Moral conviction

I rarely post across my full network and never about global topics. I’m typically reserved even by English standards and never discuss my background. But now I feel compelled as world events demand it.?

This past week has shown that we have a dire need for moral clarity.

Like most, I feel shocked and distressed by the scale and horror of the Hamas massacre, but also bewildered and angry by the moral turpitude that followed all across our society. Up until a week ago I never questioned that despite differences in politics, perceptions, and priorities, we all shared a broadly universal sense of morality: of right and wrong. I assumed that today’s zeitgeist of personal truths, moral indignation and universal tolerance didn’t extend to absolutes of good and evil.

We simply must have conviction about what is unambiguously wrong: a collective conscience. Morality around hate and murder is a bright-line test, a test we are failing on three levels:-

Firstly, Is there any morality bar lower and easier to meet than condemning the horrors of last week’s massacre? And yet … incredibly … there’s a significant portion of our society who wouldn’t – deafening silence or verbal footwork (well both sides…, but you have to understand … , Yes, but….). As French President Macron said this week? “… nothing can justify terrorism. There can never be a ‘yes but’”.? Like an awful dystopian episode of Black Mirror we saw unimaginable acts of barbarism broadcast from Kibbutzes and Peace concerts - the cold-blooded murder of at least 1,300 including babies and the elderly, targeting not just Israeli Jews but indiscriminately slaughtering Israeli Arab medics, Druze commandos and Bedouin families. Then meticulously executing the horrific plan of kidnapping toddlers, women, the sick and elderly to become (in)human shields in Gaza.- Surely this can be condemned by everyone, unreservedly? The accounts of barbarism are so inhumane that a father of an 8-year-old girl, when told of his daughter’s murder, said it was the best news he could hope to hear as he had dreaded her being savagely tortured. It’s as clear a crime against humanity as is possible. Those who won't unequivocally condemn the most horrific unimaginable acts don’t have a different opinion or different moral reference, but a different humanity.

Secondly whilst I am fortunate that my loved ones are all safe, it is unfortunate that I am - like so many – only 1-degree away from dozens who are terribly affected; my cousin’s pregnant babysitter was murdered at the concert with her family; my cousin-in-law’s 10 family members all kidnapped and taken to Gaza; a friend’s teenage son snatched and over 50 colleagues and friends ripped from their regular life to be called up to fight. So I’m not impartial. Perhaps I have lost my objectivity, but as the tide has gone out this week it has revealed unbelievable levels of hypocrisy and bias. Questions that I assumed were rhetorical are going unanswered? -

1.?? Is morality completely relative? How is it that mainstream media, such as the BBC and CBC refuse to label Hamas terrorists? Is no act of depravity objectively immoral?

2.?? Who’s writing history? We all mock holocaust deniers but X is flooded with anonymous posters casting doubt on the truth or extent of the massacres despite the terrorists perversely recording their brutality on GoPros and then posting and live streaming. No less incredibly, the press dared to ask heads of state how many beheadings they could personally confirm as if the answer would change the extent of the horror.

3.?? Do we still recognize hypocrisy?? Why are the long, long lists of colleges and sports teams who proudly took vocal stances on moral issues such as BLM, Ukraine, and gender identity, choosing between remaining silent on this massacre and issuing clinical, mealy-mouthed statements as if this were a census on Palestinian self-determination and not what it is: self-evident epitome of pure evil.

4. Can we call out false virtue? Students have been righteously evangelizing codes of behavior to avoid ‘microaggressions’ or ‘being triggered’ and the need for ‘safe spaces’ but don’t register any reaction when their Jewish peers are subject to actual violence and speeches supporting mass murder on campus. As Martin Niemoller prophetically wrote ‘Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew’

5.?? Are we really so lazy as to assume the truth must always be the midpoint between two perspectives - even if one of these perspectives is inhumane - targeting civilians, carrying out beheadings, and using rape as a weapon of terror?

6.?? It’s hard to have moral high ground in war with it being so imprecise but are we really saying there’s a moral equivalence between Israel and a group whose charter demands not peace but the obliteration of Israel, that slaughters children in front of their mothers and that barbarically uses their own citizens as human shields?

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And thirdly, before the mutilated bodies had even been recovered, let alone buried, we were subjected to rallies across our major cities and college campuses conflating outrageous support for Hamas with the legitimate question of Palestinian self-determination. Their placards and chants loudly and clearly advocated racial hatred, supported for terror and incited violence yet there seemed to be little outrage and no arrests. As NY Mayor Eric Adams unequivocally declared “We are not alright with this”.? It is unfathomable that days after wiping out entire communities, burning people alive, and babies being stabbed in their cribs that rallies in solidarity with Hamas go unchallenged in our capitals:

… Outside the Sydney Opera House, hundreds chanted “Gas the Jews”. I don’t know if it was for shock value or with serious intent, but I don’t take it lightly with 72 of my family having been gassed to death.?

… London’s Oxford Street was packed with Hamas supporters shouting “One Solution” (for overtones of Hitler’s ‘Final Solution”). My paternal grandfather narrowly escaped alive from Nazi labor camps and eventually sought refuge in London precisely to avoid my family being a part of anyone’s solution to the “Jewish problem”.

…? In New York’s Times Square they sang “From the River to the Sea’”– referencing Hamas’s mandate to wipe Israel out from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. My maternal grandfather was an early immigrant to the British Mandate of Palestine to help build the young nation alongside, not instead of, Palestinians.????

… Underneath the Eifel Tower, Hamas supporters held signs with Nazi swastikas. A symbol of death my father, a Holocaust survivor, thought he would never again see displayed yet is openly used to punctuate rallies on European streets.

Perhaps the broader conflict doesn’t lend itself to the same universal moral clarity, but nor should it be reduced to a grotesque tally chart where those with the highest death toll are the only victims. Misery isn’t a zero-sum game. No one has a monopoly on suffering. And unfortunately, there is no shortage of morally worthy causes for us to contribute to and help the desperate: charities for conflict orphans, for displaced Palestinians, for hospitals and Doctors without Borders.

I will be eternally grateful to the many who are standing up with moral certitude in these dark times following the massacre. From Biden’s important, tone-setting speech, to the Global Imams Council's immediate condemnation; from the Archdiocese of NY’s long procession to crowds of Japanese singing for peace in Hebrew; from massive Indian support online to global monuments being lit in Israeli colors. I hope this support continues whilst Hamas is being dismantled and the 300 hostages' safe return is being sought.

#NeverAgain was our aide memoire about the horrors of the last generation, it shouldn’t be a call-to-action for this one. It is not a bumper sticker. It was our collective promise after the Holocaust – a reminder of what can happen when our humanity is lost. We need moral clarity on what is evil and the courage to denounce it. We need to be brave enough to not tolerate intolerance, not equivocate about the unequivocal, and reject lofty ideas of universal consciousness in favor of a more urgent universal conscience.

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