“The world is ruled by neither justice nor morality; crime is not punished nor virtue rewarded; one is forgotten as quickly as the other. The world is ruled by power, and power is obtained with money. To work is senseless, because money cannot be obtained through work, but through exploitation of others. And if we cannot exploit as much as we wish, at least let us work as little as we can. Moral duty? We believe neither in the morality of man nor in the morality of systems.” — Tadeusz Borowski This hideous and degrading picture of the human animal was painted by the Polish writer Tadeusz Borowski at Auschwitz: humankind without benevolence and without compassion; lacking empathy and lacking mercy; inexorable, ruthless and malevolent; a savage, brutal animal devoid of morals but obedient to laws. Borowski believed there was no crime a man would not commit to save himself, and that belief, salvation for self at the expense of justice, precludes moral virtue. Borowski, a poet and writer, laboured at Auschwitz from 1942 until the liberation of the camps. He was not a homosexual, or a Roma, or a Jew: he was an observer of human nature in a place where it was bared to the bone. But if his life there brought him to a realisation of the barbarity of humankind, then he also understood what was lost as a result of that void: “there can be no beauty if it is paid for by human injustice, nor truth that passes over injustice in silence, nor moral virtue that condones it.” Unless and until we eradicate injustice, we have no reason to know beauty, for all that we create is tainted by injustice pretending that all is well with our world. Truth does not exist if injustice surrounds us and we are silent in our complicity. Proclaiming moral virtue in a world awash in crimes against humanity is condoning the crimes unless we act to eradicate them. Borowski's work came to mind because I used his words in a commencement address to a university law school some years ago. On 29 January, the journalist Nick Cumming-Bruce writing from Geneva for the New York Times reported that “Israel became the first country to withhold cooperation from a United Nations review of its human rights practices on Tuesday, shunning efforts by the United States and others to encourage it to participate.” How strange that a people that endured the horrendous human betrayal of their inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness should become the perpetrators of evil against another people denied their rights of equal justice and dignity and respect and honour, where all should enjoy the fruits of this earth. How can one understand the fact that the state of Israel, the state declared to be the Jewish state, the state that cried out at the United Nations against Iraq and Iran for discrimination or anti-Semitism, the state that ran to the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to survey countries antagonistic to Israel and bring them before the UNHRC for punishment, indeed, to levy fines and threaten sanctions against them, should now become the state that defies the same UNHRC when it is its turn for review? Did it not find the United Nations to be an institution designed to protect the weak against the strong, to provide conventions that protect all peoples regardless of colour, ethnic background, religious beliefs, political and economic systems, and to be a means of protection for itself, a small nation set in the midst of perceived enemies, or did it understand that it could manipulate the system when convenient to gain its own ends and defy it when it should be condemned? Did not the US neo-cons and their allies damn the UN for inaction against the Saddam regime in Iraq for defying 16 UN resolutions, thus establishing the justice of an invasion of Iraq even though Israel had also defied over 160 similar resolutions? Has Israel not been vociferous in its demands that Iran be placed under sanctions, and, indeed invaded, to prevent it from acquiring weapons of mass destruction, even as it itself has hundreds of such weapons and refuses to admit it or to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, while at the same time demanding that action be taken against the “existential threat” that Iran represents against it? Why does Israel defy the UNHRC? Let's be as blunt as Borowski: the world is not ruled by justice or morality; it is ruled by power. Israel knows this. It has taken control of the greatest military machine the world has ever known — the United States. It controls the US president, senate, and congress, and it does this just as Borowski had declared, with money. If one needs proof of these assertions, consider senator Lindsay Graham's interrogation of US President Barack Obama's nominee for secretary of defense, Chuck Hagel, with some help from his masters. Neither the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) nor Israel fear retribution — both disdain the opinions of the peoples of the earth, and both ridicule the organisations that have been established to guide nations in peaceful ways. They laugh at the morals taught by the religions of the world, because they have no respect for those bound by a moral order. They act by sheer chutzpah and through the vetting of those who occupy an office, those who intend to run for office, and where necessary who should run for office. It is Israel's agenda that US representatives attend to, not the agenda of the American people. Unending wars benefit the wealthy, and they destroy the average citizen. Unfortunately, American democracy is a bidding war, an auction of offices able to be purchased by the pound. The American people no longer run the government, since the forces that pay the puppet run the country. Consider the reality that the UN faces today. On 29 November last year, it invited Palestine to take its place as a non-member observer state — anathema to the Zionist government of Israel, which denied that recognition even though it is a signatory of the organisation. It simply imposes its law and political determination on all the peoples of the earth. In short, it determines what the UN will do or will vote. This it can do because it can tell the US how to vote in the Security Council —thus the impunity. Understand that five per cent of the world's population runs the UN, and 95 per cent of the world's population is mute in the oligarchical power structure that the US combined with Israel has over the wishes of the peoples of the world. How, then, to achieve not only peace in Palestine, but any possible justice for the people of Palestine? The answer rests with the peoples of the world, not with their governments, which are held beneath the gold bricks of the US and Israel. However, the peoples are represented in the UNHRC, which has been crippled by a US refusal to pay for operations because it admitted Palestine without US permission. Thus do the few cripple the many, while denying justice to the oppressed and the occupied. It should be obvious to all that the US does not have a moral base from which it operates. It operates only for money, for the one per cent, and it uses its citizens as collateral damage against those who question or attack its control. That's AIPAC's way; that's the way of the neo-cons; it's what Borowski learned: “the world is ruled by power and power is obtained by money.” There is no moral virtue that determines justice for people. But for those who believe that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states the opposite, the road to peace must be through the UNHRC and the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The people of the world have spoken for 64 years through UN resolutions voicing in clear and bold language the crimes against humanity inflicted on the Palestinian people. The laws of the UN conventions and the obligations of the nations of the world that are members of the organisation are clear: the alleged crimes must be brought before these bodies to face justice and to bring justice. Should this not be done, both Israel and the US will recreate the laws of war, so that their crimes are washed away as easily as Pilate washed his hands of the sentencing of Jesus. Let's continue with the bluntness of Borowski. The UNHRC has prepared a comprehensive document to be used when Israel comes before it, a document that itemises its crimes against humanity with a focus on the settlements and the devastation they have brought to the Palestinian people. Israel knows of this report. It will not be brought before the world court of public opinion and certainly will not be brought before a court of justice. It will not just defy the UN — it will castigate the 188 nation states that allowed Palestine to become an observer state as biased and discriminatory. It will flaunt the Holocaust as an expression of the anti-Semitism that necessitated the creation of a state for Jews; and it will build its case on grounds that only the military can defend its people, and hence the constant cry of self-defence. Israel has no compunctions about being the sole nation not to adhere to the UN's human rights reviews of all member states. Israel cares nothing about the UN or its purpose. It will act unilaterally because it can undo anything the UN desires to do. Let's understand the actions of this amoral nation. It has just attacked Syria, a member of the United Nations. Syria has executed no actions against Israel. The Israeli government has invaded a nation without provocation regardless of the innocent citizens that are hurt or killed, indeed oblivious of any such consequences. What would impel the government of Israel to such an act? The answer is simple: to force an alliance between the US and Israel that can eliminate any chance that the American government might not support Israel's defiance of the UN, especially since the US has admonished Israel, as have all other member states, about defying the call from the UNHRC. Israel knows that the UN must condemn this act, but it does not obey any laws that restrict its drive to control all of Palestine, and if necessary expand Eretz Israel beyond even these borders. Its end determines its actions; its laws supersede all others. Here are the words Israeli founding fathers Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion used to the British Mandate Government in Palestine: if further action was taken against them to destroy Zionism, then there would be a bloodbath. Nothing could prevent it. Nobody would be safe in Palestine (12 July 1946, Rhodes Archives). “If need be, we shall take the country by force. If Palestine proves too small, her frontiers will have to be extended,” (Ben-Gurion). The announcement of the UNHRC's review of Israel's record has forced Israel to yoke America to its needs and bury its defiance of the UN, so that the US cannot abstain should a vote come before the Security Council. These actions foretell the response Israel will take if brought before the ICJ. First, it will damn the resolution as anti-Semitic; second, it will argue that the ICJ has no jurisdiction over it as it has its own laws and is not beholden to others that deny the sovereignty of Israel; and third, it will present arguments that will delay any action, knowing that time erases memory, and, as it has experienced for 64 years, the world will forget. One need only remember the abandonment of the Goldstone Report into Israeli actions in Gaza. Borowski believed that there was no crime a man would not commit to save himself. That belief, salvation for self at the expense of justice, precludes moral virtue. Such are men who have traded their souls to the state in exchange for avoiding the consequences of confronting it. They are, as the American writer Henry David Thoreau once stated, so many wooden soldiers marching to another's tune. But for those of us who accept the transcendent reality of moral righteousness, selling the soul cannot be an option. We bear the responsibility to act as the arbiter of the state of our soul. No educated person can escape responsibility for his or her actions. No educated person can escape the ethical obligations of a free mind. We are responsible to ourselves if we bear responsibility to meaning and truth. The world is not ultimately bound by borders; it is bound by a moral order. No nation has the right to impose its will by violence on another and by exorcising the universal principle that there exists a basic, fundamental, and inalienable right that is premised on freedom and justice, humanity and truth. If we do not lead by moral force, we are by acquiescence the followers of those who fail to act and the subjects of those who impose their will. There comes a time when everyone must cry for justice, to cry for those who cannot cry for themselves. This is the only answer to Borowski's sorrowful lament as he witnessed the inhumanity of those in power over the helpless Roma, communists, homosexuals, and Jews, a horrid mixture of calculated humiliation, degradation of spirit, physical abuse, slaughter and disregard of civilised behaviour in favour of laws created by the conqueror in a raw display of arrogance against the beliefs of all other nations. Today, the nations of the world are faced with another power that has determined to subjugate them by arrogance, coercion, fraud, invasion, and financial strategies that cripple nations, while undermining the one agency that has brought a semblance of civilised behaviour to crises around the world, the United Nations. The United Nations alone can and must take control of these two renegade states, or their behaviour, made possible over a prolonged period of time, will negate international laws in favour of those who would impose their power over the weak, thus justifying the criminal against the victim. Should that happen, we will have allowed Borowski's picture of humanity to be the epitaph of our destroyed world.
The writer is a professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California.
