Bearing Witness to Gaza (audio dispatch 14)

Why democracy depends on continual learning

Once you have glimpsed the hypocrisy of your own human heart, the world of goodies and baddies is gone forever.

I can’t source the origin of that statement, and I might even have made it up myself, but I reach for it now as a reflection of how I feel about trying to talk about what is happening in Israel and Gaza. There are matters of guilt and innocence in play, but the situation is so vexed, and so far beyond goodies and baddies. If only our public conversation could start from a more mature place, and ideally take it as given that nobody serious would say one side is all good and the other is all bad; if only we could criticize Israel without implicating all Israelis or being accused of antisemitism; if only we could get beyond both sideism, and whataboutery, and other conversational tropes that keep us all so stuck.

I recorded a 27-minute stream of consciousness about Gaza earlier today (below) as part of processing the case currently underway at the International Court of Justice where South Africa has charged Israel with the intent to commit genocide and is asking the court for a provisional ruling, which would put pressure on Israel to ceasefire. Israel defends itself tomorrow (Friday), and I’m very curious to see what they’ll say.

So much these days depends on your information stream, so I imagine some of my readers will see a very different picture from me. I was impressed by a post of Jamie Wheal who goes into these differences of orientation to the issue in terms of our relationship to time. Some see the barbaric attack by Hamas on Israel on October 7th in a synchronic way, focussing on one moment in time, in which October 7th defines the situation, with everything that follows being about necessary self-defence and unfortunate collateral harm that Hamas bears the responsibility for. The synchronic view is also a trauma response, but an understandable one, and it’s all about ensuring that sense of shock and violation can never happen again. Others see it more diachronically - a situation in time - with October 7th part of a much wider picture in which Palestinians have endured decades of structural violence and actual violence from an occupying power that continues to steal their lands through new settlements backed by force. Some see Hamas and Gaza as almost the same thing; some see them as completely different. I have my views, but my aim here is not to argue the case, rather I seek to share my perception and to confess that my bias lies with protecting the underdogs, in this case, the Palestinians. With that in mind, I was also touched that just as Israel has formidable backing, particularly the USA; South Africa speaking for Palestine in this context - ‘having their back’ - felt somehow inspiring to me.

It’s strange what exactly moves you. The South African submission to the ICJ gives details of children losing limbs and parents, and a litany of other atrocities. I was already aware of them, albeit in a discomforting way, so I was not shocked to hear it again. What moved me most was that after several minutes of an English-language case, Ireland’s Barrister Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh, representing South Africa, initially spoke in French to apologize to the Francophone members of the court for South Africa’s court submission being only in English.

I speak just enough French that I could follow the jist of her introduction and her apology, and it felt weirdly incongruous at first, not least because the judges can all almost certainly speak fluent English. But it had a huge symbolic power for me. At its heart, it was about diplomatic courtesy, which is partly about respecting the international nature of the court as a guardian of the rule of international law; more fundamentally, it was a gesture that carried the recognition that there are many ways of being in the world.

And I think that touched me because I fear that kind of consideration - for the dignity of legal reasoning and the lives of others - is precisely what is lacking today. Sadly, I increasingly believe that much of the Western response to Gaza lies in tacit colonialism and racism, and an attendant failure of compassion and imagination, which leads to a mostly unconscious perception that the 23000 or so people killed, 70% of whom are women and children, are somehow less than fully human, or in some way deserve it.

Of course, there is also the question of what happened on October 7th and what one could reasonably expect Israel to do about it. I believe there were things to do other than what looks (to me) like attempted genocide, but I don’t envy people living in Israel contending with the perpetual threat of Hamas who deny their right to exist.

There is nothing easy about any of this.

And I don’t share these thoughts (below) as any kind of expert nor as any kind of definitive verdict. They are personal views. I share them because I am trying to model something I believe in, which is that the health of open societies depends upon a combination of political engagement and epistemic humility. Our job is to form a view, but hold it lightly, eager to learn more, aware of our biases, and eager to understand more fully. We will inevitably fall short and get it wrong, but this is the democratic disposition I believe in.

What’s happening in Gaza now is about us all, and what is happening in The Hague is about us all too. Of course, it affects some more than others, and some are more informed or have more skin in the game.

But still, we are called upon to understand what is happening in situations like this, because so much is at stake: the value of human life, racism, colonialism, history, antisemitism, war, peace, the rule of law, the balance of geopolitical power. These things are beyond all of us. And if Israel is guilty of genocide, most Western countries are in some way complicit in supporting them - that’s what makes this situation so dark and desperate - the complete loss of liberal innocence. That’s why I believe it is our responsibility to try to understand issues like this one - not to be experts or authorities, but to be engaged citizens, to understand the issue as best as we can in the context of our lives and other responsibilities. Otherwise, we are not awake to the world, and perhaps unworthy of the democratic institutions we profess to believe in.

There is a place for expertise of course, and there was plenty of that on display at the court today. However, the health of open societies depends on a process of continual learning, of having the courage to attempt to form a view on something we cannot possibly fully understand. That’s what I try to do in the audio reflection that follows: