By Ibrahim Athif Shakoor
It’s 5 past midnight, and the masks are off – thoughts on why the world allows for the brutality in Palestine to continue
Throughout the modern era, we have been led to believe in the sanctity of human rights. The rights of all humans, regardless of race, culture, ethnicity, or station in life, were sacred. And those who trample on such universal values shall be held to account.
But the period from October 7th the world has borne witness to the fact, that rights are ascribed only to those with the authority and the power to compel.
Athenian historian and General, Thucydides, circa 430 – 411 BC
A short detour to the moral landscape of today
Thucydides and his ancient concepts, while memorable and insightful, went out of fashion, as the world travelled from the dark ages, through Age of Enlightenment and onto today. Slowly the world came to believe in universal human rights and the powerful would act as guarantor of such rights for the disenfranchised.
Even Martin Luther King Jr., that enlightened leader who led, what was then thought of as the last struggle for universal human rights, believed that the world was travelling towards better times. One of his most famous quotes thus was, ‘the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice’.
While the 20th century Australian philosopher Peter Singer’s and his ‘effective altruism’ to extend rights to animals had become fashionable, they have not yet gained universal acceptability. However, basic rights to all members of our specie homo sapiens are no longer in question.
And so, the world was fashioned slowly to enshrine basic human values as inalienable rights. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1948 is supposed to have settled that. Rogue nations who dare injure such universal values would be held to account. Or so we were all led to believe.
The travesties and tragedy of the Bosnian War which started in 1992 was brought to end by the Dayton Accord in 1995, after 100,000 people were killed and 2.2 million displaced. The first genocide of the 21stCentury in 2003 in the Darfour region, killed 200,000 people before it was brought to a pause in 2005.
In both cases, even though admittedly and tragically too late for thousands, righteous nations came together to fashion an end to the atrocities. Perpetrators were brought to the International Court of Justice and Justice, as it were, was meted out.
These and other similar incidents, although admittedly not on the same scale, were treated as ‘glitches in the matrix’.
The anomaly
In June of 1982, the Israeli Army invaded Lebanon. Not content with depriving Palestinians from their own homeland, the IDF decided to invade a third, sovereign country with the officially declared aim of eliminating support against the occupying forces in Palestine. And the world watched.
As part of the operation, the Israeli army surrounded the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila on the 16th of September 1982. There, guarded by Israeli forces preventing anyone from entering the premises, they fostered a killing spree for 2 days. While official records differ as to the ‘success’ of the killing spree, conservative estimates put the numbers at a minimum of 2,000 for 2 days. Just 1,000 each day.
By the time the IDF ‘officially’ ended their incursion into Lebanon, 3 years later in 1985, it is estimated that close to 20,000 people had been killed and 35,000 displaced. To this day the state of Israel has not been held to account.
Admittedly even the IDF is not capable of undertaking such horrific large-scale atrocities on a daily basis. Yet the Palestinian population, have been humiliated and deprived of their basic human rights and robbed of their homeland for 75 years. Day in, day out. Every day.
Which brings us to the atrocities of today. As I write thi,s there is apparently a pause, only a pause, before the IDF continue to ‘defend’ itself. They have pummeled, flattened and destroyed the infrastructure, livelihood and indeed the very life of Palestinian people in Gaza- an area that has been under their control for 16 years now. 278,000 housing units, 311 educational facilities, 26 hospitals, and 167 places of worship have been ravaged and destroyed.
Meanwhile world leaders, whom we were all led to believe, would be the ‘Guardians of this moral galaxy’, were only able to repeat ad nauseum the phrase that Israel had a right for self-defense. It’s as if they, all of them, had been caught in a one-dimensional vortex and were blind, purposefully, or otherwise, to the rights of 14 thousand people, including 6 thousand babies and of 58 journalists whose lives were being snuffed out.
Why are the Israelis issued with a ‘get out of jail free’ card?
After months of denial, on February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, and the world was rightfully outraged. Ignoring all safety precautions, world leaders, all of them rushed for photo opportunities with Zelensky, spewing their outrage at the brutality of the Russian actions. They opened their purse strings and put their arms and ammunition as the disposal of Ukraine.
Transgressions of other nations too were opposed and righteous action taken by the ‘guardians’.
But when it comes to repeated outrages, the state of Israel, is, time and again, given a ‘get out of jail free, card. What gives?
I posit that perhaps the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, was meant, to ease the collective conscience of the West. Being unable to stop the murder of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust, the creation of Israel is an act of atonement. Balm on the collective conscience of the west.
If that were true, until the time that leaders believe that their sins have been washed and cleansed, they will not be able to stand up and say ‘enough is enough. Until that time I dare say, the brutality will continue. Nothing else makes sense.
The Masks are off
The need to belong, to be a member of a tribe, a state, a nation, is a human trait. It is part of la condition humaine and cannot be erased or stamped out. The present outrage have not, and will not kill the passion of the Palestinian people for self-determination. That should be clear by now. It will only fuel and foster the next generation of Palestinian freedom martyrs.
Until the leaders of the world, those who can wield power, strength and authority, wake up from their collective stupor, the suffering will, I fear continue. For as Thucydides said, and I repeat, ‘… when we are talking about the human plane, questions of justice only arise when there is power to compel….’
Meanwhile I only ask the Western leaders and their acolytes to cease the charade. It’s 5 past midnight and your masks are off. We see you.
Do not, no longer, dare to lecture us about human rights.
Ibrahim Athif Shakoor is a Maldivian writer and essayist. Writing in both Dhivehi, the national language and in English, he writes mostly on matters economics. He is the co-founder and co-editor or the Maldives Economic Review mer.mv. Some of his writings, from a career spanning 2 decades, are being collected in his. blogpost www.athifshakoor.com