Beware Conditional Humanity, Daily Brief, 16 October, 2023

Unlike just about everyone else on social media over the past week or so, I don’t pretend to be an expert on Israel and Palestine.

I’ve worked on this conflict and the abuses that stem from it for a couple of decades, but I’ve not been deep in the thick of it, day after day like a true expert. As with so many other ongoing conflicts around the world, I tend to come in to support my expert colleagues only when things heat up.

Part of this involves me spending a lot of time on social media, where disinformation is rife around conflicts, particularly in such difficult moments. As if atrocities in response to atrocities is not bad enough, some partisans feel the need to invent atrocities for propaganda, too.

For me, however, perhaps the worst part of being on social media at these times – and this past week has been no exception – is how some people react to a new horror.

When, for example, I post something about children having been killed, I see some readers first wanting to know which children, before moving into outrage mode or justification mode. That mentality, that conditional humanity, is a significant part of the problem in many conflicts, I think.

I expect people to be concerned first and foremost that kids have been killed. I expect them to demand the killers be brought to justice. The victims were children, and these men with guns or bombs have killed them. Who gives a damn about anything else?

And I’m always surprised (I refuse to live otherwise) that some people’s empathy ends once they learn the child victims do not fit their preferred narrative.

As if to say: Oh, children of those people, that religion, that skin color – well, I’m sure the men with the guns or the bombs knew what they were doing. And it’s not their fault in any case. They had their reasons. What else can you expect them to do in this situation? Don’t forget what our side has suffered!

On social media, it’s most common with the international cheerleaders of conflicts, I think – those fans for their teams who sit on the sidelines and never have to worry about spending a minute in the field. It’s hard to tell sometimes, though, because so many of the loudest loudmouths online are anonymous.

People on the ground, people living in harm’s way, people who have experienced horrific loss or are desperately waiting for loved ones to return, will have strong emotions, naturally. Maybe some would wish for others to feel the same pain.

But many (I’d say most) people I’ve met who have been through something horrific, with time, come to the conclusion they’d never want another person to go through that experience. Some of the strongest activists for peace and justice I’ve met in various parts of the world have been through exactly this process.

The online proliferation of partisans on the sidelines of every conflict is maybe not new exactly, but it seriously doesn’t help. It can give the sense that the global public is more bloodthirsty than it really is, that the world will accept what decision-makers say “needs to be done.”

And chief among their appalling arguments is that not all children are equal, and atrocities against them can be justified when “our side” commits them. Humanity becomes conditional, depending on who’s doing the killing and which side’s innocents are dying.

And so, more children get killed.

It’s not just children, of course. We see all sorts of vulnerable and blameless people paying the price for the actions of armies and warlords everywhere: older people, for example, and other civilians.

Children have merely been top of mind lately, because children make up about half of Gaza’s population.

The Israeli government has laid siege to Gaza with disastrous humanitarian consequences. They’ve told people (half of them children) in northern Gaza to flee when they have nowhere to go. They are using white phosphorus in their military operations, putting civilians (half of them children) at further risk of serious and long-term injuries.

We’re now looking at the possibility of a full-scale invasion of Gaza with horrific consequences. The incendiary language of Israeli officials is chilling, given the Israeli’s military’s past record of indiscriminate attacks that have already killed thousands of civilians in Gaza.

None of these horrors are justified by the abominable Hamas-led attack on October 7 (whose victims include scores, if not hundreds, of children), nor by the appalling holding of hostages (which might include children), who of course should be released immediately and unconditionally.But no one gets a license to commit atrocities because the enemy has.

The “laws of war” – also known as international humanitarian law – enshrine basic principles of humanity that apply to all sides in a conflict. Unlike the loudmouths and propagandists on social media, they do not preference some children over others.

I’m not an expert on Israel-Palestine. You probably aren’t either. But we both know it’s wrong to kill kids, regardless of what “side” they’re from. And we both know most people agree with us. And international law agrees with us.

Humanity is not conditional.