All Children Are The Same

Totally innocent.

Israeli or Palestinian kids somewhere in Israel or Gaza.

I was watching a discussion on cable between a Jew and a Muslim yesterday.

Both seemed like good decent people. I recall that their one strong area of agreement was on Ukraine. Both were deeply worried that Trump would cut off support and allow it to fall into the bloody hands of Putin. There were several other areas of agreement between two well-educated progressive California-born Americans.

But then they got to Gaza.

The Muslim man would not clearly condemn the Hamas massacre of 1200 Israelis on October 7th, obfuscating the issue and simply avoiding saying that the killing of the Israeli civilians was wrong. He even went off on whether Israeli women were raped or merely killed and whether any Israeli males over 17 are really civilians “if you think about it.”

The Jewish woman had the same problem with the Israeli killing of over 42,000 Palestinians although she was far more virulent in her hate. Asked about the 13,000 murdered Palestinian children, she said “it’s complex” even after the moderator said, “complex? The killing of kindergarten kids is complex!” And then she blamed their parents for “voting for Hamas.”

Each made predictable arguments for their ethnic team. Each clearly valued the lives of innocent people whose identities they shared more than the lives of those who, for them, were the other. It was certainly clear that the Jewish woman believed that 42,000 Palestinian dead was a proportionate response for 1200 Palestinian dead and, in fact, that and it probably wasn’t enough.

It was pretty sickening. I could have been listening to a German social democrat debating a French social democrat in 1914. They agreed on pretty much everything but each supported the pointless war their respective nationalities were waging and which left 40 million dead for absolutely nothing.

It struck me that the test for decency is whether, for you, a dead child is simply a dead child, regardless of their faith, ethnicity, or nationality.

If you feel deep compassion for one but not the other one, you may be decent in other aspects of your life but certainly not in what I’ll call the moral one.

Grief over your own innocents (or what you consider your own) are cheap tears if they are not also shed for the “other.”

In fact, it’s just ethnic chauvinism, team solidarity. Rah rah.

Obviously this is even more true about speaking out, signing petitions, and marching for your team and keeping silent about the other. Such cowardice at best and berserk nationalism at worst.

Worst of all is saying, as I personally have heard said, “I can’t help it. I do value the lives of our children more.”

And of course, we all do value the lives of our own children more than someone else’s. But I’m not talking about your own kids vs. your neighbors, but what you think of as your own clan’s vs some other clan.

That may be just the way it is, but as I see it, if you cling to your team—often out of fear of being ostracised by your teammates if you dare speak out for the other—you are the kind of person who throughout human history enabled the slaughter of innocent millions. You may be a wonderful person in other areas. But not this one.

And isn’t isn’t this the most significant test of humanity we have?

Nationalism is a curse. And fused with religion, a perpetual nightmare.