Gaza: Moral Matters in Hard Times

الملخص

This essay explores the moral dilemmas posed by the atrocities committed in Gaza and the stifling of any moral judgment of these crimes. It argues that morals are not limited to transcendent principles from which precepts are derived by analogy and rational judgment but that they stem from innate human dispositions. These dispositions, though not moral principles per se, constitute a seed from which morals emerge, forming the human potential for universal human values. These moral precepts are not rendered inoperative during wartime. The essay contends that Israel and its allies’ claim of self-defence to justify their genocidal actions in Gaza and to marginalize moral judgements is a blatant lie. Occupying states do not have a right of self-defence before they end territorial occupation. The (conditional) right of self-defence rests with resistance to the occupation, also subject to moral standards. The claim that the Palestinian resistance in Gaza represents “absolute evil” is less a moral judgment than it is a strategy to deflect attention from the context of resistance operations. The essay also engages in a discussion of Jürgen Habermas and Seyla Benhabib’s positions on the war on Gaza, criticizing their bias toward Israel, and exposing the moral deficiencies of these positions.