A silent moral majority

We can try to fool ourselves and tell ourselves that what we saw didn’t happen. We can try to kid ourselves that it wasn’t really that bad. That it was proportionate, justified, sadly necessary or an inevitability of history. That it was complicated, that our security or our way of life (even our “civilisation”) were at stake and that everything possible was done to protect the innocent (if we could only agree who they were).

The explanations, justifications and ultimately the lies ooze into public debate.

War crimes, surely not. Crimes against humanity, never. Genocide, impossible.

But what we saw cannot be unseen. What we heard cannot be unheard. Even in denial, what we know cannot become unknown.

Once again, and on our watch, genocide has happened (and is continuing to happen), even as we wring our hands, shake our heads and feign powerlessness.

In a modern reprise of the infamous comment of a US officer during the Tet Offensive in Vietnam: “It became necessary to destroy the place to save it.” Industrial-scale killing as a moral necessity and right.

Despite being tired of hearing about it and wanting to “move on”, it is necessary to keep talking (and writing) about Gaza and everything associated with it. Very specific political, historical and cultural reasons demand that we continue to bear witness to what is being done primarily (but not exclusively) to Palestinians.

It is also necessary to bear witness to the world’s prevarication – the silence, indifference and complicity. We now know the answer to that oft-posed historical question – how could this happen?

The answer is straight in front of us, defying us to name it.

We live in a time of escalating war crimes; the impunity frequently associated with them and of the embedded hypocrisies and double standards sustaining them. Our own society is not immune to them.

Indifference and silence; denial and deceit, discomfort and fear and, above all, refusal to challenge the powerful, especially those amongst our “allies”. Power and the uncontrolled abuse of that power depend over and over again on that silence, that complicity, that act of wilful turning away.

And, in order to justify this, we spend inordinate time rationalising and defending our inaction.

I attended a recent symposium where what is continuing to happen in Gaza was described as an unfortunate “tragedy”. The explanation offered was that thousands of Israelis “might” have been killed if forceful action wasn’t taken. A “tragedy” that could not be avoided.

In that world, human rights are reserved for the favoured. Our amorality and double standards are not only deemed legal, they become deeply racialised. The claim that Israel “has the right to defend itself” has become a smokescreen for a deeper, more insidious belief: that Palestinians are not human in the same way we are.

We (rightfully) rail against the attacks on Ukrainians but refuse to speak out on Palestine, often for fear of being labelled “antisemitic”.

To behave so is fundamentally unjust towards Palestinians but also Lebanese and Israelis and ultimately towards our own societies and our security. Silently accepting the current predilection for “epic fury” violence, a dismissal of basic moral standards and human compassion, coupled with intense self-regard and arrogance. This moral contagion spreads out and impacts all civic life.

For these reasons, we must confront the actions of this Israeli state while distinguishing it from Israeli society at large. And we simply must confront the ideology that justifies its actions and those who support them. Industrial-scale killing and societal destruction can never be accepted as a moral right, no matter who asserts it. The Swedish historian and writer Sven Lindquist reminded us in his 1992 book Exterminate All the Brutes that in the context of genocide that “…it is not knowledge we lack. What is missing is the courage to understand what we know and draw conclusions.” In leadership terms, Pope Leo continues to advise us of the danger of living in a world ravaged by a handful of tyrants” intoxicated with a “culture of power” and mired in “darkness and filth”.

When faced with clear evidence of evil and its consequences, many of us take refuge in the idea that the “moral majority” will ultimately win out. History suggests otherwise.

It is imperative that the moral majority find its voice and then exercise it, without equivocation.