Death, Death to the Causes and Conditions of the IOF

Communique from the tense place between the Bodhisattva Vow and Revolutionary Solidarity

Preface

I am writing this piece from the uncomfortable place between my bodhisattva vows and my commitment to liberation from oppression.

I know compassion discourse has been weaponized to silence resistance, especially in our sanghas. And I know there’s a real risk in spiritualizing our response without a material commitment to dismantling violent systems.

I don’t always know how to hold both. But I try. And I trust I’m closer to the path when I stay in the discomfort than when I try to bypass it.

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We Are All Being Exploited

When I was training to be a chaplain, I spent a year working at Rikers Island Jail in New York City offering spiritual care to both incarcerated people and corrections officers.

While the incarcerated people would often seek me out, part of my job was to call corrections officers at home who had been harmed on the job.

I was for prison abolition before and after my time at Rikers. But my feelings towards corrections officers changed. I came to see many of them—not all, but many—as victims, too. Exploited by the same violent system. Held hostage by the same threats.

I know this is controversial. And I’m not writing to flatten power dynamics. But I am speaking from the heart of what I experienced. Or at least, how I practice with it.

So many corrections officers were people barely getting by. The job paid more than anything else they had access to, and sometimes that paycheck was the difference between their kids having a roof over their head or not.

I remember one C.O. in particular—an immigrant, a woman of color, a single mother of two—who had been body-slammed by an incarcerated individual in one of the houses. She wept. She didn’t want to go back. But she couldn’t afford not to. She couldn’t find another job that paid enough to support her family.

This is not to excuse participation in systems of harm. But it is an anecdote meant to illuminate what, I believe, the bodhisattva vow asks of us: to serve all beings. Not just the good ones. Not just the uncomplicated ones. All of them.

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Death, Death to IOF

The chant “Death, Death to the IDF” was shouted at Glastonbury Music Festival, led by Bob Vylan, and like many, I dug my heels in to defend it. The IOF (I prefer the term Israeli Occupying Forces) is not a person. It is a military institution carrying out ethnic cleansing, settler colonialism, and apartheid. The institution should end. Its power should die.

But the people inside it? Unfortunately for my desire to keep things simple, the Dharma is calling on me to practice something different.

@gbnewsPunk band Bob Vylan have sparked uproar after they used their Glastonbury set to leads chants of "Death to the IDF" and "Free, Free Palestine". The group also expressed solidarity with Irish rap trio Kneecap, who were scheduled to perform 30 minutes after them on the West Holts stage, after it was confirmed the BBC would not be broadcasting their set live. #Glastonbury #BobVylan #Israel #Gaza #BBC #GBNews

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As bodhisattvas-in-training, we are asked to hold fierce compassion even for those doing deep harm. Not compassion instead of accountability—but alongside it.

While I believe strongly that every Israeli must refuse to serve in the IDF because that is the only ethical choice, I also try to leave room in my heart for the conditions under which some believe they can’t or won’t. The culture of fear. The greed, the hatred, and the delusion they’ve been taught to see as normal, even noble.

I can’t find the article now, but I read a quote from an IOF soldier overseeing the food aid distribution sites—aka death traps—and he said something like: “It looked like we were the Nazis and they were the Jews.”

Here’s the thing:

We are all the Nazis and we are all the Jews.
We are all the Palestinians. And we are all the IOF.

Thích Nhất Hạnh writes about this in his autobiography, At Home in the World, in the chapter titled “Call Me by My True Name.” He tells the story of a young girl raped by pirates while fleeing Vietnam by boat. When her father tried to stop them, he was tossed overboard. After her violation, she flung herself after him and they both drowned. Their suffering was unspeakable. Thầy admits he felt “blame, anger, and despair.” And then he says:

“When you address me as ‘Venerable Nhat Hanh,’ I answer, ‘Yes.’ When you call the name of the child who was raped, I also answer, ‘Yes.’ If you call the name of the pirate, I will also say, ‘Yes.’ Depending on where I was born, and under which circumstances I grew up, I might have been the girl or I might have been the pirate.
I am the child in Uganda or the Congo, all skin and bones, my two legs thin as bamboo sticks. And I am also the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to the Congo.

Those poor children in the Congo do not need bombs; they need food to eat. But here in the U.S., we live by producing bombs and guns. And if we want others to buy guns and bombs, then we have to create wars.

If you call the name of the child in the Congo, I answer, ‘Yes.’ If you call the name of those who produce the bombs and guns, I also answer, ‘Yes.’

When I’m able to see that I’m all those people, my hatred disappears, and I am determined to live in such a way that I can help the victims, and also help those who create and perpetrate wars and destruction.”

This is not moral relativism. It is radical interbeing. And while compassion cannot stop before action, it does change the energy behind the action.

The chant “Death to the IDF” is righteous rage at a system. The teaching of Thầy is a call not to allow ourselves to be poisoned by the same arrows.

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Intention Is Everything

I’m not even sure this changes the external action all that much. I will still write. I will still fight. I will still protest. I will still Boycott, Divest, and Sanction. But the intention is different. And in the Buddhadharma, that makes all the difference in the world.

In the Pāli Canon, volition (cetanā) is what makes an action karmic:

“It is intention, monks, that I call karma; for having willed, one acts by body, speech, and mind.” — Aṅguttara Nikāya 6.63

In the Noble Eightfold Path, we’re asked to go even further. We’re asked to cultivate right intention (sammā-saṅkappa), which is not just any intention, but one rooted in compassion (karuṇā), lovingkindness (mettā), and non-harming (ahiṃsā).

The difference matters. Because we can act with urgency, even fury, and still be guided by an intention not to destroy others, but to end suffering.

Right intention isn’t passive. It shapes how we engage with the world. And the karma we create depends not only on what we do, but why we do it.

We can fight for the abolition of violent institutions, even with great force, and still hold compassion for those conscripted, conditioned, or corrupted by them.

This is the razor’s edge. The Bodhisattva’s path. The one that does not flinch from injustice, but refuses to harden the heart.

And it is not easy.

But if we give up on the humanity of the “other,” we give up our own—because this is what the Buddha Dharma is pointing us to—namely, that we are one humanity.

Because then the cycle just continues. We’ll flip and we’ll flop forever and ever, from oppressor to oppressed and back again. Just like that soldier, struggling to reckon with the fact that, after a lifetime of being told he was the one at risk, he found himself with the gun pointed at starving children.

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Nonviolence, Not Naïveté

I’m not a hardliner for nonviolence as the only skillful means against oppression. As a Buddhist, I am personally committed to it … although sometimes I wonder if that’s because I’m a coward.

But as I’ve said before and I’ll say it again: it wasn’t Thích Nhất Hạnh who got American empire out of Vietnam—nor was it the American hippies, though both played their part. It was the National Liberation Front (a.k.a. the Viet Cong).
And I’m not even saying they were the “good guys.” They caused a great deal of harm, too.

My point is this: I believe nonviolence has its part to play. But for those of us committed to it, the least we can do is the hard part, which is to recognize that each of us carries the potential to be both the oppressed and the oppressor.

There are no good and bad people, not really. Only the consequences of cause and effect, the cause of injustice and the effect of suffering.

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The Inner IOF Must Die Too

I’m writing this as much for myself as for anyone else—because there are people in this world I hate.

But that’s the point. If we acknowledge that only awakened beings are free from the three poisons, then who are we to cast stones?

While “Death, Death to the IDF” is an absolutely legitimate battle cry, I also believe it is vital that we remember: we could just as easily find ourselves on either side of the gun. And our practice is to save all beings from suffering—even those suffering under the weight of their own cruelty.

So in a deeper way, that chant is also a spiritual one. A rallying cry to kill the IOF within ourselves—

The part that follows orders instead of conscience.
The part that dehumanizes to survive.
The part that confuses safety with domination.
The part that protects privilege at the cost of another’s life.

“Death to the IDF” is not only about ending a violent institution.
It’s about ending the part of each of us that is so easily seduced into its service.

In spiritual solidarity,
🧿 Constant Craving ✨

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