Here are my thoughts on the present cacophony of responses to the situation in Israel/ Palestine: One man can kill another man but one truth can’t kill another truth. Many things on the ground are invisible from a height of 10,000 feet or from an equivalent historical distance. Their invisibility isn’t the same as their non-occurrence. This is true whether the distance is the altitude of a bomber or the historical perspective of a moral observer. Even during the climactic phase of the “good war” of Britain and its allies, there were British voices that protested the indiscriminate bombing of German cities and civilians. Who was more morally courageous in retrospect? The protesters or those who cheered on Bomber Harris? Forgetting that that air war was a failure, tragic for all sides, made it easier for the US to commit the comparable mistake of the “shock and awe” strategy in the Iraq War. It’s worth remembering the details of remote events and worth imagining the destruction caused by murderers at close range and bombs and rockets at a remote distance. Everyone has to die. No one has to kill.
Signed,
Andrew (Weeks)
Normal Thoughts 