Army Rangers and brothers Pat and Kevin Tillman in Afghanistan.
Former US Army Ranger
“Feels Suffocated” by Genocide in Gaza
Kevin Tillman / Original to ScheerPost
Editor’s Note: Kevin Tillman enlisted in the Army with his brother, Pat, following the 9-11 attacks on the US in 2001, both becoming Army Rangers deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pat, who had left his sports career with the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals to enlist, was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan in 2004.
(October 31, 2024) — I feel suffocated by this genocide. I live half a world away from Palestine in nowhere Arizona, yet everywhere I go, it’s there. Whether I’m trapped in an endless cycle of Zoom meetings for work, watching kids shoot on goal at soccer practice, driving my kids to school as we listen to music not of my choosing, or walking our overly active beagle around the park, the genocide is always there. I’m not in any physical danger. I’m not a soldier on the ground any more. I’m not a policymaker. But as an average citizen, I can’t stop thinking about it.
The first thing I do in the morning is grab my phone and check what’s happening around the world. The latest horror now etched in my mind came from an article by Abubaker Abed titled “Shaaban Al-Dalou, Burned Alive in Gaza, Would Have Been 20 Today”, courtesy of Jeremy Schahill and Ryan Grim’s new Drop Site. It was about a 19-year-old engineering student named Shaaban Al-Dolou, who was set on fire by an Israeli bomb that was dropped in the night while he was lying in a tent in the courtyard of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah. Shaaban was being treated for wounds from a previous US-funded Israeli bombing, along with the rest of his family.
I then found a flood of videos of the attack where I can see the red and white flames of the firebomb dancing around the wreckage of the hospital equipment. People are frantically trying to help, but can’t. The flames cast a shadow that turns all of the tents and other material into black-and-gray silhouettes.
My eyes focus deeper into the flames. The fire is consuming young Shaaban’s body, still lying in the hospital bed. I can’t avert my eyes. His left arm sticking up in the air. Something about the way his fingers and thumb are positioned holds my attention. I keep staring. I feel wrong for watching, but also compelled to do so. He can’t flee. He can’t be saved. Death, in all of its ravenous horror, is inescapable for him.
I navigate to an interview with Shaaban’s father. With bandages and ointment protecting the major burns covering his body, he speaks about how he saved his youngest siblings but couldn’t save his oldest son, “Shaaban was engulfed in flames. I stood there, helpless, completely surrendered. I told him “Forgive me, my son. I couldn’t help you.
The images of Shaaban’s death trigger memories of Aaron Bushnell. The United States Airman who refused to participate in a genocide and self-immolated in the ultimate act of resistance and protest. “This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal,” Aaron said before he died. Aaron’s level of moral courage transcends anything I could ever relate to.
Reaching my emotional tipping point with stories of Shaaban’s death, I put my phone down to charge. With shock and silent rage, I walk into the kitchen of my safe, air-conditioned home and start making coffee to prepare for another day.
This has been my general routine for a year now. Tomorrow, a new set of victims will appear on my phone, and the day after, and the day after that. I see no end in sight, not until they’re all gone.
Most days I don’t talk to anyone about our genocide. I’ve learned to keep it bottled up. The everyday work/life balance in the US doesn’t provide a lot of space for conversation about such horrors. Once a week or so I connect with a friend who also feels powerless to stop it. It helps provide short-term relief for the internal turmoil, but impacts nothing.
At this point, I feel like I’m witnessing a version of America’s birth—with the principle mission of slaughtering the Indigenous population for their land. The same delusional, self-righteous, racist superiority complex of the colonizer repeating itself. I’m witnessing yet another unholy collaboration between the new state and its settlers as they pillage at will. Only this time, the indiscriminate killing of babies, children, men, women and the elderly, through bombing and starvation is being live-streamed on social media. Instead of being dehumanized as “savages” unworthy of breathing, it has been swapped with “human animals.”
I think about all the US history books I’ve read over the years, and know that I can pull any one of them off my shelf, like “Unworthy Republic” by Claudio Saunt or “An “Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States” by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, turn to a random page, and replace the word Palestinian with Souix or Navajo. It will read with nearly the same level of continuity. The past is repeating itself, and it is intentional. This century-long Zionist experiment to create a Jewish Supremacy State on stolen land and by co-opting the Jewish faith, is becoming a reality, all at the incalculable expense of the Palestinian people.
In some not too distant future I can already see a day set aside that whitewashes all of these crimes; a new Thanksgiving in Israel that celebrates the relationship between the genocidaire and those they have erased.
I keep asking myself: What the hell am I supposed to do with all of this? It seems like every avenue for peace has been aggressively closed off.
Most of the state and federal representatives are providing direct political cover and the funding for this apocalypse barreling towards the Palestinian people. This same government, in collusion with university admnistrators across the country, are concocting ways to criminalize dissent. Protesters, American citizens to be clear, are being labeled “antisemitic” for criticizing another country’s policy of directly commissioning a genocide.
University administrators are even going so far as labeling Zionism as a protected status on campus. So I’m not sure who our representatives actually represent anyway, but it isn’t us. Moreover, it is incredibly dangerous to dilute the real anti-semitism the Jewish people have endured throughout history — pogroms and the Holocaust — and that continues today, by throwing that term around under false pretenses. I can think of no greater insult to the victims of the Holocaust than labeling those struggling to end genocide as “antisemetic.”
The Jewish community itself is even being ignored. Rabbis all over the globe are protesting. Major organizations like Jewish Voice for Peace are advocating strongly to end the violence, stop the shipment of arms, and clearly communicate “not in our name.” They know this is not an inevitable situation based on biblical “Revelation” or part of “God’s plan.” They know Zionism is not Judaism. They know it’s genocide.
The news outlets and courageous journalists around the globe are doing their part by covering the genocide day and night. International humanitarian organizations are also documenting the devastation to put pressure on the United States. Still, they can’t make it stop.
Not even international law can penetrate the psychotic level of the US leadership’s complicity, Democrat and Republican alike. Every international legal body we’re signatory to — UNSC, ICJ, ICC, etc. — is calling it genocide while demanding a ceasefire and adherence to international law and human rights, with South Africa being the courageous nation to take the first steps. We have a moral and legal obligation to prevent genocide. The whole world is screaming, begging for it to stop. Yet it continues unabated, and the situation on the ground is getting even worse for Palestinians.
If the United States can ignore the world, international law and human rights, and the international bodies that govern it, how can my voice, or anyone else’s, get through to stop the genocide?
This is very discouraging because I know what history says about the average citizen in societies where genocide took place. The question is always asked “How could they have let this happen? How could they sit back and do nothing? “ I know they are judged very harshly for their inaction, as they should. So knowing I live in a representative democracy, these questions will be asked by posterity. It doesn’t matter the nuance of how our system actually works. And when it comes to foreign policy, it more literally functions as an imperialist oligarchy. But how am I going to explain it away to my kids and grandkids? I can’t, nor should I be allowed to.
Even though no policy maker is asking for my opinion, I naturally feel responsible for providing the State of Israel with weapons, ammunition, military personal, billions of US tax dollars, intelligence and logistics to support this genocide, and for the political cover being provided at home and abroad.
Worse yet, I share responsibility for the inevitable results of that support, which includes the death of tens of thousands—deaths made up mostly of children, women, and the elderly—by missiles, bombs, drones, machine guns, incineration, and sniper fire. And those numbers climb every day with the systematic targeting of journalists, healthcare workers, aid workers, educators, women and children, through starvationand the prevention of medical treatment, along with the destruction of Gaza’s entire infrastructure, including homes, hospitals, schools, markets, places of worship, agriculture, and water treatment plants. In effect, erasing Palestinians from their land.
And to put a face to all of it, when I think of the gruesome, horrific death of young Shaaban Al-Dolou, to one degree or another, I share responsibility. I did nothing to prevent his death. My silence and inaction enabled it.
I honestly don’t know what to do since every lever available to stop the genocide seems like it is being pulled, but nothing is working.
There was a time when I wasn’t silent in a crisis—when I felt compelled to act, to be helpful and useful to society in order to protect innocent people. It began after the attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., on Sept. 11, 2001. The country needed citizens to defend it from violence. So I enlisted in the army with my older brother, Pat Tillman.
Unfortunately, it didn’t turn out well. Our oath to this nation was not exactly reciprocated. A few months after arriving at our unit at 2/75th Ranger Battalion, we were deployed to Iraq to participate in an overt war of aggression. Then we were sent to support a rudderless, mission-less war and occupation in Afghanistan.
On that deployment in April of 2004, Pat died in a friendly fire incident; and our family spent years fighting with our government and military over lies and deception that surrounded his death. In the end, we were doing the opposite of making America and the world a safer place. We were making it more dangerous and eroding our moral fabric at home. Pat lost his life for this service.
In a time like this having a voice like Pat’s in the conversation would be helpful. I don’t ever speak for him, but our Mom wrote a lovely story that is directly related to Palestinian freedom and those fighting for it. Pat cut out a news article of a young peace activist from Olympia Washington named Rachel Corrie and placed it on his mantle.
Rachel was part of the pro-Palestinian International Solidarity Movement. While in Rafah, she was crushed to death by an Israeli armored bulldozer while trying to prevent a Palestinian family’s home from being razed. When my Mom asked Pat about the article, he said, “That’s my hero.” Rachel’s moral and physical courage to fly halfway around the world to stand firm in the face of imminent danger to protect the vulnerable and oppressed is next level. Unfortunately, those are not the stories that fit neatly into America’s narrative.
While serving, I didn’t think our foreign policy could get much worse or more obscene than the Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), “Mushroom Clouds in New York City”, or “Greeted as liberators” stunts -– lies that drove the Iraq war. But by the end of my enlistment, I realized a few things. The first is how casually this country uses the goodwill, courage, sacrifice, and lives of American service members for belligerent US interests. I still carry resentment and disgust towards our leaders’ “Forever Wars,” and my stomach drops when well intentioned people say, “Thank you for your Service.”
Although, I think for today’s service members, it’s worse. They are being ordered to support an overt genocide in Gaza, and is expanding into the West Bank, Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, and Iran; the areas and countries fighting to protect the Palestinians from genocide. I cringe thinking about how current service members will feel when they are thanked for their service to this genocide. As if it doesn’t matter ‘‘what’ their service is being used for. What impact it has. Or even if it is legal or moral.
But the most important lesson I learned is that America has been in an endless cycle of violence abroad, for pretty much ever, and it’s because we function based on US interests, not the rule of law or freedom or democracy or some other guiding moral principle. That’s just how it’s sold.
This genocide is no exception. As then-Sen. Joe Biden said on the Senate floor in 1986, “Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interests in the region.” As long as we can use the State of Israel, a strategic partner, as a military base, to store endless piles of weapons and ammunition, gather intelligence, influence the region, and plunder the Middle East, we justify our complicity in genocide to serve “US interests.”
And to be clear, genocide is not unique or out of character for the United States. One need look no further than a 60 Minutes interview with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright about the sanctions against Iraq following the first Gulf War:
Reporter: “We have heard that half a million [Iraqi] children have died. I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima,” Stahl said. “And, you know, is the price worth it?”
Albright: “I think that is a very hard choice, but the price, we think, the price is worth it.”
Again, it’s just a continuation of our existing foreign policies, by both political parties.
There is still a perception that the leading presidential candidates this November will change the course of the nation’s foreign policy. One candidate is a kind of chimera, a monster cobbled together by every awful, selfish, repugnant, and virtueless human trait that can be conjured up in one’s nightmarish imagination, who somehow, through a miracle in our justice system, isn’t shackled to the floor of a maximum security prison cell awaiting trial for treason.
The other candidate seems to be reasonable, and qualified. And from what I can see is thoughtful and acts like a normal person. Yet somehow this candidate has a moral blind spot you can drive a genocide through. Regardless who prevails, the outcome is bleak for the Palestinians.
And until American leadership stops placing “US interest” over the rule of law and well being of humanity, the cycle of violence abroad will continue and more will follow. As for America at home, our domestic policy and its politics will slowly mirror our illegal, lawless, morally bankrupt, selfish, hateful, racist, fear driven, anti-democratic, and exploitative foreign policy. It seems pretty clear this culture has already taken root.
I’m honestly not sure what to do to be helpful for the Palestinians at this point. I’m rather disappointed and ashamed of my year long silence and lack of initiative, and I’m simply at a loss. For now, it looks like I’ll continue to have no impact on the genocide being carried out in Palestine. I’ll wake up every morning to a genocide being live streamed to my phone; drink my coffee, go to work, try to be a good parent, and be haunted throughout the day by Shaaban’s death, at least until the next set of innocent victims show up on my phone.
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