When the truth hurts, but it isn’t what you think, you’re just in eternal victimhood mode

Israel’s occupation of Gaza is prolonged, illegal and a full-fledged genocide. With the backing of the United States and leading European countries, the genocide in the occupied territories paints a frightening picture of a world that’s been made to believe that Israel’s long-standing violations of international law is something that’s necessary and acceptable. The UN Special Rapporteur’s report on the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories is methodical, crystalline, and damning. I doubt most people have even read the report, or read it in full, even if it is so easily readily available but its author has been subjected to vituperative attacks and death threats just for doing her job. The truth stings but it does not make what is fact a fiction, or something that should not be made known to all just because it riles the sensitive palates of rich and influential members of society. Of late, censorship has been disguised as defamation suits by the wealthy and influential seeking ever larger damages against the practically penniless. The rule of law is being used to attack, corrupt and corrode the very freedoms the legal system is designed to defend and protect. The legal system is being manipulated to serve the only agenda that is considered legitimate by those perched atop a hierarchy we help prop up. Our collective silence and inaction have made us complicit to the human rights’ abuses and atrocities committed by Israel in the Palestinian territories. To take offence is one thing but to make believe something isn’t so because it does not agree with one’s eternal mode of victimhood is a completely different kettle o’ fish. A perpetual state of victimhood that belongs only to a special group that cannot ever, no matter what crimes against humanity its leaders commit, be deemed to violate other people’s rights because they alone are victims in any given situation. Humans aren’t great students of history’s lessons. We are, however, great bullies of one another, imposing our might or perceived importance on our less powerful fellows to wrestle and claw our way to the top of a pecking order and once there, those who disagree with us, well, they will be damned. Censorship extends from politicians to playwrights. No one is spared. And so, it comes as no surprise whatsoever when an op ed written by an Eastern suburbs ‘art lover and philanthropist’ appeared a couple of days ago in the Australian Financial Review. It appears a major donor to the Sydney Festival is withdrawing her support for the festival because she took offence at a performance she says is accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. She finds this personally deplorable, and because it is personal and it matters to her and she is wealthy and influential in this sphere in addition to belonging to this special group, then therefore, notwithstanding what the UN Special Rapporteur – an acknowledged expert on international human rights law – has to say on the matter, this art lover and philanthropist will have our ears as mainstream media is more than amenable to her deliberations. I am trying to imagine how one does not feel safe in the Arts Festival because artists are given a platform to express their craft, to, I dunno, exercise their guaranteed rights and freedoms under Articles 18 and 19. What is offensive is not that a wealthy society figure has stated they will be taking their money elsewhere because that is a right that is enshrined and paramount in property law, and in the transactional nature of the human world; it is that her money – and many who are in her position – is being utilised to advance an agenda that should be repulsive to all who believe in the sanctity of inherent human rights, to manipulate artistic expression, curtail the freedoms of thought, expression, and general speech: censorship. Yes, money talks, and its might is well, mighty. But what is the most frustrating and saddest aspect of this debacle is that some people in their eternal state of victimhood fail to see the forest for the trees: that they have made victims of too many voiceless and powerless. And this last truth is not a personal one, but grounded in facts, in evidence.