I want to open with an observation concerning America’s reception of Israel’s current war in the Gaza Strip (which, by the way, has a length that’s a little longer than the distance between Seattle and Everett, and, for the most part, a width that almost matches the one between downtown and Lake Washington). After the observation, I will attempt to make sense of it inductively—meaning, from experience or facts up to a generalization or theory.

Let’s start with a confrontation that occurred at the University of Washington on Sunday, May 12. The encampment of students who support Palestinians was countered by a march organized by the pro-Israel church group Pursuit NW. The appearance of this confrontation? One side, young students; on the other, older churchgoers. This age disparity, which an eye-witness (Hannah Krieg) confirmed, wasn’t confined to Friday’s showdown. It’s also found in how mainstream politicians in both parties have negatively responded to the new anti-war movement and further observed in a section of a comprehensive study posted by Pew Research Center on March 21, “Majority in U.S. Say Israel Has Valid Reasons for Fighting; Fewer Say the Same About Hamas,” titled “Views of how, why the war is being fought, by age.”  

Pew Research Center found that…

Younger adults are significantly more critical of how Israel is fighting in the war than are older people: 21% of Americans ages 18 to 29 say the way Israel is carrying out its response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack is acceptable; 46% describe it as unacceptable.

Another Pew Research Center study that focused on Jewish Americans repeated the age disparity, particularly in views of the Israeli government:

[T]here are age differences among Jewish Americans, as there are among American overall. For example, 45% of Jews under 35 have a favorable view of the Israeli government, while 53% have an unfavorable view. Jews ages 50 to 64 are the only age group in which a majority express a favorable opinion of the Israeli government (64%).

What are we to make of all this? One might go down a well-trodden path that leads to this common conclusion: Young people do not have any real responsibilities (paying bills, raising a family, keeping a job), and so they have the freedom to hold and express unconventional or critical opinions. But when they grow up, they will cool down and finally become adults. But what if we don’t take a path at all and instead attempt to make a new one? What would be its point of departure? I have a suggestion. It comes from a concept that posits the communicability of pain.  

I first came across this concept in a recent e-Flux Notes obituary for Marina Vishmidt. The post’s author, Andreas Petrossiants, described Vishmidt’s devotion—as a professor, critic, and theorist—to deprivatization. Pain, the seemingly “most isolating thing,” wasn’t left out of this program, a fact made clear in Vishmidt’s brief review of Anne Boyer’s book The Undying: A Meditation on Modern Illness.  

Petrossiants writes that “Marina… worked to dispel the dominant logics and abstractions that individuate and separate, pain included, putting the whole world in there, in all her endeavors.” The key line here is “putting the whole world in there.” It means we live in a world that is out there. But outside of what? The fiction of the individual. What is real, however, is our sociality, or ultrasociality. We are the most social large animal in the kingdom. Without this biological feature, we could not build bridges, collect trash, fly in the sky, and so on. These achievements, and more, require a level of cooperation that’s exceptional and not found in even our closest and far less social relatives, the great apes.

Such an understanding (the priority of human individualism) makes it very hard to see pain as not only social but communicable. In truth, however, we transmit what we feel, good or bad, on scales that far transcend the local. In this way, we can break with Darwinian evolution (genes as isolated) and enter that of Lamarck, an 18th/19th-century French naturalist whose star is rising in the age of epigenetics. Lamarck insisted that seemingly personal experiences can be transmitted to one’s offspring, a fact revealed by the Dutch Hunger Winter of World War 2. If life has been hard for you, this hardness is communicated directly to your children and even their children. The speed of Lamarckian evolution is closer to culture than natural selection. 

But what does this have to do with the American students protesting the war in Gaza? If pain is socially (“the whole world in there”) transmittable then we can arrive at this conclusion: Young people, in general, are more attuned to human animality than adults. The former can feel the pain of a war that has killed more civilians than combatants. And a large number of those civilians have been children. This kind of suffering should be imaginable to all. (Our mode of social communication is the imagination.)

But it’s not. Why? Because we live in a society that works hard and long to repress and then invert our species being. Meaning, the older we get the more our sociality is, by cultural engineering, converted into its opposite, individualism. And so, for the most part, adults in a market order are left with little to no imagination when it comes to being with others. The more years we add to our experience, the less responsible we become. Only the generalization of this inverted condition explains the existence of billionaires (who have no pain) and homelessness (who do feel pain every day, every hour). We see both classes as composed of individuals.

The adults who don’t feel the pain of Palestinians today are the same as the adults who did not feel the pain of Vietnamese people during the Vietnam War.

Charles Mudede—who writes about film, books, music, and his life in Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, the USA, and the UK for The Stranger—was born near a steel plant in Kwe Kwe, Zimbabwe. He has no memory...

16 replies on “War, Gaza Strip, and the Communicability of Pain”

  1. Most Americans are racist AF and are perfectly comfortable living their lives and not thinking about or caring about anyone other than themselves. Only when something affects them directly do they care. They don’t even care that hundreds of billions of their taxpayer dollars have been spent on slaughtering civilians worldwide. They don’t even care about the slaughter and starvation that is happening on a daily basis in THIS country. As long as it’s not happening to them they DNGAF.

    This country has made it clear it chooses comfort (for the few) and fascism (for the rest).

  3. An alternative explanation: young people’s mouths grow faster than their eyes and ears and brains. They can make loud sounds long before they can understand much of anything.

  4. As someone in his 50s I don’t understand how generations lose their capacity for empathy. Empathy for me has only grown as I’ve gotten older. I do understand how our capitalistic culture demonizes anyone and everyone perceived as being in a relative state of weakness. Capitalism HATES weakness and nobody is more “weak” (in a Capitalist view) than poor people (the LEAST capitalistic). It’s how it justifies genocide.

  5. Eh it’s a case by case basis. Muslims, Jews and Christians have been fighting over that same piece of fucking desert because their religions have all made the same claim to that piece of land as holy and sacred. If they actually understood the lessons in their religious texts (i.e. don’t be assholes, treat your neighbors with respect) then they wouldn’t be carrying on a conflict thousands of years old. They’re all stubborn fucks who can’t learn how to be good neighbors. I’m done with empathy for Israelis and Palestinians. The world would be better off if they both bombed each other to smithereens and we can be done with their hatred and stupidity.

    So yeah, no empathy for those fucks.

  6. “The world

    would be better off

    if they both bombed each other

    to smithereens and we can be done

    with their hatred and stupidity.” –@6

    sure.

    tho the

    Retaliations by

    their confederates’d

    be Swift and Certain and

    we’d All soon be dead as rocks.

    unless we Each

    had our very

    Own well-

    stocked

    Koch’s

    cave.

    thank

    you Chas.

  7. @3:

    “And

    we’ve been

    had, once again.”

    the word you’re

    Searching for is

    ‘outted’ or

    ‘made.’

    cheers.

  10. You do have to admit that a the root of all this is Abrahamic religion nonsense.

    As I have said before, I think this all comes down to ignorance of geography, bible-based nonsense, and racist feelings, whether it be anti-Semitism or bad feeling against “Arabs” that has been fueled since the Iranian revolution, and went int overdrive after 911. Add to that a popular culture that fetishizes death and violence, and there you have it.

  12. @11 absolutely agree re: religion @12 a better future is a pipe dream. I truly pity anyone with a child under the age of 18 and really I pity anyone under the age of 50 because what is coming is going to be a fucking horror show that none of us can even begin to comprehend. At least I will be dead.

    As for Biden, he must be counting on the fact that SCOTUS is going to rule Presidents can’t be held accountable for the crimes they commit.

    There is no LESSER OF TWO EVILS. There is only EVIL.

    ‘Most Thorough Legal Analysis’ Yet Concludes Israel Committing Genocide in Gaza

    The University Network for Human Rights report also stresses that other nations are legally obligated to “refrain from recognizing Israel’s breaches as legal or taking any actions that may amount to complicity.”

    https://www.commondreams.org/news/genocide-gaza

  13. The Unpunished:

    How Extremists Took Over Israel

    After 50 years of failure

    to stop violence and terrorism

    against Palestinians by Jewish ultra-

    nationalists, lawlessness has become the law.

    –by Ronen Bergman and Mark Mazzetti

    May 16, 2024

    https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/16/magazine/israel-west-bank-settler-violence-impunity.html

    four readers’ comments:

    If you’ve been wondering why the students have been protesting, here is your answer.

    –Annie; Minnesota

    Finally some real journalism. Thanks for this detailed account. It comes 6 months too late, but better late than never.

    –Insia Fatima; Brooklyn

    This is why I find American support for Israel’s current war so perplexing. People who despise right-wing strongmen like Trump and Orban seem to have bent over backwards to forget that on October 6th, Netanyahu was a right-wing extremist who’d cobbled together a coalition with even more extreme conservatives, and was in the midst of trying to dismantle the court system that might check his power.

    If you opposed the Iraq War because you didn’t trust W. Bush, why on earth would you trust Netanyahu to do the right thing?

    –NRW; Maine

    I’m afraid these terrorists are running things here in Israel. They have a strong hold on prime minister Netanyahu, being the most important piece of his current coalition after everyone else refused to ally with him, and as such they exploit their power in order to bring forth their delusional biblical theories into reality.

    These lawless people, these outcasts, who have been for years living in the outskirts of Israeli society, have taken an iron grip on Israel’s most fundamental institutions, and are now de facto in control.

    US readers must understand that Israel is being run by these people and by them alone. Mr. Netanyahu is nothing but a mere puppet.

    October 7th could have been avoided along with the consequential ongoing conflict we see now, if these war mongers were handled in the only effective way: imprisonment and trial on charges of treason against the Israeli state.

    They are no better then Hamas – both being terrorists seeking destruction and death in martyrdom.

    Keep that in mind when you read and listen to news about Mr. Ben Gvir, and Mr. Smotrich – both no more than mere hoodlums – they not only speak for the Israeli government – they control it.

    I hope readers can remember that these people do not represent the entirety of the Israeli public, and that there at least 50% of the Israeli public who strongly oppose their rule.

    Hopefully we can turn things around. Please, don’t give up on us.

    –yon; israel

    more

    https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/16/magazine/israel-west-bank-settler-violence-impunity.html#commentsContainer

    This story is told in three parts. The first documents the unequal system of justice that grew around Jewish settlements in Gaza and the West Bank.

    The second shows how extremists targeted not only Palestinians but also Israeli officials trying to make peace.

    The third explores how this movement gained control of the state itself. Taken together, they tell the story of how a radical ideology moved from the fringes to the heart of Israeli political power. –nyt

    YOUR

    Tax Dollars hard

    at Work. & for Whom?

  15. nyt: Israel

    Says It Will Send

    More Troops to Rafah,

    Defying Global Pressure

    The announcement signaled that Israel intended to press deeper into the city, where more than a million displaced people had been sheltering.

    https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/05/16/world/israel-gaza-war-hamas-rafah

    plus

    the IDF’s

    gotta go Back

    up North ‘cause

    wouldn’tchya Know it

    Hamas is Still Fucking There.

    the only ‘Plan’

    is the Leveling

    of Gaza whilst

    Hiding behind

    Hamas. & why

    Not? it’s worked

    Quite well so far.

    END THE GENOCIDE

    and stop America’s

    fucking Financing

    of Massacre, Joe.

  16. ‘Their practice of accusing anybody who refuses to endorse their views of murder — hence the otherwise bizarre chants accusing figures like American university professors and administrators of “genocide” — reimagines any dissent from the movement’s demands as a form of literal violence.’

    ‘Jewish students have been forced to endure an atmosphere of eliminationist rhetoric that is consistently unable to modulate or confine its Manichean demands. The pro-Palestinian groups have chosen to embrace violent fundamentalist death cults as their allies. They have chosen to spurn compromise and coexistence. The gaping void of a humane, universalist, liberal movement to advocate for the cause of Palestinian freedom is their failure, and its fruit is the rancid antisemitism that, despite their feeble denials, has sprung up everywhere since October 7.’

    More, excellently: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/columbia-protest-anti-semitism-campus-israel-jewish-students-justice-palestine.html

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