On December 3 2023, United States Ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, posted to X (Twitter), "On the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, we honor the leadership of persons with disabilities. True inclusion means equity, accessibility, and amplifying voices. Together, we can break barriers and ensure a world where everyone thrives."
My mind immediately went to Muhammed Bhar, the 24-year-old man with Down’s syndrome who was savaged by an Israeli attack dog in front of his family in July of this year.
Nonverbal, Muhammed spoke his first and last words to the dog as it mauled him, calling out, "Let go, Habibi, enough!" Israeli forces prevented his family from reaching him, and his decomposed body was only collected a week later.
Muhammed, then, was not included in Thomas-Greenfield's use of "everyone." Nor were the thousands of Palestinian men, women, and children who have lost limbs or have been otherwise disabled by Israel’s genocidal campaign. After all, she has facilitated this violence, casting the decisive veto in numerous UN Security Council ceasefire votes.
The tweet was a microcosm of our current moment, where the rights-based approach to social justice has foundered and been consumed by the very actors it sought to challenge. Powerholders enact terrible violence while invoking progress, equality, and justice.
In many ways, Thomas-Greenfield is simply part of the machine, interchangeable with any number of functionaries. The post could be one of any number of tone-deaf comms that highlight the administration’s hypocrisy. Yet the tweet also highlights the sinister way the language of equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) has crept into the discourse.
To justify genocidal acts to their populaces, nations carrying out mass death need to provide powerful narratives. Frequently, these centre on claims of self-defence from existential threats or resource scarcity.
Think, for example, of the regarding the perceived threat posted by the Tutsi people spread in the run-up to the Rwanda genocide, or the German preoccupation with .
To be sure, both of these narratives have been deployed with regards to Gaza. Israel’s "right to self-defence" has been repeated ad nauseam by officials and pundits across the globe.
A recent Times of Israel that made explicit reference to Israel’s need for "Lebensraum," was quickly pulled after publication. But a new narrative has emerged, as well, aimed at Western, Liberal audiences.
G is for genocide
Now we are being told that Palestinians — through their very existence — are a threat to Liberal Western values. Israel’s genocidal acts are reframed as a war on a vague Islamic threat to many of the marginalised groups who have identified with the Palestinian struggle.
Take the words of Israel’s biggest cheerleader in the US Senate, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, The New York Times in December of last year, I do find it confusing where the very left progressives in America don’t seem to want to support really the only progressive nation in the region that really embraces the same kind of values I would expect we would want as a society."
Netanyahu himself called protestors "useful idiots" for the “tyrants of Tehran, who hang gays from cranes and murder women for not covering their hair,” in .
He went on to compare "gays for Gaza" to "Chickens for KFC." It’s a common refrain from Israel’s supporters, along with telling individual LGBTQ+ pro-Palestinian advocates to, “go to Gaza,” with the implied or explicit threat that they will be killed.
Pinkwashing is nothing new. But what feels qualitatively different is the consistent framing of Palestinians in Gaza, trapped and under siege thousands of miles away, as being somehow a threat to LGBTQ+ Americans. The rhetoric echoes the nationalist narratives that formed around the civil liberties of sexual minorities to justify the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, as explored in Jasbir Puar’s Terrorist Assemblages.
Subscribe Now and Listen to our Podcasts OnA clumsy attempt is being made to graft Western culture wars onto the Palestinian struggle to splinter support from abroad. As I have previously looked at here, the lead-up to and aftermath of the US election saw a concerted effort to frame Palestinian solidarity as in tension with the rights of other marginalised groups in the US.
Charges of were levelled against photojournalists Motaz Azaiza and Bisan Owda after they had spent months risking life and limb to cover the genocide.
The difficult decision not to vote for Kamala Harris was framed as an attack on the rights of women and racial minorities. Viral social media posts made real efforts to chip away at solidarity, though mercifully their impact seems limited.
Meanwhile, the Anti-Defamation League has kicked into overdrive using the framework of hate crime to suppress pro-Palestinian voices.
CEO Johnathan Greenblatt has been making the media rounds decrying the "" in antisemitic incidents they documented in the year following October 7. Much less coverage has been given to the organisation’s changes to their definition of antisemitism to include more anti-Zionist rhetoric, with anti-Zionist chants and slogans making up a large proportion of the new incidents.
Jewish Currents has how the ADL’s strategic shift has damaged organisational identity, leading many staff to dissent or resign.
In response to questioning, an ADL spokesperson told them, "You cannot separate the fight for civil rights from the fight for the Jewish people’s right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland." Greenblatt himself stated in a staff meeting, "Zionism is a liberation movement."
The ADL statistics were cited in the press release for the "Antisemitism Inclusion in DEI Act of 2023," which New York’s Representative Ritchie Torres introduced in December 2023.
The bill would require publicly traded companies to disclose whether they have DEI programmes specifically aimed at combatting antisemitism to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Torres, who, according to the , has received over one million in AIPAC money, the "COLUMBIA Act," which would allow the Department of Education to impose "antisemitism monitors" on education institutions that receive federal funding.
Both pieces of legislation should be viewed in light of Congressional efforts adopt the IHRA working definition of antisemitism.
The , co-sponsored by Torres and already passed in the House, would require the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights to take into the IHRA definition of antisemitism when investigating complaints of discrimination.
The very legal, theoretical, and discursive frameworks that were promised to liberate us are now explicitly being utilised in furtherance of the slaughter of Palestinians. At the same moment, the kinder, gentler genocidal politics of the Biden administration are being replaced by the openly techno-fascist aims of Trump’s entourage. The path forward seems uncertain, but the vibe has irrevocably shifted.
Alex Foley is an educator and painter living in Brighton, UK. They have a research background in molecular biology of health and disease. They currently work on preserving fragile digital materials related to mass death atrocities in the MENA region.
Follow them on X:
Have questions or comments? Email us at: editorial-english@newarab.com
Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of °®Âţµş, its editorial board or staff.