I often find myself thinking about the Haitian Revolution. Not because I’m a historian, nor do I feel any particular personal connection to slavery. I am quite Caucasian, thank you, and my natural empathic connections lay in far more privileged in-groups. Frankly, I have more in common with the French slavers than I do the Haitians, and that is precisely my point.
The Haitian Revolution was vicious. When the slaves rebelled, they did so with ferocious gusto. The Haitians tortured and slaughtered every single French family on the island, ostensibly to prevent further enslavement, but arguably as revenge for the crimes of their colonial nation. The only White folks who were spared were the Germans and Poles. In retaliation, the French set up a blockade around the island with their navy of warships and forced reparations from the new republic, demanding the former slaves pay their slavers approximately $3.5 billion USD in today’s currency, with Haiti only paying it off finally in 1947. Haiti’s modern day impoverishment was imposed by a jilted nation bitter about losing the people they owned as property.
The Haitians brutalized French civilians, killing entire families including children. Did France have the right to defend itself? In a just world, should they have invaded the poor nation to reestablish the status quo? Let’s say for the sake of argument that the French would have been delicately proportionate in their response, and avoided killing civilians, targeting only the militants who overthrew the slaver regime. They were one of the few republics globally at that point, deposing their own tyrannical rulers in their own notably dovish way; surely their cause must have been just – they were an oasis of democracy in the world! Would their resolute nobility justify returning the Haitian people to enslavement? Should we condemn the Haitians for their revolution? Surely a peaceful solution was possible, and while we may mourn the tragedy of French retaliation, devastating in its reality, we cannot abide the violence of a slave revolt. Surely.
Slavery is now considered one of the greatest evils humanity has ever perpetuated. To respond to it with violence isn’t actually at all controversial. When America eventually caught on that slavery is bad, it had a whole war against itself in order to reject it. To talk about the Haitian Revolution without the context of slavery is just about the most absurd thing anyone could ever do; even the worst student in a high school history class would still include the word “slavery” somewhere in their failing final paper, perhaps even in the title. When we look at the slave revolt, the keyword is already present in the phrasing. To pretend it erupts in an ahistorical vacuum would require significant leaps of racism to ignore.
My parallel is not subtle, and the criticisms are predictable. What the French did, slavery, is objectively wrong, and the Israeli treatment of Palestinians is a false equivalence. Perhaps, but we must look at the context to determine whether or not that is actually true. In the occupied territories of the West Bank (deemed illegal under international law), Israeli settlers are forcibly evicting Palestinians from their homes in order to claim the land for their own, often using violence to do so. In Gaza, one has to wonder how Israel had the power to eliminate access to drinkable water from entering the region after Hamas’s attack, along with other trifles like fuel, food, and medicine. This blockade has been in place since 2007. What do you call it when one group controls the necessities of life of another, removing access to it when they disapprove? It is driving a people into submission, reminding them who has the power over their lives. While there is no forced labour, the comparison to slavery does not feel too outrageous. There is a word that is commonly bandied about though, apartheid, as described by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and even the Israeli human rights group B’tselem. What does it mean to use violence against such a state of oppression?
Which leads me to the second predictable criticism. We’ve grown as a species since the days of colonialism and slavery! We don’t need violence anymore! Even the apartheid in South Africa was resolved through the peaceful actions of the great Nelson Mandela! Violence, in any context, is inherently evil and should never be used as a political tool.
There is an old philosophical adage that states that ought implies can. This is a simple maxim that stipulates that only someone capable of acting ethically is responsible for doing so. If I can’t lift a boulder that’s crushing you to death, I am not responsible for saving you. If I’m Superman and just don’t bother to lift the boulder, then I am acting unethically. It’s fairly straightforward – we can’t perform moral duties that we are unable to perform, therefore we are not obligated to follow them.
Can Palestinians use non-violent means to end the apartheid imposed upon them? I mean they’ve tried. The United States has vetoed every single United Nations Security Council resolution that would hamper Israel’s ability to oppress them. The International Criminal Court has been rendered essentially impotent in their investigations into the matter due to America’s opposition, sanctioning prosecutors. Israel also flatly rejects the jurisdiction of the court, denying any international legitimacy to the complaints of the Palestinians. The Boycott, Divest, and Sanction (BDS) movement that attempts to use similar tactics that ended apartheid in South African is often legally impermissible, or at the very least culturally frowned upon rendering it inconsequential as peaceful protest. When Palestinians protest peacefully locally, they are often shot for their troubles. Journalists covering the situation are also killed with impunity. The list goes on.
What exactly ought the Palestinians to do? When we condemn Hamas, we’re saying they ought not to have done what they did, but the follow-up question becomes: what ought they to do instead? There does not appear to be any effective measure Palestinians can take that will alter their situation in any meaningful way. Are they simply to sit passively by? Allow history to unfold as it will, without their input? Should the Haitians simply have waited for the French to determine on their own that slavery is morally bankrupt? France ended slavery in 1848, 44 years after the Haitian revolution. Would we ask them to endure another couple generations of slavery to avoid any wearisome violence? How long do you think it will be for the Palestinians to wait, or will the historical narrative have them driven out of their homes forever? The idea of forcibly relocating a people out of their homes under threat of death has terrifying precedent.
The third and final predictable criticism is that I am justifying the terrorism of Hamas; what Hamas did was good actually, and innocent Israeli families deserve to die. Hopefully by now you’ve been able to ascertain the entire point of this article. We cannot justify the acts of Hamas in the same way we cannot condemn them. We cannot say they ought to have committed such atrocities just as much as we can’t offer an alternative. If ought implies can, and Palestine is forbidden any action whatsoever, then there can be no ethical component to their deeds. The October 7th attack can neither be condemned nor justified because it does not exist in the ethical realm. The violence of Palestinians transcend any ethical deliberation because ethics have long been unattainable for them. Hamas acted in what amounts to a state of nature, and people died. We are allowed an emotional reaction to be sure, but not an ethical one. If we want an ethical option for Palestinians to embrace, perhaps we should give them one. We can act.
If I was alive in Haiti in the early 19th century, me and my family likely would have been tortured and killed by dint of nothing more than our racial identity. I certainly wouldn’t have enjoyed it, and I would appreciate people mourning the deaths of me and my loved ones. I’ve long questioned, however, even before October 7th, 2023, the justifications for my survival in that context. What is my life or death in the face of the giant of slavery? How ought I to be treated as an accessory to slavery? What would my own moral obligations be if I survived the slaughter? How does one condemn a slave revolt in a world without ethics?
Blog for Chumps 
A difficult topic well thought. Good work!
Thank you! I get very frustrated listening to the news and seeing too many opinions dismissed because they were not sufficiently critical of Hamas, or commentators will awkwardly caveat their criticisms of Israel with “of course I condemn what Hamas has done.” It’s as if to say that we can’t move forward for Palestinians until they achieve some kind of inconceivable pacifism as the first step.
What should our goals be here? Is it really necessary to even speak about the Hamas attack in order to achieve those goals? If you follow Israel/Palestine, you may have heard the Israeli phrase “mowing the grass” referring to what essentially amounts to a cull of Palestinians each time they react violently to occupation. The problem isn’t the violence of the Palestinians – it’s the normalization of that dynamic to a drab chore as a means of perpetuating the current apartheid system. What’s currently going in Gaza has happened time and time again in varying degrees of scale for decades. Talking about escalating violence in a “mowing the grass”-type approach is pointless because it’s not an anomaly; it’s a feature. How we escape that dynamic is the far more urgent dilemma.
I’ve followed you for a while now, but this is the first time I’ve wanted to reply. I’m from Northern Ireland. And coming from a civil war, *the troubles* a civil war by any other name, is still a civil war regardless of what the British dubbed it. We learned very quickly that violence while never the answer, was sometimes part of the question. WHY bomb? WHY shoot? When no one is listening nor caring to listen, if the IRA didn’t bomb England no politician would have been so struck to create a *peaceful* resolution. Don’t get me wrong, innocent people where murdered and maimed unnecessarily, including women and children in the England bombing campaign. So I’m not for a minute saying this was ok. What I am saying is that when your only recourse to make politicians listen is extremism, innocent people pay the cost.
It’s too this day, still not resolved, there’s peace but it’s not sustainable by any means when religion is tied to nationality so inherently in Northern Ireland, that the zero sum game goes on. Only we’re at half time, with it being rained of play, aka at peace.
Exactly the same is happening with the Palestinian people, no one on the outside of GAZA the West Bank or the Golan heights or any of the occupied territories where privy to the real TRUTHS. As you said even journalists where murdered to stop the truth about the Israeli treatment of Palestinians getting out. I’m not for a minute saying hamas where right to do what they did on oct 7th but I’m not gona sit back and condemn them for reaching a breaking point and making the whole world sit up and listen.
It was an extreme reaction to the years, decades even, long abuses of power from Israel. Hamas have absolutely given Israel carte Blanche to eradicate all and every Palestinian from the West Bank while we watch in horror helpless to do anything. The normative flattening of Palestinian homes in the *mowing of the grass* now comes so much easier with isreali air strikes that even nato hasn’t condemned it! Not less when a refugee camp was targeted, it was a 30 second talking point by taking heads on the news before being glossed over as ‘just Isreal fighting the real threat, those Hamas bastards’.
To watch the politicians sit aloft in their ivory fuckin towers bending the knee to the Jewish state, afraid to rock the boat and call out Isreal for the war crimes they’re perpetrating on a daily basis, against a people they don’t even believe are human, I’m at a loss to see a resolution. When those in power turn a blind eye and refuse to call for even so much as ceasefire to let civilians leave, where will a peaceful resolution be found?
If Russia had attacked Ukraine in the same way, America & the UK wouldn’t have sat on their hands, because Russia is still that cold red enemy always at the door…but Israel is their friend, Israel is their political backer with the money, Isreal won’t even get a slap on the wrist. How do you fight a bully with so much power without innocents getting caught in the cross fire. How do you speak when you have no voice?
At the very least the bombing campaign the IRA perpetrated on England got the desired outcome at the extreme cost to innocent lives, which was those in power doing SOMETHING bringing in a ceasefire on all sides, creating a power sharing government, and the Good Friday peace accords which has more or less held. I don’t see how Hamas can get the same result when they are the perpetual underdog to be kept at heal, not being treated as having an equal right to the land nor resources or even being given basic human rights.
Hamas have fallen on their sword in a veiled attempt to show just how deplorable the isreali state truly is, in the extreme play that gets the world on board with the Palestinian plight. But, I don’t think even Hamas knew how little the world would want to take any action, nor go up against Israel with any credible stance to end the occupation and the war.
I fear, by this time in 2024 there won’t be a Palestine, it will be *mowed* into oblivion and taken over by Israel and those Palestinians who actually escape, will only be in the hundreds, whether they’ll be the lucky ones to survive will be yet to be determined, with the level of human suffering they will have endured in order to *survive*.
Thank you so much for your continued support, and for adding your own local experiences to the conversation! The response to any oppression is going to be relative to the extent of that oppression, and to be shocked at that response is to be ignorant of the oppression that spawned it. It’s never pretty, but oppression doesn’t create pretty outcomes. We’re very cut off from reality in the West in a lot of important ways, and that creates a naivety that more often than not allows oppression to flourish. Hopefully the more it gets pointed out, the easier it is to see.
Thanks again for adding your two cents, and I hope to hear from you again!
I was heartened to read such a factual and real assessment of armed revolt. Most want to point out 1 day as the most horrid and as a reason for the wholesale slaughter being rained down unrestricted against the native Palestinians, as if it did not stem from 76 years of- what the ‘fair & world peace keepers’ have long termed ‘illegal’. The carte Blanc the Jews have been given all these years is apalling and speaks volumes about justice, values, democracy, fairness, double standards, racism, land grab, plunder, etc., and what the original tribes found here aptly termed as: ‘white man w forked tongue’ along with the European mantra of eminent domain and manifest destiny. It also clearly points out the growing racial divide taking place globally and portends the bleak future of mankind.
[…] plight of the Palestinians has been well-documented, and it is certainly reasonable to argue that these conditions allowed toxic resentment and unhealthy violent urges to fester. But why is this particular […]
it is always ridiculously funny to me. When I hear white supremacy, talk about the Haitian revolution as being barbaric, and how the Haitian slaughtered the French without any mention of the genocide, the rape and the slaughtered and the tortured and the abuse of the Haitian people as if, to say dear , those Negro have the audacity to not want to be abused rape and tortured by Us , white supremacy, French people.🤣🤣🤣🤣 the Haitians need to wake up and have another revolution because for the past 222 years they have still been occupied by US france and Canada. If white supremacy feel entitled to slaughter rape and torture, they need to get a taste of their own medicine!!!!