Standing with Ukraine and Palestine in Paradise

Performativity in the Pacific

I realize that publicly admitting that I live in Hawaii makes me even easier to dox than I already am. But I can’t resist exploiting my unique vantage point.

Can you see me in the middle of nowhere?

Our Department of Land and Natural Resources claims “Hawaii is the most isolated archipelago in the world.”

I think Honolulu is the most isolated major city in the world, though of course there are Well Acktually people on reddit:

When people disagree with the sentence "Honolulu is the most isolated major city", they don't dispute the "most isolated" part, they dispute the "major city" part by arbitrarily choosing a population cutoff value designed to prevent Honolulu from qualifying but not high enough to prevent their preferred city from qualifying.

I will concede that it’s easier to get here than to Tristan da Cunha, which

is regarded as the most isolated settlement on earth, both in terms of distance (Cape Town is the closest city, 2700 km away) and time/difficulty to get there. No flights, and a ship roughly once a month.

But the main island of Tristan da Cunha has only 250 people, and Tristan da Cunha is still closer to continents than Hawaii is.

Anyway, the point is that it’s easy to forget about the rest of the world here. There is no Ukraine, no Palestine, no Godland on that map. And yet we have a “Hawaii Stands With Ukraine” group on Facebook and in meatspace:

Hawaii Public Radio claims “[h]undreds turned out across Hawaiʻi to stand with Ukraine” on March 4th.

Are those demonstrators more anti-Trump than pro-Ukraine?

I doubt that if Hawaii Public Radio couldn’t get a photograph of more than a few people in Honolulu, where there would be more protesters than anywhere else. Do all the demonstrators statewide add up to “hundreds”? Sounds like wishful thinking from a Ukrainian expat activist.

(Ukrainians - including refugees - live here. People from all around the world somehow make their way here. I can’t remember the ostensible logic of sending Ukrainian refugees to Hawaii.)

Notice how the Hawaii Stands With Ukraine group photo has just one like on Facebook.

I’ve seen only two Ukrainian flags here over the last three years. Perhaps flying over Ukrainian households.

The average person in Hawaii almost certainly cannot find Ukraine on a map. Some may not even know there is a war! And even if they do know, they almost certainly don’t care.

I’m not condemning the masses for their ignorance. They’re struggling to keep their heads above water. Everything here is expensive, while most jobs are low-end. Worrying about a country 7,500 miles (12,000 km) away is a luxury unless it is your country.

Pretending to worry is a luxury our ‘leaders’ indulge in.

Behold Hawaii Senate Resolution 129 from March 12th!

BE IT RESOLVED by the Senate of the Thirty-third Legislature of the State of Hawaii, Regular Session of 2025, that the Congress of the United States is urged to continue to provide funding and support to the Ukrainian military in its defense of aggression from Russia

Do any senators here lose sleep over Ukraine?

Is the USSA Congress getting such resolutions from the other forty-nine states? Are Puerto Rican and American Samoan politicians joining in on the fun?

The fun doesn’t stop with Ukraine. Last year Hawaii became “the first state to pass a Gaza ceasefire resolution”!

WHEREAS, in Hawaii, “Aloha” is more than a word of greeting or farewell or a salutation; it is the essence of relationships in which each person is important to every other person for collective existence; now, therefore,

BE IT RESOLVED by the Senate of the Thirty-second Legislature of the State of Hawaii, Regular Session of 2024, the House of Representatives concurring, that members of Hawaii’s Congressional delegation and the Biden Administration are urged to publicly call for an immediate, permanent bilateral ceasefire in Gaza and the return of all hostages […]

Yeah, the hostages will be returned because a bunch of people 8,900 miles (14,000 km) from Gaza say so. A bunch of people who then forgot about Gaza to focus on what really matters: grabbing more of our money.

The [Hawaii] state Salary Commission, which itself is made up of former and current public officials, has recommended a package of raises that range from 35% to 48% over six years for the Legislature and other state leaders. Most of those raises will automatically take effect starting July 1 [2025] unless the [Hawaii] Legislature votes to reject them.

Don’t you wish you could vote yourself a 48% pay raise?

Our governor, Dr. Josh Green, MDeeee, has ‘earned’ whatever’s extracted from us with this press release from March 17th:

The University of Hawai‘i was among 60 institutions under investigation by the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights (OCR) for potential antisemitic harassment and discrimination. While UH has fully cooperated with the investigation and remains committed to fostering an inclusive learning environment, there were growing concerns that the federal administration would use these investigations as a pretext to pull critical federal funding.

Governor Green took decisive action, engaging directly with senior White House officials to protect UH students and ensure the institution would not face unwarranted financial penalties. Speaking on his efforts, Governor Green stated:

“I was on the phone to the White House dealing with UH funding at about 4:30 a.m. on March 11. I spoke with high-level administration officials including the Deputy Chief of Staff for the White House and a Director of Intergovernmental Affairs. I explained that while there was a little on-campus conflict during the recent war in Gaza, it paled in comparison to what’s gone on at other universities. We are not an institution that is antisemitic. We’re giving them a letter to fortify our position, but they assured me the University of Hawai‘i is not on the chopping block for antisemitism.”

As far as I can tell, “a little on-campus conflict” was limited to verbal exchanges which did not include threats of violence, unless you count this allegation at a CONservative site:

One of the protesters reportedly threatened another student, saying: ‘The only thing keeping you safe right now is the community guidelines.’

I wasn’t on campus (I was banned from campus for not being injected), and even if I had been, I couldn’t have observed everything that was said and done by everyone at protests. So I can’t claim the protesters were angels. (The fact that they were masked “to protect [their] comrades from illness” makes me less sympathetic.)

But I can say this: If there had been significant anti-Jewish activity, our Jewish governor would have raised the alarm, as would David Lassner, the Jewish president of the University of Hawaii at the time¹, and David Shapiro, the Jewish editor of Pravda. And for once I would actually agree with them on something.

I can’t find any Pravda articles covering campus demonstrations. And I never saw any TV coverage, though I did find this video from ten months ago with only 1K views.

Hawaii News Now Nausea couldn’t even spell “antisemitic” correctly.

In any case, Gaza is not the explosive issue that the telescope affair was (long story for another day). There was something the average resident cared about - or at least pretended to care about.

My guess is that some Godland-loving CONservative here sent the Feds a false alarm.

Only minutes left, so I’ll just make two points.

Even though I oppose both wars, I also fear that many (most?) protesters are just cargo culting. Performing. Unless they are Ukrainian or Palestinian, they are highly unlikely to have any skin in the game.

And the painful truth is that no gestures in the middle of the Pacific, no matter how sincere, will alter the course of either war.

Putin and Netanyahu don’t care about us.

1. Lassner even briefly lived in Godland:

When I was in undergraduate, I took a year off and had a rail pass and was staying in youth hostels and sleeping on trains. I eventually ended up going to Israel and getting placed in a moshav community, where the work is collective. I ended up being a shepherd.

And until recently he was the shepherd of the University of Hawaii. I should write about his replacement in a future Stack.

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