The never-ending conflict in the Middle-East, and the normalisation of horror that war brings, has made a cliché of the ultimatum brought to fame by Athenian historian and general, Thucydides, in his Melian Dialogue: “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must”.
In the context of the overt bullying of opponents of the razing of Gaza, its worth examining the full statement Thucydides relayed from the negotiations between the Athenians – who were militarily the superior force – and the rulers of Melos, whose people faced destruction. The ultimatum is not so much about the inevitability of strength overcoming, but about morality: because morality only matters, according to the Dialogue, when both sides are ‘equal in power’.
‘Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”
Isn’t that precisely what we’re now seeing in the Middle-East as allies muster on each side? The realpolitick (a political approach for which Thucydides is considered a foundational figure) of what is happening is that this is not a conflict between equals in power. Israel has the might of the United States in its corner, and that means Netanyahu is doing pretty much whatever he likes. As a consequence, the weak are suffering appallingly. The strong prevail and persevere because they can. But in this modern era where the destruction of a whole people is playing out before our eyes, it behoves us to at least speak up even if we know we are unequal in power, even if we are threatened, not with bombardment, but with fiscal punishment.
This week, in the teeth of sustained international criticism, Israel said that it not only planned to invade the already ceaselessly-bombarded Gaza city, but was also seeking to erase the idea of a Palestinian State by cutting the West Bank in two, a move that offers further support to the extremist Israelis attacking Palestinians in the region and illegally seizing their land. The strong do what they can.
Public opinion in the West is overwhelmingly against the continuing bombardment – and this month 28 countries, including Ireland and the UK, signed a joint statement calling for the immediate end of the war in Gaza and accusing Israel of denying essential aid to starving people. The UN’s humanitarian agency, Ocha, say that Palestinians are starving, and that there have been 227 malnutrition-related deaths, including 103 children, since October 2023.
Israel, which denies most Western journalists entry to Gaza, also denies that they are starving Palestinians. “Not only has Israel never starved or targeted civilians, but it goes above and beyond to protect civilians in the most complex of war zones like Gaza,” Israeli opposition leader Benny Gantz said previously.
Those denials are seriously undermined by the decision of the Israeli authorities to ban journalists from the conflict and therefore prevent them from reporting on much of the destruction, or witnessing the effect of same on desperate, broken people. They are setting themselves up as an international Ministry of Truth and asking us to accept, without question, their version of events, while at the same time pillorying media reports that quote the Palestinian authorities. As the conflict grins on, that argument has run out of road.
International news agency, Agence France-Presse, one of just three such news platforms still operating in the area, said last month that it is trying to evacuate its remaining freelance staff from Gaza because “their lives are in danger”, CNN reports: adding “alongside Reuters and the Associated Press, Paris-headquartered AFP is one of a trio of major global news agencies that provide other media outlets with text, photo and video images from around the world.”
That suits Israel. The strong will do what they can. And so Mike Huckabee, the U.S. Ambassador to Israel, hits out at the countries who called for a ceasefire in Gaza, saying that “when Hamas thinks you do good work, you are doing evil.”
That talking point is, frankly, absurd – as is the relentless aggression from both the U.S. and Israel towards Ireland for taking a position which does not support Hamas but which decries the appalling, indefensible treatment of innocent people in Gaza. The Irish government strongly condemned the brutal, horrific attack by Hamas on October 7th, which led to this war, and continues to repeatedly call for the release of the remaining hostages. But as barrister and Senator Michael McDowell, who no-one could fairly describe as being a supporter of Hamas, pointed out last week:
De facto annexation through settlement of the remaining lands occupied by Palestinian Arabs since 1948 is a breach of international law. Full stop. And its violent maintenance by military means, including a policy of encroachments and expulsions as the state of Israel and its army has practised, amounts to war crime. Full stop. What the Israeli government and its army have done to the civilian population in Gaza and in many parts of the West Bank since the Hamas atrocities of October 2023 amounts to war crime.
I don’t accept the argument that Israel should be championed in this war simply because of the way support for each side in the conflict has divided along political lines in Europe and much of the Western world.
It’s true that the hypocrisy of much of the intolerant, idiotic, addled left who virtue-signal about Palestine mostly because they hate Western culture is nauseating. But that should not mean our instinct is always to take the opposing view if the liberal left, often for their own nefarious reasons, adopt a position.
The morality of the actions of each side in any conflict, or any situation, should be decided on fundamental principles. Morality is not a political tick-box exercise where I must subscribe to all of the views of a cohort I agree with because I find so much of what the left espouses to be abhorrent, particularly on issues like nationalism, abortion, and the family. (As Matt Treacy and others have observed, the modern left have utterly abandoned the issues that were supposed to matter to them.) We should seek moral clarity in each instance instead of adopting some sort of boil-in-the-bag ideology. We can believe a political figure is right on, say, gender ideology, but wrong on Gaza.
Of course that boil-in-the-bag ideology is very common in the political world. Sinn Féin, for example, have shifted from nationalism vis socialism to internationalism, so they can engage in the cognitive dissonance of talking up Irish identity while supporting mass migration which can – and will – only serve to damage and dilute that identity. But in their simplistic view, opposing immigration is a ‘right-wing’ view, so they’ve spent years describing those who expressed concern about that issue as ‘racists’. That’s simply idiotic.
But, for those of us observing rather than participating in the war in Gaza, the weak should also do what they can to speak for the innocent. Ireland is a small country and therefore has limited influence on the international stage. Measures like the Occupied Territories Bill may bring opprobrium and threats from the pro-Israeli lobby and their powerful U.S. allies, who darkly warn of repercussions for Ireland if we don’t back down. That doesn’t mean we should be bullied into silence.
Incidentally, I would wager that most people are unaware that the OTB only aims to ban trade with the illegal settlements in the West Bank. It’s not a measure that deals with Hamas in Gaza – and there can no denying that the violent seizures of land from Palestinian families in that territory is both illegal and morally wrong.
In the account written by Thucydides, the Melians respond to the Athenians claim that morality is only at play between those equal in power with the assertion that they should have “the privilege of being allowed in danger to invoke what is fair and right” – and warn that relying on might as right might cause the Athenians to, in turn, suffer the consequences of denying such invocations leaving them as “an example for the world to meditate upon”.
Cruelty begets cruelty, in other words. And while the unfortunate Melians were slaughtered by the Athenians who ruthlessly “put to death all the grown men whom they took, and sold the women and children for slaves, and subsequently sent out five hundred colonists and inhabited the place themselves”, the long wars – and a ferocious plague – eventually brought the Athenian Empire to its knees. The moral decline revealed in their brutality on Melos was followed by their eventual decline as a great power in the region
The war in Gaza will end, but the catastrophic death toll and destruction will only increase the enmity and hatred on both sides. We are right to speak against the brutality of this war when we can, and to judge the morality of the actions and engagement playing out before our eyes. Both Israel and Hamas should be held to account if we are to achieve moral clarity, though what we are witnessing now is more of a terrible vengeance being wrecked on a cowering people than an actual conflict. The strong must be challenged or we are all diminished.
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