October 7: the Beginning of Israel’s End

I went to law school specifically to study international human rights law. As the first person in my family to attend, I had no idea that I would not be at liberty to choose my courses until the second of my three years there. My parents were so proud…I did not have the heart to tell them that, while I enjoyed the rigor of the challenging texts, and their complexity, I found my studies mercenary and unbearably cynical. When I was finally permitted to choose elective courses, I eagerly signed up for Public International Law, with Professor Ndulo, a renowned African scholar and lawyer. Professor Ndulo was kind and a gentler teacher than other more Socratic professors that I had encountered during my first year, although to be fair Cornell was on the whole far gentler than other schools of comparable reputation. The teachers are more patient, the students less cutthroat than the horror stories I had only recently become aware of. 

As we examined case after case from the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, and war crime tribunals, however, I listened and grappled with the texts, hoping to read in them some reflection of the spark I felt at the thought of a governing world order that could have prevented the British Raj, the Balfour Declaration, the Holocaust…but the longer I studied them, the deeper my heart sank. It’s not enough…I thought. We need laws that bind men of power, not lofty, toothless ideals that only touch men of honor. I had no idea that my premonition would be overwhelmingly proven to be prophetic, a decade later. 

I had been fascinated by the politics of the Palestine conflict since high school. I was chagrined to learn when I was still young and idealistic that the United Nations, an institution created to correct the ravages of the eurocolonial era, had endorsed the inception of Israel on indigenous land, at the expense of the indigenous population who had welcomed the European refugees with nothing but kindness and classic Islamic hospitality. When I first heard about Hamas’ attack on Israel in 2023, I had no idea what it would spiral into. To me, it was merely an escalation in response to what Israel had been inflicting on Palestine for decades. I soon learned that the Western world regarded it as an unprovoked act of aggression that gave Israel the right to defend itself. Self-defense…the phrase curdled in my throat the first time I heard it. My stomach turned the way it did when I heard sexual predators accuse their victims of seducing them, when I heard that American racists used to argue that a black woman cannot be raped because she is too hot-blooded…I felt keenly for the Palestinian cause, but I could not have foreseen the paradigm shift that would occur in public opinion as the world experienced its first social media documented genocide. 

After the genocide began, I read Edward Said’s Orientalism for the first time. And for the first time, I truly grasped the existential threat that Islam has always posed to Europe and its American progeny. That single book taught me more about the politics of the Middle East, or SWANA (Southwest Asia and North Africa), than a lifetime of education from Western perspectives: 

“Arabs, for example, are thought of as camel-riding, terroristic, hook-nosed, venal lechers whose undeserved wealth is an affront to real civilization. Always there lurks the assumption that although the Western consumer belongs to a numerical minority, he is entitled either to own or to expend (or both) the majority of the world’s resources. Why? Because he, unlike the Oriental, is a true human being.”

“In newsreels or news-photos, the Arab is always shown in large numbers. No individuality, no personal characteristics or experiences. Most of the pictures represent mass rage and misery, or irrational (hence hopelessly eccentric) gestures. Lurking behind all of these images is the menace of jihad. Consequence: a fear that the Muslims (or Arabs) will take over the world.”

I was thirteen on September 11, 2001. I never thought I would see a brutality to rival that of the War on Terror. But the Gaza genocide and the recent escalation of settler violence in the West Bank have corrected my naivete. This is the great moral test of our time. It carries with it the burden of rejecting once and for all the capitalist system that puts war and profit before humanity and dignity. The recent war in Iran has profited warmongers and Big Oil, enriching Trump’s donors beyond their wildest, most perverted dreams. And while these billionaire cowards, who would never risk their lives or those of their children in the wars they support, buy elections and politicians, families in Gaza struggle to survive another day, hungry and at the mercy of the elements, and those in the West Bank are not much better off. 

I went to law school specifically to study international human rights law. As the first person in my family to attend, I had no idea that I would not be at liberty to choose my courses until the second of my three years there. My parents were so proud…I did not have the heart to tell them that, while I enjoyed the rigor of the challenging texts, and their complexity, I found my studies mercenary and unbearably cynical. When I was finally permitted to choose elective courses, I eagerly signed up for Public International Law, with Professor Ndulo, a renowned African scholar and lawyer. Professor Ndulo was kind and a gentler teacher than other more Socratic professors that I had encountered during my first year, although to be fair Cornell was on the whole far gentler than other schools of comparable reputation. The teachers are more patient, the students less cutthroat than the horror stories I had only recently become aware of. 

As we examined case after case from the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, and war crime tribunals, however, I listened and grappled with the texts, hoping to read in them some reflection of the spark I felt at the thought of a governing world order that could have prevented the British Raj, the Balfour Declaration, the Holocaust…but the longer I studied them, the deeper my heart sank. It’s not enough…I thought. We need laws that bind men of power, not lofty, toothless ideals that only touch men of honor. I had no idea that my premonition would be overwhelmingly proven to be prophetic, a decade later. 

I had been fascinated by the politics of the Palestine conflict since high school. I was chagrined to learn when I was still young and idealistic that the United Nations, an institution created to correct the ravages of the eurocolonial era, had endorsed the inception of Israel on indigenous land, at the expense of the indigenous population who had welcomed the European refugees with nothing but kindness and classic Islamic hospitality. When I first heard about Hamas’ attack on Israel in 2023, I had no idea what it would spiral into. To me, it was merely an escalation in response to what Israel had been inflicting on Palestine for decades. I soon learned that the Western world regarded it as an unprovoked act of aggression that gave Israel the right to defend itself. Self-defense…the phrase curdled in my throat the first time I heard it. My stomach turned the way it did when I heard sexual predators accuse their victims of seducing them, when I heard that American racists used to argue that a black woman cannot be raped because she is too hot-blooded…I felt keenly for the Palestinian cause, but I could not have foreseen the paradigm shift that would occur in public opinion as the world experienced its first social media documented genocide. 

After the genocide began, I read Edward Said’s Orientalism for the first time. And for the first time, I truly grasped the existential threat that Islam has always posed to Europe and its American progeny. That single book taught me more about the politics of the Middle East, or SWANA (Southwest Asia and North Africa), than a lifetime of education from Western perspectives: 

“Arabs, for example, are thought of as camel-riding, terroristic, hook-nosed, venal lechers whose undeserved wealth is an affront to real civilization. Always there lurks the assumption that although the Western consumer belongs to a numerical minority, he is entitled either to own or to expend (or both) the majority of the world’s resources. Why? Because he, unlike the Oriental, is a true human being.”

“In newsreels or news-photos, the Arab is always shown in large numbers. No individuality, no personal characteristics or experiences. Most of the pictures represent mass rage and misery, or irrational (hence hopelessly eccentric) gestures. Lurking behind all of these images is the menace of jihad. Consequence: a fear that the Muslims (or Arabs) will take over the world.”

I was thirteen on September 11, 2001. I never thought I would see a brutality to rival that of the War on Terror. But the Gaza genocide and the recent escalation of settler violence in the West Bank have corrected my naivete. This is the great moral test of our time. It carries with it the burden of rejecting once and for all the capitalist system that puts war and profit before humanity and dignity. The recent war in Iran has profited warmongers and Big Oil, enriching Trump’s donors beyond their wildest, most perverted dreams. And while these billionaire cowards, who would never risk their lives or those of their children in the wars they support, buy elections and politicians, families in Gaza struggle to survive another day, hungry and at the mercy of the elements, and those in the West Bank are not much better off.