Shortly after the current war between the Israeli regime and the Palestinians broke out, the chief executive of aerospace and defense company RTX, Gregory Hayes, airily observed that it would be good for business. Evidently the human cost involved barely crossed his mind.

As we mark the 95th anniversary of the birth of Martin Luther King Jr., it looks pretty clear what Dr. King would do were he still alive and active.

There would have been two speeches, A Declaration of Independence from the War in Gaza and A Declaration of Independence from the War in Ukraine. King would have emphasized the need for peace, security and reconciliation on all sides, condemning ongoing brutality, no matter its source.

King would have noticed how both wars have ground into stalemate, with no end to the deepening atrocity in sight. In Gaza’s case, he would have noticed that the war has already escalated, with increased ethnic cleansing from Israeli settlers in the West Bank, with rocket fire from Hezbollah across Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, and Israeli armed forces firing back. He would have noted the war’s southern front, with Houthis firing rockets into Israel from the Red Sea and cutting off any shipping coming up the Red Sea to Israel. The presence of two U.S. carrier groups in the eastern Mediterranean and other U.S. warships in the Red Sea would also have troubled his mind.

Clearly, President Biden would be annoyed, as Lyndon Johnson was when King declared his independence from the war in Vietnam. If Biden were to protest, King would have pointed to the U.S. veto of a UN Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. He would have criticized U.S. appeals for Israeli restraint and the episodic trickle of humanitarian aid into Gaza as wholly inadequate to the need, fig leaves covering the naked cruelty of carpet bombing in the most densely populated area of the world. He would have stressed that most of the dead are women and children, and that there are still hostages trapped in Gaza.

Both President Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have argued that the destruction of Hamas is a necessary precondition for peace in the Middle East. That wouldn’t matter to Dr. King, given the moral issue involved. He would have replied that every round of Israeli-Palestinian fighting has led only to more strife later on, an inheritance of distrust and hatred.

Without giving Russian President Vladimir Putin a free pass for his own use of landmines and cluster bombs in the Ukrainian war, he would have pointed to continuing U.S. shipments of artillery shells and cluster and white phosphorus bombs to Israel and Ukraine. He would have emphasized that the use of white phosphorus bombs against civilian populations is forbidden under international law, which completely bans cluster bombs, a practice which runs contrary to U.S. pleas for mercy to civilian populations and declarations about respect for international law.

Then he would have described what those weapons look like and do. How white phosphorus splatters when it explodes, burning through skin, muscle and internal organs into bone, poisoning the earth when it drops to the ground. How an unexploded cluster bomb lying on the ground looks like a toy, so when a child picks it up and it goes off, it rips the child to shreds. He wouldn’t have hesitated. He would have presented his witness as a demand.

As should we, in every public place and every public forum we can.

Copy the Story Link

« Previous

Opinion: America repeats its history of Black oppression with book bans

Next »

View from Away: Another test for Speaker Mike Johnson. Will he keep the government open?