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Professor Mark Tomlinson is co-director of the Institute for Life Course Health Research in the Department of Global Health at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at Stellenbosch University. These are his personal views.
“In the operating room, we examined Juri (aged 9 years) from head to toe. This beautiful, meek little girl was missing two inches of her left femur along with most of the muscle and skin on the back of her thigh. Both of her buttocks were flayed open, cutting so deeply through flesh that the lowest bones in her pelvis were exposed. As we swept our hands through this topography of cruelty, maggots fell in clumps onto the operating room table.” – Mark Perlmutter and Feroze Sidhwa
In April and May 2024, Dr Mark Perlmutter and Dr Feroze Sidhwa, two American surgeons, spent a fortnight in Gaza performing surgeries at the Gaza European Hospital. Together they have a combined 57 years of volunteering in over 40 surgical missions on four continents.
They describe being on “intimate terms with death and carnage and despair”, but that none of this could prepare them for what they saw in Gaza.
Perlmutter speaks of children being shredded; of pinpoint shots to the hearts and heads of children, and of a toddler who had been shot (twice) in the heart by a sniper – making any argument about an accidental shooting absurd.
Two months later, on 2 July, the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) ordered the Gaza European Hospital to close. Before I go on, let that sink in. On 2 July, the IDF, who are conducting the most intense bombing campaign of the last century, ordered a hospital to close.
Pro-IDF protests
The end of July saw protesters (with the support of several MPs) storming a military base in Israel to prevent the questioning (not even the imprisonment) of IDF soldiers accused of the rape and abuse of Palestinian prisoners. Surely, this must be one of the first times in history that high-ranking officials of a government have rioted in support of rape as a weapon of war?
Early August saw Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich say that “nobody will let us cause two million civilians to die of hunger even though it might be justified and moral until our hostages are returned”. In a normal, even only marginally moral society, Smotrich would be in jail. In Israel, he is the finance minister.
We are in the 11th month of an invasion of an occupied territory, where the bodies of thousands of children are being shredded and burnt by 900-kilogramme bombs; a likely death toll of up to 186,000 (7.9% of the population), with the minds of countless more punctured and torn by the endless explosions day and night for over 300 days.
Children listening to and wondering whether it is this bomb or the next that will kill them and their families. Then hearing the explosion as the bombs kill their neighbours and friends. The ensuing nightmares and chronic trauma will mark a generation.
Dystopian game
It is as if Israel is playing a dystopian reality television game. Moving Palestinians around like pieces on a chess board. A chess board bounded by walls. A board from which the only escape is death. Squid Games for Palestinians. Go here. No, go there. Go to that safe place. No, we changed our mind. Bomb the safe place. Bomb the tents. Burn the children. Bomb the hospital. Blow up that school. Kill the journalists. Kill the aid workers.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Minister of Defence Yoav Gallant and Smotrich have created a hellscape from their Knesset offices.
It is the work of a regime that is utterly convinced as to its impunity, no matter the transgression.
And as I write this on Sunday 11 August, 2024, Israel has just issued a massive evacuation order in Khan Younis, following on the heels of yet another bombing and massacre at a school where displaced people were sheltering. At least 80 people were killed.
How do we come to understand the callousness and slaughter in Gaza? How do we even begin to understand the minds of people like Netanyahu and Smotrich?
Reverse empathy
In his remarkable book, Against Empathy, the American psychologist Paul Bloom presents us with an intuitively unsettling idea. We tend to see empathy as a virtue beyond reproach – how can empathy be a bad thing? Commonly, empathy is understood as the capacity to put yourself in the shoes of another, to feel what they are feeling, and to then act accordingly.
But, as Bloom shows so powerfully, it is more complicated than this. He shows that empathy often leads to biased and irrational decision-making and that we are far more likely to empathise with those who are ‘like us’ than those we see as different.
The pretty, white, blonde little girl stuck at the bottom of a well will receive endless help from the community and reams of media attention – often global attention. The pretty black girl will also receive help, but substantially less than the white girl. The ladder of diminishing ‘empathy’ follows a neat, linear, racial, cultural and gender path. The homeless black child will receive little empathy – “What were they doing playing so close to that well, anyway?”
Does Bloom’s proposition help us understand the minds of men like Smotrich and Netanyahu? Of course, there is politics, history, religion, racism and colonialism. But what else can we draw from to offer insight into these men? In thinking about this, a word and a political philosopher kept intruding. The word is righteousness; the political philosopher Hannah Arendt.
Wrong side of righteousness
A righteous person is defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as someone who behaves in a way that is morally correct, while the etymology of righteousness is “purity of heart; just, upright; sinless, conforming to divine law”.
It is easy to see how the word is commonly framed in religious terms. Netanyahu and Smotrich are so utterly convinced of their righteousness, that they believe that they must, by definition, be sinless. And because (in their minds) they are conforming to divine law, nothing is therefore out of bounds. There is no obscenity, no transgression, no number of dismembered children that would cause Netanyahu or Smotrich to stop and think.
And it is that word, “think”, that brings me to Hannah Arendt, the 20th-century philosopher of totalitarianism and evil. In her book on Arendt, Lessons in Love and Disobedience, Lyndsey Stonebridge draws on Arendt’s views on the origins of the totalitarian mind, the mind that can no longer hear another voice, the mind that cannot have an inner dialogue, that has no moral imagination.
For Arendt, the most important thing that any of us can do is to think. For her, thinking is a solitary act, of looking within, about engaging with something broader. And importantly for our purposes here – being able to connect to a moral order that is bigger than one’s own narcissism.
Hatred
Smotrich and Netanyahu are bereft of ideas, responsible for unfathomable suffering, and utterly incapable of thinking from the standpoint of a Palestinian, of a mother who has lost her child, a child that has lost its parents. Both are utterly overwhelmed by hatred and incapable of a moral stance.
If any part of the rule-based international order is to be salvaged from the horror that Israel has rained down on Gaza, now is the time for the International Court of Justice to stop delaying and declare a genocide, and for the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Smotrich.
They are war criminals. They should be in jail. DM
