Month: October 2023

I Don’t Know How to Talk about the War in Israel

~ Randy Blazak ~ 3 Comments

October 13, 2023

I’m at a complete loss. Tomorrow, it will have been one week since Hamas’ barbaric invasion of Israel that left so many people, especially those beautiful young people at a music festival, dead or kidnapped. Since then, those images and the images of Gaza, the most densely populated place on earth, being bombed into dust have kept me in a constant state of nausea.

I’m at a complete loss on how to talk about Israel and Palestine, in general. I have so many friends on both sides of the issue. Being an undergraduate at Emory (a Methodist university) was a crash course on the Jewish diaspora and how important Israel is to the stability of the Jewish people in the wake of the Holocaust. I read Leon Uris’ 1958 novel, Exodus, like it was first-person history. I’ve also met so many Palestinians, including students of mine, who describe the apartheid they now live in since the state of Israel was created in 1948. They both present the need for their states with such complete legitimacy, it seems insane to even think one side has the most airtight claim on the land.

Since the 1990s, we’ve been able to put our faith in the “two state solution,” that the Gaza Strip in the south and the West Bank in the north will be the nation of Palestine. As a teenager, I watched Jimmy Carter broker a peace deal between Israel and Egypt, so maybe this would work. The deal, which turned the two territories over to the Palestinian National Authority, allowed me to not think as much about Israel and Palestine. The problem was solved, right? But when the terrorist group Hamas, took over Gaza in 2007 and the Gaza Strip became a walled-off prison of 2 million people, I probably should have paid more attention.

I don’t know if this war, which is now almost a week old, ends the idea of a two-state solution. There are already reports of Jewish settlers and Hezbollah militants clashing in the West Bank and media and politicians seem fixated on the war spilling over into a “wider conflict.” Like on 9/11, it does feel like the Earth forever shifted on its axis on 10/7. I saw the image of a child’s bedroom in Ashkelon, Portland’s sister city in Israel. The blood of that child, similar in age to my child, was spattered across the wall by Hamas raiders. I couldn’t hold back the tears. The next image was an apartment block in Gaza City flatted by Israeli rockets, a child, again like my own, covered in dust was searching for her family in the rubble. And again, I cry.

There is a tidal wave of false information already flooding social media about this conflict. Some of it is misinformation that is just wrong on the facts. But much of it is disinformation, purposely shared misinformation to inflame one side or the other, or malinformation, which is true but is shared to cause harm, like the showing of child casualties to enrage viewers to violence. It’s so hard to know what is real. I have to start out with the assumption that most of what I see on social media (and all of what I see on “X/Twitter”) is false. If people are getting their primary information from TikTok, we have a huge problem.

There is also a weird false narrative at work. People (especially non-Jewish Americans) often conflate “Israel” and “Jews,” making anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism fast friends. The opinions among Jews about the policies of Israel are probably as varied as the opinions among non-Jews about the policies of Israel. But there is a parallel line that conflates “Palestinian” with “Hamas.” One could easily argue that the vast amount of suffering in Gaza is because of Hamas. But then this conflation then equates “Hamas” with “Israel,” and that is madness. Israel, like all nations, has all kinds of problems. As in the United States, Israel has human rights issues to answer for. But, unlike Hamas, Israel is a democratic state that submits itself to the scrutiny of its global neighbors. The recent peace talks between Israel and Saudi Arabia are evidence of that. Hamas, harbors genocidal fantasies akin to Hitler’s, and has no desire for “peace.”

So much of my work on violent extremism highlights the role of trauma. And yes, there is a story to be told of generations of Palestinian trauma that would produce the type of mind that could have been capable of slaughtering kids at the “Supernova Sukkot Gathering” music festival last Saturday. But one could argue the history of Jewish trauma is much longer and deeper and doesn’t lead Israelis to rape, murder, and torture anyone in the manner we’ve seen this week. Again, I don’t know how to talk about this because it all defies the limitations of words.  I just want to understand how humans are capable of this.

This conversation could go into all kinds of directions. How Putin, neo-Nazis, Iran, arms dealers, and evangelicals who believe Israel will soon be delivered to Christians are the likely beneficiaries of this mess. About how we have already seen a spike in anti-Semitic and Islamophobic hate crimes in the United States in response to the war. About how dare we enjoy our pumpkin spice latte’s and post-season baseball while hundreds are being held hostage in Gaza. I’m just here to say, as a human being, I don’t know how to talk about this.

As a college professor, I find my young students tend to fall into two categories. The first are emphatic and righteous. They firmly believe that “Israel is a terrorist state” or that “Hamas are subhuman aberrations that must wiped from the face off the earth.” The other, larger group are just completely checked out, endlessly watching reels on their phones. They couldn’t find the “Middle East” on a map, let alone the Gaza Strip. I was trying to engage them in class yesterday and they looked me like, “What does this have to do with me?” I don’t know what’s worse, their indifference or the students who are actively cheering for Hamas.

It’s clear that Hamas wants to escalate the violence and kidnapping Israeli babies is a good way to do it. If rockets and a ground assault from Israel leads to the death of thousands of Palestinians, it furthers their dream of a “holy war” in the region. But I don’t know what the alternative is. A zombie apocalypse (a la World War Z)? An alien invasion? A faster, deadlier version of COVID? I told you I don’t know how to talk about this.

I’m at such a loss for words. The trauma being levied on the children of Israel and the children of Gaza will forever shape their brains. Unlike my emphatic students, I have no idea what the solution is. I can urge for de-escalation, but I also understand the impulse to take up arms and fire rockets. Inaction is off the table but what is the action? We must respond immediately but also wait to better assess the situation.

So I’m here to say I have no answers to this. I’m angry and I’m heartbroken and I know this is so much bigger than me. It seems like the international community, especially Muslim nations in the Middle East, need to defend Israel’s right to exist while fully enfranchising the citizens of Gaza and the West Bank. I don’t know. And I’m going to have to be OK without knowing. As a citizen of nation founded in violence, I can’t tell others not to use violence to form their nations. I can only bear witness to this moment of fire and pain.

Danger, Will Robinson! Anticipating a Next Wave of Political Violence

~ Randy Blazak ~ 1 Comment

October 3, 2023

“Hindsight is 20-20. Looking back, we should have known that would happen.” That is a common refrain for every major historical calamity, from Hitler invading Poland to the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. We have an entire federal agency, the Department of Homeland Security, created, in large part, to address all the indicators the intelligence community missed in the lead up to the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Will we ever have the science down that accurately predicts some calamitous event so we can prevent it?

The good news is we’re getting better at preventing bad things from happening. After the deadly 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, that killed 168 people (including 19 children), the FBI made the investigation of right-wing militia groups a priority and broke up several plots leading up to Y2K. Since 9/11, there are 44 known terrorist plots that were thwarted by government agents, including a 2012 al-Qaeda plot during the Obama administration to blow up the U.S. Capitol, and 2019 neo-Nazi plot during the Trump administration to kill numerous Democratic politicians and mainstream journalists.

These acts of mass violence are prevented for three main reasons. First, people who are close to the plotters come forward to authorities with concerns that there is some suspicious activity. “Hello, 911? I think my neighbor and his friends are building a bomb in his garage.” Second is old fashioned gumshoe detective work by law enforcement agents. “Our confidential informant in that anti-government militia group is telling us the plan of attack has been made.” But group working on this issue is the not-as-exciting work of data scientists. “The chat on Discord referencing gun training spiked 63.2% following the fourth Trump indictment.” It may be the data scientists that keep us safe at night.

Since 2021, I have been working on a federally funded project that looks for ways to reduce extremist violence across the political spectrum called Cure-PDX. The sheer scope of the attack of the January 6th attack woke up a lot of folks in both public and private sectors to the fact that the stability of our democracy might be more fragile than we ever thought. Part of this work has been utilizing data to find where the flashpoints for political violence are, and it is a sad reality that they are often school board meetings and LGTBQ events. How drag queens managed to trigger the Proud Boys would probably give Sigmund Freud a thrill, but there are real victims in these violent clashes. For example, last March, the Proud Boys and other right-wing activists attacked a crowd at a Drag Queen Story Hour in Manhattan’s West Village, a historically gay enclave of the New York City.

Focusing on the Pacific Northwest, our project has noticed more tension around these flashpoints. Much of this has been fueled by local right-wing groups, like the Portland Active Club, Patriot Front, and the Rose City Nationalists. These groups have been dubbed White Nationalists 3.0 by monitoring groups (and by the activists themselves). The violent skinheads of the 1980s and 1990s were 1.0. The keyboard racists of the “alt right” that rose under Obama and came to the mainstream under Trump were 2.0. These new 3.0 groups are not hiding behind keyboards, and are actively fashioning themselves as foot soldiers in what they believe to be an approaching race war. I was bantering with one last weekend and he was quite clear what his immediate agenda was:

Him: Be scared, buddy always be scared of the republicans lol

Me: done

Him: I’m sure

Me: I feel sorry for you and want to help you.

Him: You all could not survive three days without food

Me: Oh, lord. Let me guess. You are prepping for the race war.

Him: Absolutely and you will be the first I’m coming after

Much like in the Timothy McVeigh-era of the 1990s, there is a growing subculture of heavily armed anti-government activists who are hellbent on a second civil war in which the Confederate values of white supremacy are an organizing principles. Unlike the 90s patriot militia movement, thanks to social media and the encouragement of a certain four time indicted presidential candidate, this well-armed anti-government movement is massive. In the 1990s, it was a handful of guys building bunkers in Idaho. Now, it’s soccer moms, drunk on QAnon conspiracy theories, and suburban mixed martial art clubs training for combat with the “woke mob.”

2024 is gonna be a rough year. Gas prices aren’t coming down. LGBTQ people are not going to be shoved back into the closet, triggering Kid Rock and all his fragile boys who pretend this is the fall of the Roman Empire.  The southern border, which has always been a rolling crisis, will be shoved in our faces on the nightly news. There could well be another COVID lockdown (or whatever the next plague will be). And whether Donald Trump wins, loses, or gets thrown in jail, there are going to be some people who will be seriously pissed off.

We’re heading into a dark season and yes, we’re going to need whistleblowers and ace detectives to foil plots. But we’re also going to need an army of data scientists who are willing to scrape the data from the armpits of the internet and other electronic platforms (including CB radios!) where the enemies of civility thrive. With good data, we can plan interventions that include preventing people falling into the rabbit holes of violent extremism. It’s go time for democracy and we need science to save us.