Am I my Palestinian brother’s keeper?

Indeed, this is the problem I see behind all of the kafuffle that has been going on here over the last few months - the debates about appropriate governmental responsibilities, backed up by a well-coordinated smear campaign against those who support BDS, which is labelled as racist and extremist (extraordinary labels to apply to a strategy of non-violent resistance to a military occupation)! The real problem is not lack of clarity about correct political procedure nor a misunderstanding of the exact nature of the BDS campaign, but a simple lack of compassion!

In all these debates about procedure and about the electoral value of pro-Palestinian policies, the suffering people of Gaza and the West Bank are completely sidelined! What we need to come to terms with here is the fact that these people are not simply a policy issue. The men, women and children of Palestine are human beings worthy of respect, and the violation of their human rights is something that should offend us all. When we feel this offence deep down in our souls, the procedural issues are put into proper perspective. Indeed, they are seen for what they are: a simple excuse for inaction!

I recently finished reading an excellent biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (the great German Christian leader who was a part of the plot to kill Hitler) and the most startling thing I learned from that book was that most of Hitler’s generals were apparently opposed to Hitler most of the time. For almost the entirety of the war, most of Germany’s key military leaders hated Hitler’s policies and wanted to get rid of him as their leader! So what stopped them? Apparently it was primarily a concern for proper procedure!

There were appropriate and inappropriate ways of replacing a leader, and this action needed to be pursued through the appropriate mechanisms of government, etc., etc. And so, apart from heroic individuals like Bonheoffer and Von Stauffenberg, who cared more about the fate of their Jewish sisters and brothers than they did about governmental protocols, nobody did anything!

The author of the Bonheoffer biography attributed the generals’ inaction largely to ‘German stuffiness’ and the desire to do things ‘by the book’. I suspect though that all such stuffiness really only functions as another convenient excuse for inaction.

For we human beings are great at avoiding our responsibilities while maintaining an air of self-righteous virtuosity! And so we bluster on about the need for political correctness and how we must avoid doing anything rash or inappropriate, and perhaps we even go so far as form a committee to discuss the matter further at an appropriate time. And all the while the world burns!

Wake up, people of Marrickville! Wake up, world! What we lack here is not political nous but compassion. We need to take the suffering of the Palestinian people seriously – recognising them as our sisters and brother in the human condition. And we need to be honest with ourselves and stop hiding behind questions like, “Is it really our responsibility?” and “Am I my Palestinian brother’s keeper?”