In the Shadow of Genocide: A Message to Bystanders on moral complicity, and the whimper of the hollow men

Image source: https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2024/4/19/gaza-genocide-and-the-worlds-most-heinous-crime

For a crime you need three players: A perpetrator, a victim, and a bystander. The bystander isn’t passive. Standing by is an active choice to enable the continuation of a crime; of injustice and abuse. It is a cowardly position that I can almost empathise with because on the face of it, it prioritises the bystander’s self-preservation. Who hasn’t—at least on one occasion in their life—placed their own safety or self-preservation ahead of truth or justice?

However, I believe that many bystanders do not operate entirely out of self-preservation. Some, I’m convinced, secretly harbour contempt for victims and admiration for perpetrators. Many people don’t have the stomach, criminality, or temperament to harm another human being directly, no matter how much they despise them. So the next best choice is to do nothing, and enable someone else to inflict the harm.

Bystanders are not just frightened, or opportunistic people minding their own business. They bear significant responsibility for the cruelty in our world, and for allowing evil to repeatedly triumph and dictate the rules by which we are all forced to live. Among the bystanders are many people in positions of power who can do a great deal to sabotage, even stop the genocide that Israel is committing right now, against the entire Palestinian population all across historic Palestine.

Growing up in Israel, I was taught about the bystanders—those who stood by and said or did nothing when the Nazis came for victims. Bystanders worry me far more than the identified ‘bad guys’. You know what bad guys can do, but bystanders hide in plain sight among the ‘nicest’, quietest, and most respected members of society. The bystander group includes our colleagues, parents, siblings, neighbours, friends, and also many bureaucrats and politicians.

When people can recognise and own the humanity they share with victims, they are already on the right track to avoid becoming bystanders. It’s not education, or knowledge of history or politics that determine where people stand when an injustice or evil is perpetrated. It is basic empathy for our fellow human beings who for no fault of their own became victims, that motivates people to take the next step from just feeling and thinking, to doing something, no matter how small. There are many ways to be an activist, but only one way to be a bystander.

In ‘The Hollow Men’ T.S. Eliot appeals to each person’s soul, and places a mirror in front of us. Eliot laments:

“Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men”

Those who survive Israel’s genocide will remember both the bystanders—those who stood by and said or did nothing—and those who actively supported their annihilators. They will carry the memory that a vast portion of humanity despised them, or did not care about them, and that those in power either remained passive or actively aided the perpetrators. It is precisely why Israel will do its utmost to ensure no one survives. Without a body, you cannot prove a murder. Without memory, there is no crime, and no guilt. Israel’s ambitions and malevolence must not be underestimated. Our inability to trust our own kind will remain our species’ most destructive and shameful legacy.

The bystanders are quiet. Their violence is internal. This is why Eliot says:

“This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.”

The world ends not through explosive violence, but through the collective and cowardly whimper of those who witness injustice and choose silence.

The Hollow Men

T. S. Eliot (1888 –1965)

^{A penny for the Old Guy}

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour.
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer—

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

(This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on July 20, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets).

---

A comment on paid subscriptions

Substack encourages writers to apply paid subscriptions. They take a small cut to enable them to provide this, otherwise free-to-use platform. A few readers have pledged money for monthly or yearly subscriptions, to which I am grateful. I enjoy, and feel privileged to write and publish on this platform. But I am holding back on monetising my Substack channel, because I do not want to turn my writing into an obligation. I also know that I cannot afford to subscribe to all the excellent writers on Substack I would like to read, so prefer to keep my page free to everyone. Humans and human relationships as well as knowledge, should not be monetised.

For those who can, and wish to make a contribution, below is a ‘buy me a coffee’ button. If you haven’t seen it before, it’s a way of offering a donation to freelance writers. Payments are processed securely on the ‘Buy Me A Coffee’ site, using Stripe, and I believe people can keep donations anonymous if they wish. This is entirely voluntary. You are just as valuable to me whether or not you contribute something to support my writings.

Thank you so much for reading my work!