Evil is Alive, Unfortunately

           The question I am asking is this: Can a country be responsible for the death of it’s own people during a war? Because if we say a country can’t be responsible for the death of it’s own people, then a government can declare war against a neighbor and just sit and watch the number of deaths that increase among it’s people, making the world public turn against their enemy.

Because History showed that very evil people can ascend to power, yes, it is necessary that we check if nobody is using this kind of diabolic strategy. Using human shields is a crime. And if it is so, what are the signs that could tell us if somebody is doing precisely that?

Making an insanely cruel surprise attack against civilians, then launching rockets from inside cities, hiding among houses, having military equipment inside hospitals, and coercing their people to stay where they are even when the opponent announces where it is going to attack, is it all not a clear sign that we should condemn this as a crime, and ensure nobody is going to get away easily to do it over and over again?

But of course, this puts us in an uncomfortable position ff having to condemn the side where more people died. This seems to go against some basic intuition we have. In a World where wars are something that happen far away, it is easy to imagine that everybody that takes part in a war is doing it for bad reasons, and the side who had more people killed during the recent conflicts is the less bad.

This idea makes it easier for us to find the “right” reaction. All we have to do is say “just stop”, and we’ve done our part, and can go back to our lives. Any other state of things is too painful for us.

We live in a new world in the western societies, a world with no war, thank God. But when we look at the past we have no problems to understand that not everybody holding a gun was bad. I tend to use the example of War World II because I believe most people understand that there was an Evil side, and for the other side, it was necessary to fight. We have no problems putting the responsibility for all the horror in the evil side, in the provoking side.

From our homes in the modern west, living a peaceful life, working, watching tv, etc it is getting harder for us to believe that evil giants still exist, but they do. Some things that we call simply “governments” of foreign countries, work very differently from what we call a “government” here. The “ideological” disputes there are not like here ( and I pray our disputes don’t become like theirs ). The reality in the Middle East, for instance, is very different from here.

            When Israel was established as a modern state, after the division – remember, division, between two peoples in a land that had space for that – of the British mandate of Palestine, seven Arab countries declared war against her and attacked. Those countries simply wanted to destroy Israel. The war was of a country defending itself from elimination. Israel won, and that’s the reason it wasn’t destroyed. It had to fight against a group of nations that attacked as a block. Unfortunately, this reality is not just in the past for them, there are still many nations wanting Israel to cease to exist.

What people are saying against Israel, in the end amounts to this: “You can’t attack countries that are attacking you because people will die”. Someone may say that countries are not attacking Israel, just “organizations”, but this is just a trick, a strategy.  Hamas has been ruling over Gaza for a long time, just like Hezbollah rules over South Lebanon. With the complacence of everyone around, they attack with the power of small countries – that have not so small allies by the way.

A country, like Israel, can’t neglect to consider attacks on it’s population as crimes that must be responded. The giant quantity of weapons, bombs and military structure that Israel is destroying right now, was all there for the sole reason of one day being used against Israel. There are International Organizations present in these places that definitely should not have allowed all that to be set there, but they did nothing, it seems. And now who is wrong?

Of course, the press don’t ever seem to have the time to give us nothing that helps us to see the big picture, the power and the intentions of the leaders that Israel is eliminating, and how they make everything they can to make the price of their life the higher possible for their own population. Those leaders say openly what their goals are, they say openly that their population must be martyrs.

But all the press does is publish numbers of deaths, which seems to be the only thing those groups have in their favor. And if it is the only thing they have – what else they have? What service for the happiness of their people? What is happiness for them besides destroying someone else? – if it’s the only thing they have, we must think on the question in the beginning of this chapter.

The press won’t even have a word to say about how the societies in some places are becoming more radical, more people are engaging with terrorist organizations, the governments accept to live side by side with these groups ( when government and the groups are not the same ), and the normal man is more and more believing that the western freedoms are the reason of all the evil in the world.

There are still leaders who see absolutely no problem in the total dominion of man over man, they believe there is nothing to discuss, no philosophical or ethical development needed all truths are already defined, and some men are naturally entitled to impose them, as infallible leaders. Moreover, they believe that any other form of society is evil, too liberal, too open, and the right thing to do is to conquer those societies, using any amount of violence necessary. They definitely don’t give value to human life individually speaking.

If regimes like that exist, and we have a set of laws in our countries, freedoms we want to preserve, naturally some clash will occur one day. They would really like to destroy the West, banish anything resembling women’s rights, respect for sexuality and things like that from the face of the earth. But for now, it’s Israel who is paying the price.

People who want to “defend” extremely radicalized countries, because they think these countries are “just poor countries” and all their problems come because of the western “oppressor”, are faced with the incoherence of defending regimes that go against all that they defend, all freedoms, all rights, all respects for minorities, everything. They usually come up with the excuse that all this radicalization is to blame on the “oppressor”, “these societies were oppressed so they radicalized”. But what about rich Arab countries that are getting more and more radicalized? Who is oppressing Iran, the Emirates, so on? Nobody.

Anyway, the press, with their simplistic facts, don’t help us to see what each side defends.  Isn’t there more to talk about, when it comes to Middle East, then wars after they explode? The radicalization of the people makes very sad stories. Women subjugated, people with no dreams…

Of course, after some time, they don’t even see their own lack of freedom. But it is not wrong, and it is not racism or religious discrimination, to wish they had more dignity and self-respect. Isn’t teaching praise for terrorism in schools a form of child abuse? Isn’t praising suicide attacks an international crime?

The History of the anti-Jewish hatred – and if you hate everybody who supports Israel, then I’m sorry, but you’re hating like ninety percent of the Jews – is old and still hard to totally explain, still hard to fully understand, but I think I can see some of the reasons why imposing some defeat on Israel, even if not totally destroying it right now, would be good for those giant tyrants. It would encourage losers to enlist in terror groups, it would encourage people in the middle east and the world to buy more and more radical visions. In the meantime, the sacrifice of civil people is used to turn people Western against Israel, and push an ideological agenda that turns the West against itself, turns democracy, that those leaders hate, against itself.

            Being for peace is different from shaking hand with tyrants. We don’t like war, that’s ok, but how come those dictators are our friends? It makes no sense. How come our Internation Organizations fully accept well known dictators that hardly pretend to care for human rights as perfect members, honorable members?

Why don’t we ever try to see from Israel’s perspective, they are not protecting a government or any other convention, they have a people to protect, a people who comes from a long history of slaughter and persecution. Israel is fighting back strongly, yes, because what is happening against them is very large scale, too, if you didn’t notice. Through the history of the world, the giants of the Earth don’t seem to like Jews, but now they have a chance to defend themselves

Now, if you think that what I said in the beginning of this chapter, that bringing peace to the World is more complex than doing third grade maths with numbers of deaths you see in superficial news, is a form relativizing human deaths, I tell you, it is not. Because I am not making their deaths a less sad thing. It is still tragic.

I am just saying we must make an effort to see the truth, find the real responsible people and find what is the right thing to do. if we really want to extend our goodwill and care to people on far places, on different societies, I don’t think we can do much in the real world, if we don’t give up the illusion that we can protect people that live under evil regimes if we don’t oppose those regimes somehow.

The fact that we need to oppose tyrannies to try to protect people, brings some pain and some complexities, but think with me, we could be worst. Imagine if we lived in a Universe where we had to support tyrannies to help people. I think that would be worst.