Performative Cruelty
Musk, Netanyahu and the death of compassion
Not so very long ago, there was a broad consensus that aid agencies were in general a good thing - for responding to humanitarian emergencies overseas and to work towards longer term development goals. But in the last few days that consensus has been shattered.
In the US, Elon Musk has hobbled USAID, the Agency for International Development. And in Israel, the government is ceasing cooperation with UNWRA, the United Nations body, which has been delivering social services and welfare in the Occupied Territories for more than 70 years.
Musk has accused USAID of being a criminal organisation. The Israeli government says UNWRA was complicit in the atrocities carried out by Hamas in October, 2023. But it seems highly likely that the actions that have been taken against the two agencies have other motives.
There is scant evidence that either Musk or the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, want to reform USAID or UNWRA - that they want to see them revitalised and carrying out their work more effectively.
It is far more likely that Musk thinks money spent on helping people abroad in desperate need is a waste of tax dollars. That he thinks supporters of Donald Trump will care very little about the vital work of USAID and, even better from his point of view, that it will enrage “the libs”. It is, in other words, performative cruelty.
In Israel, UNWRA has come to be seen as an arch enemy by right-wing Zionists and those who want to annex the occupied territories and expel Palestinians, because its schools and clinics have sustained communities displaced from their homes after the founding of Israel in 1948. And what makes the rejection of UNWRA worse is that the plight of people in Gaza has become so much greater in the last year and a half because of Israel’s war against Hamas. It is as though a person finding victims of a car crash at the side of the road is waving away the medics coming to help them.
Musk appears to take pleasure in the shock value of his actions, as political theatre, as a public display of his new power. He shows no interest in the real-world consequences which will unfold in the weeks and months to come. Similarly, Netanyahu does not view Palestinians as fellow human beings, to whom he has a legal duty of care because of Israel’s status as an occupying power.
Who then has given these men permission to do what they have done? The question hardly needs to be asked. It is of course Donald Trump. Who, with a straight face and no hint of real compassion, suggested that Gazans should be removed from their homes to be looked after elsewhere, so that the site of some of the worst war crimes of the 21st century could be repurposed as a location for casinos, luxury condominiums, shopping malls and of course golf clubs. Hedonism and conspicuous consumption built on unnumbered graves. He might think of it as a beautiful idea. Others will see it as an obscenity.
Trump’s plan for Gaza will not happen. Perhaps it is merely a distraction from the egregious abuses being visited on key organs of government in Washington. But the fact remains that in the first weeks of his presidency, he has licensed his allies to perform previously unimagined acts of cruelty. And this is just the start. Will he succeed in pushing compassion to the margins of life in America and in wiping out any traces of humanity in its influence across the rest of the world?
He did say that he would be a dictator on day one. In that regard at least, he was not lying.
There is nothing pleasant to say about the current US regime. It is an abomination