When it happened a long time ago it’s called history. When it happened a shorter time ago, or it’s happening today, it’s called an atrocity. Think about what it was like to be an Amalekite. Fast forward to the Viking conquest of Normandy, and then the Norman conquest of England. But sometime between 1066 and the various European conquests and colonisations of the Americas and Africa, what a thousand years hence will be just another 1066 will in the meantime be unconscionable atrocities.
    There’s no set statue of limitation on grounds for outrage. It’s all a matter of the PR. Slavery wasn’t introduced to this continent in 1619, but the descendants of those pre-contact peoples who’d been enslaved by other pre-contact peoples seem to have let it go, whereas the descendants of those brought from Africa have not. In some measure this might be because pre-contact slave owners became post-contact slaves to new slave owners. But it’s a little known fact that in some cases it was erstwhile Black slaves who became owners of other Black slaves. Were this to become well known, would it be counted an atrocity? I suspect not. Why not? Because it doesn’t have a canonical outrage-inspiring narrative to accompany it.
    It might be argued – in fact it often is – that the enslavement by Whites of African Blacks, and White colonisation of the pre-contact peoples, remain atrocities because the effects have yet to dissipate. In fact in some cases the ripple effects have worsened. It’s also argued that though neither slavery nor colonisation seemed like an atrocity at the time – neither to the perpetrators nor to the victims – the moral arc of history, if there is such a thing, both entitles us and requires us to regard them as such. That is, we need to regard 1619 and Wounded Knee as atrocities, whereas 1066 we don’t.
    I think both of these arguments are to be taken seriously, and applied to the cases closer to hand. A thousand years from now the Holocaust will be as morally arresting as the maraudings of Genghis Khan. But for now it’s being cited to justify both the Settlements and Israel’s so-called right to defend itself. A thousand years from now the ethnic cleansing of Palestine will be of the same historical gravitas as the Maori cleansing of the Chatham Islands of the Moriori. (Never heard of them? Well now you know why.) But for now the Hamas attack of October 7th is being used to justify Israeli ‘atrocities’ in Gaza and the West Bank.
    Can we imagine it was any different when the Israelites exterminated the Amalekites, or the Vikings colonised Normandy, or the Normans landed at Hastings? And if not, what should this tell us today about Palestine? On the one hand, acknowledging “nature red in tooth and claw” might take some of the wind out of our rhetorical sails, be it on behalf of the Israelis or on behalf of the Palestinians. But to what avail? Because on the other hand, Peter Paul and Mary tell us to “Take your place on the great mandella, as it moves through your brief moment of time.” That is, much as we might want to, we can’t escape our particular situatedness. And why would we want to anyhow?
    Not all injustices are atrocities, and not all atrocities are injustices. What’s happening in Palestine may be one, the other, both, or neither. I wonder what history will decide.

Categories: Everything You Wanted to Know About What's Going On in the World But Were Afraid to Ask, Social and Political Philosophy

Tags: 1066, 1619, Amalekites, atrocity, Chatham Islands, colonisation, conquest, Gaza, Hamas, Israel, Maori, Moriori, Palestine, pre-contact, slavery, West Bank, Wounded Knee