Every institution is supposed to make a statement on Israel so it can be judged on whether its sympathies are properly calibrated.
While war rages in Gaza, many Americans have turned their attention to each other. As politicians, organizations and even ordinary people declare their positions on the conflict, everyone else leaps in to judge what was said. The result is a kind of sympathy meter to assess whether each statement properly places the needle between Israelis and Palestinians.
That’s certainly how many are acting today. It’s almost as if people believe that denouncing the horrific slaughter carried out by Hamas would be nullified if they also express concern about the thousands of Palestinian civilians who are likely to be killed in the Israeli counterattack. The Hamas attack is often described as Israel’s 9/11, and it is indeed reminiscent of that time.
None of us is immune to the tribalistic impulse that was bred in our bones over thousands of generations. But tribalism is the source of most atrocities. If you find yourself thinking that a child killed by a bullet as she cowers in her family’s safe room is fundamentally different from a child crushed by falling concrete when a missile destroys her apartment building based on her religion, then you haven’t found moral clarity. You’ve abandoned moral judgment altogether.
Which some on both left and right surely have. Little good comes of the granular analyses of the latest round of condemnations. Nor does it bring us closer to a future in which the horrors in Israel and Gaza are less likely to recur.
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