Although I sincerely hoped to move on from discussing the tragic Israel-Hamas War, recent events have demanded otherwise. A couple of weeks ago, Senior Airman Aaron Bushnell, U.S. Air Force, lit himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy, yelling “Free Palestine!” multiple times before collapsing on to the pavement. He later died of his injuries.
There were a wide variety of reactions to his protest. Some viewed it as both an inspiration and impetus to protest further Israel Defense Forces operations in Gaza. Others viewed it as an act of extremism, sympathetic to those who share a cause with terrorist groups like Hamas. Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton wrote a letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin questioning “how this individual was allowed to serve on active duty.”
Sen. Cotton’s line of reasoning is irritatingly simple-minded, made even more aggravating by the fact that Cotton is an Army veteran himself. Someone who voluntarily served as an officer in the U.S. Army should understand sacrifice, even if it comes in an untraditional form. Although Bushnell’s act was undoubtedly extreme, there is a difference between Hamas, who murders others for their cause, and an American service member who was unwilling to sacrifice anyone but himself to make his point.
Cotton’s arguments also expose a larger logical fallacy among the staunchest Israeli allies: that expressing support for Palestinians equals expressing support for Hamas. Such arguments rely on an abundance of false causal relationships, such as the idea that “letting up” on Hamas by instituting a ceasefire would lead to more terrorist attacks (an idea I thoroughly debunked in an earlier column).
I have noticed the old guard of both the liberal and conservative establishments using this same logic to dismiss protesters out-of-hand. They have also insinuated false equivalences by suggesting IDF operations in Gaza are no different than American operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and labeled activists as anti-Semitic because they only seem willing to criticize the Jewish state for its collateral damage.
I have a few responses to these politicians and pundits. First, about half of the people actively protesting the IDF’s campaign in Gaza were toddlers when the Global War on Terror began, so of course we did not react in the same way. I hate to sound cliché, but those fiascoes were on your generation. Now, however, we have a choice to stand up to the excesses of a counterterrorism campaign.
Secondly, the “anti-Semitic” bias is more a product of the news environment. News agencies are simply less likely to report on war crimes and civilian casualties conducted by the military of the country in which they reside. CNN, Fox and NBC were unlikely to challenge specific U.S. military operations because they reside in a place where such reporting would be deemed unpatriotic. Thus a bias against all foreign operations, not just Israeli ones, affects our news sources.
Thirdly, all these staunchly pro-Israel advocates fail to engage with the actual casualty counts. According to the Gaza-run Health Ministry (whose casualty totals have been independently deemed reliable, even by some Israeli officials), 31,000 Gazans have died, including militants. If I am going to be conservative, I would estimate 18,000 of them are civilians (half of those being children). In the entirety of the Afghan War – due to the actions of every side and group involved, including the United States, during the course of 20 years – the estimate of civilian casualties is “more than 70,000.” Albeit horrific, there were only quadruple the civilian casualties in a conflict that lasted 45 times as long.
I have never seen a clearer example of the term “false equivalency.” This is what angers me most – the morally simplistic arguments people make to gloss over the unethical implications of their ostensibly ethical actions. Morality is never simple. I believe Airman Bushnell understood that. I hope others can as well.
Janagan Ramanathan is a Sartell High School alum, former U.S. Naval Academy midshipman and current aerospace engineering major at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.
