointee and Special Assistant to the Chief of Staff at the Interior Department; and Alexander Smith, a former government contractor at the U.S. Agency for International Development. 

Each panelist brought a distinct perspective to the discussion, illuminating both encouraging and disheartening realities about Palestine in the U.S. public sphere. A common thread among them, and probably the only one worthwhile pondering over, was the undeniable acknowledgment among government officials at various levels of government that Israel’s actions in Gaza violated international law and could be classified as war crimes. In the moment, I was encouraged by Harrison Mann remarks that “the intel community was well aware of the high [Palestinian] casualty counts.” Both Lily and Josh echoed Mann’s sentiment in their resignation statements, sharing anecdotes that revealed their disturbing confrontations with the administration’s leadership over its unwavering support for Israel’s actions.

People of conscious may criticize me for feeling encouraged by what amounts to lip service—and I would join them. But in a moment where every answer seemed to underline how empire and its apparatus are working towards your demise, even a slight shift in tone—a glimmer of belief that gradual dissent could lead to real change—felt like a bunker in a tsunami. Mann and Paul seized the opportunity to solidify this sense of trust in the system, getting the final word of the night. They urged young people in the audience not to lose hope in the lack of progress toward a ceasefire, and insisted that their own dissent could eventually shift the tide.

In hindsight, and after some time to digest, I realize how foolish I was to accept the terms set by these so-called ‘dissenters.’ By the end of the discussion, Israel had dropped a 2,000-pound bomb on 20 tents where displaced families were sheltering in al-Mawasi, Gaza—a so-called humanitarian, or “safe,” zone. The attack killed at least 19 Palestinian children, men, and women, injuring 65, with many still trapped under the rubble as of the time of writing.

Israel’s actions utterly obliterated all the points made in the talk. They underscored the fact that these ‘dissenters’ were not disrupting U.S. foreign policy but merely buying it time, selling the illusion that trust in government is logical, sane, and necessary. These talking points not only dilute the act of dissent but also prove once again that Palestine’s liberation will never come from career bureaucrats.

The nail in the coffin proving that the titling of the event was colloquial catfishing came when Lily Greenberg Call circled back to the 2024 election, indirectly endorsing her former boss by stating that Donald Trump would be worse than genocide, worse than the destruction of 75% of all building, worse than the death of 186 000 people, worse than having 94% of Palestinians in Gaza facing high levels of acute food insecurity, worse than all universities turned into rubble, worse than the millions of hours documenting torture, rape, bodies mutilated, mothers and father carrying their lifeless and cold children begging for a power out of this world to step in and end it all, and worse than the stripping of children and men from their clothing while handcuffed and blindfolded on their way to detention centers built on their grandparents confiscated land, where their dignity, bodies, and sanity would be desecrated.

Some may argue that I am not the intended audience, that these four individuals hold the key to unlocking a specific but a powerful group’s ironclad support for the genocidal state—and perhaps that is true. But to frame their actions as dissent as they simultaneously urge trust in the very government that funds, arms, and shields the eradication of Palestinian society is morally bankrupt and dishonest, both to the audience and to the English language itself.

Excuse my harsh tone but had the tens of thousands of children been Ukrainian, or Jewish (dare I say it) the act of dissenting would have been, at minimum, government wide shutdown with weapons manufacturing plants and shipping transportation companies taking it upon themselves to punish both the state that is funding these atrocities and the one enacting the act of genocide.

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UofT Encampment: A Testimony of Love For Palestine