USBlog: Israel and West Destroying Gaza

The Problem with Gaza

The problem with Gaza is that when we see its suffering, we know that our commitment to human rights stops at the Israeli border; it hurries past the apartheid wall. We do not, it seems, believe in universal human rights after all.

The problem with Gaza is that when see its dead, dust-covered children, we know that our belief in the rule of law and accountability for war crimes and crimes against humanity is nothing more than fancy talk designed to seduce and distract from the ethical vacuum at the heart of our legal ethics.

The problem with Gaza is that when we see the crushed wheelchairs of the disabled, too slow to get out with a one minute warning, we know that we consider some lives to be value-less, expendable, ungrievable. The Gazan dead are collateral damage, the responsibility of the terrorists, unfortunate accidents, deserving of their deaths because of their government; there are a million reasons to discount lives, to dismiss suffering.

The problem with Gaza is that when we see its hospitals crowded with the weeping wounded, waiting for vital medicines to be allowed in by Israeli border officials, we realise that we do not consider that all people have the right to live in freedom and dignity. We have learned to accept the imprisonment of an entire people behind walls; we accept that some can enjoy the freedoms we possess while others must possess subjugation, injustice, humiliation.

The problem with Gaza is that when we see family homes, hospitals, mosques and cultural centres reduced to rubble, we know that our commitment to international law and justice is little more than political expediency, a rhetorical flourish concealing a cynical calculus.

The problem with Gaza is that when we see people running about helplessly behind the walls, desperate to escape the screaming, searching bombs, we know that we accept an international order in which the powerful terrify and debase the weak, the oppressed are denied the right to resist, and in which military might trumps morality and reason.

The problem with Gaza is that it is a mirror to the moral vacuum that is 'civilised, Western values'. It taunts us, mocking our deeply-held beliefs, our delusional self-confessed identity as civilised, democratic, advanced. We think our politicians, our institutions and our societies really do cherish human rights, democracy, rule of law and a compassionate, humane international order. We believe our media tell the truth. But when we look at what Israel does to Gaza, to the Palestinians across the colonised territories, day after day and year after year, we know that none of this is really true. Suddenly, brutally, we know that we are hypocrites, our leaders are hypocrites, our purported values are nothing but vapours; they vanish with the first breeze of a US-made Israeli attack helicopter.

The problem with Gaza is that it reminds us that our governments send arms to Israel, accept its nuclear arsenal without protest, maintain full diplomatic relations with it, allow its representatives to speak unchallenged in our media, make excuses for its illegal, immoral behaviour, and block UN resolutions which criticise its walls, its blockades, its annexation of land, its excessive violence. It reminds us that we continue to vote for politicians and political parties who refuse to speak or act on behalf of the oppressed, despite their fine rhetoric about freedom and human rights.It reminds us that we allow Israel to act with impunity by our silence, our cooperation, our normalised relations. It reminds us that we have chosen a side, and it's not the side of justice and freedom.

The problem with Gaza is that it reminds us that we are all complicit in its suffering if we do nothing.