If that's true, then humanity is second in line.
As the Israeli Defence Forces prepare a ground attack on Gaza, shifting concepts of humanity and its dark oppositional force, inhumanity, are being weighed and measured, promoted and deflected.
As distant observers we are asked to make an assessment from grainy images of bombed babies and kidnapped grandmothers about the degrees of humanity on either side.
Israeli politicians say they have suffered the biggest single loss of life since the establishment of the state 75 years ago, raising deep memories of European pogroms.
More than 1300 Israelis, mainly civilians, have been killed by Hamas militants who arrived from Gaza on motorbikes, trucks, speedboats and motorised paragliders, blowing holes in the security wall and widening gaps with bulldozers.
They mowed down concertgoers at a music festival and threw grenades at people hiding on kibbutzim - taking as many as 150 hostages, live bargaining chips, back to the Gaza enclave where Hamas is based.
These actions are made possible by a suspension of humanity. The inability to see your victims as people like yourselves.
Dehumanisation is an active tool of modern warfare, fought in the age of the 15-second video.
Hamas social media clips show young music fans cowering in holes in the ground, at the points of guns, being referred to by their captors as "pigs".
The inability or unwillingness to see the opposing side as human beings, to instead regard them as sub-human or animals is a necessary pre-requisite for absolute war - conflict without restrictions - enabling the very worst behaviour imaginable.
It allows the suspension of protective humanising processes which would ordinarily prevent soldiers from targeting civilians.
And now the bombs fall on Gaza. In the first six days of the war Israel says it's dropped 6000. The number of dead children, Palestinian health officials say, was greater than 500. A week further on the death toll in Gaza has reached an estimated 3700, including deaths at a bombed hospital, although who launched the rocket remains debated.
There are 2.3 million Palestinians living on a 41km long strip of land between the Mediterranean Sea and the State of Israel.
Gaza, originally a conglomeration of refugee camps, has grown into one of the most densely populated places on earth.
One by one, its neighbourhoods are being flattened by rolling airstrikes. Israel's government has turned a 16-year economic blockade into a state of siege.
Supplies of fuel, food and fresh water have been cut off.
Announcing the siege, defence minister Yoav Gallant said: "we are fighting beasts (or human animals depending on which translation you use) and will act accordingly".
On both sides, the accusation of inhumanity is being used as a justification for waging war on civilians.
Highly emotive interviews with survivors of the Hamas attacks and families of the hostages describe "barbaric" experiences.
On the sixth day of the conflict the office of Benjamin Netanyahu posted photos of a baby in a pool of blood and the charred bodies of two other children on social media.
The Israeli prime minister shared them with US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, who had just flown into Tel Aviv.
Blinken speaks of the value that Americans place on "human life and human dignity" - that's "who we are," he says.
The ability of a newly formed Israeli unity government and Hamas to uphold some form of that ideal will have a major impact on the direction of this conflict, and the collateral human damage.
Throughout history the suspension of humanity has long enabled atrocities.
Look at the Holocaust, look at the terrors of Stalin, the Killing Fields.
Exterminate the cockroaches, was the cry of the Rwandan genocide.
As observers from far away, we are asked to judge accusations of inhumanity as we witness the opening salvos of what might become the mass extermination of civilians.
We are expected to weigh the pictures of dead babies, with a tiny infant lying in the middle of a huge orange stretcher or a lifeless child in the arms of a father, its back to the camera in a pink stretch and grow, one arm dangling.
Balance up the abduction of an 85-year-old woman in a golf cart with a inert two-year-old lifted from the rubble of a bombed building, and they all take us to a place of terrible outrage.
To try and balance atrocity is a fool's errand. Each deserves its own investigation and condemnation.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has claimed tens of thousands of lives and displaced many millions of people and has its roots in a colonial act carried out nearly a century ago.
Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem has been tracking conflict-related deaths since September 2000.
The overwhelming majority of the deaths are Palestinian and have been for almost 14 years.
For every 15 people killed in the conflict, 13 are Palestinian and two are Israeli.
Within a week, the number of dead in Gaza at more than 1500 surpassed the number of Israelis killed in the Hamas attack. The bombing didn't stop.
The concept of proportionality does seem to apply.
In President Joe Biden's first major statement after the Hamas attack he said that the US stood by Israel but that said it was important that their ally operated "by the rules of law".
The Geneva Conventions unequivocally forbid the taking of hostages. However, the rules around a siege like the one in Gaza are less clear.
Under laws of armed conflict a siege is acceptable so long as the target is military and the aim isn't to starve the civilian population.
How do you assess the decision to cut off fuel to power generators which keep the hospitals running? Hospitals that are full of thousands of Palestinians injured in sustained Israeli bombing.
An article on the International Committee of the Red Cross website says legally justifying sieges in a time of war is a "slippery method of thinking".
The Israeli Defence Force claims that Hamas uses civilians of Gaza as human shields. That their infrastructure is scattered among places where people live.
Protecting civilians under these conditions is incredibly challenging. Though it does not serve as a humane argument for killing innocents or perceived collaborators.
Labels are crucial to humanity.
When talking about Hamas, Israeli spokespeople invariably refer to the militants as terrorists.
The Chief Rabbi of Britain has criticised the BBC for not using the expression terrorists to describe Hamas militants. He said it showed they weren't impartial.
Veteran war reporter John Simpson staged a spirited response insisting that the use of the t-word immediately designated one side as baddies and the other as goodies.
This simplistic dichotomy hides a more complicated truth - there are goodies and baddies on both sides.
To maintain humanity in times of conflict we perhaps need to nurture simultaneous and contradictory thoughts.
We need to entertain the thought that either side is capable of anything - bad deeds and good.
The complete suspension of humanity and the promotion of good vs evil takes us to an intractable place where the concept of peace and a cessation of hostilities is unthinkable.
The practice of looking for humanity in the actions and words of others, especially our enemies, may not solve the Middle East crisis, but it may help prevent an agnostic conflict turning into the slaughter of absolute war.
Phil Vine has been a print, radio and television journalist for 30 years. This article was first published HERE
Israeli politicians say they have suffered the biggest single loss of life since the establishment of the state 75 years ago, raising deep memories of European pogroms.
More than 1300 Israelis, mainly civilians, have been killed by Hamas militants who arrived from Gaza on motorbikes, trucks, speedboats and motorised paragliders, blowing holes in the security wall and widening gaps with bulldozers.
They mowed down concertgoers at a music festival and threw grenades at people hiding on kibbutzim - taking as many as 150 hostages, live bargaining chips, back to the Gaza enclave where Hamas is based.
These actions are made possible by a suspension of humanity. The inability to see your victims as people like yourselves.
Dehumanisation is an active tool of modern warfare, fought in the age of the 15-second video.
Hamas social media clips show young music fans cowering in holes in the ground, at the points of guns, being referred to by their captors as "pigs".
The inability or unwillingness to see the opposing side as human beings, to instead regard them as sub-human or animals is a necessary pre-requisite for absolute war - conflict without restrictions - enabling the very worst behaviour imaginable.
It allows the suspension of protective humanising processes which would ordinarily prevent soldiers from targeting civilians.
And now the bombs fall on Gaza. In the first six days of the war Israel says it's dropped 6000. The number of dead children, Palestinian health officials say, was greater than 500. A week further on the death toll in Gaza has reached an estimated 3700, including deaths at a bombed hospital, although who launched the rocket remains debated.
There are 2.3 million Palestinians living on a 41km long strip of land between the Mediterranean Sea and the State of Israel.
Gaza, originally a conglomeration of refugee camps, has grown into one of the most densely populated places on earth.
One by one, its neighbourhoods are being flattened by rolling airstrikes. Israel's government has turned a 16-year economic blockade into a state of siege.
Supplies of fuel, food and fresh water have been cut off.
Announcing the siege, defence minister Yoav Gallant said: "we are fighting beasts (or human animals depending on which translation you use) and will act accordingly".
On both sides, the accusation of inhumanity is being used as a justification for waging war on civilians.
Highly emotive interviews with survivors of the Hamas attacks and families of the hostages describe "barbaric" experiences.
On the sixth day of the conflict the office of Benjamin Netanyahu posted photos of a baby in a pool of blood and the charred bodies of two other children on social media.
The Israeli prime minister shared them with US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, who had just flown into Tel Aviv.
Blinken speaks of the value that Americans place on "human life and human dignity" - that's "who we are," he says.
The ability of a newly formed Israeli unity government and Hamas to uphold some form of that ideal will have a major impact on the direction of this conflict, and the collateral human damage.
Throughout history the suspension of humanity has long enabled atrocities.
Look at the Holocaust, look at the terrors of Stalin, the Killing Fields.
Exterminate the cockroaches, was the cry of the Rwandan genocide.
As observers from far away, we are asked to judge accusations of inhumanity as we witness the opening salvos of what might become the mass extermination of civilians.
We are expected to weigh the pictures of dead babies, with a tiny infant lying in the middle of a huge orange stretcher or a lifeless child in the arms of a father, its back to the camera in a pink stretch and grow, one arm dangling.
Balance up the abduction of an 85-year-old woman in a golf cart with a inert two-year-old lifted from the rubble of a bombed building, and they all take us to a place of terrible outrage.
To try and balance atrocity is a fool's errand. Each deserves its own investigation and condemnation.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has claimed tens of thousands of lives and displaced many millions of people and has its roots in a colonial act carried out nearly a century ago.
Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem has been tracking conflict-related deaths since September 2000.
The overwhelming majority of the deaths are Palestinian and have been for almost 14 years.
For every 15 people killed in the conflict, 13 are Palestinian and two are Israeli.
Within a week, the number of dead in Gaza at more than 1500 surpassed the number of Israelis killed in the Hamas attack. The bombing didn't stop.
The concept of proportionality does seem to apply.
In President Joe Biden's first major statement after the Hamas attack he said that the US stood by Israel but that said it was important that their ally operated "by the rules of law".
The Geneva Conventions unequivocally forbid the taking of hostages. However, the rules around a siege like the one in Gaza are less clear.
Under laws of armed conflict a siege is acceptable so long as the target is military and the aim isn't to starve the civilian population.
How do you assess the decision to cut off fuel to power generators which keep the hospitals running? Hospitals that are full of thousands of Palestinians injured in sustained Israeli bombing.
An article on the International Committee of the Red Cross website says legally justifying sieges in a time of war is a "slippery method of thinking".
The Israeli Defence Force claims that Hamas uses civilians of Gaza as human shields. That their infrastructure is scattered among places where people live.
Protecting civilians under these conditions is incredibly challenging. Though it does not serve as a humane argument for killing innocents or perceived collaborators.
Labels are crucial to humanity.
When talking about Hamas, Israeli spokespeople invariably refer to the militants as terrorists.
The Chief Rabbi of Britain has criticised the BBC for not using the expression terrorists to describe Hamas militants. He said it showed they weren't impartial.
Veteran war reporter John Simpson staged a spirited response insisting that the use of the t-word immediately designated one side as baddies and the other as goodies.
This simplistic dichotomy hides a more complicated truth - there are goodies and baddies on both sides.
To maintain humanity in times of conflict we perhaps need to nurture simultaneous and contradictory thoughts.
We need to entertain the thought that either side is capable of anything - bad deeds and good.
The complete suspension of humanity and the promotion of good vs evil takes us to an intractable place where the concept of peace and a cessation of hostilities is unthinkable.
The practice of looking for humanity in the actions and words of others, especially our enemies, may not solve the Middle East crisis, but it may help prevent an agnostic conflict turning into the slaughter of absolute war.
Phil Vine has been a print, radio and television journalist for 30 years. This article was first published HERE
9 comments:
The responsibility for the death and suffering of any innocents in this conflict rests solely with the aggressor.
The state of Israel has a moral obligation to defend the people within its borders from people who would attack, kill, rape, capture them. The idea that Israel should respond in measure, proportional to the capabilities of its aggressor is immoral. The idea that Israel should continue to permit the resupply of its enemy while the conflict goes on is stupid. Adhering to such a principle means that Israel will continue to sacrifice its own people as it fights on its aggressor’s terms. A moral response is the swift, decisive, and complete destruction of the fighters, leadership, and supporters of the aggressors where ever they may be hiding (including Qatar and Iran) and to take military actions to achieve this while minimising any further loss to Israel.
You cannot negotiate with evil. You cannot bargain with organisations who exist for no other reason than to see you dead. Make no mistake, the people that want Israel gone belong to the same ideological group that want an end to the US and the west in general.
One of the main differences between the western values being attacked (again) and those of the aggressors is that the west values the lives being lost. The aggressors hold no similar attitudes; they are happy to attack innocent civilians, and cause and celebrate the continued suffering of their own people. They fight a propaganda war in western media cynically using our values against us supported in part by articles like this one.
Protesters demand Israel stop the attacks. They are quiet on the kidnapped and abused hostages, and the fate of the Hamas errorist murders that targeted, raped, murdered civilians. Hand them over, the situation will de escalate.
Then the only issue is how to live with a neighbor that wants to exterminate you, and spends their time securing weapons to do just that.
Lebanon could well find themselves in camps to. After all, a country cannot allow decades of attacks for ever. Israel should not hold back this time. Eliminate terrorists.
It's common for the Jews to attribute any problem faced by Jews as being someone else's fault. The Jews are never at fault, you see. How can they be? They are God's chosen people, so they say. It's never their own behaviour that ends up blowing up in their faces (so to speak). No, it's always these pathological non-Jews who harbour an inexplicable and wholly irrational hatred towards them that is the problem. Their obvious sense of Jewish supremacy leads them to classify anything they do as a moral imperative, no matter how barbaric it is. It's pretty rich to wring one's hands about the number of dead Israelis, when the Israelis kill many more times the number of Palestinians. Of course, the Jews only ever kill Palestinians in self-defence, against "animals" who hate them for no reason at all.
Well Madame Blavatsky - that's you done. I'll never read anything of yours again.
EP
That's a shame. Maybe you could attempt a cogent response instead.
Jesus sunned it up when he said to Christians :"The world will hate you as it hated me".
Madame Blavatsky
If you take somebodies life then you must be prepared top forfeit your own life.
The Hamas started this war (and previous wars) taking Israeli lives.
There is a grave danger that what we are witnessing may be a repeat of the 1948 Nakba, and the 1967 Naksa, yet on a larger scale. The international community must do everything to stop this from happening again,” said Francesca Albanese, U.N. Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967.
Israel has long used war to justify the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Government officials have openly called for another Nakba, or “catastrophe,” the term for the events of 1947-1949 when over 750,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from historic Palestine and driven into refugee camps to create the state of Israel. During the 1967 war, which led to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Israel ethnically cleansed another 300,000 Palestinians during the Naksa, or “day of the setback,” which is commemorated every year by Palestinians.
Madame Blavatsky makes a pertinent point even if not palatable nor the whole story nor the solution.
Both the Jews and the Palestinians have been aggrieved by history.
The question is: can they find positive common ground to create a new future where they are all respected and responsible. And thus change the course of history so it is not doomed to repeat ad infinitum. Ie the mantra of hatred and/or greed and/or violence and destruction.
The same issue for the Balkan countries, Russia and its neighbours, China and its neighbours, the countries and people of Africa. ….
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