Idea: dehumanising someone prevents you from understanding their behaviour. This dynamic has been prominent in people’s reaction to Israel’s response to the 7th of October massacre. As Israel is by far the stronger combatant in the Gaza war, people would prioritise understanding the behaviour of Israel if they genuinely wanted to help Palestinians. This therefore also reveals a lack of compassion for Palestinians.
I’ve thought a lot about the Israel-Gaza conflict since the 7th of October massacre. This post explores the response from people outside the conflict.
I need a moral position around which to frame this argument, and I’ll begin by describing some images I've seen from the conflict that have influenced this position. I saw a dead Israeli baby, face blurred, but its body covered in blood. I saw a horribly burnt and screaming Palestinian child being carried into a hospital. In the rooms of Israeli children, I saw walls covered with bullet holes and blood. I saw a Palestinian toddler sitting on a hospital bed trembling with shock.
We can argue about the degree to which adults contribute to their own suffering during a conflict, but it’s clear to me children don’t. The moral position this post will be built around then will be that people should be focused, at the very least, on reducing the death and suffering of children.
With this moral position, it seems to me the task becomes identifying what the limits are to achieve this goal. I won’t be discussing the morality of these limits, just whether they exist or not. In fact, this is an essential element of how I’m going to frame the response of people outside the conflict. That is, if you’re truly focused on a particular goal, you will identify and accept certain limits even if you don't like them.
The first and most obvious limit is the military strength of Israel vs the Palestinians and the neighbouring countries. From the beginning of the conflict, it was unlikely countries neighbouring Israel would want to get involved, and Western countries immediately gave support to Israel’s military action.
For people concerned about Gazan civilians, the goal should then have been focused on trying to prevent Israel’s military action under whatever limits are relevant. Before I detail what I think these limits are, I think it’ll be useful to outline my solution and I’ll begin by appealing to your intuition about a more familiar situation.
Faced with a violent person, people in organised societies can call the police. This option has an essential civilising effect. Without it, people could have no choice but to use violence themselves in a chaotic and emotional driven way which might escalate to involve others. Handing this violence, effectively, over to the state has the potential to minimise it and avoid these problems, especially in societies with democratic oversight.
Using this idea of a civilising ‘police force’, this is how I think countries outside the conflict should have responded to the attack by Hamas. Due to historical involvement, many countries should have accepted some responsibility for managing the situation. A UN sponsored force should have occupied Gaza with the aim to provide security for Israel and retrieve its hostages while removing the military capability of Hamas. The UN should then have administered Gaza with the aim to deradicalise Gazan society and steer the Palestinians towards accepting a two-state solution. Other than returning the hostages, the time to achieve these goals should have been at a pace that minimised the loss of civilian life, especially children.
There isn’t the space in this post to fully deal with how realistic this solution is. However, I’ll contrast it below with the most frequent demand heard by ‘pro-Palestinian’ people, a ceasefire. Also, multiple countries might eventually be drawn into a wider war anyway, and my solution could prevent that escalation.
Back to this post, I’d imagine many who claim to be pro-Palestinian wouldn’t like some of the aims in my solution. This leads me onto the additional limits I see as relevant to this situation and why they’re not recognised and accepted. These limits are to be found be understanding how Israelis reacted to the massacre.
On the 7th of October, Hamas killed, raped, and tortured Israelis of all ages and sexes. It seems obvious to me Israelis felt fear and anger, and a strong sense of urgency to resolve these intense, negative emotions. There was a sense of unity as well as isolation. They’ve been trapped in that moment since it happened, and this isolating emotional state has reduced their ability to consider Palestinian civilians.
These are the limits I see as following from understanding the reaction of Israelis to the massacre. Israelis felt an urgent need to immediately remove an existential threat. After 75 years of contested statehood and the savagery of the massacre, Israelis had no belief in a political solution. Destroying the military capability of Hamas could be achieved in months; the timeline for changing minds was unknown. Because of the brutality displayed by Hamas, Israel’s hostages needed to be put out of their misery as much as saved. The demands of Hamas were suicidal for the state of Israel. Israel had no choice but to remove the military capability of Hamas, and nobody was going to directly help them do this. They either had Israel and each other or they had nothing.
To emphasise, the only objections I see as relevant to the argument I’m making is whether the limits I've just described exist or don’t exist. The morality you give them is irrelevant. You can’t ignore Israel’s emotional response to the massacre and expect to prevent harm to Palestinians. You can only prevent a military response from Israel by accepting their limits.
So, if what I’ve suggested is true, why have so many people on the pro-Palestinian side not understood and accepted the emotional reality of the conflict? That is, not appreciated they must have a realistic solution to the emotional state of Israelis if they want to prevent military action by Israel.
I think many on the pro-Palestinian side have dehumanised Israelis. For this post, the aspect of dehumanisation I consider important is where it reduces the information people have about those they’ve dehumanised. Social cognition begins with Theory of Mind before it progresses to feelings of empathy and compassion. That is, using awareness of our own and others minds we can predict what other people may be thinking and feeling in various situations. This begins just as knowledge or information before it may progress to emotions such as empathy. Pro-Palestinian people have therefore inhibited their ability to understand Israelis when they’ve dehumanised them.
There could be many reasons for this dehumanisation but I’m going to focus on one that made me wonder if there’s an irony at the heart of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. As I’ve detailed in other posts, our minds are made up of networks of connected neurons. When one network is activated, it increases the chances linked networks will also be activated. So, when people’s Theory of Mind is engaged, not only will they be able understand someone’s behaviour in an abstract way they may also automatically experience feelings of empathy and compassion, as these emotions naturally follow from understanding their behaviour.
I suspect this is one of the reasons pro-Palestinian people have dehumanised Israelis. They would rather not feel any empathy and compassion for them and so they block the process of social cognition by dehumanising them. This then prevents them from thinking intelligently about Israel’s behaviour.
However, neither Israelis nor Palestinians can afford this luxury. Not understanding each other has, is, and will continue to increase the amount of death and suffering each side experience. Israelis and Palestinians are forced to ‘know your enemy’, and so there will always be the chance they may experience empathy and compassion. The long-term solution to their conflict may only be with each other.
I see little evidence a solution can be found from those outside the war. After 4 months of conflict, tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians are dead, a third of them children. Gaza is destroyed, which will lead to many more people dying and suffering from disease and social breakdown. As I write this, Israeli forces are preparing to attack Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians have fled to from the rest of Gaza.
The pro-Palestinian side have done nothing to prevent this. Western cities have seen marches with banners and chants that are the opposite of what is needed to prevent Israel from attacking Gaza. The most common demand is for an unconditional cessation of military activity by Israel. Hamas have publicly stated they wish to repeat the barbarity of the 7th of October massacre. Calling for a ceasefire is effectively saying you think the life of an Israeli is worth less than a Palestinian. Unsurprisingly, Israelis aren’t listening.
This is what my solution above is competing against. Any solution requires a consensus that includes Israel, countries that support it, and countries that don’t support Hamas and/or terrorism. An unconditional ceasefire can’t achieve this, so my solution is at least more realistic than the demand for a ceasefire.
When trying to understand someone’s behaviour, I think people effectively ask: what’s motivating them, and how intelligently are they pursuing their goals? The military strength of Israel is obvious; their emotional response to the massacre is obvious; the limits that follow from understanding this response also seem obvious to me. If understanding the immediate emotional and practical context of Israel’s response to the 7th of October massacre is straightforward, then it’s not a problem with intelligence that has led to the demands of pro-Palestinian people. I think it’s their motivations that are the problem. They’re not genuinely focused on preventing the death and suffering of Gazan civilians.
I don’t know what these motivations are. All I do know is that Israelis and Palestinians need to understand each other better, first more intelligently to save themselves, then hopefully with empathy and compassion to save each other. They can’t depend on anyone else to do this. In particular, Palestinians can’t depend on their supporters in the West to put their interests, and their children, first.