In certain nations, a genuine refugee crisis persists. Take Lebanon, for instance, where arguably a quarter of the population consists of refugees from Syria, further compounded by an influx from Palestine and Iraq. Other impoverished and conflict-ridden nations in the region have similarly absorbed vast numbers of refugees—Jordan and Syria among them—long before reaching their own precipice of collapse. The countries bearing the brunt of this crisis are in no way responsible for its genesis. The onus for manufacturing these refugee flows lies primarily with the wealthy and powerful, who now recoil at the weight of the dispossessed victims they could easily accommodate.
What factors precipitated Israel’s recent strike on Iran? An inquiry reveals a multifaceted convergence of objectives: a calculated maneuver to evade international judicial scrutiny, a tactical diversion from the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, and a desperate assertion of regional hegemony.
The U.S.-U.K. invasion of Iraq alone displaced nearly four million people, half of whom fled to neighboring countries. These Iraqis are escaping a nation shattered by a decade of draconian sanctions and the sledgehammer blows of the wealthy and powerful—a country now among the most distressed on earth, its social fabric and regional stability torn asunder by the fires of sectarian violence.
There is little need to catalogue Europe’s role in generating refugees across Africa; the continent is currently hemorrhaging through the vacuum created by the French-British-U.S. bombardment of Libya, which effectively dismantled the state and left it to the mercy of warring militias. Nor is there a need to revisit the American record in Central America—the chamber of horrors from which people flee in terror and destitution. To this, one must add the Mexican victims of trade agreements that rendered them unable to compete with heavily subsidized U.S. agribusiness, thereby decimating the Mexican agricultural sector.
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The Peace Process: Rewriting History
The response of the affluent and powerful United States has been to coerce Mexico into keeping these displaced victims away from its own borders, and to inhumanely deport those who manage to evade these controls. The response of the wealthy and powerful European Union has been to bribe and pressure Turkey into harboring the desperate survivors at its borders, while corralling those who do escape into barbaric camps, treated with less dignity than livestock.
As the world's sole permanent tribunal tasked with the adjudication of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, the International Criminal Court currently confronts an existential crisis of unprecedented magnitude.
There are exceptions among the citizenry. Yet, even if one were to set aside the state’s direct responsibility for such catastrophes, the official reaction remains morally repugnant.
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This shame is hardly novel. Consider the United States, the most privileged and powerful nation in history, endowed with incomparable advantages. For much of its history, it welcomed European refugees to settle on lands seized through the decimation of the indigenous nations who resided there. That changed with the Immigration Act of 1924, designed specifically to exclude Italians and Jews. Their fate was of no concern. Even after the war, survivors were detained in camps, with entry into the U.S. strictly forbidden. Today, the Roma—descendants of Holocaust victims—are being expelled from France to face harrowing conditions in Eastern Europe, provided anyone bothers to notice. This shame is both profound and persistent. It is high time to bring it to an end and strive toward the baseline requirements of civilization.
This article by Noam Chomsky was published on May 5, 2016, under the title Noam Chomsky for Refugee Crisis.