I begin this article paralysed by despair. Although I have always felt comfortable in dialogue and have never shied away from dialectical fencing in defence of my convictions, these terrible days have left me breathless. I am under the impression that madness is gaining ground on reason, and that there are no beacons to shed light on so much darkness.
Everything that has happened, and the reactions many of the people I know have had to it, lead us to a moral void and an intellectual rot that portrays us as a very sick society. The boundaries of humanity has been lost and, in the confusion, pure evil has made its way, trivialized by some, justified by others; even applauded in some cases. I do not recognize my country, nor the civilization to which I belong, nor do I recognize the faces of many friends. What else would a perverse, bloody and terrifying ideology have had to do for some to leave their slogans and banners behind and simply express their pain? Had they not raped enough women, had they not killed enough babies, had they not massacred enough families, had they not hunted enough young people as if they were rabbits? What more would evil's ideology, camouflaged under a violent cause, have to do for some of my friends, my colleagues, my society to be horrified? How many more people would Hamas have had to slaughter, to make a Jewish life worth living?
It is actually a very naïve question. After all, most who raise the Palestinian flag left and right, and cry out against the State of Israel, which has become the monster of all monstrosities, have never cared about the suffering of Yemen's citizens or Afghanistan's women, or the tortured people of the Sahel, or understood the enormous suffering that the people of Israel also accumulate. As the philosopher Alejo Schapire says, the USSR's collapse and the brutal failure of the communist economic model mutated the historical subject of the most dogmatic left-wing, and the worker as the oppressed par excellence was replaced by the Muslim in the West, and by the Palestinian throughout the world. "The Islam-left alliance is already commonplace," he adds, and the examples run through the Left's skin, from pro-Hezbollah Chavism, or the links of the Argentinian far-left with Iran, or the incendiary proclamations of the Colombian Petro, the Bolivarian Morales or the Spanish party Podemos. The problem is that these extreme positions have contaminated the more reasonable Left, which ends up catatonic and incapable of structuring its own narrative. Be that as it may, the Palestinian cause has become a substitute for old slogans and a balm for all the accumulated frustrations.
There is no Palestinian and Israeli cause, although there is an endemic and complex conflict
The Che Guevara poster has mutated into the Palestinian keffiyeh and this mutation is capable of digesting everything, massacres, slaughter, rape, manhunts, the end of civilization, in a process of trivialization of terrorism that destroys all commiseration. And always on top of a huge mountain of lies, manipulations and distortion of reality. Besides applying the fateful triplet: delegitimization of Israel's own existence, justification of its enemies' violence and permanent demonization of everything they do to defend themselves.
Does that mean that the Palestinians are not the victims? Not at all. They are victims and these days will be terrible for them. And they deserve our horror and our pain over these events. But whose victims are they? Of all those who use them. Of the Arab countries, who never wanted a Palestinian state when they could have created it, or must we remember that from 48 to 67 Jordan and Egypt occupied part of Israel and never cared about the Palestinians? In fact, all the wars against Israel were not for the Palestinians, but to destroy a Jewish state and keep the territory for themselves. Victims, the Palestinians, of their leaders, who never wanted to sign any peace. Victims of Islamist ideologies, who never wanted a Palestinian state, but use the cause to impose their Islamic madness. Victims of geopolitical interests, with Iran oppressing and killing its own people, and using the Palestinian cause to consolidate its position in the Middle East and throughout the Muslim world. And victims, painful victims of their jihadist organizations, who pour them into a demonic cycle of violence that has no way out. Victims of Hamas, which places its missile launchers in hospitals and schools, which indoctrinates its children in the purest hatred and uses its population as a human shield, as will happen now.
Did anyone think Israel would not enter Gaza to try to put an end to Hamas for good, after they penetrated Israel, massacred its population in the most brutal way and caused what French writer Sabine Huynh calls "a Bataclan raised to a 1,000", and Bernard-Henri Lévy calls an "Arab pogrom"? And so, with the Hamas trap set, the cycle of violence, terror and death goes on and on.
As long as the most totalitarian Islamism dominates the situation, with Iran pulling the strings of the conflict, there is only one cause: that of civilization versus barbarism
And it will continue for even longer if those who should differentiate a noble cause, such as the creation of a state, from the most abject terrorist organizations, completely trivialize the damage they do. It is not true that all those who raise the Palestinian flag defend the Palestinians. On the contrary, by not condemning the extreme evil of Hamas, or jihad, or the rest of the jihadists, they completely abandon the Palestinians to their fate. Such is this Left's moral emptiness, which has lost all sense of humanity, which has become their worst caricature: mere pawns of a totalitarian ideology.
Hamas is Stalin, it is Hitler, it is Daesh, it is evil. And it is an evil that threatens us all. The blindness of those who trivialize, justify or applaud them will leave us all blind. There is not a Palestinian and an Israeli cause, although there is an endemic and complex conflict. But while the situation is dominated by the most totalitarian Islamism, with Iran pulling the strings of the conflict, there is only one cause: that of civilization against barbarism.
Yuval Noah Harari said that with the slaughter they have returned to the heart of darkness, to ground zero, and David Grossman wondered "who we will be when we rise from the ashes". In these dark times, this question is terrifying.