On War, Peace, Genocide, and Absurdity

Or how (not) to speak and write about the Ukraine War and the Gaza Genocide

It is a fact that I often write and occasionally speak about two important events of our very dark times: the Ukraine War and the Gaza Genocide. This is not the place to go into long, self-searching, navel-gazing elaborations why this pattern has emerged. I have made it, obviously, but I did not deliberately choose it.

Only so much: Unlike some who stake silly claims, I happen to be a genuine expert on Russia as well as Ukraine, trained well and long and, no minor point, in full command of both languages. That’s just the way things have turned out. On Palestine and “Israel” I cannot claim to be an expert. While doing my best to be well-informed (and not disinformed), I have no special training; I do not know Hebrew and my Arabic is, to my greatest regret, below rudimentary. Yet I am human, and genocide concerns all humans entirely.

And here we are, the mostly powerless bystanders of the Gaza Genocide. We can protest and struggle, but we know that we do not command what stopping the “Israeli” monsters of mass murder and sadism would take: an army to save their Palestinian (and many other) victims, defeat them totally (just like their kin, the German Nazis of yore), and abolish their rotten fascist state. And the many of us who do not participate in direct action, such as the heroes of Palestine Action, for instance, in the future, for the rest of our lives, we will certainly have to remember how little we did, not how much.

That little must, however, be done. And while doing it as best we can, an urgent question has appeared now. Let’s put it like this, in very rough outline: When Joe “Genocide” Biden led the US – the mightiest and the decisive Western co-perpetrator state of the Gaza Genocide – things were absolutely horrible (as they are now), but they were simpler in one regard. The demon – and I choose this word deliberately as a lapsed-ish Roman-Catholic who faults the Church for not having excommunicated the vile, perverse slaughterer – Joe Biden did nothing that anyone intellectually and morally sane could possibly welcome. (Please note that I am not writing “nothing mitigating” because one cannot “mitigate” for the crime of genocide.)

Now we are dealing with his successor, who is co-perpetrating the Gaza Genocide no less than Biden. Yes, Donald Trump as well is Donald “Genocide” Trump. And yet he has let us know – not just jokingly, as his spokeswoman has credibly assured us – that he would like to go to Heaven. And that although he knows – or, in false modesty thickly applied, claims to know – that his chances are not great.

Donald “Genocide” Trump’s reason, so he tells us, for believing he could still have a shot at paradise is the same that makes him figures he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize in this world already: his contribution to, hopefully, ending the Ukraine War.

Let’s set aside deliberately how little sense this claim makes as Trump has, of course, made his own contribution to provoking the war in the first place. Indeed by pumping up Ukraine with arms his predecessor had not given to it, Trump also bears indirect responsibility for prolonging the war. Without the Javelins supplied by him, Ukraine might have been defeated quickly. Depending on what side you are on you might have found that regrettable. It is a fact everyone has to acknowledge that it would have saved almost two million Ukrainian soldiers from death, as we now know. But, again, let’s set that aside.

What is much more disturbing, abysmally revolting really, is that the same Donald “Genocide” Trump does not even seem to realize that Heaven cannot possibly be a place for those co-perpetrating a genocide, as he is. His understanding of the world, his place in it, and essential morality is deeply perverse. He is not – in vulgarized Christian terminology – a small-fry sinner, the usual run-of-the-mill fallen man (and woman, of course): greedy, jealous, cheating, stealing, and perhaps even worse. If God selects anyone to be beyond His mercy, it is the mass murderers and, of course, those of children. Yes, and their helpers, too. Like the Joe Biden he loves to hate, Donald “Genocide” Trump is a monstrous sinner, a factual, objective agent of diabolical evil. Will he ever understand? Who knows? Is there a way back for him? Only God knows.

But let’s ask about ourselves and our obligations: How must we write and speak and how must we not write and speak about these two coinciding events: the Ukraine War and its possible end, in which Trump does play a role (if not as grand as he may like to imagine), and the Gaza Genocide, in which he also plays a role (if much worse and much greater than he wants to know).

One (bad) answer is obvious: compartmentalization. Its practice is as ugly as the word. It really means engaging in a form of lying and denying. One cannot speak of Trump’s real – and for whatever reason – work toward peace in and over Ukraine and just “forget” about his co-perpetrating a genocide in Palestine. Without the slightest intention to be flippant but imagine a German trying to sell you “Hitler-the-high-way-builder,” while conveniently omitting Hitler-the-Holocauster. See? (Personally, for what it is worth, I have adopted a habit of at least mentioning Trump-the-Co-Genocider whenever I am asked or speak about “Trump-the-Peacemaker.” Good enough? Hardly.

Then, there would be relativization. Another cumbersome term, it literally applies here: Another (bad) way to speak about Ukraine and Gaza in the same moment would be to state or imply a de facto hierarchical relationship between their meanings and the obligations they produce. That is such a dastardly technique that I find it off-putting to even articulate it for the purposes of exposition. But here it is. It would amount to saying, loudly or tacitly, that dialing down the risk of apocalyptic nuclear war involving the USA and Russia is more important than ending the genocide of the Palestinians.

It is obvious that this would be a “logic” both entirely flawed and profoundly evil. Flawed because there is no actual, really compelling reason – no whatever “Israel” has on Trump and the rest of the apparently comprehensively perverse American establishment does not qualify; neither do electoral or geopolitical considerations – why Trump could not, in fact must not do both: help end the war in Ukraine and, even much more urgently, end the genocide in Gaza, which instead he is prolonging and helping to commit. Indeed, it is – objectively – much easier for an American president to stop “Israel,” which cannot survive without constant, massive US support, than make peace in Ukraine.

That means, Trump’s performance over Ukraine is nothing to be proud of, actually: it only highlights how horrific his crime over Palestine is. That needs to be said. And if Donald “Genocide” Trump should really receive the Nobel Peace Prize, it would just be one more instance of the complete prostitution of those who hand it out as well as yet another sign of just how absurdly evil our “elites” are.

Yet again, how to do better, not by degrees but principally? I cannot end this text with an answer because I have none. But one thing is clear: Palestinian lives and rights cannot be treated as lesser; as, in effect, something that matters less than, for instance, the preservation of others from the risk of World War Three. Indeed, in terms of the crimes committed, genocide and the mass murder of children are the worst. The very least we must do is hold those ready to pat themselves on the shoulder over peace in Ukraine accountable. They must not be permitted to hide that they are genocide co-perpetrators in Palestine, and they must be reminded that there is no “mitigating” that absolute evil.