Myth #5: The two sides in this conflict are equally civilized, equally entitled to respect, and equally worth protecting.
Well, again, if we’re talking about children dying on either side of this conflict—then yes, a human life is a human life. But Jihadist organizations like Hamas, and the wider cultures that support them, don’t value human life the way we do. Again, while this might sound like wartime propaganda, it is a simple statement of fact about how religious beliefs motivate people and constrain their thinking.
There is a difference between religious fanatics who punish women with beatings (or worse) for showing their hair in public, or commit honor killings against them for the crime of getting raped, or throw acid in their faces for a perceived slight, or even, in a place like Afghanistan for the crime of going to school—there is a difference between this vicious lunacy and a modern society that treats women as equals to men.
There is a difference between a society that murders gays, that literally has a policy of throwing them off of rooftops head first, and one that fully embraces them. There is a difference between religious fanatics who care only about Paradise, and most other people who take their religious beliefs much less seriously—or who have different beliefs that allow them to appropriately value life in this world.
Have you seen the crowds that cheered the capture of Israeli hostages and the mutilation of Jewish dead? Have you watched those videos? Did these people look like they have the slightest interest in avoiding war crimes? These are the types of behaviors we see all around the world in an Islamic context, even when the fighting has nothing to do with Jews or the US. Is it only Islamic? No. But Islam has more than its fair share of this kind of barbarity. We have to be honest about that. To be clear, I’m not advocating collective punishment against the Palestinians for being backward. I’m not saying that Palestinian civilians who support Hamas deserve to die. I am saying, however, that we shouldn’t lie to ourselves about the state of public opinion throughout the Muslim world. We should understand what people believe and how these beliefs affect behavior. And we have to figure out how to get 2 billion Muslims to truly moderate the religious extremism and tribalism we see throughout the Muslim world. It’s an enormous problem.Recent polling among Palestinians, by the Palestinian Center for Policy Survey and Research, shows widespread support for Hamas, and more support for the attacks of October 7th. As I said, many of those who don’t like Hamas, for one reason or another, still like what Hamas did on October 7th. This recent poll shows that while only around 40 percent of Palestinians support Hamas, double that support these atrocities of October 7th—the deliberate torture and murder of noncombatants, the taking of children (and even infants) as hostages. And the justification, in their minds, is explicitly religious—it was in defense of the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, which they imagine has been desecrated by the Netanyahu government. Of course, the Palestinian community and the Muslim world generally is so riddled with lies and conspiracy theories, that we might reasonably wonder what percentage of ordinary Muslims believe that any Jewish civilians were killed on October 7th. Many believe the Holocaust never happened. After September 11th, we had the impossible spectacle of Muslims alleging that it was Jewish plot, because 4000 Jews supposedly didn’t show up to work on 9/11, while simultaneously celebrating it as a great jihadist victory by al-Qaeda. There is no reconciling these beliefs. In general, we are not talking about people who are part of the reality-based community. But if we are going to maintain basic moral sanity at this moment in history, we have to acknowledge that there is a difference between those who intentionally kill noncombatants—often in the most gruesome ways possible—and those who inadvertently kill them when dropping bombs, having taken considerable pains to avoid killing them. There is a difference between a society that parades tortured hostages before jeering crowds and one that gives even its most dangerous prisoners life-saving medical care. Most people don’t realize that the current head of Hamas, Sinwar, was cured of brain cancer, while in an Israeli prison. The actual mastermind behind the October 7th attacks was someone whose life had been saved by Jewish oncologist. It’s pretty hard to overstate the disparity here. Do you understand how much this difference matters? And how it touches everything? There simply is a difference between those who are attempting to spread a cult of death to the ends of the Earth and those who are struggling to prevent this from happening, while also struggling to maintain the norms of an open society. And it is impossible to understand these differences if one merely counts the number of dead and wounded in this or any other conflict.
And this is why intentions matter. Actions matter, of course, but the reasons behind the actions also matter. What sort of world are we trying to build? What would any given person or group do if they had the power to do it? There are vast differences in what various groups are aspiring to accomplish at this moment in history. And the future of civilization depends on our being able to minimize these differences—and where they remain significant to minimize them further, through diplomacy, and economic incentives, and other forms of pressure short of violence. But there are certain groups of people that have kicked themselves loose of the Earth—and they can’t be reasoned with or incentivized. And this is where the use of force becomes necessary. Let’s hope that becomes less and less true in the years to come…
Thanks for listening.
