OF HUMAN DISCERNMENT: This war, this terrible war!

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2023

The lives of many children: "This war, this terrible war."

So read headline on a column in the Missouri Ruralist. 

The date was August 1917. The column was written in reaction to the United States' entry into the so-called "Great War."

In this morning's New York Times, Charles Blow has reached a judgment about the world's latest onrushing war. He has judged both sides to be at fault. We don't necessarily agree with him, but this is the way he begins:

BLOW (10/20/23): The terrorist attack by Hamas against Israelis—the worst massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust—was horrid, barbaric and inexcusable. Israel has a right to defend itself and pursue the perpetrators.

What is happening to innocent citizens of Gaza, and what is likely to happen to them as the war between Israel and Hamas continues—evacuation orders are imposed, electricity and basic supplies are cut off—is also horrid and not a justifiable response to the terrorist attacks.

Israel has a right to respond, but not in this way, Blow says. As a starting point, we'd only say this:

This war, this terrible war.

We often disagree with Blow's assessments. In this case, we tend to agree with the assessment he reaches here:

BLOW: Most Americans assess this conflict the way they do many others: at arm’s length and an ocean away. And they do so through the prism of their own sense of fairness and justice.

In this case, there is something of a partisan and generational schism, with some progressive Democrats and younger Americans more likely to express a greater degree of sympathy for the Palestinian people or at least less reflexive support for Israel, according to polls.

Many of those who share this view are part of what Elizabeth Alexander, a writer, poet and scholar and the president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, has called the Trayvon generation—young people who have come of age in the decade since the killing of Trayvon Martin in 2012. It’s a generation that has become highly attuned to intersectionality, the history and current expressions of various forms of oppression, and the ways in which colonialism, imperialism and capitalism undermine the concepts of equality and justice.

And just because the country as a whole seems to have turned the page on its fleeting interest, circa 2020, in the movement born of this generation of Americans, that doesn’t mean the impulses and understandings of members of this generation simply evaporate. Social and racial justice is still their compass. It is a part of who they are and how they think. And it is with that compass that many of them evaluate the broader dispute over Israel’s control of the occupied territories and the immediate conflict between Israel and Hamas.

I think it would be a great mistake to bemoan the position taken by many of these young people—the seekers of context, not the defenders of terrorism, of course—rather than seek to understand it.

We don't think this is about Trayvon Martin or the Trayvon generation. It's also true that young people can say the darndest things.

That said, we agree with Blow's general advice. Some of those young people may bring types of knowledge to the discussion which go beyond the types of knowledge their self-assured elders possess. 

Instead of telling them to shut up, some of those older hedge fund types should possibly ask themselves if there is something they could learn from those younger people—something which might add to or complicate their own understanding of the matter at hand.

In Blow's view, most Americans assess this war from a very long distance away. It's also true that many Americans may tend to assess this war on the basis of prior sympathies, including perfectly reasonable prior sympathies in favor of the nation of Israel.

On balance, Americans have fewer ties to the people of Palestine, or to those who live in the Gaza Strip. That said, children are already dying there, as New York magazine's Eric Levitz noted late last week:

LEVITZ (10/13/23): On Friday, Israel ordered 1 million Gazans to evacuate the northern part of the strip, in advance of an Israeli ground invasion set to begin at around 8 p.m. local time. The United Nations has said that it considers such an evacuation logistically impossible. The number of people is too large, the transport infrastructure too damaged, and, thanks to the Israeli siege, the resources necessary to care for 1 million uprooted people are too scarce. In this context, the order looks like a means of excusing the reckless endangerment of the lives of any civilians who remain in place. Israel’s aerial bombardment of Gaza also appears to flout international law’s prohibition of the disproportionate killing of civilians. The Israeli Air Force has dropped more than 6,000 bombs on a stretch of land roughly the size of Queens. Its targets have included hospitals and schools. By its own account, Israel has not been firing “warning strikes” to encourage civilians to exit a given building before incinerating it. As of this writing, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, Israel’s airstrikes have killed more than 1,799 people, including 583 children. According to the ministry, 60 percent of all the injured are women or children.

That was posted one week ago. 

Already, 583 children? We have no idea if that figure was accurate. We offer no assessments concerning international law.

But in many cases, it's easier for us Americans to picture the people who live in Israel as compared to the several million people consigned to life in the Gaza Strip. We may sometimes tend to favor the suffering endured in one place over the suffering endured in the other.

This latest iteration of a long war involves the lives of many "women and children," and even a lot of innocent men. In this country, kids sometimes say the darndest things—and hedge fund owners sometimes insist on remaining defiantly stuck in their ways.

No one has yet found a way to bring this division of peoples to an end. How hard have our stars on blue cable news tried? To what extent does our tribe really care?