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?
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