Gaza’s Destruction Has Discredited the Global Moral Order
Western states have not merely supported Israel’s devastating attack on Gaza as if it were a just war of self-defense. They have also sought to repress those demonstrating for the right of Palestinians to live in dignity — or simply to live.
Palestinians continue to return to the ruins of the Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza City on January 23, 2025. (Ashraf Amra / Anadolu via Getty Images)
Consent to the obliteration of Gaza has created an enormous gulf in the global moral order. Retrospectively, the events that have unfolded in Palestine since Hamas’s murderous attack on October 7, 2023, and the reaction to them in many of the planet’s halls of political and intellectual power will doubtless appear in the harsh light of their true significance.
More than an abandonment of part of humanity — something of which international realpolitik has afforded many recent examples — history will record the support extended to its destruction. This acquiescence in the devastation of Gaza and the massacre of its population, to which must be added the persecution of the inhabitants of the West Bank, will leave an indelible trace in the memory of the societies that will be accountable for it.
Moral Defeat
Following the rout of the French army in 1940, Marc Bloch wrote Strange Defeat, an uncompromising analysis of what had led to it. That defeat was military; today’s is moral. It calls for an examination that must be carried out as lucidly as the French historian’s, even if the context and issues are very different and even if the ethical divisions go much deeper.
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