The Israeli Military Kills Starving Gazans Seeking Food as Police in Massachusetts Intimidate Human-Rights Protesters

Even as the Israeli military was shooting innocent, starving people waiting for food in Gaza, Massachusetts police were overreacting to a pro-Gaza, pro-human rights protest in Cambridge, where Harvard University has most of its campus. Whereas the Israeli military (intentionally?) did not engage in crowd control around a designated food-distribution site, Cambridge and Harvard police employees overreacted and in so doing, falsely presented the visuals of an emergency and intimidated peaceful protesters. Both the Israeli military and a local and a private police department in Massachusetts can thus be criticized, and the choices of all three were to the advantage of Israel in spite of its ongoing war crime and crime against humanity in regard to the Gaza Holocaust, and to the advantage of the American defense contractors profiting from the U.S. Government sending weapons to Israel.  

On July 19, 2025, “Israeli troops opened fire” on “crowds of Palestinians seeking food at a distribution point run by an Israeli-backed US company in southern Gaza, killing at least 32 Palestinians.”[1] As if killing starving people on their way to an Israeli-approved food-distribution point being managed by an American company, in “a separate incident, at least 18 more Palestinians were killed in an Israeli air strikes (sic) on Gaza City . . . near hubs operated by the Gaza Humanitarian Fund (GHF).”[2] Of course, the “Israeli military did not immediately react to reports of the two incidents.”[3] Especially concerning the first, even an attempted justification that the crowd was unruly would only beg the question of why the Israeli military had so badly mismanaged crowd-control, as it could certainly be anticipated, given the extent of famine in Gaza, that a crowd of starving, desperate Gazans would manifest to get food. To fail to manage an easily anticipated crowd and then shoot on the crowd reflects badly on the Israeli government rather than the starving people.

On the very same day, presumably many hours later, a “Free Palestine” small protest took place in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Whereas the Israeli military lapsed in managing a crowd, the Cambridge police surrounded the small group of protests on both sides. Even a city block away, Harvard’s private police employees had infiltrated Smith Hall, which is just across a street from Harvard Yard. Even though no university administration office was open on that Saturday in Smith Hall, which doubles as a student hang-out space, at least eight police employees interspersed themselves out in front, and left four or five of their cars double-parked on the street. To say that both the local and university police overreacted, given the small size of the protest and where it was taking place, is an understatement. The extent of police-presence around the small group of protesters can even be interpreted as an attempt to deny Americans their right of political protest and free speech by visible intimidation. When Black Lives Matter protests were going on several years earlier in Phoenix, Arizona, such intimidation was at the extreme of police surrounding protesters with machine guns even though the protests were all non-violent. The presumptuous “right” of police to deter by intimidation deserves to be contested in a U.S. district court, for the convenient (in terms of power-aggrandizement by police) assumption that peaceful protest will turn violent and thus should be treated as such is fallacious.

In short, there is simply too much show of military/police force evinced in these two cases—one in Gaza and the other in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The instinctual urge to bully ought to be checked by local governments, and even private universities that operate as de facto non-democratic local governments, against military and police employees, including their respective directors. Starving people being shot on the way to an approved food-distribution site and pro-human rights protestors being intimidated by an excessive show of presence by police up close and even a city-block away from the protest itself can both be taken as “red-flags.” Absolute power corrupts absolutely. No Harvard administrator would say to that university’s police unit that its presence was excessive in front of Smith Hall, and no government official in Netanyahu’s government in Israel would chastise the military for letting the crowd of starving people get out of hand, if in fact that crowd became unruly as opposed to being “sitting ducks” for Israeli troops hateful of Palestinians.

The Pro-Palestine Protest in Cambridge on July 19, 2025

Meanwhile, over at Harvard, an invasion of human-rights advocates was expected . . . 

And, just for added fun, photos of the Massachusetts Army intimidating Americans at Boston's Fireworks on July 4th

With the celebration of liberty obscured by the smoke of intimidation, I left in utter disgust as the booms of the "bombs" in the sky began. As I walked away quite determined, the first few powerful thuds I could feel through my body made the show of force on the ground seem somehow more real. A celebration of raw force by means of weapanry, or liberty from autocratic intimidation? It is no wonder that the U.S. was being so helpful to Israel. My visit to Boston was eventful and enlightening. I hear that Geneva is wonderful. 

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1. Malek Fouda, “Israeli Troops Open Fire on Palestianians en Route to Food Distribution Site, killing 32,” Euronews.com, July 19, 2025, italics added for emphasis.
2. Ibid. The grammar error aside, there were more than one strike, as the report also mentions them as “attacks.”
3. Ibid.

On the Arrogance of Self-Entitlement during a Pandemic

In the midst of the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, libertarians in San Francisco, California objected to wearing face masks. Other people there were simply fed up with wearing masks by late 1918. The libertarians, who objected on the basis of rights, actually prevented the Board of Health from renewing a mandate to wear masks.[1] In early 1919, another spike in influenza cases there led the board to put a mandate in place. So in March of 2020, the failure of mass transits and retail stores to enforce physical distancing and the failures a few months later to enforce mandates on wearing face masks to reduce the spread of the coronavirus can be seen as recklessness (and fecklessness) that could have been prevented by looking back a hundred years. But could the willful disregard of store policies and local law both by customers and store managers have been prevented had business had heeded history? I contend that human nature, which had not changed in such a short time by evolutionary standards, played the heavy, or anchor.
The selfishness of business managers can be regarded as the obstacle to historical progress in dealing with pandemics. As against history and even “organizational learning,” the current profit-motive wins over managers. God forbid that a customer be offended by being confronted by a store employee for not wearing a mask even though mask-wearing was “required” not only by store policy, but also by local law! Of course, a store or business policy barring enforcement of a requirement nullifies it, even if managers could not grasp this simple point. Also, allowing customers to break a local law is itself criminal, even if managers could not grasp this simple point. Ignoring a company policy and even local law could somehow be justified by the interests of profit-seeking.  
The selfishness and inconsiderateness of customers came with a presumptiveness or sense of entitlement to break not only store policies but local law as well. The mantra by the individual that that individual is above store requirements and the law rings with a shallow arrogance. The presumptuousness of the weak of being self-justified brings with it a bad odor, Nietzsche would say. This pathology was especially prevalent in places such as Arizona in the United States.
According to Jeremy Brown, an expert on the 2020 pandemic, it showed how strident selfishness can be. Such selfishness, joined by the related lack of consideration and empathy for other people, was perhaps greater than expected among American business managers and customers. “I think that the message we’ve seen is that people are selfish to a remarkable degree that I don’t think we’ve seen before,” Brown said.[2] That is, the refusal of retail managers to enforce a company requirement because doing so might turn some customers away, and thus their money, is steeped in short-sighted selfishness that recognizes no business responsibility in society. Similarly, the refusal of customers to wear masks, which put other people at risk, can show us just how much of a force selfishness can have in certain people. “The selfishness of people and their inability to have empathy for others who aren’t like themselves is one of the very, very worrying aspects that the disease has highlighted, Brown suggests. “I think this is a deeply rooted part of American society.”[3]
I submit that it is a gross overgeneralization to gloss American society, as there are many, just as many exist in Europe. In having lived in several of those in America, I was stunned in 2020 by just how much aggressive selfishness and stubborn weakness I witnessed in Arizona by how people reacted to the pandemic. Many bus drivers, for instance, refused to wear masks even though they were required by company policy and the local law. Many retail stores had policies forbidding employees from even approaching customers who were not wearing masks. Many light rail, bus passengers, and store customers went maskless with impunity. Light rail security guards were not allowed even to ask passengers to put masks on, and bus drivers rarely did even though they could have at least informed violators of the company policy mandating the wearing of masks. The local police department managers unilaterally decided not to go after organizations allowing customers or riders to break the law. Apparently some laws, especially if they are important to public health, are not worth enforcing.
In short, in some places more than others, just as the extent and depth of selfishness became more apparent with the coronavirus pandemic, so too did human weakness and the related organizational corruption. That these defects had the gall to defend themselves aggressively rather than recognize themselves are faults is perhaps another stunning realization that was made possible by the coronavirus pandemic. This can easily account for the fact that lessons learned in 1918 were so easily dismissed in 2020.

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1. Kristen Rogers, “What the 1918 Flu Pandemic Can Teach Us about Coronavirus,” CNN.com, September 25, 2020.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

Autocratic Regimes: Subject to the Domino Effect?

"In Beirut, gunfire broke out and crowds of people waved Egyptian flags. In Yemen, they gathered in front of the Egyptian Embassy chanting, 'Wake up rulers, Mubarak fell today.' In Gaza, they fired shots in the air and set off fireworks. . . . [However,] in a telling sign of the divide between the rulers and the ruled, the region’s leaders, presidents and monarchs remained largely silent." This depiction by The New York Times of ripple effects across the Middle East in the wake of the resignation of Egypt's Mubarak in February, 2011 intimated the hoped-for and feared possibility that the popular unrest could spread.  Moreover, the entire world, which had been been glued to the events unfolding in Cairo, wondered if a domino effect might be in store in countries under autocratic rule. Indeed, The New York Times wrote of a possible domino effect quite explicitly: "The popular uprising that started . . . in Tunisa had claimed its second autocratic government, this time in the largest country in the Arab world. With more protests planned in coming days, some governments were clearly worried they could be next." But do autocratic governments fall like dominos?  That is, is revolution contagious? Fawaz Traboulsi, a prominent Lebanese writer and columnist, thought so in the days following Mubarak's resignation. “All the regimes are shaking now . . . They are becoming more and more fragile. This is just the beginning.” In Bahrain, King Hamad Bin Isa al-Khalifa apparently thought so too, for he ordered the equivalent of $2,650 be given to every Bahraini family a few days before a planned "Day of Rage" protest. “Arab people discovered their ability to make change,” said Nabeel Rajab, a human rights activist in Bahrain. “And with Egypt in the leadership once again, the change will reach all the Arab world.” In Yemen, President Ali Abdullah Saleh announced he would suspend constitutional amendments that allow him to remain in his office for life. He also raised salaries for the military and civil servants and cut income taxes in half. In Algeria, the government promised to lift the state of emergency that had been in effect since 1992. To be sure, nineteen years is a rather long time for an emergency.  Such efforts can be likened to building up wetlands or widening a beach to take the wind out of the hurricane out at sea should it hit. In other words, it appears that there was "revolution watch" in effect for the Middle East in the wake of the fall of the Egyptian regime. One might reasonably question, however, whether revolutions are contagious.

It could be that autocracy itself had been weakened by the success of the protests in Egypt.  On the other hand, there had been revolutions before and dictatorship was not evicerated from the face of the earth. The belief that the Tunesian and Egyptian revolutions were the start of a wave that would flood all autocratic powers in the Middle East (or the world) might also consider that even autocratic states differ in their respective internal conditions. To use the hurricane analogy, some beaches are better protected than others. If the unrest in Tunesia and Egypt were linked in such a way that other countries could be impacted internally, the ensuing domino effect could perhaps be compared to that among Wall Street banks in September 2008.  The collapse of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and Merrill Lynch as independent or viable going concerns contained a momentum that was beginning to bring down Morgan Stanley and threaten even Goldman Sachs when the ex-CEO of Goldman Sachs at Treasury effectively pushed for the construction of a fortified sand-dune (TARP) a.k.a. an infusion of funds into the remaining banks from the U.S. Government and the Federal Reserve.  As a result, the force of the strengthening winds ceased to intensify and began to diminish, leaving the economy in a long rainy season (i.e., a recession and a subsequent nearly jobless recovery).

In the wake of the fall of the Egyptian regime, were the other regimes in the Middle East like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs after Lehman Brothers declared bankrupcy?  In other words, are autocratic regimes subject to a "run on the bank" in another? If so, there would still be a notable difference between the big banks and the governments.  Namely, the banks were deemed too big to fail, while the autocratic rulers were deemed too powerful to rule. That is to say, the continued viability of the Wall Street pillars was deemed essential to the world economy, while it was thought in the wake of the Egyptian regime of Mubarak that the world was better off less one autocratic regime. Hence there would not be likely to be a TARP program arranged to prop up dictators. Even with this difference noted, I contend that both big banks and big dictators are too big to exist in a world that values freedom and individual rights. Perhaps we ought to have been cheering the domino effect on Wall Street just as we cheered the fall of the Tunesian and Egyptian dictators. In both cases, destabilization that could lead to the collapse of the global economy and civic order would of course need to be avoided.  However, I contend that the U.S. Government could have intervened to maintain order on Wall Street by assisting as the big banks split into pieces, none of which being too big to fail and thus more in the public interest than retaining the big banks as such.  In the case of public autocratic regimes, their demise and replacement can typically be handled domestically, as in the cases of Tunesia and Egypt, rather than by an international organization such as the U.N.

In general terms, the "run on the bank" in Tunesia and Egypt may or may not be contagious in its nature, yet a consideration of the possibility of a domino effect can remind us of the domino effect that we witnessed in September of 2008 on Wall Street. Making this connection might prompt us to ask whether autocratic governments and big banks aren't both too big to exist. In other words, the collapse of one badly run bank after another and the subsequent need to deal with the question of such banks as going concerns can perhaps be likened to the collapse of one badly run government after another.  Was the world finally noticing around the end of the first decade (and the beginning of the second) of the twenty-first century that enormous concentrations of private capital (and thus power) and of public autocratic authority were not necessarily givens, and thus could, and perhaps should, be taken down? In other words, were long-standing givens finally seen as replacable?  The world was stunned when huge investment banks that had been around for more than a century were suddenly collapsing, just as the world was stunned when the government of the largest Middle Eastern country suddenly fell after two weeks of popular protests. Pillars, even those that are thought vital, can indeed fall, and the world can discover through the experiences that they are not essential--and they might even be bad for the public good. Surely this is the sense of the free world concerning autocratic governments, yet we are less convinced concerning the danger in continuing to allow banks too big to fail to continue to exist as they have for decades. In both cases, the domino effect may be natural and good, provided it is managed so public order does not collapse in the process. 

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/12/world/middleeast/12arabs.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

Democratic Protests in the Middle East: A Conflagration of Historic Proportions amid a Constancy in Human Nature?

Perhaps by looking back on one's own time as though it were already historical, it is possible to assess whether what one is witnessing on the global stage is truly significant from the standpoint of human history or merely of that which history is replete. In the context of the popular protests in the Middle East in early 2011, the question is perhaps whether the world was witnessing a Hegelian burst of freedom or merely more of the same in terms of political revolutions. According to The New York Times, popular movements were "transforming the political landscape of the Middle East" in the wake of the protests in Tunesia and Egypt.  For example, in Bahrain, "as in Tunisia and Egypt, modest concessions from the government [were] only raising expectations among the protesters, who by day’s end [on February 15, 2011] were talking about tearing the whole system down, monarchy and all."  The prime minister, Khalifa bin Salman al-Khalifa, the king’s uncle, had been in office for 40 years. Accordingly, the protesters were asking not only for the release of political prisoners, but also "the creation of a more representative and empowered Parliament, the establishment of a constitution written by the people and the formation of a new, more representative cabinet."

The New York Times placed the protests in Bahrain in the wider context of the protests that had recently occurred in Tunesia and Egypt. The Bahrain protests, "inspired by the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, have altered the dynamics in a nation where political expression has long been tamed by harsh police tactics and prison terms." (italics added)  However, it was not clear at the time of the protests whether the thread of inspiration was determinative to such an extent that the landscape of the Middle East itself would be transformed as a result. In allowing the protests, the king of Bahrain may have assumed that he could stay in control and thereby reduce the strength of the "inspiration" by giving the protesters some space to do their thing and presumably get it out of their system. However, Ibrahim Matar, an opposition member of Parliament who joined the crowd of protesters, said, “Now the people are the real players, not the government, not the opposition.” It is interesting that he dismissed his own movement (i.e., the opposition) rather than trying to take credit for the uprising.  If Matar was correct, the spread of protests throughout the Middle East had the wherewithal to fundamentally change the means by which people would be governed in the region. That is, the protests could have been a transformative wave wherein people finally had within their sight the possibility that government could be of and by the people. The revolutions in Tunesia and Egypt would not have been isolated incidents in a long world history of sporatic revolutions without autocratic government itself being expunged from the tired face of the earth. The question that captivated the world watching the Egyptians protest was whether something different might have been going on. 

Whereas the twentieth century had hosted technological change on many fronts, political development was not among the areas of progress. When the twenty-first century had gained enough of its own years to claim its own time, the question may have become whether the human race was  ripe then for a leap in political development. If so, the trigger would not be in the democratic nations that preach representative democracy; rather, it would be in the people themselves who had lived under autocratic rule. It is as though there were a spreading suddent awareness that they didn't have to take the abuse anymore; they could simply say no--though "simply" is the wrong word here as saying no in a state such as Iran, for example, was at the time still prompting a barrage of bullets from government soldiers. It was clear that the autocratic governments had different strategies with respect to the protests.  The question was perhaps whether the thrust of the wave had rendered the choice of strategy nugatory. In other words, was the world witnessing the beginning of the end for autocracy or dictatorship as a means of governing human beings, or merely the latest round in a series of revolutions that have been an intractable part of human history?  Did Tunesia unleash a burst of freedom that can be placed in a Hegelian progression of human history wherein human spirit comes to realize itself in greater freedom, as per its nature? That is to say, were we witnessing a Hegelian moment? Can the protests in the Middle East in 2011 be interpreted as marking a fundamental political change or even a new awareness in humanity?  I suppose the answer would depend on whether the protests spread like a forest fire across highways and byways such that no dictator would remain standing not only in the Middle East, but, moreover, in the entire world as well.

Lest we get too carried away in celebrating the salubrious evisceration of autocratic government, we should not forget that representative democracy is far from perfect. Left without any viable competitors, this system of government could be more subject to abuses from within. If representative democracy is the beneficiary of the extinction of autocracy, might democracy as an ideal be like capitalism in the wake of the demise of the USSR (and communism in China)?  In other words, might the hegemony of representative democracy ironically make it more likely that the drawbacks of such democracy gain in force, or at least become more transparent?  Just as the financial crisis of 2008 rather than the USSR demonstrated that the market mechanism itself is flawed in how it accommodates increased volatility (by freezing up rather than accommodating it), perhaps once the world is populated by republics we might come to see the internal flaws in what the U.S. Founders called "excess democracy."

The protests in the Middle East reminded the world that history is not very predictable. Similarly, history can be quite ironic, given the fixity inherent in human expectations. As we the West welcome our brothers and sisters in the Middle East into the family of free nations, let us not get too self-congratulatory, for our institutions are far from perfect.  We are all human, all too human. Yet in spite of human nature as its constant, human history may contain a progression wherein humanity the world over comes to realizations that insist upon or inevitably lead to greater self-realization. Humanity's realization in the early twenty-first century may involve political development. I suspect that the next turn will concern religion. After that turn, the world will be quite different than for those who lived before even the technological revolution in the twentieth century.  In other words, modernity may well be characterized in terms of succeeding intervals of technological, political and religious transformation--altogether evincing a huge amount of change even as human nature remains constant.  The question might be how much change is possible given the constancy of our nature, or do some change elements change human nature? In the context of the protests in the Middle East, human nature looks pretty much the same as it has been for eons.  Yet the future change may shift the basis-point in human biology and psychology such that even more change becomes possible.

Source:

Michael Slackman, "Bahrain Takes the Stage With a Raucous Protest," The New York Times, February 15, 2011.

Natural Rights in Europe and America: Shoring-Up Each Other’s Weak Spots

The Declaration of Independence made by the thirteen newly sovereign American states in 1776 recognizes “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” These rights are not dependent on any government, and thus exist equally so in the state of nature. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, made in Europe thirteen years later, omits any mention of a creator-deity. “Men are born and remain free and equal in rights.” The equality here is more limited, being solely in terms of rights, “man’s natural and imprescriptible rights” in particular. These “are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.” We can thus compare and contrast the two sets of rights, which important implications for public policy for both America and Europe.

Liberty is shared by both declarations; the value placed on freedom was likely salient in the last quarter of the eighteenth century at least. Liberty represented the emerging paradigm of popular sovereignty as against monarchy and the associated divine right of kings. Interesting, the American Declaration pivots the divine source over to liberty, whereas the European Declaration implies a basis in Nature. Basing a new paradigm on the basis of the prevailing one has the advantage of the transference of legitimacy, while bypassing the old foundation may be likened to kicking the chair out from under the reigning paradigm, hence weakening any potential resurgence. So, both documents had a valid strategy.

In terms of “ever closer union” pertaining to the E.U. and U.S., we might try combining the other salient rights to get a sense of a more holistic, or balanced, basis to government. John Locke would no doubt be very pleased. To liberty, we can add life, property, security, resistance to oppression, and the pursuit of happiness. I have ordered these rights along the lines of Maslow’s hierarchy of self-actualization—physiological sustenance and physical security being the most fundamental, and happiness residing at the top. The right to security implies life, but the latter does not include the former.

Hence we find a more complete safety net in the E.U. than in the U.S. The ideological belief that a person must work in order to survive, a vestige of the proverbial state of nature although without the greater specialization making people more dependent on each other, has more currency among Americans than Europeans, generally speaking. A balanced approach to public governance would include the right to life buttressed by the right to security. That is to say, more could be done in the U.S. with respect to ensuring basic shelter, medical care, and food to the people in most need such that they need not live in fear from day to day.

Furthermore, the right to resist oppression can be coupled with the right to pursue happiness, for the oppressed are rarely very happy. Striking workers in the 1930s in America felt the weak spot in the American variant of rights as companies hired Pinkerton cops to beat the strikers as local police looked on or even participated. Europeans weighed down by onerous regulations would benefit in terms of quality of life were happiness a more explicit factor used by regulators.

In any culture, some rights are valued more than others; valuing itself involves prioritizing. Accordingly, governments tend to have distinctive weak spots. Political development can be facilitated, I submit, by comparing different though related sets of values in order to detect and strengthen areas that potentially could undercut the system of public governance itself. That is to say, Europeans and Americans can learn from each other and both come out with stronger systems of governance.

A Myanmar Spring?

The party of dissident leader Aung San Suu Kyi, the National League for Democracy, won a decisive victory in by-elections on April 1, 2012. The party 40 of the 45 seats reported as of April 3^rd, with the results of five more seats not yet in. The news of the victory reached the outside world, which reacted with optimism. Catherine Ashton, the E.U.’s foreign minister, said “I congratulate the government and people of Myanmar on the conduct of the by-elections.”[1] Meanwhile, the White House indicated that the vote marked “an important step in Burma’s democratic transformation.”[2] Both the E.U. and U.S. approached the outcome as necessary but not sufficient for democracy in the country that had had five decades of harsh military rule.

Aung San Suu Kyi on the day of the by-election.          Agence France/Getty

Indeed, the impact of the by-election must be put into perspective in terms of governing. At the time, the Wall Street Journal noted that the NLD party “will have only a small presence in Myanmar’s parliament, where most of the more than 600 seats are held by current or former soldiers linked to the old military regime.”[3] From this perspective, the by-election itself can be viewed as a public relations coup by the soldiers. Such a dramatic victory of the NLD would give the appearance of a new democracy when in fact nothing would change in who controls the government. At best, the by-election’s results would mean that the governing party would have to accommodate some dissent within the legislative chamber. In terms of removing sanctions, the U.S. and E.U. officials would be wise to wait until a majority within the parliament is up for grabs under a free and fair (and monitored) election.

Like the military in Egypt, that in Myanmar might have known that it could retain control even after the apparent shift to democracy. Indeed, all the optimism that comes with an apparent switch to democracy could operate as cover, enabling the real power to continue much as before. Becoming a true democracy in which power transfers between parties is likely a long process where a military dictatorship has been the rule. People don’t give up power easily, and they can be quite crafty in how they retain it.

1. Patrick Barta, “Suu Kyi’s Victory Leads to Rethink About Sanctions,” The Wall Street Journal, April 3, 2012.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.