An Illusory Human Common Sense

I condemn in the strongest terms the recent heinous act where an IDF Soldier fired into a tent classroom in a refugee camp, killing Ritaj Abdul Raouf Rihan (9). Another crime against humanity in occupied Palestine in the long conflict committed by the Zionist regime.

My friends at Researcher 4 Palestine are working hard as part of the international effort to restore the educational system in Gaza. You can read more about that here.

Since the time I was a kid and maybe long before¹, headlines abound that contained the phrase “xx dead in occupied Gaza, West Bank, and now Southern Lebanon” — China usually reports on conflicts to end evening news most days — and remember the bafflement seeing grave wastes of humanity and suffering.

What are the torture and killing good for?

For the news at hand, I fail to see the sense in all of this. Any of the following, in any context:

• A soldier murders a little girl.
• He goes to bed without nightmares.
• He will not be reprimanded.
• He will receive praises —
  • praises from the higher ups who are ready to use this to deter the enemy and fortify military leverage.

I fail to see the sense.

Such question remained a looming dull confusion, something profoundly discontinuous in my world view and moral compass. International instruments and institutions for peace and justice failing, grudgingly accepted, sure. And then there’s no mental safety checks either? No “conscience” that’s hurt at all seeing to and carrying out a Genocide? Disgust from seeing reflections of a face covered in civilian blood?

Raised in the narrow confluence of Western Christian and Eastern Marxist societies, which, while disagreeing on issues about this material world and humanity’s role in it, both did reasonable jobs at sheltering me from the gory unstable side of the human condition, and reading about Gaza is a wake up call. That hell was never far, and there are duties that one can’t just sleep on and forget.

It is up to each and every one of us to understand that justice is never taken for granted. Human beings are just a simple animal, in an indifferent universe. Whether it is karma in the East or God’s punishment in the West, it is an illusion.

If you don’t name and punish the devil, the devil will live well, even better than you, no matter how much evil they do.

1. I reject the manufactured narrative that things were ever rosy until a tone-deaf music festival near a prison fence was ambushed. ↩︎

Cover image: Palestinian students attend class inside a tent set up on the beach in Khan Younis. [Abdel Kareem Hana/AP Photo]