On the day when the Russian human rights organization Memorial became a co-winner of the Nobel Peace prize last year, its activists had very little opportunity to process the news. October 7, 2022 found them huddled in a windowless hall of one of Moscow’s district courts, where Memorial was fighting the capture of its assets by the Russian state. Nine months earlier, the Russian Supreme Court liquidated Memorial under the so-called “foreign agent law,” so the new judicial decision to take over their assets was hardly a surprise. On the day the organization was recognized in Stockholm for its human rights and educational work on behalf of victims of Soviet state terror, it became essentially homeless in Moscow.

While formally the cause of Memorial’s legal woes was its failure to consistently brand itself as a foreign agent in all of its public statements, the words of the prosecutor left little doubt as to the real reason behind the state’s hostility. Memorial’s crime was simply its commitment to commemorating the victims of Soviet-era state violence. As state prosecutor Aleksei Zhafiarov put it during the hearings that led to Memorial’s liquidation, “Why should we, the descendants of victorious people, feel shame and repent, rather than pride ourselves on our glorious past?” The organization’s keen gaze at state terror, he made clear, was perceived by the Russian state as actively harmful in the present.

The same commitment to making Soviet-era state violence visible that landed Memorial in the Russian courts is what animates the groundbreaking volume by Denis Skopin entitled Photography and Political Repressions in Stalin’s Russia: Defacing the Enemy. The book, published by Routledge in 2022 in its History of Photography series, is a conceptually and empirically rich study of a corpus of 57 photographs from Stalinist Russia (many of them from Memorial’s archives), in which faces of people declared “enemies of the state” have been removed: scratched out, painted over or otherwise excised. While the existence of such photographs is well known (one such image, for example, was reproduced on the hardcover of Orlando Figes’ Whisperers [2007]), Skopin is the first to probe this practice for what it reveals about both Soviet history and the ontology of photography — group photography in particular.

Photography and Political Repressions in Stalin’s Russia consists of five chapters. The first one lays out the historical context of Stalin’s terror before advancing to a close reading of the criminal cases centered on improper handling of representations of political leaders, the subject of Chapter Two. Chapters Two to Four are the theoretical heart of the book, in which Skopin lays out his theory of group portraiture and discusses specific cases of photographic defacement, before concluding this discussion with a fifth, empirical chapter on the defaced photographs in secret police archives. He argues persuasively that Soviet-era photographic destruction, while close in spirit to other acts of iconoclasm, such as damnatio memoriae, has its own distinctive logic. The removal of faces from photographs during the Great Terror, he suggests, was driven by a desire to purify the community depicted in these images by visually ejecting the newly discovered “enemy” from the group. Skopin’s theorization of group portraiture under Stalin takes inspiration from Gilbert Simondon’s concept of “transindividuality,” framing collective portraiture that was so prevalent throughout the Soviet period as a tool for cultivating the supra-individual nature of Soviet subjectivity. Such emphasis on the prevalence of the collective, and on one’s inherent entanglement with it, created problems for everyone who shared the photographic space with the people subsequently denounced as traitors. As the number of such bogus denunciations grew, more and more group photographs were swept into the vortex of a visual iconoclasm that targeted “less the portrait itself than its performative value, namely its power to create a relationship between the iconoclast and the enemy of the people” (141).

Given the immediate political danger posed by the visual evidence of association with an enemy of the state, why would so many such photographs be preserved? Instead of destroying the compromising evidence entirely, why would people keep the photos with the traces of violence done to them? Skopin’ hypothesis is that the images were simply too valuable to be disposed of, and this makes sense, especially given the outsized importance that belonging to a group carried for individual identities in the USSR. But it is also possible that these images were preserved precisely as records of the righteous indignation that drove their owners to iconoclasm. They were there to make that outrage visible, and in this way, to protect their owners by testifying to their loyalties.

The complex motivation behind photo tampering is especially evident in a particular subset of photographs – those of familial groups. Many of these more intimate portraits also carried the signs of violent modifications aimed at dissociating the family from a member exposed as “an enemy of the people.” The book considers them as congruent with the logic of group self-purification (the group in question this time being the family), but it also notes some details that seem to call for an investigation of the ways in which the practices around these images differed. While the visual editing of large-N collectives tended towards the dramatic, with faces violently blotched or torn out, images of familial groups more frequently strove to conceal the signs of their modification, for example, by painting a curtain over a figure, or even transforming the clothing of the sitter in order to hide a Tsarist-era uniform or military award in a preventative act of caution. The point with these images, it seems, was not so much to perform an act of outrage that ejected the traitor from the group, but rather to shield a loved one from the violence of history in an act of care.

While the release of Skopin’s study would be an important intellectual event under any circumstances, the grim irony of its publication in 2022 is that this research is unlikely to reach its readers in Russia for many of the same reasons that fueled the dynamic of mass terror in Stalin-era USSR. Indeed, in October 2022, just as the Memorial activists were busy fighting the capture of the group’s assets by the state, Skopin’s academic employer, St. Petersburg State University, terminated its contract with the author, citing “immoral behavior” as the reason for dismissal. The immoral act in question was Skopin’s participation in a public protest against the government’s mass mobilization of military-aged men to wage Russia’s criminal war on Ukraine. Skopin, who has had to leave Russia after spending ten days in detention, is but one among many Russian academics forced to choose between silence and abandoning their students in recent months; the history that his volume had been probing seems to have come a full circle. The very least the rest of us can do is make this violence visible.

Image NOAA

Eleven thousand years ago, all of Canada, save the Yukon Valley, was under ice.  The country was literally a blank slate.  Then warming set in, the land vegetated, people entered, and white Canada evolved into a green Canada.  Lightning and torch kindled fires.  Green Canada burned—and has burned ever since.  Climate is the grandest of the themes that frame Canadian history.

The primordial rivalry between ice and fire has deepened in recent years: the fires are more savage and frequent, the ice is melting more swiftly.  This time the tempo is set not by Milankovitch cycles that regulate the intensity of solar radiation but by anthropogenic fire. People have escalated from burning living landscapes to burning lithic ones – once living, now fossilized into coal, gas, and oil. Canada began burning its combustion candle at both its ends. 

The serial ice ages that erased and repopulated Canada like a palimpsest have yielded to a fire age that is rewriting history with flame.  An interglacial period has morphed into an epoch in its own right.  Call it the Pyrocene.

You might think that a place so vast, and so combustible, would be filled with fire traditions, a fire literature and fire art, fire institutions, a fire culture in the fullest sense.  But while colonized Canada has a first-world fire establishment, and displays developed-world fire pathologies, it shows a remarkable disconnect between fire’s presence on the land and its manifestation in the culture. This is particularly true among elites who live in cities, not the bush. Only over the past couple of decades has fire entered common currency. Canada may be a firepower, but it punches below its weight internationally.  Its muted presence makes a striking contrast to Australia.

One explanation points to the character of boreal Canada, and two others to how fire fits with Canadian ideas and institutions.

Begin with the boreal environment.  The boreal forest, which houses the major burns, is a landscape informed by extremes, not averages, now exacerbated by global warming.  Burning obeys rhythms of boom and bust.  This makes planning, budgeting, and general bureaucratic operations difficult.  Yet they are expected to stand between the extremes of boreal fire and ordinary life.  Taking the pounding can make them unstable.  Still, Alaska has managed, and Mediterranean climates present similar challenges. 

The other explanations derive from the character of Canada as a confederation.  The great question of culture and politics (and national identity) was how to reconcile colonies that did not want to unite, but were compelled by force, geopolitics, or economics to join together. The Anglophone-Francophone bond was both the largest and softest of these welds. There was little reason (or bandwidth left) to contemplate the boreal backcountry, other than as part of a northern economy of fish, fur, minerals, and timber.  Fire control existed to keep the timber flowing.

The second is that the colonies, now provinces, retained control over their landed estate and its natural resources.  Those provinces carved out of Hudson’s Bay Company lands originally held a hefty proportion of dominion lands, which were organized into national forests on the American model.  In 1930 these lands were ceded to the provinces.  The Canadian Forest Service imploded, surviving as a research program. Fire protection resided with the provinces. A national fire narrative disintegrated into provincial and territorial subnarratives.  The closest American analogy to the provinces may be Texas (imagine a U.S. consisting of 10 clones of Texas).

The provinces struggled to muster enough resources to handle the big outbreaks of fire.  Nearly all had a northern line of control beyond which they let fires burn.  Not until a round of conflagrations between 1979 and 1981 pulverized western Canada and Ontario did pressure build to create an institution that would allow provinces to share firefighting resources on a national scale.  A mutual-aid agreement with the U.S. stumbled because the U.S. wanted to sign a treaty between nations, not between a nation and separate provinces. The compromise was to craft a Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center as a corporation (not a government entity).  If the U.S. too readily nationalizes fire policies better left to local authorities, Canada fails to nationalize what exceeds provincial interests.

The Canada-U.S. Reciprocal Forest Fire Fighting Accord granted Canada access to a continental-scale cache of firefighting resources (and the U.S. access to Canadian aid when needed).  But the fires have grown meaner, larger, and more frequent, well beyond the capacity of even wealthy nations to corral.  Fires have blasted through Fort McMurray, Slave Lake, and Lytton.  They burrow into organic soils, the major reservoir of carbon in the boreal biome. Now their tag-team smoke palls have flooded Toronto and New York, Ottawa and Washington, D.C. The burning of lodgepole pine and tar sands are measurably perturbing the global climate.  Canada’s fire practices have leaped well beyond its provinces.

Image Natural Resources Canada

The argument grows, moreover, that relying solely on fire suppression only aggravates the crisis, that excluding fire leaves more of the living landscape available to burn even as climate change powered by burning lithic landscapes bolsters its propensity to burn. Most analysts plead for better forest, land, and fire management programs that work with fire. Forty years ago Parks Canada began this transformation, and now fields a world-class fire program. The Canadian Forest Service continues to publish stellar science.  Most of the larger provinces have fire control organizations that rival anything of their peers; on fire technologies like pumps and aircraft, Canada excels. Ongoing reconciliations with First Nations promise a recovery of indigenous fire knowledge. Yet the whole seems less than its parts.

It’s not enough.  The Pyrocene is coming to Canada with the scale and power of the Laurentian ice sheet.  The country needs to find ways to leverage its many fire talents not just to advance a global good but because Canada may become ground zero for a fire age.  A shift will mean burning some woods rather than logging them, and not burning bitumen and oil that Canada has in the ground.  It means matching firefighting with fire tolerating or outright fire lighting. It means kindling in the minds of its literati and elites an appreciation that fire is an indelible – and fascinating - part of living in Canada, as recent books by John Vaillant, Alan MacEachern, and Edward Struzik demonstrate.  It means accepting that, in the global economy of carbon, Canada is a superpower that needs to craft a confederation of institutions, ideas, and tools that can grant it a cultural and geopolitical presence commensurate with its conflagrations. 

On the Canadian Red River Exploring Expedition of 1857, Henry Hind observed of a massive fire that “It is like a volcano in full activity; you cannot imitate it, because it is impossible to obtain those gigantic elements from which it derives its awful splendor.”  We still can’t control those elements, though we have managed to disrupt them and so boosted their power.  But we can control our response. 

Striding masterfully through St. George’s Hall of the Grand Kremlin Palace, Vlad the Conqueror pondered his role as a Man of Destiny.

“It’s not easy to measure up to the past leaders of Russia,” he brooded.  “Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great slaughtered enormous numbers of people at home and abroad in building the largest nation on earth.”  Stalin, too, he noted, “showed the world what could be accomplished by a strong man with an unrelenting will to power.”  After all, Stalin “succeeded in murdering millions of Ukrainians through starvation, gobbling up portions of Eastern Europe through an alliance with Nazi Germany, smashing Hitler’s legions after the führer broke with him, and pushing Russian domination right into Central Europe during the early Cold War.  Now those were real men!”

Frowning, he added: “Of course, the Russian empire went downhill after that.  Stalin’s namby-pamby successors fumbled along, trying to hold it together through invasions of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Afghanistan.  And then, Gorbachev”―Vlad spat out the name―“that traitor, he wanted Russia to behave like a normal nation.  But it’s not a normal nation,” Vlad told himself heatedly.  “It’s a great nation.  And great nations require great leaders!”  Pausing briefly, he stopped to regard himself, fondly, in a diamond-encrusted mirror.

“And look at what I’ve already accomplished in restoring our nation’s grandeur―not only rebuilding our military forces and arming them with new nuclear weapons, but using Russian military power to obliterate Chechnya, secure footholds in Georgia and Moldova, annihilate resistance to Assad’s dictatorship in Syria, and launch Russian mercenary forces throughout Africa.”

He stopped and smiled.  “But the highpoint so far is surely my invasion of Ukraine.  I’ve leveled its cities, massacred many thousands of Ukrainians, sent millions more fleeing as refugees, and annexed its land into Russia.  As my long-time friend, Donald Trump, remarked of the invasion, ‘this is genius’!”  Pausing before another mirror, he again admired his profile.

“Alas,” he conceded, “not everyone recognizes greatness when they see it.  In the wake of my glorious invasion of Ukraine, 141 nations at the UN General Assembly voted to condemn it, though four wise nations did give it their support:  North Korea, Syria, Belarus, and Eritrea.  At home, too, many thousands of Russian subversives―betrayers of their Motherland (and of me!)―demonstrated and signed petitions against the war.  Fortunately, we’ve already arrested about 20,000 of them.  Also, perhaps a million Russians, losers all, fled to other lands.”  He groaned wearily.  “Well, they won’t be missed!”

“Furthermore, abroad, where I’m gratified to learn that I have many fans among rightwing and leftwing zealots, public opinion has turned against me.”  Vlad scratched his head in dismay.  “Even those segments of the Western peace movement that back my policies don’t seem to ‘get it.’  One busy bee who writes and speaks incessantly about the war in Ukraine almost completely ignores my role in it.  Instead, she chalks up the conflict to the policies of the United States and NATO.  Don’t I get any credit for anything?!”  He shook his head sadly.

“And then, of course, there are the damned Ukrainians who, instead of welcoming our invasion, destruction, and occupation of their country, are resisting!  This is surely another sign that they are unfit to govern themselves.”  He concluded, morosely:  “What a mess!”

“Yes, life is unfair to me,” Vlad sighed, as warm tears suddenly appeared and rolled lazily down his cheeks.  “And it has been for some time.”

He ruminated: “Things are not so easy when you’re a little guy―only 5 feet, 6 inches tall―in a big man’s world.  Peter the Great, a hero of mine, measured 6 feet, 8 inches.  So he certainly had an advantage there!  Also, on top of that, my puberty came late. To keep from being bullied by the other boys, I took up judo and, at the age of 19, became a black belt.  Then,” he laughed, “I joined the KGB, and people soon learned not to mess with me or with my new circle of friends.” 

“Naturally, as I moved up the Russian government hierarchy, I became known for my tough, masculine style and approach―riding bare-chested, muscles rippling, on horseback, imprisoning uppity women, and making even the mention of homosexuality punishable by imprisonment.  And I saw to it that my political opponents were packed off to prison camps―at least when they didn’t develop the nasty habit of getting poisoned or falling out of windows.”  Pounding his fist on a table inlaid with gold and ivory, Vlad chortled at his wit.

“Some say that I’m a cold person.  Actually, though, I can be warm and accommodating when it’s useful in forging friendly relationships with other great leaders―men of power like Xi Jinping, Donald Trump, Kim Jong Un, and Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman.  In 2018, when bin Salman was being snubbed by other government leaders at the G20 summit for ordering the dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi, a dangerous journalist, I went right over to the prince and we exchanged joyful high-fives.  We’ve been great pals ever since.”

Smiling, Vlad remarked: “None of them, of course, has my sophisticated grasp of international relations, and they will ultimately recognize my superior wisdom as my mastery of world affairs and my power grow ever greater.  Even now, though, they are turning to me for leadership.”  Spotting another mirror, he gazed lovingly at his splendor.

Standing tall and throwing back his shoulders, he proclaimed:  “Yes, I’m no longer Little Vlad.  I’m the supreme commander of the biggest country on earth.  And, under my rule, it’s growing even bigger.  Today I am Vlad the Conqueror!  Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”

Then, glancing about the vast, ornate hall, he muttered: “Now where the hell is my Viagra?  Where did I put it?”

"American Army Entering the City of Mexico" by Filippo Constaggini, 1885. Architect of the Capitol. 

In April 1846, the United States invaded Mexico after a highly disputed incident at the border. Freshman Congressman Abraham Lincoln challenged President James Polk’s account of Mexican provocations as misleading and demanded to know the “spot” where they supposedly took place.

None of the major European powers got involved on either side. Great Britain remained officially neutral during the war, although it objected to an American blockade that interfered with its trade with Mexico. France was uninvolved but insisted that Mexico remain an independent nation.

By September 1847, American forces had captured the Mexican capital and forced surrender. An overwhelmed Mexico signed the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ending the war and transferring to the United States over half of its territory, including modern day California, Nevada, Utah, and most of present day Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona. Mexico was also forced to drop its claims to the former Mexican province of Texas and accept the Rio Grande as the new border between the countries. In return, the United States paid Mexico a consideration of fifteen million U.S. dollars, worth between 500 and 600 million dollars in today’s money.

Mexico is never going to receive its stolen territory back. The annual economy of California today alone is $3.5 trillion, approximately three times that of Mexico.

Fast forward to 1913, when Europe was divided into two military alliances. The Central Powers  (Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Italy, later joined by the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria), faced off against the Triple Entente (Great Britain, France and the Russian Empire, later to be joined by the United States and Italy when it changed sides). The alliances provided some stability in Europe, much like NATO and the Warsaw Pact alliances did during the Cold War, but also set conditions for the situation in Europe to rapidly spiral out of control.

On July 28, 1914, Austria-Hungary invaded Serbia after the assassination of the Austrian Archduke in Sarajevo, which had been annexed by Austria-Hungary in 1908. The assassins hoped to liberate Bosnia and Herzegovina from Austro-Hungarian rule. On August 8 Montenegro joined in the defense of Serbia, and on August 9 Russia, an ally of Serbia, attacked German and Austro-Hungarian positions. Meanwhile, Germany invaded Belgium, bringing France and Great Britain into the war. In the east, Russia collapsed, but in the west the two alliances stalemated. The war dragged on until the German collapse in the fall of 1918. Military and civilian casualties during World War I, deaths and injuries, were an estimated 40 million people. The punitive treaty that ended the war became an underlying cause of World War 2 and the deaths of another 80 million people.

Fast forward again, this time to more recent decades. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine and Russia became independent countries, with the former Soviet Black Sea naval base now located in Ukraine after Crimea was administratively transferred from Russia to Ukraine in the 1950s. In 2014, a Ukrainian government allied with Russia was replaced by a westward leaning government, and Russia seized Crimea and its warm water naval base in violation of international agreements established after World War II protecting the territorial integrity of nations. In response, western nations placed economic sanctions on Russia, and NATO expanded eastward and considered admitting Ukraine into the alliance. Russia responded by invading Ukraine with the goals of putting a friendly government into power there and annexing territories on the Russian-Ukrainian border. The invasion stalled when NATO, including the United States, armed the Ukrainian military with modern weaponry more sophisticated than that used by Russian forces. It is now a war between NATO and Russia, although still a limited war, not just a war between Ukraine and Russia.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky continually pressures NATO and the United States to provide Ukraine with more advanced weaponry. NATO has already agreed to deliver tanks, anti-missile systems, drones, and rockets, but Zelensky wants fighter jets that will allow Ukraine to shift from a defensive war and attack targets deep inside Russia.

The United States and NATO face a serious dilemma. They are committed to supporting Ukraine and preserving its national integrity, but Zelensky is demanding that Russia return all occupied territory, including Crimea, and pay reparations to rebuild areas of Ukraine that were destroyed by the Russian invasion, demands that Russia will never accept. Russia will not return Crimea to Ukraine, just as the United States will never return California to Mexico.

If NATO and the United States deliver jet fighters and Ukraine uses them to attack Russian targets, including cities, the world faces an escalating domino effect similar to that which started World War 1 and led to World War 2. That is why as a historian, I am really worried about events playing out in Ukraine. The only peaceful resolution that I see is Ukraine agreeing to accept Russia control over Crimea and some of the disputed border areas in exchange for the NATO alliance rebuilding areas destroyed by the war. NATO and Russia will then have to find a resolution to their differences, but I am not hopeful they will find an amicable solution.

Some of the 800 members of Women Strike for Peace who marched at United Nations headquarters in Manhattan to demand UN mediation of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis

It should come as no surprise that the world is currently facing an existential nuclear danger.  In fact, it has been caught up in that danger since 1945, when atomic bombs were used to annihilate the populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Today, however, the danger of a nuclear holocaust is probably greater than in the past.  There are now nine nuclear powers―the United States, Russia, Britain, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea―and they are currently engaged in a new nuclear arms race, building ever more efficient weapons of mass destruction.  The latest entry in their nuclear scramble, the hypersonic missile, travels at more than five times the speed of sound and is adept at evading missile defense systems. 

Furthermore, these nuclear-armed powers engage in military confrontations with one another―Russia with the United States, Britain, and France over the fate of Ukraine, India with Pakistan over territorial disputes, and China with the United States over control of Taiwan and the South China Sea―and on occasion issue public threats of nuclear war against other nuclear nations.  In recent years, Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, and Kim Jong-Un have also publicly threatened non-nuclear nations with nuclear destruction.

Little wonder that in January 2023 the editors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set the hands of their famous “Doomsday Clock” at 90 seconds before midnight, the most dangerous setting since its creation in 1946.

Until fairly recently this march to Armageddon was disrupted, for people around the world found nuclear war a very unappealing prospect.  A massive nuclear disarmament campaign developed in many countries and, gradually, began to force governments to temper their nuclear ambitions.  The results were banning nuclear testing, curbing nuclear proliferation, limiting development of some kinds of nuclear weapons, and fostering substantial nuclear disarmament.  From the 1980s to today the number of nuclear weapons in the world sharply decreased, from 70,000 to roughly 13,000.  And with nuclear weapons stigmatized, nuclear war was averted.

But successes in rolling back the nuclear menace undermined the popular struggle against it, while proponents of nuclear weapons seized the opportunity to reassert their priorities.  Consequently, a new nuclear arms race gradually got underway.

Even so, a nuclear-free world remains possible.  Although an inflamed nationalism and the excessive power of military contractors are likely to continue bolstering the drive to acquire, brandish, and use nuclear weapons, there is a route out of the world’s nuclear nightmare.

We can begin uncovering this route to a safer, saner world when we recognize that a great many people and governments cling to nuclear weapons because of their desire for national security.  After all, it has been and remains a dangerous world, and for thousands of years nations (and before the existence of nations, rival territories) have protected themselves from aggression by wielding military might.

The United Nations, of course, was created in the aftermath of the vast devastation of World War II in the hope of providing international security.  But, as history has demonstrated, it is not strong enough to do the job―largely because the “great powers,” fearing that significant power in the hands of the international organization would diminish their own influence in world affairs, have deliberately kept the world organization weak.  Thus, for example, the UN Security Council, which is officially in charge of maintaining international security, is frequently blocked from taking action by a veto cast by one its five powerful, permanent members.

But what if global governance were strengthened to the extent that it could provide national security?  What if the United Nations were transformed from a loose confederation of nations into a genuine federation of nations, enabled thereby to create binding international law, prevent international aggression, and guarantee treaty commitments, including commitments for nuclear disarmament? 

Nuclear weapons, like other weapons of mass destruction, have emerged in the context of unrestrained international conflict.  But with national security guaranteed, many policymakers and most people around the world would conclude that nuclear weapons, which they already knew were immensely dangerous, had also become unnecessary.

Aside from undermining the national security rationale for building and maintaining nuclear weapons, a stronger United Nations would have the legitimacy and power to ensure their abolition.  No longer would nations be able to disregard international agreements they didn’t like.  Instead, nuclear disarmament legislation, once adopted by the federation’s legislature, would be enforced by the federation.  Under this legislation, the federation would presumably have the authority to inspect nuclear facilities, block the development of new nuclear weapons, and reduce and eliminate nuclear stockpiles.

The relative weakness of the current United Nations in enforcing nuclear disarmament is illustrated by the status of the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.  Voted for by 122 nations at a UN conference in 2017, the treaty bans producing, testing, acquiring, possessing, stockpiling, transferring, and using or threatening the use of nuclear weapons.  Although the treaty officially went into force in 2021, it is only binding on nations that have decided to become parties to it.  Thus far, that does not include any of the nuclear armed nations.  As a result, the treaty currently has more moral than practical effect in securing nuclear disarmament.

If comparable legislation were adopted by a world federation, however, participating in a disarmament process would no longer be voluntary, for the legislation would be binding on all nations.  Furthermore, the law’s universal applicability would not only lead to worldwide disarmament, but offset fears that nations complying with its provisions would one day be attacked by nations that refused to abide by it.

In this fashion, enhanced global governance could finally end the menace of worldwide nuclear annihilation that has haunted humanity since 1945.  What remains to be determined is if nations are ready to unite in the interest of human survival.

An entry in a 1635 Virginia land record is the earliest indication of the presence of a South Asian in colonial North America. “Tony East Indian” -- with a diminutive first name and no last name except for an epithet indicating a vague understanding of geographical origin and racial identity, “Tony” is  an insignificant speck in the vast landscape of the emerging colony. But his presence is surely remarkable – this man who came from the very antipodes, as it were, in an era when even the voyage from Europe to the New World was lengthy and dangerous.

The person who listed Tony and 23 other men as headright to the 1200 acres of land he was registering was George Menefie, a prominent Virginia merchant, landowner, and colonial office holder who had himself arrived from England in 1623. Tony’s transport to Virginia might have been arranged by Mr. Menefie or an agent acting on Menefie’s behalf, but his journey most certainly involved forces of even greater magnitude than a single Virginia landholder. 

In 1600, when Queen Elizabeth I had granted a charter to the “Company of Merchant of London trading into the East indies …,” the members of the East India Company, as it came to be known, had already recognized the tremendous profits to be made from trade with the enormous cluster of kingdoms and principalities known as “India.”  Always a land of myth and marvel in the western imaginary, India, was, by the early 1600s, a still wondrous but also geographically precise space reached by navigable sea routes. The East India Company went on to become a behemoth of a corporation-cum-government, but even in its relatively modest early years, some Company officials returning to England took back with them (perhaps, in some cases, forcibly) Indian servants, many of whom continued to live and work in London. Adding to the East Indian population in England were other “lascars” or sailors employed in Company ships sailing to England who found themselves stranded and destitute in and around English ports. England, one can assume, was the mid-point of Tony’s journey to Virginia. 

Although Tony and the other East Indians (as they were called) who followed him to colonial America are almost erased from our collective memory, the fact of their presence provokes some interesting questions and offers up some important reminders.

First, were they brought over as servants?  This is a distinct possibility. After all, increasing numbers of people came to Virginia after 1620 as indentured servants, helping swell the labor force needed by the colonial setters. As John Pory, speaker of Virginia’s first general assembly famously wrote: “Our principal wealth … consisteth in servants.”  Deeds of indenture were drawn up prior to travel, though some agreements, especially in the early years, were negotiated with employers after landing. In both cases, there were varying degrees of exploitation and abuse and deeds of indenture of all servants, East Indians possibly among them, could be sold, bought, and transferred.  

On the other hand, was Tony enslaved? Or, to put it differently, did he (and the other East Indians who followed him) have the same rights and freedoms as indentured white servants or did they suffer the same restrictions as enslaved African people?  The exact standing of early Africans in Virginia and elsewhere is debated by historians, but one can perhaps agree that a few notable Black landowners notwithstanding, most Africans (even those who were servants rather than enslaved) probably did not share the same status as white migrants, even white servants. Slavery probably existed in fact even before it became institutionalized.  Richard B. Allen, who has studied the East India Company’s (and other European) involvement in the slave trade in the Indian Ocean, has made the argument that the trans-Atlantic slave trade was not distinct from the concurrent Indian Ocean traffic in humans. While the latter mainly involved the sale of East Africans and natives of Madagascar, a number of enslaved Indian people were taken from the port cities of South India and the coastal regions of Bengal. 

Some records also indicate that Indians were enslaved to English masters in their voyages across the Indian Ocean.  No certain claim can be made about Tony’s status in Virginia, but some 70-odd years later, in 1708, one Thomas Mayhew (who might have also gone as Thomas India) stated in his petition for freedom that he was born in India, taken to England where he was baptized, and subsequently transported to Maryland with his mother.  Although he claims that he came as an indentured servant, his mistress, he states, kept him as a slave. Similarly, a 1786 advertisement for a runaway “an East India negro man” named Jean describes him as “slave born” although “he will call himself free,” while one Pompey is described in a c. 1735 court order from Spotsylvania County as “an East Indian (slave) belonging to William Woodford, Gent.” 

Image Geography of Slavery in Virginia, Virginia Center for Digital History. Advertisement from Virginia Gazette (Williamsburg), August 4, 1768

The limited evidence available also, however, indicates that, as slavery became increasingly institutionalized and racialized in British America and subsequently in the fledgling United States, at least some East Indians were successful in their petitions for freedom because they were East Indian (presumably rather than African). So, in 1777, Peter Charles “is an East India Indian and justly Intitled to his freedom”; one Will, who was “fraudulently trapped out of his Native Country in the East indies and thence transported to England and soon after brought to this Country and sold as a slave …,” was awarded freedom in 1708 as the Court considered that “the sd. Will ought to not have been sold as a slave and that he was a freeman …” 

A third possibility is that many East Indians (like those Africans who were designated indentured servants) were less likely to have held well drawn-out deeds of indenture, so resulting in increased exploitation, which might have taken the form of very long (perhaps even lifelong) terms of servitude.

Numerous East Indians subsequent to Tony are mentioned in deeds, estate accounts, runaway ads, and court documents. They have been enumerated and listed by Paul Heinigg in his Free African Americans of North Carolina, Virginia and South Carolina and the information further compiled by Francis C. Assisi and Elizabeth Pothen in “South Asians in Colonial America” among others. One finds them (mostly men, but some women as well) mentioned in 18th century court judgments as having completed their indentures, in inventories of personal property, in advertisements for runaways (although at least one East Indian was apparently not above reporting a runaway himself). Some East Indians also fought in the Revolutionary War, both on the American and the British side.

Both English and American records indicate that the terms “East India Indians, “Asiatic Indians,” “blackmoors,” “(East India) moors,” and “(East India) negroes” were used to describe this population. Sam Locker, a runaway, is described as a “negro man … has rather long hair being of the East India breed” while another runaway, John Newton, is described as “an Asiatic Indian” in one edition of the Virginia Gazette but as a “mulatto” in another, while, as late as 1794, 16-year-old Crispin, a runaway from Philadelphia is described as “a kind of mulatto East India boy.”  In some cases, a distinction is more clearly drawn between East Indians and people of African descent. One Ann James, presumably a white female, named the father of her child as Pompey “an East Indian,” and was judged by the court as not carrying a “mullato child” as the law “only relates to Negroes and Mullatoes and being Silent as to Indians.…” One can conclude that from the earliest date this group of arrivals exemplified the complexity of race and race relations in colonial America.

Early East Indians soon blended with the African population, so providing among the first examples of alliances between peoples of color. They created “multi-ethnic” families and, consequently, further confounded the already complicated and shifting idea of race.   Will, a man who ran away from Mr. Hepburn’s Plantation in 1760 in Frederick County, Maryland is described as being “of a yellow complexion, being of a mix’d Breed, between an East Indian and a Negro.…” Thomas Mayhew, who escaped from a Maryland jail in 1760, is described as being “of a very dark Complexion, his Father being an East India Indian.…” The wording of the latter notice indicates that Thomas might have been the product of a union between a white woman and an East Indian man.

Tony’s story—and that of other early East Indians—is a significant preface to the narrative of South Asian immigration to the USA although, after their merger with the African-American population, they no longer retained their “East Indian” identity. Further, their presence is a symptom and consequence of elaborate and far-reaching circuits of global movement and exchange, which lead to new understandings of self and other and new experiences of both familiarity and xenophobia. More specifically, they are a reminder that, while the variegated and complex story of early America is certainly a result of cross-Atlantic movements, it is also shaped by proto-imperial networks that traversed the entire globe.

Most notably, these East Indians are a reminder that the “Atlantic world system” was also connected to the societies and peoples of the Indian Ocean. In fact, the small group of merchants who formed the East India Company also had interests in the Virginia Company (apart from sharing the same London offices and having the same governor for a while). It is not too surprising, then, that servants who might have been brought to England by EIC officials eventually accompanied their masters, or were sent by them to America. The East Indian presence in North America is only one sign of this confluence and interconnectedness between India and America: Europeans paid for Indian commodities with silver bullion from the Americas and for African slaves with Indian textiles; later, Lord Cornwallis, after his 1781 defeat in Yorktown, went on to serve as Governor-General of India.  Also of interest is the fact that Elihu Yale, major donor to the institution that became “Yale College” had been Governor of Madras in India and made much of his fortune in that country.

The English poet John Donne in a characteristic rhetorical flourish sees his beloved as the confluence of the two hemispheres. Both the Indias of spice and mine … lie here with me, he proclaims in his 1633 poem “The Sunne Rising” – a line surely inspired by the new geographies and the interconnected new world (both brave and brutal) coming into being.  That is what moved me, too, when I imagined the long-forgotten Tony’s story in my forthcoming novel The East Indian: unlikely paths that crossed and collided, a voyage that is somehow both fantastical and plausible, and the sheer length of the road traveled … indeed, such a long journey….

For many years, a portion of the world public has sought to wall itself off from people abroad by hiding behind national borders.

In the United States, this tendency became an important element in American politics.  During the 1920s and 1930s, the Republican Party embraced isolationism and spurned the new League of Nations.  Indeed, for a time, President Warren G. Harding’s State Department refused to even acknowledge correspondence from the League.  Republican leaders also played a key role in the America First Committee, founded in 1940 to oppose U.S. aid to Britain in its lonely resistance to the fascist military onslaught.  Admittedly, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the GOP shifted course, backing U.S. participation in World War II and the development of the United Nations.  In the postwar years, however, this internationalist approach gradually dissipated, especially as the Republican Party lurched rightward.  Increasingly, the GOP portrayed international treaties and foreigners as threats to “the American way of life.”

The descent into xenophobia was particularly evident during the presidency of Donald Trump.  Proclaiming an “America First” policy and ridiculing “global citizenship,” he assailed the United Nations, withdrew the United States from the World Health Organization, championed the building of border walls, banned travel to the United States from select countries, and pulled the U.S. government out of international climate and arms control agreements.  “You know what I am?” Trump remarked to a campaign crowd in October 2018.  “I’m a nationalist.  OK?  I’m a nationalist.”

Even after his 2020 election defeat, Trump has continued to promote an “America First” policy,  while other leading Republicans, ranging from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, have done much the same.  MAGA extremists like Tucker Carson and Marjorie Taylor Greene increasingly set a strident nationalist tone for the current GOP.  Nor are they out of line with most of their voters,  According to polls, most Republicans oppose their government’s taking international action against climate change, aiding refugees fleeing violence, defending human rights in other countries, and strengthening the United Nations.

Of course, this kind of narrow nationalism has been and remains common in many lands, where notions of national superiority have facilitated imperialism, militarism, disdain for foreigners, and ignorance of the world.  Rightwing political movements seem particularly prone to nationalist hysteria; witness, for example, the chauvinism displayed by fascist parties of the past and present.  But flag-waving glorification of the nation has certainly not been limited to the Right or, for that matter, to any country.     

Despite their ubiquity, however, nationalist disrespect and contempt for people of other lands run counter to most of the world’s great ethical and religious teachings, which call for fairness, charity, and even love for others.  The oft-cited Golden Rule―“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”―is not limited by national boundaries.  Similarly, “welcoming the stranger,” a direct challenge to xenophobia, has deep resonance in traditional moral preachments.  In fact, xenophobia is a form of nationally-based selfishness that undermines the fundamentals of ethical behavior

Moreover, a nationalist approach is very unrealistic.  After all, in today’s world, no single country or group of countries can cope effectively with the severe problems that confront us.  These problems include war (and perhaps nuclear war), climate catastrophe, disease pandemics, resource scarcity, widespread poverty, and mass migration.  Given advances in modern science and technology, solutions to these problems are feasible.  Even so, as these are global problems, it is hard to see how they can be addressed successfully without implementing global solutions.  And these solutions require international cooperation.

Fortunately, as ethical obligations have been reinforced by global realities, many international voluntary organizations have emerged to deal with such issues as war (the International Peace Bureau and International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War), environmental defense (Greenpeace, 350.org, and the World Wildlife Fund), and preservation of human life and health (the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and Doctors without Borders).  Other concerns that have led to the development of international voluntary organizations include aid to refugees (the International Rescue Committee), the alleviation of poverty (Oxfam International), and the defense of workers’ rights (the International Trade Union Confederation).

In addition, international governmental institutions, working to address these and other challenges, have developed over the past century.  The best known of them is probably the United Nations.  But others include the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court.  Working together, they have helped fashion international law, including the Geneva Conventions and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 

In an effort to promote further progress along these lines, some organizations, such as the World Federalist Movement, call for strengthening international cooperation by building a united federation of nations.  And there is much to be said for this approach. After all, these international organizations, institutions, and agreements point the way forward to a global civilization where nations are not invaded and relentlessly bombed to satisfy the imperial ambitions of an arrogant ruler, where people do not go hungry when there is food enough for all, and where people’s homes and lands are no longer overwhelmed by environmental disasters to safeguard the profits of giant fossil fuel corporations.

As the development of international social movements and institutions has shown us, people around the globe who seek to move beyond the artificial boundaries that have separated them can work together to address their common problems by building an ever more united world.  Having wallowed in futile and self-defeating national isolation for centuries, the people of the world can take effective action to transcend their divided past in the interest of a brighter future . . . for all!  

The village of Oberstdorf, Bavaria

At first sight it would seem unlikely that the Bavarian village of Oberstdorf has much to tell us about the Third Reich. Perched on the border with Austria, it is the most southern village in Germany, located 100 miles southwest of the nearest city, Munich. Yet, such was the grip of National Socialism on German society that even in this remote place there was scarcely any aspect of Nazi rule or of the Second World War that did not touch its 4000-odd inhabitants one way or another. Their accounts, in turn shocking, revealing and moving, lead us to ask that all-important question – “what would I have done?”

Like so many of their fellow citizens, Oberstdorfers—deeply Catholic and conservative by nature —were drawn to Hitler by his promise to implement strong government, to expunge the ignominy of the Treaty of Versailles, to defeat Communism, and to put Germany back where it belonged at the top table of nations. Only a couple of months after the Armistice, Quakers from England and America were already in Germany preaching their message of hope and reconciliation. Their reports on the countless conversations they held with ordinary Germans make it clear that even though people were cold and starving, even though they were stricken with grief and fearful of the violence erupting in so many cities, it was the humiliation of having their country treated like a pariah that pained them most. Humiliation as a driver of conflict has arguably been underestimated. Certainly, Putin’s fury at what he saw as the disgrace of the dissolution of the Soviet empire is often cited as a cause of his invasion of Ukraine.

Although a majority of villagers voted for Hitler in the March 1933 election, they were quite unprepared for the draconian measures imposed on them by their first Nazi mayor, an outsider who treated their traditions and institutions with open contempt. Indeed, Oberstdorf was not the only rural community that, while enthusiastically supporting Hitler, clashed with local Nazi officials. Nor, indeed, did the villagers have much time for the storm troopers (SA) whose aggression and noisy parades were so damaging to the tourist economy on which this once poor rural community now largely depended.

In common with many other small towns and villages, Oberstdorf’s residents exhibited a wide range of attitudes toward the regime. Unquestionably there were plenty of Nazis in the village, many of whom were to remain dedicated to Hitler to the bitter end and beyond. But there were others who, having started out as committed party-members, changed their minds as it became ever harder to ignore the true nature of the Third Reich.

Ludwig Fink, Oberstdorf’s second Nazi mayor, is a prime example. Initially seduced by Hitler’s determination to restore Germany’s prestige and prosperity, he, like so many others, assumed that once securely in power the Nazis’ more extreme policies and rhetoric would subside. When, on the contrary, they only worsened, we might ask why Fink did not protest or resign. The truth is that any such act of defiance would have condemned him to a concentration camp or the guillotine. And even had he been courageous enough to accept that fate, what would have become of his family? His wife and two sons (one of whom was epileptic) would have been left destitute. Fink’s response to his loss of faith in National Socialism, therefore, was to mitigate as much as possible the worst effects of Nazi rule in the village. He tried to protect the handful of Jews living there, and helped the local nuns when they were targeted by the regime. He defended villagers threatened with imprisonment for infringing any one of the Nazis’ countless petty rules and regulations, and in the last months of the war refused to carry out orders to execute villagers attempting to surrender.

The burning question is how much did Fink and his villagers know about Nazi atrocities—the concentration camps, the Holocaust, the torture and murder of homosexuals, Roma (known as Gypsies), the disabled and anyone else the Nazis didn’t like? In my view they knew a great deal. A teenager from the village was gassed in Hitler’s so-called “euthanasia” program because he was blind. Soldiers who had witnessed or had themselves perpetrated barbaric deeds were continually returning home on leave. At least some of them must have unburdened themselves to their families and friends. One man, Heinz Schubert, who claimed descent from the composer’s family, was responsible for organizing the murder of 700 Roma in the Crimea. What did he tell his wife and friends when he was back in Oberstdorf? Later at his Nuremberg trial, he stated, “we thought we were saving Western civilization.”

Then there were the assorted camps that existed close to the village—a Waffen-SS training camp, Dachau subcamps and several forced labor camps. Every day the villagers saw foreign slave workers being marched to and fro and can hardly have been unaware of the appalling conditions in which they lived. At Sonthofen, just 10 miles north of Oberstdorf, there stood a Nazi castle often visited by party bigwigs including Himmler, who went there specifically to brief local Nazis on the Final Solution.

Towards the end of the war, when Messerschmitt and BMW moved their operations out of Augsburg and Munich to escape the bombing, several manufactories were established in and around Oberstdorf. Furthermore, as the war progressed, Oberstdorf’s population doubled, first with evacuees from the bombing and then with refugees fleeing the Russians. All had terrible tales to tell.

While villagers loyal to Hitler blamed reports of atrocities on enemy propaganda, those who had detested the regime from the start needed little convincing they were true. Most Oberstdorfers, however, once they realized how catastrophically they had been duped, just wanted to keep their heads down and somehow stay alive until it was all over.

Immediately after the war when Oberstdorfers—like Germans everywhere—came close to starvation, they were too absorbed in trying to rebuild their lives to spend much time contemplating their own or Germany’s culpability. Their one overriding desire was to extinguish all memories of Hitler and National Socialism. Since then, Germany has been impeccable in examining its Nazi past, but there will always be more questions. In recent times the focus has shifted from the leading figures of the Third Reich to ordinary Germans, the dilemmas they faced, and the moral decisions they made in what can only be described as the most far-reaching tragedy and crime in human history.

"A People Without Memory is a People Without a Future"

A portion of Section 8 of the Estadio Nacional in Santiago, Chile is preserved as it was when the stadium was used as a mass detention center for political prisoners in the early days of Augusto Pinochet's 1973 coup

The match began as the Chilean team leisurely dribbled the ball down the pitch and then scored an uncontested goal.  Thirty seconds into the game, it was over. The Chileans would win the game in a walkover as their opponent, the Soviet Union, never showed up.

This unusual outcome was put in motion two months earlier by a suicide. A suicide that would lead Chile into further tumult that not only led to the walkover but to one of the most shocking events that ever happened in a sports stadium.

On September 11, 1973 the President of Chile, Salvador Allende, balanced an AK-47 between his knees and under his chin and then set the weapon to fire automatically. The weapon was a gift from Cuba’s Communist dictator, Fidel Castro, who had engraved the gun, "To my good friend Salvador from Fidel, who by different means tries to achieve the same goals."

At the time of his suicide, the Palace de la Moneda was surrounded by troops loyal to the military figure General Augusto Pinochet.  This was the second coup attempt; one just a few months earlier, the Tanquetazo (tank putsch), had failed.

From the get-go, Salvador Allende's time as President had been turbulent. He had been elected President in 1970 with just 36.9% of the popular vote.  A majority of the Chilean Congress and Washington, DC were wary, as Allende was a socialist supported by Communists in the Soviet Union and Cuba.

Washington also couldn’t have been happy as, during his Presidency, Allende accepted the Lenin Peace Prize in Moscow and hosted Fidel Castro for over a month. First Cuba, now Chile.  Would all of the Americas below the Rio Grande fall under Moscow’s sway?

Allende increased the minimum wage and tried to improve literacy, but under his leadership Chile went off kilter.  He seized private industry, including the all-important copper mines and banks.  Farms larger than 200 acres were taken from their rightful owners, which accounted for 40% of Chile’s farms.  Allende also announced Chile would default on its international debt.

The results were that exports fell dramatically and inflation and food costs spiraled out of control at a 150% annual rate. Basic food staples, such as beans, sugar and rice, were in short supply. In protest, in 1972, Chilean workers staged a 24-day strike.  Conditions were ripe for a coup.

Once Pinochet seized power, he had a problem.  As the old expression goes, “He who rides a tiger is afraid to dismount.”  If Pinochet lost power in the days following the coup, his fate would likely be the same as Allende’s. 

In quick order, the new government started rounding up anyone they thought was a threat.  Where to put them?  Estadio Nacional (National Stadium).   Estadio Nacional, located in Santiago, was, and still is, a stadium with international standing.  In 1962 it hosted the World Cup.  Between September and November of 1973, it became one of Chile’s largest prisons.  Some estimate over 20,000 people were held prisoner during this time period, and close to 50 were either executed or tortured to death.

If all this sounds familiar to you, it is because this is the plot to the 1982 movie Missing staring Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek, which was based on the book about the death of American Charles Horman.  The movie’s plot revolves around Horman’s wife and father desperately trying to figure out what happened to him in the chaotic days following the coup.

In real life, six days after the coup, Horman was nabbed by Chilean soldiers and taken to Estadio Nacional.  Why?  Possibly because he was a writer and working on a story about the 1970 assassination of General Rene Schneider.  General Schneider was killed by rebels who were angry because he refused to stop Allende from ascending to the presidency in the tense days after the election.

Although his family searched for him for nearly a month, he was already dead, having been shot and killed on September 19th, and buried inside the walls of Estadio Nacional.  Later his body was exhumed and sent to Santiago for an autopsy.

Although he did not get as much fanfare, another American named Frank Teruggi also died inside of Estadio Nacional.  He was described as a student journalist and a leftist, as a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, which describes itself as a “revolutionary industrial union,” with ties to socialists and anarchists.

What ended Estadio Nacional's days as a prison camp was that the normal business of stadiums still needed to go on.  The business of Estadio Nacional at the time was a World Cup qualifying game between Chile and the Soviet Union.  And in soccer-mad South America, that was a big deal.

Only two weeks after the coup, the Chilean team was scheduled to play the Soviet Union in Russia.  It was more than an important sporting event; it was a political melodrama.  Chile was in turmoil. The Soviet Union was a staunch ally of Allende, while the new government was firmly anti-communist and backed by the United States.  The Soviets refused to recognize the new government in Chile.

In hindsight, it is remarkable that the match in Russia did take place as scheduled on September 26th.  The only way General Pinochet would allow the Chilean team's travel was on the condition that the players wouldn’t make any political statements.  Rumors persisted right up to game time that the showdown would never take place, as the Chilean players would be held as prisoners and then swapped for political prisoners Moscow wanted free in Chile.

The Soviets didn’t allow any journalists to watch the game or let anyone in with a camera.  The match was reportedly tense and ended in a scoreless draw.  This was a disappointment to Russia; playing on their home turf, they had been the favorite. 

If all of this was surreal, things were about to get stranger, as the second leg of this series was set to be played in Estadio Nacional on November 21st.  Russia insisted that, given the circumstances, the game be played in a neutral location.

Prior to the scheduled game, FIFA sent inspectors to Estadio Nacional to check out the fitness of the stadium.  Remarkably, at the time of the inspection, an estimated 7,000 prisoners were still being detained there.  

During the inspection, prisoners were kept out of sight.  According to accounts by the prisoners, they could see the FIFA inspectors and yelled out to them.  One witness recalls saying, "Hey, look at us. We're here."  After the inspection, FIFA confirmed the stadium was fit for World Cup action.

To prepare for the game, the prisoners were sent to other locations.

The Soviet Union responded to all this by sending FIFA a letter that stated, "For moral considerations, Soviets cannot at this time play in the stadium of Santiago, splashed with the blood of the Chilean patriots."     

According to some of the Soviet players, there was more to Moscow’s decision to boycott this game, other than “moral considerations.”  The Soviets were fearful of losing in Chile and handing the new anticommunist regime a propaganda victory. 

In the end, FIFA declared Chile the winner 2-0 in a walkover.

As the 21st century dawned, the stadium was completely renovated except for one section of stands, Section 8, which looks as it did in 1973, as a memorial to the imprisoned.

On the back wall of Section 8 is a slogan painted in black: "Un pueblo sin memoria es un pueblo sin futuro" -- A people without memory are a people without a future.

An engraving of Aodh Mór Ó Néill (Hugh the Great O'Neill), the 16th century chieftain and subject of Brian Friel's "Making History".

In late April 1983, Brian Friel wrote to poet Seamus Heaney to update him on business related to the Field Day Theatre Company, which both men served as members of the company’s board of directors. Friel confided that he had not written anything in a year and a half and was actively searching for a theme. He also mentioned, in passing, that their mutual friend “Hume” had dropped in recently to talk about his plans for a New Ireland Forum.

When I first read this letter in Emory University’s Rose Library early in 2015, I saw the kernel of a story. As a playwright, Friel’s livelihood depended upon the reception of his work in metropolitan centers such as Dublin, London, and New York, but he was famously reclusive. In 1983, he had just moved from a small townland in Donegal to an even more remote part of that rural county. Yet John Hume—the leader of Northern Ireland’s constitutional nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party, a Member of the European Parliament, and soon to be elected a member of the British parliament as well—was stopping by Friel’s house to discuss politics.

My book Getting to Good Friday: Literature and the Peace Process in Northern Ireland explores connections between literature and contemporary politics during the fifteen or so years leading up to the 1998 Belfast/Good Friday Agreement, which marks its twenty-fifth anniversary this April. In it, I intertwine narrative history and literary analysis to describe shifts in thinking and talking about Northern Ireland’s divided society that brought thirty years of political violence to a close. Creative writers in this period, I argue, were both reacting to current events and attempting to influence them. Examining literary works within a detailed historical frame, constructed with the help of archival research and personal interviews and correspondence with authors, reveals aspects of these works previously unrecognized. But the book also suggests that literature as literature—in its formal properties as well as its subject-matter—can enrich readers’ historical understanding.

The play Friel began planning at the end of 1983, Making History, was designed to further two of Hume’s projects. One was to help Irish nationalists understand that, in the event of some future united Ireland, a million Northern Protestants would not disappear just because the border did. Thus, anyone sincerely interested in a “new” Ireland needed to acknowledge the island’s diversity as well as what nationalists regarded as its essential unity. The second was to persuade militant republicans that political engagement with unionists and the British government would be a more effective means of pursuing their objectives than violence.

Making History centers on Hugh O’Neill, a Gaelic chieftain who also held an English title and represented, for a time, the best hope of the European Counter-Reformation. Though celebrated by Irish nationalists as the mastermind of the Gaelic aristocracy’s last stand against English colonization, O’Neill’s 1601 defeat at the Battle of Kinsale and subsequent exile from Ireland cleared the way for the seventeenth-century Plantation of Ulster, to which may be traced the roots of Northern Ireland’s religious and political divisions.

In Getting to Good Friday, I describe the play’s development over five years with reference to both the New Ireland Forum of 1983–’84 and the Anglo–Irish Agreement of 1985. Such a topical approach to a play set at the turn of the seventeenth century might seem odd. However, as fellow Northern Irish playwright Stewart Parker described his own play Northern Star (about a doomed eighteenth-century Irish revolutionary leader), "this is not an historical play” but “very much a play about today.”

Making History does not pass muster as a factual account of Hugh O’Neill. Scholars have accurately observed that, far from replacing heroic myth with less heroic truth (as a naïve reading of it might suggest), Friel deliberately replaced one historical myth with another. His portrayal of O’Neill’s life is frequently counter-factual, but his distortions had the aim of encouraging audiences in 1988, when Field Day performed the play around Ireland and in London, to reconsider what they thought they knew about this legendary Irish warrior. Friel cared what people thought about O’Neill because their beliefs about the Gaelic confederacy’s leaders had the power to influence their attitudes and actions in the late twentieth century.

Friel’s chief purpose in Making History was to emphasize O’Neill’s genuine cultural hybridity. O’Neill’s English education made him precociously aware of English Renaissance modes of social and political organization, allowing him to imagine a similar status for Ireland. Friel dramatized the way O’Neill straddled two cultures by making his marriage to an English “settler” in Ireland central to his drama. The historical O’Neill was married to this woman, Mabel Bagenal, for a few years in the early 1590s, but almost nothing is known about her. Friel departed from his historical sources in depicting the marriage as a genuine love match and using it as a metaphor for the productive partnership of Protestants and Catholics in the North of Ireland. In Mabel, he gave unionist members of his original audiences a Protestant character with whom they could identify and nationalist members of those audiences one with whom they could sympathize.

Friel also sought to influence events in his own Ireland by demonstrating the futility of violence as a means of achieving the nationalist ideal of Irish independence and integrity. Read with this goal in mind, Making History brims with political relevance. Instead of telling audiences things, Friel shows them. In Act 1, we see O’Neill happy, rich, and powerful, in a position of authority in both Gaelic and English systems and engaged in a loving relationship with a Protestant woman of English stock. In Act 2, after resorting to war on behalf of Ireland and Catholicism, we see him hunted, reviled by his own people, and stripped of his power and wealth. Although we cannot know what would have happened had O’Neill continued his established policy of strategic surrender and cooperation with the English (i.e., peace and power-sharing), we can see clear parallels between the wasted, famine-ridden land he leaves behind when he goes into exile and Northern Ireland in the 1980s.

Hume attended Making History’s premiere performance in Derry. So, too, did Martin McGuinness, a former IRA commander who would later serve as Deputy First Minister in a power-sharing Northern Ireland government. Their presence in Field Day’s audience demonstrates that the literary and political realms of Irish public life, like the natural and supernatural worlds of Irish folklore, lie close together and frequently intersect—and that those seeking to understand either must examine both.

Checkpoint between Jerusalem and Ramallah in the occupied West Bank

Editor's Note: This is the third of a three-part series of essays. Parts 1 and 2 focused respectively on the leadership failures of Israelis and Palestinians in the years leading to the current crisis. 

Righting the Wrong

During the 55 years of occupation, Israeli and Palestinian leaders subjected four generations of youth to the same horrifyingly misguided fate as their fathers and even grandfathers. Neither side can significantly change the fundamentals to even remotely justify more sacrifices borne by the next generation. It is time for both sides to recognize that a solution to their conflict rests on accepting that the conflict has transformed and that irreversible facts on the ground have developed, which are not subject to dramatic change in any significant way short of a catastrophic event. The following will demonstrate why coexistence based on a two-state solution is a must and why I maintain that the Palestinian state must be established in the context of an Israeli-Palestinian-Jordanian confederation. Finally, I will demonstrate why such a confederation may ultimately prove to be the only enduring, viable solution. Confederations are defined as “voluntary associations of independent states that, to secure some common purpose, agree to certain limitations on their freedom of action and establish some joint machinery of consultation or deliberation.” In an Israeli-Palestinian-Jordanian confederation, independent states would join together on issues of common interest that cannot be addressed except under full collaboration under a confederative framework, such as interspersed populations, Palestinian refugees, national security, and Jerusalem.

The Establishment of a Palestinian State

The Palestinians’ determination to establish a state of their own will not change under any circumstances. I challenge every Israeli to show me how, when, and why the Palestinians would ever abandon their aspirations for statehood. However oppressive the Israeli occupation becomes, the greater the Palestinians’ violent resistance will be, as the continuing flareup in violence and the ever-rising death toll clearly demonstrates. Moreover, every regional and global power (save the United States) has and will continue to support the Palestinian cause. Although Israel has thus far successfully defied the international consensus, it can never maintain the status quo of the occupation and enjoy a day of peace. The current Israeli government led by Netanyahu—who openly calls for annexing much of the West Bank, expanding and building new settlements, and legalizing illegal ones—must answer the public as to where Israel will be in 10-15 years if it continues to pursue its ambition of creeping annexation, and how the Palestinians will react during this increasingly brutal occupation. It does not take a prophet to augur that the violence will escalate to a boiling point and a massive Palestinian uprising with untold death and destruction will become only a question of when, rather than if. Israel will risk losing the unwavering support of the United States, and push the EU to fully side with the Palestinians and potentially sanction Israel. Furthermore, Israel will fail to normalize relations with other Arab states, especially Saudi Arabia, and seriously risk previously normalized relations with some Arab countries under the Abraham Accords. World Jewry will be divided, (which is already happening), many Israelis will emigrate from Israel, capital in billions will flow out of the country, and foreign investments will slowly dry up. To be sure, Israel will shamelessly become a certified apartheid state that betrayed the vision of its founders as a Jewish and democratic state that holds human rights, the rule of law, and democratic values supreme. Given that the Palestinians will never give up their right to statehood, the dangerously deteriorating relations between Israel and the Palestinians, and the utter lack of trust between them, a Palestinian state is inevitable. A one-state solution will categorically be rejected by Israel as it would threaten the Jewish majority of the state; thus, two states is the only option, which will also lay the foundation for a confederation. Israel will not agree on a bilateral confederation with the Palestinians. A solution to the conflict will be found in my view only in the context of an Israeli-Palestinian-Jordanian confederation. Jordan, which signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994 and fully collaborates with it on multiple fronts, has intrinsic long-term security concerns tied to the conflict, and for its part will not agree to form a confederation with the Palestinians unless a Palestinian state is established first. Jordanian officials with whom I spoke made their position on this issue categorically clear: if Amman were at any point to join an Israeli-Palestinian confederation, this prerequisite must first be met.

Interspersed Populations

The Israeli and Palestinian populations are interspersed in the West Bank, where there are approximately 2.3 million Palestinians and about 432,000 Israelis. In East Jerusalem there are roughly 361,000 Palestinians and 233,000 Israelis, and in Israel proper there are 1.8 million Israeli Arab citizens and about 6.6 million Israeli Jews. In Jordan, the population is estimated to be somewhere between 55 to 70 percent of Palestinian origin, which translates to roughly 6 to 8.2 million people. And while the nearly 2 million Palestinians in Gaza are separated from Israel proper, they maintain deep ties with their fellow Palestinians in the West Bank with whom they interact regularly. This reality of interspersed Israeli-Palestinian and Palestinian-Jordanian populations is not and will not be subject to change in any substantial way, other than perhaps relocating 70,000 – 80,000 Israeli settlers to other larger settlements under land swaps, which both sides have agreed to in the past in principle. Thus, the coexistence of Israeli and Palestinian populations under any conditions of peace or hostility is permanent. Neither side can ever dislodge the other from the territories they currently occupy, nor do they have any other choice but to accept this fact on the ground, regardless of the intensity of the violence between them. I challenge every right-wing extremist Israeli to show me how and under what circumstances they can alter the demographic composition in the occupied territories. Those Israelis who entertain the illusion that they can pressure many Palestinians to leave their homes and villages through the brutal occupation and intimidation are hallucinating. The Palestinians will never leave their land in any significant number now or at any time in the future. Israeli-Palestinian coexistence under any condition is and will remain the only option; regardless of how hard any right-wing Israeli government might attempt to change this fact on the ground, it will fail. Furthermore, it is clear that the rise of an extreme right-wing religious government in Israel has contributed dramatically to the escalation of violence, especially between the settlers and the Palestinians. The fuse of this powder keg can easily be lit by those such as National Security Minister Ben-Gvir, who called on settlers to crush the Palestinians “one by one.” The tragedy is that while most settlers will have to coexist with their Palestinian neighbors, an extremist minority is now indiscriminately attacking Palestinians, which is bound to explode into a much wider violent conflict involving thousands from both sides. And while Palestinians also have attacked and killed Israeli settlers, the rampage that the settlers have gone on—burning down dozens of homes and cars out of simple revenge—is only furthering a continuing back-and-forth of revenge and retribution. Where is this going to lead to? When will both sides finally face the bitter truth and accept the reality that they are stuck and have no place to go, and that spilling each other’s blood is not the answer? It should also be noted that other than interspersed populations, Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian territories’ geographic contiguity, shared national security, and interactions on many other fronts only heightens the need for greater collaboration between all three parties. This is where confederation becomes central, as it will meet the collective and individual requirements of all three entities without compromising their sovereignty and independence.

Palestinian Refugees

From the time Israel was created in 1948, which precipitated the Palestinian refugee problem, the Palestinians, with the support of the Arab states, have insisted on the “right of return.” Since then, the number of refugees has swelled from about 750,000 that were uprooted from Palestine to nearly 6 million. Israel has rejected out of hand the return of any substantial number of refugees. The Palestinian authorities in the West Bank and Gaza continue to insist on the right of return as sine qua non to reaching an agreement with Israel, knowing full well that there is zero prospect that their demands will ever be met. Sadly, if not tragically, Palestinian leaders use the refugees as a political tool to justify their refusal to reach any negotiated agreement while abandoning them to languish in refugee camps for more than seven decades. Just imagine: four generations of Palestinians, representing over 95 percent of all living Palestinians today, were born under the occupation. They have been misled to believe that their day of redemption was near when in fact that day never came and will not come. Moreover, the Palestinian refugees have been used and abused all these years, serving their corrupt and power-hungry leaders who used them as scapegoats to justify their tragically misguided policy. Indeed, other than the possible return of 15,000 – 20,000 refugees to Israel in the context of family reunification, there will be no right of return to Israel proper, albeit refugees will be able to “resettle” in their home country of Palestine in the West Bank or Gaza, as the majority are de facto internally displaced. This is not a question of moral right or wrong; it is a fact of life that no power from inside or outside the region can force Israel to change its position under any circumstances. Indeed for Israel, the admission of a significant number of Palestinians to the country will erase the national Jewish identity of the state, which is simply a non-starter for the vast majority of Israeli Jews. Current and future Palestinian leaders should for once be truthful with their public and start talking about compensation and/or resettlement, and put an end to the refugees’ misery and hopelessness. It should be noted that the establishment of a confederation will allow for the refugee problem to be settled—Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinians, with financial support from the US, the EU, and wealthy Arab states in particular, would fully participate in the process of either resettlement, compensation, or both. There are still two Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan, and they too should be a part of the overall resolution to the refugee problem under the confederation framework.  

Israel’s National Security

Israel’s national security concerns are heightened by three factors: the Jews’ persecution for centuries throughout the diaspora, the existential threat emanating from regional powers such as Iran, and the threat by Palestinian extremists such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Although Israel can prevail militarily over any security threat regardless of its source, its national security concerns still loom high. Needless to say, the occupation exacerbates Israel’s security concerns, albeit it is self-manufactured and only Israel can mitigate it by ending the occupation and putting in place a new security apparatus that will include Israel, the Palestinians, and Jordan. The sad thing, however, is that Palestinian militants who are sworn to liquidate Israel know only too well that they cannot now or at any time in the future realize their illusory goal, but still maintain their bellicose public narrative against Israel. Indeed, for any enemy that poses an existential threat against Israel, expressing any threat in real time will be tantamount to committing suicide. The Palestinians need to understand that if they want to establish a state of their own, they must first cease and desist any public threat against Israel. Hamas’ constant existential threat in particular plays directly into hawkish Israeli hands, which are using it as an excuse to hold onto the territories and “justifiably” make the argument that ‘no one should expect us to end the occupation when we are being constantly existentially threatened.’ Security collaboration between Israel and the Palestinians is a must. Indeed, even under the current adversarial conditions, Israel and the PA still collaborate on many aspects of their security. Given that Jordan’s national security is very much entwined with both Israel and the Palestinians, continued and further expansion of collaboration on all security matters between them will remain essential to the three entities. For Israel and Jordan in particular, their security cooperation has regional security implications as well, and neither Israel nor Jordan would want to weaken their security ties, especially given the regional instability.  

The Status of Jerusalem

In reality very little, if anything can change in the current status of Jerusalem, which served in the 1970s and 1980s as a microcosm of peaceful Israeli-Palestinian coexistence. Jerusalem houses the Jews’ holiest shrines (the Wailing Wall and Temple Mount) as well as Islam’s third holiest shrines (the al-Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock at Haram al-Sharif, the same Temple Mount). Moreover, given that Jordan is the custodian of the Muslim shrines in Jerusalem, there is absolutely no way to separate the structural religious component of the city for both Muslims and Jews alike from the need for a confederation. Although Israel annexed East Jerusalem immediately after it occupied the city in 1967, and a vast majority of Israelis insist that Jerusalem east and west must remain the eternal capital of Israel, the establishment of a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem cannot be categorically ruled out. Indeed, since both Israel and the Palestinians want Jerusalem to remain an open city and neither side seeks to build any barriers between its east and west sides, under conditions of peace the Palestinians residing in the east side will have every right to govern themselves. That is, as long as the current status continues where the city remains united and open for both Israelis and Palestinians to traverse freely from east to west and vice versa, and where the people differ only in their citizenship, the establishment of a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem remains a viable option. This should not change in any way the status of the holy shrines. Both sides must respect each other’s religious convictions because neither can alter in the slightest way the reality of Temple Mount—Haram al-Sharif short of an unthinkable religious war.

Validity of Confederation

People who are versed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may find definitive merits or demerits in this confederation plan, but I challenge anyone to show me how the facts established above will change in any substantial way to render this proposal inoperable. The current Israeli government is determined to change these realities and prevent the Palestinians from establishing a state of their own, but it will not succeed. Israel will fail because the Palestinians will never give up their right to statehood and the bloodshed will continue as long as they are blocked from realizing their aspirations. It will fail because the Palestinians enjoy unwavering and near-unanimous international support, including from the Arab states. It will fail because a majority of Israelis understand the pitfalls of the continuing occupation and its long-term dire consequences. And finally, it will fail because of the destabilizing nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict throughout the region and its adverse effect on geostrategic interests, especially those of the US, EU, and the Arab states. Lastly, given the intractability and the intricacies of the conflict and the depth of distrust, hatred, and animosity between Israel and the Palestinians, it will be naïve to assume that such a resolution can simply be negotiated and an agreement be reached. It will take at least a decade of a process of reconciliations, both people-to-people and government-to-government, to mitigate the deeply hostile and distrustful atmosphere before a final agreement can be realized, as long as the principle of establishing an independent Palestinian state is agreed upon from the onset. In the interim, both sides ought to reflect on one thing: their coexistence is inevitable and indefinite. The question is whether they want to live in peace, and grow and prosper together, or continue to spill each other’s blood for the next 75 years without any ability to change the essence of the conflict in any meaningful way. Israelis and Palestinians paid dearly for the tragically misguided policies pursued by their extremist leaders who missed many opportunities to make peace at various stages of their conflict and deprived four generations of living in peace and enjoying a friendly, collaborative, and prosperous neighborly relationship. However unlikely it seems that an Israeli-Palestinian peace can be achieved, all Israelis and Palestinians ought to think if there is any other viable alternative, as coexistence remains the only option. And if not now, when? How many more generations will have to pass before both sides come to their senses? The next generations of Israelis and Palestinians deserve to live in peace and must not pay with blood for the sins of their misguided and shortsighted leaders, many of whom still wallow in past delusions, while Israeli and Palestinian youth continue to pay the price. --- Note: A vastly expanded version of this article was published in World Affairs in Spring 2022; a special issue of the journal dedicated entirely to this proposal was published in Winter 2022.  

An effigy protests Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's support for the invasion of Iraq, Rome, February 15, 2003

March 19 marked the 20th anniversary of the United States and Coalition Forces’ Invasion of Iraq in 2003. The George W. Bush administration’s preparations for war against Iraq had drawn widespread international criticism and triggered an international anti-war movement. The outbreak of the Iraq War disrupted the global political system and severely strained Transatlantic relationships between the United States and its allies and partners in the European Union.

As the Bush administration conducted an international diplomatic campaign to prepare for war against Saddam Hussein, Europeans questioned the need for war. I was conducting research in Florence, Italy, during the run-up to the outbreak of war and was deeply troubled by the Bush administration’s bellicose policies and its unrelenting drive for war. As a historian of violence based in Florence, I was able to observe the organization of a significant European anti-war movement.

The first European Social Forum, a European convention of social and activist organizations, was held in Florence in November 2002. I attended the convention and observed many of the sessions that discussed international politics and criticized the Bush administration’s foreign policy. Other panels promoted pacifism and explored techniques of anti-war activism. At the end of the European Social Forum, the member groups organized the first pan-European anti-war march. I participated along with an estimated 450,000 activists in a massive anti-war march through the streets of Florence opposing the Iraq War. Groups carried rainbow-colored pace (peace) flags and banners with anti-war slogans such as “Non Alla Guerra - No War” and “Not in My Name.”

The organizers of the anti-war march at the European Social Forum in Florence prepared an even larger international day of protest against the impending war in February 2003.

As these protests were being organized, European opposition to the planned war solidified. French and German diplomats openly opposed the planned war in Iraq. European media increasingly questioned the United States’ pursuit of war against Saddam Hussein.

Secretary of State Colin Powell appeared before the United Nations Security Council on February 5, 2003 to present the case that Iraq possessed (or had the means to manufacture) chemical weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and had ties to Al Qaeda. Powell’s presentation utterly failed to convince the United Nations diplomats or the world’s journalists of the existence of WMD in Iraq or of the necessity for a military campaign to “liberate” the Iraqi people.

Julian Borger argued that “Colin Powell will be most remembered for the act he most regretted, his 2003 presentation to the UN security council laying out US evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, which turned out not to exist.”

Sharp contrasts appeared between the U.S. news media’s jingoistic coverage of Powell’s presentation—it completely justified war—and the European and world news media’s criticisms of Powell—he was utterly unconvincing.

Many European citizens mobilized in opposition to the United States’ Iraq War. Phyllis Bennis recently observed that “Twenty years ago — on February 15, 2003 — the world said no to war. People rose up in almost 800 cities around the world in an unprecedented movement for peace.”

The anti-war protests on February 15 achieved a massive coordinated mobilization of citizens worldwide. “There were 600 marches in 54 countries: 250 alone in Canada and the United States, 105 in Europe, 37 in the Middle East and Asia, 16 in Latin America, 8 in Africa, 34 in Oceania, and 1 in Antarctica.” Millions of citizens marched against war in Rome, London, Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, Berlin, Stockholm, and other European cities, often evoking the initiative of the European Social Forum in Florence. Additional protests were held in New York, Beirut, Melbourne, Tokyo, and smaller cities around the world.

The United States’ military invasion of Iraq unleashed decades of destruction and suffering for the Iraqi people and destabilized the entire Middle East. The invasion also weakened the United States’ relations with its European allies and undermined European citizens’ confidence in the international policies of the United States and its leadership of the NATO Transatlantic alliance.

The anti-war movement that started with the European Social Forum in Florence failed to prevent the Iraq War, but it did launch broader pan-European forms of civic participation and anti-war activism that have continued to shape European societies.

Students in Brasilia take the ENEM, the national high school exam of Brazil. Former President Jair Bolsonaro had attemtped to revise the exam to promote a benign view of the country's periof of military dictatorship. 

On January 12, 2023, the Department of Education in Florida labeled a draft Advanced Placement course on African American Studies “woke indoctrination” and rejected it for including readings from, among others, historians Robin D.G. Kelly and Nell Irvin Painter. The Department's decision fit within the broader political vision of the governor (and former history teacher) Ron DeSantis, as well as a nation-wide pattern of attempts to restrict the teaching of gender and race in United States history. Florida’s policies were quickly linked to similar ones in backsliding democracies in Europe, such as Hungary, Poland and Turkey. Data from the Network of Concerned Historians for 2020–2023 suggest a correlation between attempts to censor history education and the global backsliding of democracy, with India, Brazil and the Philippines being among the most grave examples.

Since 2014, when Narendra Modi was elected Prime Minister of India, Hindutva (or radical Hindu nationalism) has again become a cornerstone of internal politics, exemplified through a surge in mob violence, discrimination against non-Hindu people, and a broad set of laws aimed at history education. Most frequently, these laws have targeted history textbooks. In March 2019, it was announced that chapters related to caste conflict would be scrapped from the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) history textbooks for class IX (the first year of high school). In July 2021 more than one hundred historians expressed concern over further changes to the NCERT history textbooks, and a year later acclaimed historian Irfan Habib criticized the textbooks for downscaling Muslim and Mughal history. Also in July 2021, the University Grants Commission released a new undergraduate history curriculum for centrally funded public universities that was widely criticized for its pro-Hindu bias, its downplaying of contributions to Indian history by Muslim and secular politicians, and the overrepresentation of Vedic and Hindu religious literature.

In addition to legislation, right-wing Hindutva groups exerted pressure on textbook publishers. In February 2020, Hindu Janajagruti Samiti (HJS) demanded the immediate withdrawal of a class XI World History textbook in Goa, because it allegedly depicted the 17th century ruler Shivaji I, often depicted as an important proto-nationalist Hindu leader, too critically. The HJS had previously demanded a ban on a book containing alleged derogatory remarks about Hindutva ideologue V.D. Savarkar (1883–1966), and requested action be taken against the book’s author and publisher.

Attempts to censor history education in India chiefly concern the inclusion of the contributions of people who do not fit an ethnocentric nationalist narrative of the past that serves as a foundational element of the government’s political ideology. In that sense, these examples mirror most  closely to what is happening in the United States.

Similarly, in Brazil former President Jair Bolsonaro repeatedly attacked the way slavery was taught, for example by supporting the far-right thesis that, since Portuguese colonizers barely entered the interior of Africa, Africans themselves should bear the most blame for the enslavement and trading of African people. Additionally, the Escola Sem Partido [loosely, “school without politics”] movement has claimed to protect children against indoctrination in schools while targeting courses on Black history and culture and proposing laws that would, among other things, institute a complaint line for parents who felt that their children were being subjected to “Cultural Marxism,” encourage children to film their teachers, and reduce the time spent on teaching Black and Native Brazilian history and culture.

Moreover, in the run-up to the National High School Exam (ENEM) on 21 November 2021, Bolsonaro was criticized for asking Education Minister Milton Ribeiro to change wording to refer to the 1964 military coup as the “Revolution.” The term aligned with the far-right revisionist history of the 1964–1985 military dictatorship. Since 2018, Bolsonaro had repeatedly criticized ENEM, leading to the disappearance of at least one question about the 1964 coup from the 2020 exam. His criticism was part of a pattern of interference and intimidation, which included attempts by the director of the National Institute for Educational Studies and Research, the agency responsible for ENEM, reportedly demanding the exclusion of more than twenty exam questions, many of which dealt with Brazil’s recent history. In November 2021 Bolsonaro stated that ENEM would start “looking more like the government,” and that it would no longer have “absurd questions as in past exams” and would instead “start history from scratch.”

In Brazil, censorship practices regarding history education have been concerned with both remote and recent history. The latter has been the focus of attempts to rewrite history in the Philippines, which have focused on the 1965–1986 rule of President Ferdinand Marcos, which was characterized by widespread human rights violations and corruption, especially during the period of martial law (1972–1986). In the lead-up to the May 9, 2022 presidential elections, campaigners for Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, Jr. proclaimed that the Marcos administration had brought glory and wealth, and that no human rights violations had taken place under martial law. Already on January 10, he had promised the revision of history textbooks.

Upon his election as President, Marcos Jr. appointed Sara Duterte as Minister of Education, increasing concerns that they would lead a campaign to rewrite history textbooks. During his presidency, Sara Duterte’s father Rodrigo Duterte had expressed admiration for the Marcos regime, referring to those years as the “golden age” of Philippine history and calling on the public to “move on” rather than dwelling on the particulars of dictatorial rule. In July 2022, public historian Ambeth Ocampo of the Ateneo de Manila University, who had been a fierce critic of the younger Marcos’s attempts at historical revisionism, was harassed online. A month later, the official Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino (KWF; Commission on Filipino Languages) tagged five books critical of the martial law period as “subversive” and their authors as “Communists,” and banned them (though the order was rescinded after a strong pushback by the literary and academic community).

In Responsible History, professor emeritus of Human Rights, Ethics and History Antoon De Baets has pointed out the intimate correlation between democracy and the freedom of historical research and teaching. The plausibility of this connection can be most clearly seen in its violations, as the four cases above forcefully demonstrate. More broadly, between 2020 and 2023, censorship of history education took place in at least fourteen countries. Of these, twelve have seen a decline in their democratic status at some point during that period. This is not only the case with the censorship of history education, but also finds its expression, for example, in state-led attempts to censor commemorative practices. The interference of states in research, teaching and commemoration of history is an important warning sign for its pending abuse, and for the erosion of democracy in general.

However, and more hopefully, state censorship can be met with resistance. In the United States, PEN America is at the forefront of opposing censorial practices, such as those in Florida. In Brazil, the National Association of Historians (ANPUH) protested repeatedly against Bolsonaro’s attacks. In India, historians like Habib and the Haryana opposition leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda have criticized, in the words of the latter, the “politicization” of education and the “saffronization” of history. And in the Philippines, more than 1700 scholars and educators signed a manifesto calling for the defense of historical truth and academic freedom, pledging to “combat all attempts at historical revisionism,” and vowing to protect historical, educational and cultural institutions and “preserve books, documents, records, artifacts, archives and other source materials pertaining to the martial law period.” Their efforts should motivate us all to continue to step up and protect history from abuse by politicians.

An Irish family enduring starvation during the Great Famine in Carraroe, County Galway. National Library of Ireland.

The hit Irish show Riverdance includes a segment titled The Countess Cathleen, which was originally a verse drama by William Butler Yeats, published in 1893. 

This legendary tale of Countess Cathleen (aka Kathleen) begins with Irish peasants starving to death during a famine. Demons have descended upon the desperate poor trying to get them to sell their souls to the Devil in exchange for gold to buy food. The wealthy Countess Cathleen tries to help the peasants by selling off her riches to buy food and end the starvation.

But the demons persist in stopping food from reaching the hungry, forcing the Countess Cathleen to offer her soul to them. The Countess Cathleen tells the demons, who are disguised as merchants, “These people starve, and therefore do they come Thronging to you. I hear a cry come from them, And it is in my ears by night and day."

Cathleen cannot ignore the suffering cries of the hungry. So she makes the deal with the Devil. Her soul is taken in exchange for food for the peasants and the return of any souls the demons had taken. The peasants are saved. The Countess Cathleen sadly dies.  

But Cathleen’s story does not end. Her soul is later saved by angels because God realized she was trying to do good to save others. The evil demons are driven away. 

While the story is fictitious, the idea of famine in Ireland was, of course, very real. Multiple famines struck Ireland during the 19th century and no doubt influenced the creation of the legend. The desperation in the story of those starving symbolizes the real life struggles people face during severe hunger emergencies.

When famine threatens a country, those starving are forced to sell precious assets, withdraw their children from school or send them into the streets to beg. Families will flee their homes in the search for food. When famine strikes, instability and chaos often follows. 

And the evil of famine symbolized in The Countess Cathleen is very real to this day. In the story the demons interrupt Cathleen’s effort to feed the hungry, before taking her soul. In some conflicts food aid is blocked by armed forces from reaching those in need, a true act of evil. 

For Ireland, preventing famine around the globe is an important mission as they know too well the horror of hunger. The Riverdance show, in keeping with this tradition, started fighting hunger at its creation. A video titled, Riverdance for Rwanda, was sold in 1994 to raise funds to feed the hungry in Rwanda. 

That same spirit of the Irish in fighting hunger we need more than ever today. As the UN World Food Program warns “the number of acutely hungry people continues to increase at a pace that funding is unlikely to match, while the cost of delivering food assistance is at an all-time high because food and fuel prices have increased.”

There are many nations on the brink of famine including drought-ravaged Somalia where people are having to walk for days in the search of food and water. In war-torn Yemen, Burkina Faso, D.R. Congo, South Sudan, and the Sahel region of Africa hunger is at frightening levels. The UN World Food Program (WFP) and other relief agencies don’t have enough funding to keep up. WFP, UNICEF, CARE, Mary's Meals, Concern Worldwide, Save the Children, Mercy Corps and many other hunger fighting charities need our support. 

The war in Ukraine has made the hunger crisis worse by causing havoc to one of the world’s breadbaskets. Food from Ukraine helps feed Somalia, Yemen and other countries in need during normal times. But this food is harder to reach since the war began and this precious supply is constantly in danger. 

The evil of famine is hanging over many nations. We all can do more to feed the hungry especially the children who are most vulnerable to malnutrition. We can save lives and prevent famine in the true spirit of the Irish and Saint Patrick’s Day. 

Ukrainian refugees housed in an athletics facilty, Moldova

The best quote I’ve discovered about war is from Ian McEwan’s novel Black Dogs (1993). His main character reacts to World War II in Europe:

He was struck by the recently concluded war not as a historical, geopolitical fact but as a multiplicity, a near-infinity of private sorrows, as a boundless grief minutely subdivided without diminishment among individuals who covered the continent like dust. . . . For the first time he sensed the scale of the catastrophe in terms of feeling; all those unique and solitary deaths, all that consequent sorrow, unique and solitary too, which had no place in conferences, headlines, history, and which had quietly retired to houses, kitchens, unshared beds, and anguished memories.

With all the media available today we do sometimes become aware of war’s “private sorrows,” but not often enough. When we consider how important our own sorrows (like the death of a loved one) are to each of us, we should pause longer to reflect on all the deaths, maiming, and other tragedies that wars inflict.

Like the general public, historians (including myself) often fail in this regard. We are better at providing mind-numbing statistics regarding all the deaths and injured than we are at conveying much feeling for the millions of individual tragedies caused by wars. Sporadically, however, I have tried to correct this defect. On the first page of my book An Age of Progress? Clashing Twentieth-Century Global Forces (2008), I quote McEwan and then add,

Some feeling for all these tragedies is also sometimes conveyed by first-hand accounts. A few early ones are provided here, and readers can only attempt to imagine some of the other millions of tragedies which lie behind the gruesome statistics of the remainder of the century.

I then provided excerpts from the writings of a few U. S. soldiers that killed Filipinos at the very beginning of the twentieth century--in the Philippine-American War (1899-1902) “as many as 200,000 Filipino civilians died from violence, famine, and disease.”  Here is just one sample:

Our men have been relentless, have killed to exterminate men, women, and children, prisoners and captives, active insurgents and suspected people, from lads of ten up, an idea prevailing that the Filipino was little better than a dog, a noisome reptile in some instances, whose best disposition was the rubbish heap.

Almost all wars have produced such “private sorrows.” But I have only occasionally touched upon them--see, for example, “A Memorial Day Lament for Capt. Wilfred Owen, Sgt. Joyce Kilmer, and the Needless Dead of Foolish Wars."

Now, however, having just observed the one-year anniversary of the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it seems appropriate to describe just a small percentage of the individual suffering wrought by this tragic war.

One of those tragedies occurred last year on the first day of summer, June 21. It happened in a pine forest near the Ukrainian Donbas city of Sievierodonetsk, and it killed a professional Ukrainian-Jewish couple in their early thirties, Taras and Olha Melster.

They had grown up in Kropyvnytskyi, a central Ukrainian city of 230,000, surrounded by wheat fields and relatively unscathed by the physical damage inflicted on so many other Ukrainian cities. The couple knew each other from age eight on, engaged in environmental protests together, went to college--he studying electrical work, she art--and married when they were 25. Six years later, they were living in a small apartment, owning a big dog, not yet having children, but hoping to soon. He was constructing websites, she had created an online decoration business. Like so many other Ukrainians of various ages and professions they both volunteered for military service, in their case on the very first day of the Russian invasion back in February 2022.  

Even though the couple had little military training and she was the only woman in their unit, they found themselves on the front lines because of her persistence and major losses to more experienced soldiers. Their job? Hold their trench despite heavy Russian shelling and bombing; prevent the Russians from advancing. But after particularly intense Russian bombardment, another soldier discovered the couple’s bodies “next to each other, ripped apart.”

Another Ukrainian tragedy occurred the following month. But since I’ve already described it, I’ll just summarize it here. In July 2022 in the Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia, about 160 miles southwest of Kyiv, Iryna Dmytriev, a thirty-four-year-old single mother, is pushing a pink and black stroller. In it is her only child, four-year-old Liza, who is afflicted with Down syndrome and was also born with a defective heart. When she was seven months old she required five-hour heart surgery. 

As Iryna and Liza are walking Iryna suddenly hears a frightening noise above. She looks, sees a “massive” missile, and spontaneously huddles over the carriage trying to protect her daughter. But it did no good. The Russian missile killed Liza and severely injured mother Iryna, who was hospitalized for a month, with her left leg shattered and missile fragments requiring removal from her stomach and left arm. About the killing of her daughter Iryna said, Liza “was my life. . . . What Russia took from me cannot be forgiven. All my plans are destroyed.”

Another example of the “private sorrows” of wars that McEwan wrote about occurred in Dnipro, the Ukraine’s fourth largest city with a population of about one million. It’s on the Dnieper River, about 243 miles southeast of Kyiv. On January 14, 2023 a Russian cruise missile hit the apartment building where Anastasia Shvets, age 24, lived on the sixth floor with her parents and a cat. She was the only survivor in her apartment. According to Ukrainian authorities at least 44 other people in the building were killed and 80 were injured.

Anastasia’s mom had worked in a bank, and her dad had been a mechanic until the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, when he lost his job and later volunteered to build roadblocks to secure the city. Anastasia and her mom also took in stray cats, fed them, and looked for people to adopt them.

On the day the missile struck, the daughter and her parents had just finished lunch, but the latter remained in the kitchen, where they made candles for Ukrainian soldiers hunkered down in trenches. Working a night job at a bakery, Anastasia left the kitchen to sleep for a while. But just minutes later she heard a “massive roar,” and the kitchen and most of the apartment was blown apart. Her parents’ dead bodies were pulled from the rubble the next day.

As with many Ukrainians, this death was not the first to bring her grief. The previous September her boyfriend, Vladyslav, died in battle during a Ukrainian counteroffensive in eastern Ukraine. All this tragedy has left her living with an aunt and grandmother, taking sedatives, being on sick leave, and being frightened of air-raid warnings and loud noises.

A final example of the war-inflicted suffering is that of Andrii Mishchenko, his wife Olha Taranova, and their 11-year-old daughter, Sasha. From living together in Kyiv, they parted like many couples early in the one-year-old war. In their case at the Ukrainian-Slovakian border. He eventually ended up on the front lines in eastern Ukraine doing dangerous reconnaissance work. She and Sasha are now in Trossingen, a small town in southwest Germany, which has also welcomed other refugee Ukrainian mothers and children. Fortunately, because she can work remotely, she is able to continue earning income from the IT (Information Technology) job she had in Kyiv.

Andrii and Olha communicate mainly by cell phone. Every morning he tries to send her a heart emoji; she responds with an electronic kiss, but also tries to send him videos of her and Sasha. In one exchange he wrote, “Kissing and hugging you tightly”; she replied, “I am yearning for you.” He responded, “Miss me but do not be sad.”

Once he ordered flowers to be sent to her German address. She used the flower box to send him German chocolates, a box he now keeps beside him when he sleeps.

One can only imagine the anxieties of this man and wife, separated by more than a thousand miles and warfare, when they cannot communicate. That was the case for three straight weeks in September during Ukraine’s counteroffensive.

Since they parted in early 2022, the family has only been able to get together twice. The first time was in Kyiv in August, but only for about four hours because Andrii’s unit needed him back quickly for a counteroffensive in the Kharkiv region. The second time, in December in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, they were able to spend five days together. They talked about Olha and Sasha moving back to Kyiv, but because Andrii would worry too much about a Russian missile killing them there, Olha agreed for her and Sasha to return to the safety of Trossingen.  

The four sketches outlined above are just a small sample of the innumerable hardships and tragedies suffered by the Ukrainian people. We can read statistics like 13 million Ukrainians displaced from their homes (8 million of them now refugees in Europe), but they don’t mean much unless we think of millions of individual cases, most of them worse, like those of Olha and Sasha. Ditto for linking the at least 100,000 Ukrainian troops killed or injured with the Kropyvnytskyi couple Taras and Olha Meltser, found dead, “ripped apart,” in a trench together. And ditto for connecting the at least 8,000 Ukrainian non-combatants who have been confiramed killed and nearly 13,300 injured with the four-year-old child Liza (killed in Vinnytsia) ); her mother Iryna (injured); and the parents of 24-year-old Anastasia Shvets (killed), all non-combatant victims of Russian missiles.

The four cases mentioned above are just a minuscule sample of what McEwan called “a near-infinity of private sorrows.” And none of the four deal with cities or villages like Mariupol, Kherson, or Bucha where some of the worst atrocities occurred. (See, for example, “Putin’s Mariupol Massacre is one of the 21st century’s worst war crimes,” a late-February 2023 “60 Minutes” treatment of Kherson, and an AP News account of Russian tortures and executions in Bucha.)

Nor do any of our four cases mention Russian missile or other attacks (a total of 707) on Ukrainian medical facilities that occurred in 2022. Nor do any of the four deal with the effects of the war on children’s education. (A recent UNICEF report stated, “Recent attacks against electricity and other energy infrastructure have caused widespread blackouts and left almost every child in Ukraine without sustained access to electricity, meaning that even attending virtual classes is an ongoing challenge.”)

Nor have our tragic examples mentioned rape, sending some Ukrainian children to Russia, or the imposition of Russian propaganda in Ukrainian areas seized by Russia--all of which have occurred. Nor have I written about all the Russian deaths--reportedly more than Ukrainian ones--nor Putin’s increased domestic curtailments.

And for what purpose have all these evils occurred? Primarily because in Vladimir Putin’s head all kinds of evil Ukrainian and Western threats whirl around. Some, like NATO’s expansion, may be genuine dangers; but others like the Western desire to dismember Russia, or Ukraine being dominated by neo-Nazis, are more like paranoid delusions.

The present essay has not addressed the need for a diplomatic solution to end the war. Nor has it minimized the risk of it leading to an escalation and perhaps even a resort to nuclear weapons. Moreover, the sources cited may not all be 100 percent objective. But, as one critic of the escalating level of Western military support for Ukraine has written, “There is no valid excuse for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its horrific ongoing war on that country.”

The following is the second installment in a series of three articles. The first addressed how Israel lost its way; the third will demonstrate certain realities on the ground that are not subject to change short of a catastrophe. In that context, since Israeli-Palestinian coexistence is inevitable, both sides must choose between living in peace or perpetual violent conflict.

Although the 55-year-old Israeli occupation cannot be justified under any circumstances, Palestinian leaders have greatly contributed to its disastrous continuation. Their misguided policies over the years have tragically subjected four generations to a life of misery and hopelessness in pursuit of a delusional goal of destroying Israel.

Righting the Wrong

For the past 75 years, the Palestinians have raised four generations of aspiring youth who, like their counterparts in Israel and other advanced countries, dream of growing and flourishing while making their own mark by contributing to their community’s and their country’s prosperity and growth. They have failed not because they are incapable, or less talented, or unworthy of success: they have failed because their leaders failed them. Palestinian leaders failed them due to their shortsightedness, misguided policies, and unwillingness to accept Israel’s ineliminable reality. As such, they have played directly into Israel’s hands by threatening its very existence, which provided Israel with the rationale and justification for continuing the debilitating occupation.

Ironically, during the 75- year-old conflict between the two sides, Israel became a global power, a leader in every sphere of science and technology, with a powerful economy and formidable military, while millions of Palestinians are still languishing in refugee camps. If this does not demonstrate the utter moral and political bankruptcy of the Palestinian leadership, I don’t know what does. Thus, their insolvent policy only compounded their youth’s despondency and despair for which they conveniently blame Israel, giving rise to militancy and violence against a country with which they must coexist.

From the onset of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in 1948, the Palestinian leadership adopted a policy of resistance and confrontation against Israel. Even at times of relative calm, the persistent denunciation of Israel on various issues, especially in connection with the Palestinian refugees, Jerusalem, and the Israeli settlements provided a constant reminder to every Palestinian youth that Israel is the obstacle that hinders their progress and shatters their dreams.

That is, the Palestinian leadership linked the fortunes and the future well-being of their youth to the destruction of Israel. As such, successive Palestinian generations condemn Israel for their misfortune which is constantly reinforced not only due to lack of genuine efforts on the part of the Palestinians to find solutions, but also because the longer the conflict persisted, the more it became intractable. At the present, the two sides are further apart than they were 30 years ago when the Oslo Accords were signed.

Indoctrination in schools The indoctrination of Palestinian youth begins from a very young age in schools; it is one of the most potent ways to sway the minds of the young, and get them to believe whatever they are taught. In essence, Palestinian schools have become in part laboratories for anti-Israeli disinformation both through the teachers and textbooks. For example, in history books Israel is depicted not only as an occupying power that must be resisted, but as having no right to exist at all.

In geography books, the 1967 borders are not delineated, and in Palestinian maps the ‘state of Palestine’ covers the entire landmass from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River. In the studies of Palestinian refugees, the blame is placed squarely on Israel for causing the catastrophe, al-Nakba, which is being inculcated in the mind of young pupils. The continuing occupation only reinforces what these young students are misled to believe.

As Mark Twain observed in his autobiography, “When even the brightest mind in our world has been trained up from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will never be possible for that mind, in its maturity, to examine sincerely, dispassionately, and conscientiously any evidence or any circumstance which shall seem to cast a doubt upon the validity of that superstition…” To be sure, in schools the Palestinian people are portrayed as being the victims of a brutal power. The misinformation and the selected truth about the conflict with Israel passes from one generation to the next, and today Palestinian youths view Israel the way their parents have, as an irreconcilable enemy to be resisted at all costs.

Brainwashing through public acrimony Whereas the anti-Israel schooling is poisoning the minds of the young, it continues to be reinforced by the Palestinian leaders’ acrimonious public narrative against Israel. The day-to-day public denunciation of Israel further resonates in the minds of the young and they become increasingly in tune to resistance, rather than reconciliation. This state of mind is further bolstered, especially when they hear from extremist Palestinians leaders, such as Hamas, and the media about Israel’s ruthlessness which will not end until Israel is soundly defeated.

Moreover, disunity between extremist groups such Hamas and the more moderate Palestinian Authority makes it impossible for the latter to moderate its public acrimonious narrative against Israel, fearing being accused of appeasing the Israelis. Indeed, rather than preparing the public for the inevitability of peaceful coexistence and engaging in constructive public dialogue, they are poisoning the political atmosphere by promoting the belief that only the destruction of Israel would liberate the Palestinians from the bondage of occupation, allow them to reclaim the land, and restore their national pride and dignity.

Failing to invest in nation-building The Palestinian leadership’s dismal failure to dedicate itself to nation-building made it impossible for hundreds of thousands of young people to find respectable employment, which kept them deprived of decent wages to support themselves and denied them a dignified life. Tens of thousands of young Palestinians cannot pursue higher education because more often than not they are forced to find menial jobs to help feed their families.

Thus, idleness and the lack of any prospect for a better and more productive life radicalizes many Palestinian youths who become disposed to join militant groups where they are embraced, feel respected, and are rewarded for their willingness to join the fray against Israel. Basically, they escape from their imprisonment in a life of despair as they are lured to go to a new prison, where they presumably find meaning to their lives. As Aldous Huxley cogently stated, “It is perfectly possible for a man to be out of prison and yet not free — to be under no physical constraint and yet to be a psychological captive, compelled to think, feel and act as the representatives of the national State, or of some private interest within the nation, want him to think, feel and act.”

Exaltation of martyrdom Many young Palestinians who feel left out without any prospect of living a normal and productive life often search for a greater meaning to their lives and are swayed to believe that they can find in death the salvation that eludes them when they are alive. Martyrdom is glorified, especially when the cause for which they sacrifice themselves is for the good of the entire Umma (nation). The Quran makes many references to martyrdom including the following: “Think not of those who are slain in Allah’s way as dead. Nay, they live, finding their sustenance in the presence of their Lord; They rejoice in the bounty provided by Allah….” (3:169).

The problem here is that the Palestinian leadership, especially the extremists, do not preach for peaceful coexistence; instead, they praise acts of violence and terrorism against Israel, and honor the perpetrators’ courage and valor in sacrificing themselves for the greater cause of national liberation. Thus, for a multitude of young Palestinians, killing Israeli Jews and ridding themselves of the occupation has become a holy mission as if it were sanctioned by Allah. They seek martyrdom because they truly believe what they are told, that they will rejoice in heaven instead of continuing to be humiliated and mortified on earth.

Missing opportunities to make peace From the time Israel was established in 1948, the Palestinians missed many opportunities to make peace. The late Israeli foreign minister Abba Eban put succinctly when he stated that “the Palestinians never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity,” a fact that prevented a multitude of young Palestinians from enjoying the fruits of peace and becoming constructive players in nation-building who are able to take pride in their achievements.

Starting with their refusal to accept the UN partition plan in 1947, the Palestinians have indisputably missed a number of opportunities, but it will suffice to name only a few. Following the Six Day War in 1967, the Palestinians turned down Israel’s offer to return all the territories captured in war in exchange for peace (with the exception of the final status of Jerusalem). In 1977, the Palestinians rejected the invitation to join the Israeli-Egyptian peace negotiations which could have resulted in in an Israeli-Palestinian peace along with the Israeli-Egyptian peace agreement signed in 1979.

At Camp David in 2000, the Palestinians missed another historic opportunity and walked away the last minute when a comprehensive agreement was afoot. The most violent uprising—the Second Intifada—that began a few months later stunned the Israelis, who concluded that Palestinians are simply not interested in peace. And finally, in 2007-2008 the Palestinians once more walked away from negotiations, this time over a disagreement in connection with percentages of land swaps.

Since then, largely under Netanyahu’s and Abbas’s leadership, no substantive peace negotiations have taken place, and sadly a fourth generation of Palestinians is now flagging between corrupt dictatorial leadership and self-destructive extremism, with no prospect for any meaningful life. Neither the Palestinian Authority nor Hamas have any plans or strategy that will help bring an end to the most destructive conflict to which they have subjected their youth for 55 years and counting.

This is how the Palestinians lost their way. As they continue to revel in the illusion that they can destroy Israel, they in fact are sowing the seeds of their own destruction. It’s time to wake up before they forfeit the next generation’s chance to live in peace and realize their dreams and aspirations to prosper in their own country, which they richly deserve if only given the opportunity.

In the conflict-ridden realm of international relations, certain terms are particularly widely used, and one of them is “red lines.”  Derived from the concept of a “line in the sand,” first employed in antiquity, the term “red lines” appears to have emerged in the 1970s to denote actions one nation regards as unacceptable from other nations.  In short, it is an implicit threat.

Vladimir Putin, self-anointed restorer of the Russian empire, has tossed about the term repeatedly in recent years.  “I hope nobody will get it into their heads to cross Russia’s so-called red line,” he warned in April 2021.  “Where it will be drawn, we will decide ourselves in each specific case.”  These red lines, although addressing a variety of issues, have been proclaimed frequently.  At the end of that November, Putin announced that Russia would take action if NATO crossed its “red lines” on Ukraine, saying that the deployment of offensive missile batteries on Ukrainian soil would serve as a trigger.  In mid-December, as Russian military forces massed within striking distance of Ukraine, the Russian foreign ministry demanded that NATO not only rule out any further expansion, but remove any troops or weapons from NATO members Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and the Balkan countries, and obtain Russian permission before holding any military drills in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, or Central Asia.

Finally, on February 24, 2022, Putin―ignoring a U.S. offer to negotiate some of these items―sent a massive Russian military force pouring into Ukraine in a full-scale invasion.  “This is the red line that I talked about multiple times,” he said, and “they have crossed it.”  Most nations were not impressed by this justification, for the Russian invasion and subsequent annexation of large portions of Ukraine were clear violations of international law and, as such, were condemned by the United Nations General Assembly and the International Court of Justice.

Of course, Putin’s red lines and international aggression, though particularly blatant, are hardly the only features of this kind that have appeared throughout Russian or world history.

The United States has a lengthy record in this regard.  As Professor Matthew Waxman of Columbia Law School has written, the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 involved “drawing a red line―with an implicit war threat” against “any European efforts to colonize or reassert control in the Western Hemisphere.”  Given the relative weakness of the United States at the time, the U.S. government did not attempt to enforce President James Monroe’s grandiose pronouncement. 

But, with the emergence of the United States as a great power, its government expanded the Monroe Doctrine to justify frequent U.S. meddling in hemispheric affairs, including conquering and annexing Latin American territory.  Even in recent decades, when U.S. annexations have become a relic of the past, the U.S. government has engaged in military intervention in other lands, especially in the Caribbean and Central America, but also in Asia and the Middle East (where President George W. Bush drew what he called “a line in the sand”).

In recent years, as China’s military and economic power have grown, its government, too, has begun emphasizing its red lines.  Meeting with U.S. President Joseph Biden in mid-November 2022, Chinese President Xi Jinping declared that Taiwan was the “first red line that must not be crossed.”  Xi did not mention the tension-fraught situation in the South China Sea, where China had set up military fortifications on islands claimed by its neighbors, including Vietnam and the Philippines.  But here, as well, China had red lines―leading to the current dangerous confrontations between U.S. and Chinese warships in the region.  Sharply rejecting a 2016 ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague that denied China’s control of the area, the Chinese government continued to build up fortifications on the disputed islands.  Furthermore, Chinese troops have continued for more than six decades to engage in violent military clashes with Indian troops along the disputed border, in the Himalayan region, between their two nations.

Although it could be argued that red lines are only an innocent expression of what a nation considers unacceptable in world affairs, it’s worth noting that they are employed especially by major nations.  The “great powers,” after all, have the military strength to give their warnings some credibility.  Conversely, smaller, weaker nations do not usually bother to issue such pronouncements, as their warnings―and even their interests―are rarely taken as seriously.  For this reason, the issuance of red lines usually boils down to a matter of what nation has the power to compel other nations to accept its demands.

Consequently, red lines lead inevitably to spheres of influence that other nations are supposed to respect―including a U.S. sphere in Latin America, a Russian sphere in Europe, and a Chinese sphere in Asia.  Naturally, people and nations living in the shadow of these major powers are not enthusiastic about this arrangement, which explains why many Latin Americans want the Yankees to go home, many Europeans fear Russian hegemony, and many Asians are wary of the rise of China.

Another problem with the issuance of red lines is their tendency to inspire international conflict and war.  Given their roots in the professed interests of a single nation, they do not necessarily coincide with the interests of other nations.  In this competitive situation, conflict is almost inevitable.  Where, in these circumstances, is there a place for collective action to fashion a common agreement―one recognizing the fundamental interests of all nations?

Rather than a world of red lines proclaimed by a few powerful nations, what humanity needs is a strengthened United Nations―a global federation of nations in which competing national priorities are reconciled and enforced through agreements, treaties, and international law. 

Setting red lines for the world is too important to be left to individual, self-interested countries.  They should be set―and respected―by all.

Police cordon near Victoria Park, Hong Kong, enforces prohibition on a vigil observing the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

Detail from photo by Studio Incendo, CC BY 2.0

According to the Annual Reports of the Network of Concerned Historians, at least fifty-three cases of state-led suppression of commemorative events took place between 2015 and 2022. Not surprisingly, most of these, seventy-seven percent, took place in authoritarian regimes. Two other characteristics are more surprising. First, in less than one-fifth of the cases were restrictions imposed by so-called memory laws which prescribe or prohibit certain expressions about the past– whereas in sixty-four percent they were backed and penalized through legislation unrelated to memory (e.g. as incitements to public disorder or threats to public health). In another seventeen percent the government simply resorted to violence, sometimes backed up by legislation afterwards.

Second, of the fifty-three cases of suppression, more than half (twenty-seven) took place in Asia, and another thirteen in Turkey, the Russian Federation and the Middle East. Of these, I will outline here four examples: the suppression of the commemoration of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in Hong Kong; the crackdown on commemorative events related to the 2011 Bahrain Uprising; the restrictions on the commemoration of Tamil victims of the Sri Lankan civil war (1983–2009); and the wide array of “sensitive commemoration days,” during which human rights activists were put under house arrest in Vietnam.

Despite their diversity, these examples hint at two shared characteristics: the correlation between suppression and political legitimacy based on a specific interpretation of the past, and the potential for commemorative suppressions to function as a warning signal for the abuse of history.

Commemorations of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre had long been banned in mainland China. On June 1, 2020 Hong Kong police banned the annual June 4 vigil at Victoria Park for the first time, officially citing health concerns over the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the ban, tens of thousands of people still came to Victoria Park, of which some, including Joshua Wong and Jimmy Lai, were arrested and charged with taking part in an “unauthorized assembly.”

In 2021, police again barred the vigil on the grounds of social distancing restrictions related to COVID-19. In the lead-up to the commemoration, the June 4 Museum—the only museum dedicated to the massacre, established in 2012 by the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China (HKASPDMC)—was forced to close. Police again arrested a number of demonstrators, including Chow Hang Tung, vice chairwoman of the HKASPDMC, who had called on people to commemorate the anniversary in their own way.

In 2022, for the third year in succession, authorities banned the vigil, this time threatening prosecution on the grounds of “incitement.” It was the first time that the Catholic Diocese of Hong Kong decided against holding a memorial mass, after its 91 year-old Cardinal Joseph Zen had been imprisoned on charges of collusion with foreign forces. Accompanying the prohibition of the vigils was the authorities’ announcement of new textbooks for secondary students in Hong Kong, in which most mentions of the massacre had been erased and nothing was said about the annual vigil in Victoria Park. Research by the Hong Kong Free Press showed that between 2010 and 2021 twenty-nine books about the massacre had been removed from public libraries, and of the remaining 120, only twenty-six were displayed and immediately available for borrowing.

Elsewhere, in Bahrain, a series of protests erupted against the authoritarian rule of King Hamad Al Khalifa and his family between February 14 and March 18, 2011, coinciding with the wider wave of protests known as the Arab Spring and lingering on until 2014. Afterward, authorities began to repress commemorations of the protests. In February 2016, the Chief of Public Security issued a warning against any kind of celebration of the five-year anniversary, because of “security threats from Iran-backed elements and militants linked to Islamic State.” On the day of the anniversary, police forces attacked people participating in commemorations, suppressing at least thirty-three events and arresting eighty-nine people.

Police in Hamad Town interrogated the fifteen-year-old Jameel J. about his participation in the observation of the ninth anniversary of the protests on February 14, 2020. On February 11, 2021, three other children, ages 16 to 17, were also arrested for their participation in demonstrations held in 2020. At the Criminal Investigation Directorate in Manama, they were reportedly beaten, threatened with rape and electric shocks, and refused access to their lawyers or parents. After international pressure, they were sentenced to a six-month suspended prison term.

Both in China and Bahrain, the suppression of commemorative events is intimately linked to the ways in which the respective leaders construct their political legitimacy. The demands for democratization exemplified by the Tiananmen protests are diametrically opposed to the self-fashioning of Xi Jinping as the avatar of stability, which shows increasing elements of a personality cult. In Bahrain, commemorations of the 2011 protests and their pleas for democratization and increased freedom for civil society undermine the continuous rule of King Al Khalifa.

The same was the case in Sri Lanka under the rule of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who had been the top defense official during the Sri Lankan civil war and campaigned in the 2019 elections on a platform of protecting “war heroes” from prosecution. Once in power, he banned any commemoration of Tamil victims. As a result, in 2021, under the pretext of COVID-19 related health concerns, Tamil parliament member Selvarajah Kajendran was arrested for commemorating a member of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE), relatives of deceased LTTE-members were forced out of cemeteries by armed troops when they tended their graves, and, on November 29, a group of Tamil journalists covering a commemoration in Mullaittivu was assaulted by soldiers.

The crackdown on commemorations was accompanied by the pardoning of those few members of the armed forces who had been held accountable for human rights violations against Tamils, increased surveillance and threats against human rights defenders by security and intelligence agencies, and the country’s withdrawal from commitments, set by the United Nations Human Rights Council, to provide justice and accountability for war crimes and other grave violations.

Since July 2022, Rajapaksa has been replaced by Ranil Wickremesinghe, after countrywide protests sparked by an economic crisis. However, Wickremesinghe does not seem to have made significant changes to his predecessor’s mnemonic policies towards the Tamil people.

In no other country is the scope of prohibited commemorative dates as extensive as in Vietnam. Research by Human Rights Watch in February 2022 found at least twelve anniversaries on which human rights activists were put under house arrest. Some of these were religious. The Hòa Hảo Buddhist practitioners who refused to join state-sanctioned churches were subject to house arrest at least four times a year: the founding day of the Hòa Hảo religion (July 4, 1939) and the anniversaries of the birth (January 15, 1920), disappearance (March 18, 1947), and death (April 16, 1947) of its founder Hunh Phú Sổ.

Other anniversaries were prohibited due to the historically complex relationship with China, including January 19 (commemoration of the 1974 Battle of the Paracel Islands between naval forces of South Vietnam and China); February 17 (commemoration of the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese border war); March 14 (commemoration of the 1988 Gac Ma battle); and October 1 (China Independence Day). Lastly, some national holidays were accompanied by house arrest orders: on April 30 (commemoration of the end of the 1954–1975 war); June 26 (United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture); September 2 (Vietnam National Independence Day); and December 10 (International Human Rights Day). State-led restrictions on memorial practices have become so common that in recent years house arrests were even enforced on weekends following public protests.

State-led suppression of commemorative practices is a highly diverse type of historical censorship. Yet, an analysis of the cases between 2015 and 2022 shows that some cautious conclusions can be drawn. First, the gravitational center of suppression in recent years lies in Asia. This is contrary to most of the research on history politics that focuses on Europe and to a lesser extent Latin America. Second, although in some cases states design memory laws to suppress commemorative practices, in the majority of cases non-history related legislation is invoked for their suppression, or a legal justification is only formulated after the fact. Lastly, commemorative practices, like historical work in general, are considered especially threatening when they have the (perceived) potential to undermine the carefully constructed interpretation of history that functions as one of the foundational pillars of a political reign. By extension, once a regime begins to interfere with commemorations, it should be an early warning that history is at risk of abuse.

Allied delegates photographed after the signing of the 1918 Armistice. Marshal Ferdinand Foch is second from right.

An invading army mounts a surprise attack against a peaceful neighbor. Expecting a “walk over” with a bold plan, the invader meets unsuspected resistance. The invader suffers huge losses of men and material and gets bogged down. Both sides settle into trench warfare, with static defenses and constant fighting. The invasion becomes a war of attrition, with both sides firing thousands of rounds of artillery and enduring thousands of casualties.

A war that the invader expected to last weeks drags on for years. Both sides, desperate to win, pour more men and material into the struggle. Each side believes it can win if it can just hold out longer than its foe.

This is Ukraine in February 2022 — but it could also describe Germany’s invasion of France in August 1914.  

While the war in Ukraine has reached the one-year mark, World War I, which Germany expected to last a few weeks, lasted 4 ½ years. Until August of 1918, both sides were convinced they could win if they just held out a little longer and fed more men into the meat grinder.

Could the Ukraine War follow this course?

Military experts in recent weeks have suggested different outcomes ranging from a sudden Russian collapse to a long, drawn-out stalemate with a negotiated peace. While we can’t predict the future, a brief review of the last months WW I in 1918 shows how a stalemate can end in a sudden collapse.

August 6. A  massive Allied attack using 456 tanks punches a wide hole in a German salient. The Allies advance seven miles and capture 13,000 German prisoners in one blow and thousands more in follow-up attacks. General Ludendorff calls the retreat “the black day of the German Army.”

October 3. Germany and Austria send a formal note requesting a ceasefire to President Wilson. They hope to obtain easier terms by bypassing archenemies France and the U.K.  Wilson declines to intervene and defers to Allied Supreme Commander Ferdinand Foch, who immediately rejects the request. At this point, German military leaders believe a ceasefire will give them a few months’ time to regroup, refit and launch a new offensive.

November 3. Austria-Hungary, with many of its soldiers surrendering en masse, abandons Germany and concludes an armistice with the Allies. In Germany, the sailors in the main fleet munity.  Angry riots demanding peace break out in Hamburg, Munich and Berlin. Germany’s leaders reluctantly conclude the war is lost; their only hope is a negotiated peace.

November 7. A delegation of German parliamentary leaders, headed by Matthias Erzberger, arrived at Compiegne, France to negotiate an armistice. Field Marshal Paul Von Hindenburg declines to participate, hoping to avoid blame for the defeat. The next day, November 8, Kaiser Wilhelm abdicates and flees to neutral Holland; Germany is now a republic. Parliamentary leader Erzberger will be assassinated by right-wing extremists in 1921.

November 11. At 5 a.m. the German delegates sign the armistice. It becomes effective at 11 a.m., on the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

January 18, 1919. The Paris Peace Conference opens at the Versailles Palace; 32 nations send delegates, but the final decisions are made by U.S. President Wilson, French Prime Minister George Clemenceau and British Prime Minister Lloyd George. Ultimately Germany must surrender all of her Navy, much of her army and is assessed $132 billion gold marks (U.S. $33 billion in current dollars).

Russian Collapse Unlikely

Could the current Ukraine war end like WWI, with a sudden collapse of the invader’s armed  forces and civilian riots?

It is possible, but unlikely. Putin’s Russia is more like Hitler’s Germany in 1945 than the semi-democratic nation of 1918. In WWI, Germany’s Reichstag had a small but vocal opposition party. Anti-war pamphlets had circulated for months. Germany had strong labor unions, which held strikes and a relatively free press, which kept the public (more or less) informed about the war’s progress. In addition, the British naval blockade was highly effective, forcing Germany to drastically reduce food rations. By 1918 many civilians were desperate from hunger and deaths from malnutrition were rising.

The situation in Putin’s Russia is much different. There is no opposition party, no free press and dissent is ruthlessly repressed.  Economic sanctions, so far, have not been very successful.

If the stalemate continues could the war be settled by negotiations?

So far, both sides remain mobilized and confident of victory. The leaders of Ukraine and several of its allies have insisted that Russia must be completely defeated. Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin said in January that “Ukraine has to win. I don’t see another choice.”

This kind of talk is often heard among warring parties before negotiations begin. As Robert Cialdini, a professor of psychology at Arizona State University and the author of Influence: the Psychology of Persuasion  observed:

“The truly gifted negotiator, then, is one whose initial position is exaggerated enough to allow for a series of concessions that will yield a desirable final offer from the opponent yet is not so outlandish as to be seen as illegitimate from the start.”

Although Ukrainian and Russian diplomats held a series of meeting shortly after the war began in February 2022, no agreements were reached and no talks have been held recently.

If serious peace negotiations do begin, the diplomats involved should remember the lessons of WW I.  The Treaty of Versailles, signed in June 1919, crippled the young German Republic and set the stage for the rise of the Nazi Third Reich.

Some prescient observers warned about this outcome as the Versailles talks concluded.

Economist John Maynard Keynes, an advisor to the British delegation declared it “one of the most serious acts of political unwisdom for which our statesmen have ever been responsible.”

French Field Marshall Ferdinand Foch, warned that "This is not peace, this is an armistice for 20 years."

Although Woodrow Wilson was unhappy with many terms of the final treaty, calling the reparations “harsh” and predicting that it would result in the German people “dreaming of vengeance,” he returned to America hoping to sell it and membership in the new League of Nations to Congress.

He failed. A newly elected Republican Congress rejected the peace treaty (the first time the U.S. had rejected a treaty ending a war) and declined to join the newly formed League of Nations. Wilson suffered a serious stroke in October 1919 and died in February 1924.  His initial dream, that “the world must be made safe for democracy” died with him.

Palestinian children detained by Israeli soliders in Hebron, West Bank, Febuary 2012

Editor's note: this essay is the first of three parts. Subsequent installments will assess the responsibility of the Palestinian people and their leaders and the actions both sides must take to avert catastrophe. 

Seventy-five years after its creation, Israel is now raising the fourth generation of warriors who are taught to view every Palestinian as a suspect or a would-be terrorist. Sadly, no Israeli government has considered how this direct and subtle indoctrination is poisoning the minds of its youth, with long-term dire consequences for the country.

Successive Israeli governments have been raising generations of warriors, poisoning their minds in the military and in schools. They are indoctrinated from a young age to view every Palestinian as a suspect or a would-be a terrorist—an irredeemable foe that ostensibly poses a real and present danger and must be reined in by whatever means, however brutal, to eliminate the threat they pose. Seventy percent of Jewish Israelis under the age of 25 identify as right-wing, and believe the Palestinians to be an arch enemy while psychologically preparing for the next violent confrontation. No Israeli government has seriously considered the dire psychological impact on the Israeli youth who are growing in an environment laden with such intense hatred toward a people with whom they must coexist indefinitely and under any circumstances.

The normalization of occupation has made the young Israelis increasingly numb to the Palestinians’ plight, and as a result of their schooling and training they have become impervious to the people who live in servitude with little or no hope for a better and promising future. But when this indifference to the pain and suffering of the Palestinians becomes a normal state of mind for Israeli youth, it robs them of their own humanity and dignity. They do not realize how they were psychologically inculcated to become so callous and apathetic towards their young Palestinian counterparts who live in fear and uncertainty while hatred, revenge, and retribution become their only way to maintain their resistance.

As Aldous Huxley eloquently stated, “The nature of psychological compulsion is such that those who act under constraint remain under the impression that they are acting on their own initiative. The victim of mind-manipulation does not know that he is a victim. To him the walls of his prison are invisible, and he believes himself to be free…his servitude is strictly objective.”

To be sure, for tens of thousands of Israeli youths, like their fathers and even grandfathers, the West Bank became an extension of Israel proper. They have been taught that this land was bequeathed to them exclusively by the Almighty for eternity and that the Jews have come back to simply reclaim what is inherently theirs. The Palestinians are portrayed as the perpetual enemy not to be trusted or reconciled with.

Last week, I had an opportunity to speak to a former Israeli soldier who served in a surveillance unit in the West Bank. I asked him about his experience with and feelings toward the Palestinians. At first, he demurred, but after a moment of hesitation he said: “You know, now that I am speaking to you, I can’t believe how I used to think of the Palestinians, any Palestinians at that. I was taught in class and trained in the field by the military to treat every Palestinian as a suspect or a would-be terrorist. That I should be vigilant, take no risk and not hesitate to shoot if I felt that I was even slightly in danger.”

“The fact that I could have easily pulled the trigger and killed a Palestinian of my age and rob him of his dreams and everything dear to him still sickens me to this day. Like thousands of other soldiers, I am still struggling with these feelings. I guess this what’s happens when the military and the political leadership indoctrinate, if not manipulate you through persistent public pronouncements to think and believe that the Palestinians are an irredeemable enemy and treating them as such is central to our national security.”

Generally, every person’s conscience limits or hinders, to a certain extent, their instinct to harm others. But when you become an integral part of a larger institutions, such as the military, and you are told what you must do to protect yourself, you unintentionally compromise your moral principles. You feel immune as long as you are operating within the larger authoritative framework. Thus, you become just another instrument within the military structure that makes you capable of killing a human being without hesitation, and you easily exempt yourself of any moral responsibility.

Given how the Israeli military indoctrinate the soldiers to treat the Palestinians, especially the young, as suspects—would-be terrorists—religious law (Halakha) which is codified in Tractate Sanhedrin 72a, (Habah l’hargecha hashkem l’hargo, “If someone is coming to kill you, rise against him and kill him first,”) allows Israeli soldiers, who are made familiar with this principle, to basically ‘shoot first and ask questions later’ because if you believe that the Palestinian intends to kill you if he can, you must rise and kill him first.

However, when a young Israeli soldier at the age of 18 or 19 kills a Palestinian, once he finishes his tour of duty and is out of the military infrastructure, he begins to experience, more often than not, agonizing trauma for having killed someone that he does not know. Still at a young age, he lives for years, haunted by that painful act that resulted in the death of another human being who was born and grew up under brutal occupation.

The following fatal incidents exemplify the terrifying psychological impact of this predisposed mental state of mind of the military forces serving in the West Bank. In 2014, a 64-year-old Palestinian man was sheltering in his basement with his family and neighbors when Israeli soldiers raided his home. The man was told by one of the soldiers not to take another step up the stairway. The man, holding a white flag, tried to explain in Hebrew that they were peaceful civilians as he unconsciously took one more step forward. The soldier shot him instantly in the heart and the man dropped dead in front of his children. In searching his body no weapon of any kind was found. Since then, the distrust and animosity between the two sides have become even progressively worse.

This January, a 14-year-old Palestinian boy was shot in the head by Israeli soldiers and later died during a military raid in the Dheisheh refugee camp, during which Israeli forces allege that Palestinians were throwing stones and Molotov cocktails at soldiers. To be sure, the lives of the Palestinians in the occupied territories have become disposable and inconsequential. With every new generation that passes, the Israeli youth are becoming increasingly accustomed to a reality that further degrades their own humanity.

I challenge every right-wing Israeli leader like Netanyahu and his accomplices, who denies the Palestinian right to statehood, to tell me where Israel will be in ten to fifteen years under this environment that dehumanizes not only the Palestinians but also the Israeli youth who are trained to be their oppressors. They are deliberately instilling in the minds of young Israelis the belief that the Palestinians will never accept Israel’s right to exist, and hence Israel is left with no choice but to view them as a perpetual enemy that must be dealt with accordingly.

As such, Israeli right-wing leaders systematically mislead the Israeli youth to believe that the continuing occupation is central to Israel’s national security, when in fact the occupation itself is bolstering the Palestinians’ national aspiration, nurturing and ensuring the next generation’s resistance to the occupation.

It is nothing short of tragic that successive Israeli governments paid little, if any heed to what they have inflicted on Israeli youth. Short of annexing the West Bank, right-wing Israeli governments, like the current one led by Netanyahu, want to maintain the occupation; for that they need to prepare yet another generation of warriors to keep fighting and dehumanizing the Palestinians with whom they must co-exist. The question is, do they want to fight another 75 years or accept the unswerving reality of co-existence and live in peace?

This is how Israel lost its way as it raises one generation after another of warriors instead of peacemakers, robing millions of Israelis of their quest for peace. The Israeli public must now rise to restore the sanity that has eluded successive Israeli governments and save the country from its tragically misguided extremist leaders.