"Refusal of Aid Between Nations"

It's almost hard to recall anymore, given the mountain of horrific global events that have piled up since then, but it's been only a week and a half since a handful of far-right Republicans nearly shut down the federal government—remember that? And it was all primarily because they refused to provide additional aid to Ukraine in its defense against Putin's aggression. When their leadership did the right thing—albeit at the last moment—and agreed to fund the government for a few more weeks, they voted him out of office for it (just for a measly CR!)—and this, despite the fact that the continuing resolution he negotiated didn't even include the Ukraine aid they fought against so strenuously. 

It's hard to understand what their categorical objection to Ukraine aid could possibly be about, other than an ideological affinity for Putin and a support for his aggression. After all, do they oppose extra spending in general? Why, then, in the immense galaxy of the federal budget, are these the only earmarked funds they seemed to care about? Do they have a principled objection to militarism? Or at least a consistent ideological commitment to isolationism or foreign policy "restraint" of some kind? Um, excuse me, these are the same people openly advocating a war with Mexico. The only thing that's left as a possible explanation is that they endorse Putin's actions, or at least don't give a damn about the fate of Ukraine. 

The violence that has engulfed Israel and Gaza this past week obviously has very different historical roots from the war in Ukraine, and requires its own analysis—but whatever else it proves, it at least shows that the position of simply not giving a damn about the fate of other countries and people around the globe is not an option for the United States—or for any country. Moral isolationism is not acceptable. And even if one believes, as I do, that our bias should generally be against specifically military interventions in the affairs of other nations, one's reason for opposing militarism should be precisely because one cares about the fate of other people around the world, and thinks military funding harms more than it helps—not because one renounces any responsibility for their plight.

Reflecting on all this, and the general sense of disorder and moral collapse engulfing the international community at the moment, I was thinking back to Dante Gabriel Rossetti's apocalyptic poem, which I first discussed on this blog back in the first spring of the pandemic. I went to look it up, and was reminded that the title of the piece is "On Refusal of Aid Between Nations." This struck me as even more apt to our moment that I had anticipated. After all, far-right Republicans nearly shut down the government just a few days ago, precisely because they wish to make a literal "refusal of aid" to Ukraine. But even beyond this, I found the moral lesson of Rossetti's poem resonates profoundly, and is one we still need to hear. 

Rossetti wrote the piece in 1849, as a direct commentary on the popular movements for national liberation and democracy that had broken out in Poland, Hungary, and other parts of the Continent the previous year, and which the autocratic and monarchical overlords governing these territories had brutally suppressed. The poet—like other English liberals of the time, such as Arthur Hugh Clough—felt a deep affinity for the Hungarian and Polish democrats and was appalled that England and other more liberal European governments did nothing to assist them or prevent their destruction at the hands of empires. This is the "refusal of aid between nations" that the poem condemns. 

It is not hard to draw the connection to House Republicans' refusal in 2023 to fund the Ukrainian defense. The Ukrainian government, while far from perfect, is undoubtedly engaged in a struggle of national self-determination against an oppressive autocratic state that would like to restore its power over the country as an imperial overlord. The United States's own history and commitment to democracy should counsel us to support the Ukrainian cause, if nothing else did; just as England's tradition of liberty ought to have motivated it, in Rossetti's view, to take the side of the rebels fighting for freedom, self-rule, and representative government in Poland and Hungary. 

One is reminded too of E.E. Cummings's scathing poem a century later about U.S. inaction and indifference in the face of the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary, in which the USSR crushed a popular uprising and re-imposed autocratic rule. Here too, we see that it is not only by overt acts that a government can fail in its obligations to the people of other countries. It is also possible to commit sins of omission—and the failure of the Western powers to do anything to aid Hungary in 1956 must be numbered among them. Just as a failure to renew aid to Ukraine in its struggle against Putin would be today. Rossetti in 1849 and Cummings in 1956 were telling us the same message: we have no choice but to concern ourselves with the fate of other nations. 

There seems little reason at this point to worry that the U.S. will be similarly hesitant to intervene in the Israel-Palestine conflict, of course. The leadership of both parties—and even the primo neo-isolationist "America-Firster" and Putin stooge Mr. Trump himself—have renewed their commitment to military aid for Israel. The problem here seems to be almost the reverse of the problem in Ukraine. Whereas there, we must fear a gathering apathy moral about the Ukrainian cause, in Israel, we have to worry that U.S. support for the government will be too unconditional. After all, in his moving and strongly worded statement of solidarity with Israel yesterday afternoon, Biden made only the most glancing and indirect reference to the other side of the equation: the human rights of Palestinians. 

For the most part, to be sure, Biden said yesterday what needed saying. He underlined in potent and unmistakable terms the scale of the massacres and atrocities Hamas perpetrated in Israeli communities over the weekend—and what it means for a country that was founded to provide a haven for Jewish people from genocide. He reiterated U.S. support for Israel, for which I am grateful. But he did not spare a word for the Palestinian civilians—included hundreds of children—who have already perished in Gaza as a result of Israel's retaliation, or who are likely to die or suffer in the weeks and months ahead, as the IDF lays siege to the enclave and continues to impose a humanitarian blockade on Gaza's inhabitants. 

The problem with U.S. policy in Israel therefore does not appear to be a "refusal of aid"—both parties have made clear that military support for Israel will continue to flow. And for what little it's worth, I think this is the right policy—even if there are times in my life when I would have said otherwise. The events of this past weekend—specifically, the wholesale massacre and kidnapping of hundreds of Israeli civilians as they peacefully went about their lives—have made clear that Israel's capacity for self-defense, specifically against terrorist groups who want to kill Jews for being Jewish, must be strengthened. The fringier segments of the far-left who are saying otherwise, or who are presently refusing to condemn Hamas's atrocities, are flat-out wrong.

But that doesn't mean U.S. aid should come without human rights conditions. Yet Biden and other politicians have given no indication they would attach such requirements. The closest Biden came in his remarks yesterday was when he underlined that the strength of democracies' responses to violence—and what differentiates them from groups that directly target civilians—is that they obey the laws of war. This statement, though, while it may function as a subtle admonition, was phrased as though there were no question that Israel's military abides by these same principles. Yet, even as Biden spoke, the IDF was already bombing civilians in Gaza, killing hundreds, and shutting down the flow of food, fuel, and other humanitarian supplies to the enclave. 

The Israeli military's advice to Palestinian civilians to simply "get out" of Gaza, or stay at their own peril, is also not an answer. The IDF itself has failed to establish any humanitarian corridor that would allow civilians to evacuate, and the Egyptian border likewise remains closed to Palestinian refugees (a fact that ought to invite more international condemnation of Egypt's role in this decades-old crisis than it usually receives). The comment also sounds frighteningly like a statement of intent to commit an ethnic cleansing. It amounts to a declaration that the IDF has no particular intent to make special efforts to protect civilians or to avoid obvious civilian targets like schools, hospitals, and mosques—and indeed, there are reports that such sites have already been damaged in the bombing. 

It should go without saying that this is morally intolerable, no matter the provocation. The Israel-Palestine conflict is often described as "complicated," as it certainly is—but one thing is very simple, as it should be in any armed conflict. The rules of war—the principles of international humanitarian law—are absolute and non-reciprocal. This means that there is never a justification for harming a civilian population. The actions of an armed group never provide a legitimate basis for reprisals targeting civilians. Yet it is astounding how many people overlook this—whether it is the fringe leftist groups endorsing or at least excusing Hamas's atrocities against civilians, on the grounds that they were supposedly "provoked" by the blockade, or the American politicians refusing to speak out against Israeli actions that harm or collectively punish innocent Gazans. 

Here too, I find Rossetti's words to be on-point. After all, his poem denounces not only the specific sin of omission of refusing to come to the aid of another country that is under attack. The U.S. cannot be said to be doing that right now, at least not vis-a-vis Israel specifically. The poem also—and more broadly—condemns the kind of insular morality that would refuse to extend the principles of human solidarity to the other "side" of a conflict, simply because they are not ourselves. "Man is parcelled out in men/To-day," the poet writes, "because, for any wrongful blow/No man not stricken asks, 'I would be told/Why thou dost thus;' but his heart whispers then, 'He is he, I am I.'" 

Rossetti therefore has something to tell us too about a moral attitude that, on either side, sees only the "wrongful blows" committed against one's own civilians, but not the atrocities one's own party is committing—the sort of moral obtuseness on display in the far-left groups who denounce the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and blockade of Gaza, but who do not see, or do not care about, or do not even oppose the wholesale slaughter of Israeli civilians that Hamas inflicted this past week. But also the sort of apathy on display in the pro-Israel politicians who do not see, or do not care about, or do not even oppose the retaliatory bombings and humanitarian blockades that have once again left Palestinian homes and communities in ruins—and have already sent hundreds of innocent people—men, women, and children—to an early grave.