When Are You Guilty for the Crimes of Your Group

One of the most stable political situations in the West is the use of charges of anti-semitism to attack those who criticize Israel.

Alexandria Occasio-Cortez, who championed Palestine in her primary run, was quickly broken by the pro-Israeli lobby, before she was even elected. The UK Labour party under Jeremy Corbyn has been under constant attack for “anti-semitism” because Corbyn is sympathetic to Palestinians. And recently, Representative Ilhan Omar suggested that donation from AIPAC are why Congress supports Israel.

(I don’t think that’s mostly correct. They fear AIPAC for far more than monetary reasons.)

Anyway, Ilhan was forced to apologize.

I tend to avoid the Israel-Palestine issue because it’s so dangerous. It’s the only issue I’ve ever been told to shut my mouth about or else (a donor strike, in that case).

But let’s state this simply: Israel is a religious-ethnic apartheid settler state, where the land and homes of much of the people who lived there were seized by force.

The problem is that criticism if Israel, a particularly evil state, is deliberately conflated with criticism of Jews, because Israel is an explicitly Jewish state.

So, here’s the formula:

Jews: Wonderful. Israelis: Citizens of an apartheid, colonial state running the world’s largest open air prison. Any Israeli who opposes their government’s Palestinian policies is good in that regard. Any Israeli who supports the government is evil. It’s not hard.

Let us extend this:

Germans: Wonderful. Germans who supported the Nazis. Evil. Germans who opposed the Nazis. Good.

Or:

Americans: Wonderful Americans who supported the Iraq War: Evil. Americans who opposed the Iraq War: Good.

(We could instead say, oh, Whites, or African Americans, or women, then move to Americans.)

People have responsibility exactly equal to their power. Nonetheless, if you support evil, you are culpable.

Most ethical situations are, in fact, black and white. We like to pretend they aren’t. Let’s take another situation:

Raising the price of Insulin 1000 percent in a few years: Evil. People who do it? Mass murderers. Correct punishment? Same as for any other murderers.

None of this is to say redemption is impossible. One of my friends supported the Iraq War. He quickly realized his mistake, reversed his position and has consistently opposed shitty American wars since then.

George Bush wouldn’t get off so easy: He had a lot of power, therefore his responsibility is much greater and as he’s no longer in power, he can no longer “make it up”.

The rule for redemption is as follows:

First stop doing evil. Apologize. Make it up. Those insulin execs: Drop the prices back down. Disgorge all the profits you made, with a priority to the families of those you killed. That’s all it takes.

But if you keep doing it or supporting it you are responsible or complicit.

This isn’t hard. Don’t do evil. Don’t support evil. If you do or support evil, then you are stained by that evil.

As for Israelis: It is not their fault they are Israelis. However, if they support their government’s policies against Palestinians, well, they’re evil.

The same is true of Jews, as it is of individuals belonging to identity-group you wish to name.

With respect to Israel, well, all it has to do is offer all Palestinians full citizenship and give them reparations equal to what was stolen. This will probably mean the end of Israel as an religious-ethnic state, but, umm, are religious ethnic states a good thing?

We all know what is required when we do wrong. Stop doing harm, apologize, and recompense the victim(s) as best one is able. (Yeah, this applies to black descendents of slavery in the US, though not so much as it does to the remaining Native Americans in the US, Canada, and elsewhere.)

While often what we should do as individuals isn’t true of states, for redemption and forgiveness, it is. Stop doing evil. Say sorry. Make it up as best one can.

But first stop doing evil.

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